>>Actually, the opposite. I bet the military went on high alert as soon as the power went off. Of course, civil disaster response would be hampered. But it would add a layer of complexity -- the timing has to be perfect, and it's more people in the loop, and more likelihood of leaks.
There were plenty of people in the loop for 9/11 and that still happened with extreme precision... the three main collisions occured within about 20 minutes of each other. The only outlier was flight 93. All it'd take is another 3 or 4 people probably to take out a couple transmission stations.
>>As for whether "terrorists" would target the power grid, I don't see it. Not much bang for the buck. How many died in this, the biggest outage in the US for decades? A half-dozen. It'll be forgotten in a few weeks. Blowing stuff up and killing lots of people is much simpler and does a much better job of terrorising the population. Cutting the power off for a few hours just pisses them off. (With apologies to anyone on a heart-lung machine.)
OTOH, cutting off power immediately before an "actual" attack could cripple the response.
The Earth is extremely close when it comes to the Hubble... Remember, you're talking about an instrument where a defect on the mirror of less than a hair's thickness completely destroyed the focusing ability of the telescope.
"Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:....
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;...." (17 U.S.C. 106)
"A 'derivative work' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work'." (17 U.S.C. 101)
If I take the code to Linux for instance and change it, I am creating a derivative work, because my version is based upon a preexisting work. The preexisting work is copyrighted. The only reason this is allowed is because the copyright holder (be it Linus or someone else) has exercised his or her rights under sec. 106 and authorized anyone to make modifications provided that they follow the requirements set forth in the GPL. Without this permission, I am violating one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders stated in sec. 106.
The only hope that this is legal then is if the fair use exemptions given in 17 U.S.C. 107. There are four criteria listed for determining fair use; let's look at them and try to guess what a court would decide, since to the best of my knowledge, a case like this has yet to be brought to trial.
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include - "(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;"
Okay, probably pass. You're not selling it or anything, so you're probably in the "better half" of the spectrum here. Still, it's probably not being used for actual educational use per se, so it isn't at the complete other end of the scale.
"the nature of the copyrighted work;"
In (only) OS, it could easily be argued that the nature of the release is to allow modifications for personal use, so with non-Free OS software, you're mostly in the clear here. However, the fact that, say, GPLed software comes with a license that gives specific permissions for what is allowed and what is not would probably significantly narrow the opportunity to make such an argument. So with GPL-like licenses, you're probably about halfway across the scale. Of course, with closed source programs, you'd be over towards the other end.
"(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;"
Here is where we have major problems. If you're doing modifications on an existing program, you're probably only replacing a very small abount, or even maybe only adding code and not removing any. Either way, probably almost all of the material in the final product is going to be from the original, so here you're usually going to be in deep water.
"and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
This has tremendous variability both in terms of what the original software was and what the changes were and how the software was to be used. For
>>Now what can I do with this tarball? The previous poster what wondering if he could modify it as long as he doesn't redistribute the changes. Now logically that sounds reasonable but I don't know.
No, you can't (IANAL disclaimer). At least, this is what a reading of copyright law tells without a knowledge of many court rulings. That was what my post was saying. Modifying it is creating a derivative work* which is a right reserved to the copyright owner**. Hence, without permission, it is infringement. You don't have to distribute.
It's possible that it could be considered fair use, but I think the best you could hope for is to have it declared that you in good faith thought it was fair use and get off without much punishment except a ruling requiring you to destroy your work. This would be up to a court of course.
* "A 'derivative work' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work'" (17 USC sec. 102)
** "Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:.... (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;...."
First, you should get your car back, then the thief should be required to reimburse the cops. So between the two groups, you get more than the thief took.
Secondly, the analogy is still flawed because the cops are already being paid on a salary. I'm guessing the lawyers weren't. The winners (the members of the class) shouldn't have to pay because they didn't get reimbursement beyond a strict refund, so Apple pays the lawyers too. A settlement where the class members get excess reimbursement and then used some of that to pay the lawyers would also work, provided after payment the class members still had full reimbursement for the $129, which accomplishes essentially the same thing in the end.
Also, there was a terrorism report that said we were extremely vunerable that was issued under--wait for it--Bush, after only about a month of presidency. So both Clinton's and Bush's inaction were to blame.
From MSNBC: "The CERT Coordination Center said it also did not appear to be related to the W32/Blaster worm or other computer intruder activity."
(Yes, I know the source, but MS actually stays pretty well out of the way of the news, at least according to the web publisher of Slate(?) concerning the antitrust trial)
I would agree with both the grandparent (looking at *only* what was said and what he was replying to, and not inferring anything). The origial poster (great grandparent) said that times like this is what the 2nd amendment was made for ("That is seriously one of the main reasons for the 2nd amendment"), while the grandparent only said that the 2nd amendment clearly states that the right to bear arms is given to support a "well regulated militia".
I'll agree that if you read into it, it seems like he's saying that the 2nd amendment doesn't do what you say, but that isn't the necessary interpretation.
This is probably (it's untested, hence the "probably") untrue. One of the rights that is reserved for the copyright holders under Title 17 is the right to make derivative works. Modifying code would almost certainly be seen as making a derivative work, at least if the changes are more than an extremely minor patch or something, and hence a violation without the copyright holder's permission.
Actually, depending on how you get your "random" numbers, this may not work. Very coincidently I have been looking at the third chapter of The Art of Computer Programming, on arathemetic means of producing pseudo-random numbers. Exercise number 3.1-1 asks "Suppose that you wish to obtain a decimal digit at random, not using a computer. Which of the following methods would be suitable?... d) Expose a geiger counter to a source of radioactivity for one minute (shielding yourself) and use the units digit of the resulting count...."
This looks like it would work, but it doesn't: "(d) (This is a hard question thrown in purposely as a surprise.) The number is not random; if the average number of emmissions per minute is m, [lots of math I don't feel like typing in ASCII]....Even digits are selected with probability exp(-m) cosh m = 1/2 + exp(-2m)/2, and this is not equal to 1/2, redardless of the value of m (although the error may be so small as to be considered negligible when m is very large)." because the numbers are not uniformly distributed (precisely, the count follows a poisson distribution).
Now taking the time that the counter registers a hit may work, but it seems that too may not be a uniform distribution.
>>There was a time when "probably less than 1/4 of computer users" chose Internet Explorer as their browser, but Microsoft's bundling of that browser changed that.
Do you remember the time that MS charged a monthly fee to use IE? Didn't think so. Do you think that people would have switched to IE from Netscape if the companies charged $20-whatever/mth? No, because calling up AOL, canceling their account, calling up MSN, giving them your cerdit card is a bigger pain then installing AOL. But there was no pain changing from Netscape to IE. (Apart from the dubious quality of IE anyway.)
The real downside to webmail for me is (are you ready for this?) it's on the web. I keep a backlog of essentially every email I recieve. I have things burnt onto CD from over 4 years ago, which is when I first had a non-webmail, non-AOL account. Unless webmail places start giving insanely larger starage spaces (say, 50 megs instead of 5) and/or offer a very easy download solution, they are worthless for general use. Add to that the fact that you have to be online (okay, I have cable, so that's not a real issue) with a good connection to read, and even with a good connection it would take longer to move things between folders, read past messages, search, etc. and webmail starts to look very unappealing. The only benefit for power users at least is that you would have all your messages whereever you go.
As a general rule, there is *no way* to design a complex program (as in one that does a lot of things) in a way that is both simple enough to learn and use for beginners and yet powerful enough to satisfy advanced users. You need two modes of operation. I believe this is an actual design rule attributed to someone, but I forget who. Now, one of the ways doesn't have to be a wizard, but in order to make it easy for beginners to use, you have to hide advanced options. In order to make it efficient for advanced users, the advanced options need to be easily accessable. These two goals are contradictory.
Because they don't know that. Actually, if you read some of the comments here, brokers aren't allowing shortselling of SCOX because it's too high risk. But some people for instance short sold Enron at a point when it looked like it was a strong stock and brokers lent it out because of it's appearance. Essentially if you are the person doing the lending, you want the stock to go up as well.
See this post. Your method would work, but it is unnecessary unless you're trying to steal the identity of a particular person. Why make it easier for identity thieves?
Shorting is done by borrowing stock. After a certain amount of time, you have to return that amount of stock, but in the meantime you can do whatever you want. In short selling, you typically sell all of the stock when you first get it, hopefully at a high price, then buy it back when you need to return the stock, hopefully at a lower price.
If you know that already and were instead wordering about specifics, then I can't help you.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Actually, the opposite. I bet the military went on high alert as soon as the power went off. Of course, civil disaster response would be hampered. But it would add a layer of complexity -- the timing has to be perfect, and it's more people in the loop, and more likelihood of leaks.
There were plenty of people in the loop for 9/11 and that still happened with extreme precision... the three main collisions occured within about 20 minutes of each other. The only outlier was flight 93. All it'd take is another 3 or 4 people probably to take out a couple transmission stations.
>>As for whether "terrorists" would target the power grid, I don't see it. Not much bang for the buck. How many died in this, the biggest outage in the US for decades? A half-dozen. It'll be forgotten in a few weeks. Blowing stuff up and killing lots of people is much simpler and does a much better job of terrorising the population. Cutting the power off for a few hours just pisses them off. (With apologies to anyone on a heart-lung machine.)
OTOH, cutting off power immediately before an "actual" attack could cripple the response.
You shouldn't be touching the desk when you're using the mouse.
The Earth is extremely close when it comes to the Hubble... Remember, you're talking about an instrument where a defect on the mirror of less than a hair's thickness completely destroyed the focusing ability of the telescope.
Read the US code!
"Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:....
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;...." (17 U.S.C. 106)
"A 'derivative work' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work'." (17 U.S.C. 101)
If I take the code to Linux for instance and change it, I am creating a derivative work, because my version is based upon a preexisting work. The preexisting work is copyrighted. The only reason this is allowed is because the copyright holder (be it Linus or someone else) has exercised his or her rights under sec. 106 and authorized anyone to make modifications provided that they follow the requirements set forth in the GPL. Without this permission, I am violating one of the exclusive rights of copyright holders stated in sec. 106.
The only hope that this is legal then is if the fair use exemptions given in 17 U.S.C. 107. There are four criteria listed for determining fair use; let's look at them and try to guess what a court would decide, since to the best of my knowledge, a case like this has yet to be brought to trial.
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
"(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;"
Okay, probably pass. You're not selling it or anything, so you're probably in the "better half" of the spectrum here. Still, it's probably not being used for actual educational use per se, so it isn't at the complete other end of the scale.
"the nature of the copyrighted work;"
In (only) OS, it could easily be argued that the nature of the release is to allow modifications for personal use, so with non-Free OS software, you're mostly in the clear here. However, the fact that, say, GPLed software comes with a license that gives specific permissions for what is allowed and what is not would probably significantly narrow the opportunity to make such an argument. So with GPL-like licenses, you're probably about halfway across the scale. Of course, with closed source programs, you'd be over towards the other end.
"(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;"
Here is where we have major problems. If you're doing modifications on an existing program, you're probably only replacing a very small abount, or even maybe only adding code and not removing any. Either way, probably almost all of the material in the final product is going to be from the original, so here you're usually going to be in deep water.
"and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
This has tremendous variability both in terms of what the original software was and what the changes were and how the software was to be used. For
Yes, a realize that...
....
>>Now what can I do with this tarball? The previous poster what wondering if he could modify it as long as he doesn't redistribute the changes. Now logically that sounds reasonable but I don't know.
No, you can't (IANAL disclaimer). At least, this is what a reading of copyright law tells without a knowledge of many court rulings. That was what my post was saying. Modifying it is creating a derivative work* which is a right reserved to the copyright owner**. Hence, without permission, it is infringement. You don't have to distribute.
It's possible that it could be considered fair use, but I think the best you could hope for is to have it declared that you in good faith thought it was fair use and get off without much punishment except a ruling requiring you to destroy your work. This would be up to a court of course.
* "A 'derivative work' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a 'derivative work'" (17 USC sec. 102)
** "Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;...."
First, you should get your car back, then the thief should be required to reimburse the cops. So between the two groups, you get more than the thief took.
Secondly, the analogy is still flawed because the cops are already being paid on a salary. I'm guessing the lawyers weren't. The winners (the members of the class) shouldn't have to pay because they didn't get reimbursement beyond a strict refund, so Apple pays the lawyers too. A settlement where the class members get excess reimbursement and then used some of that to pay the lawyers would also work, provided after payment the class members still had full reimbursement for the $129, which accomplishes essentially the same thing in the end.
Also, there was a terrorism report that said we were extremely vunerable that was issued under--wait for it--Bush, after only about a month of presidency. So both Clinton's and Bush's inaction were to blame.
From MSNBC: "The CERT Coordination Center said it also did not appear to be related to the W32/Blaster worm or other computer intruder activity."
(Yes, I know the source, but MS actually stays pretty well out of the way of the news, at least according to the web publisher of Slate(?) concerning the antitrust trial)
Jargon file entry. (I know you have another reply)
>>Was it the MSblaster?
"The CERT Coordination Center said it also did not appear to be related to the W32/Blaster worm or other computer intruder activity." clicky
I would agree with both the grandparent (looking at *only* what was said and what he was replying to, and not inferring anything). The origial poster (great grandparent) said that times like this is what the 2nd amendment was made for ("That is seriously one of the main reasons for the 2nd amendment"), while the grandparent only said that the 2nd amendment clearly states that the right to bear arms is given to support a "well regulated militia".
I'll agree that if you read into it, it seems like he's saying that the 2nd amendment doesn't do what you say, but that isn't the necessary interpretation.
...TWICE. (Well, one wasn't quite this big...)
There was the 1977 NYC only outage, and the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965. The latter seems similar to the present condition.
This is probably (it's untested, hence the "probably") untrue. One of the rights that is reserved for the copyright holders under Title 17 is the right to make derivative works. Modifying code would almost certainly be seen as making a derivative work, at least if the changes are more than an extremely minor patch or something, and hence a violation without the copyright holder's permission.
Actually, depending on how you get your "random" numbers, this may not work. Very coincidently I have been looking at the third chapter of The Art of Computer Programming, on arathemetic means of producing pseudo-random numbers. Exercise number 3.1-1 asks "Suppose that you wish to obtain a decimal digit at random, not using a computer. Which of the following methods would be suitable? ... d) Expose a geiger counter to a source of radioactivity for one minute (shielding yourself) and use the units digit of the resulting count. ..."
This looks like it would work, but it doesn't: "(d) (This is a hard question thrown in purposely as a surprise.) The number is not random; if the average number of emmissions per minute is m, [lots of math I don't feel like typing in ASCII]....Even digits are selected with probability exp(-m) cosh m = 1/2 + exp(-2m)/2, and this is not equal to 1/2, redardless of the value of m (although the error may be so small as to be considered negligible when m is very large)." because the numbers are not uniformly distributed (precisely, the count follows a poisson distribution).
Now taking the time that the counter registers a hit may work, but it seems that too may not be a uniform distribution.
>>There was a time when "probably less than 1/4 of computer users" chose Internet Explorer as their browser, but Microsoft's bundling of that browser changed that.
Do you remember the time that MS charged a monthly fee to use IE? Didn't think so. Do you think that people would have switched to IE from Netscape if the companies charged $20-whatever/mth? No, because calling up AOL, canceling their account, calling up MSN, giving them your cerdit card is a bigger pain then installing AOL. But there was no pain changing from Netscape to IE. (Apart from the dubious quality of IE anyway.)
The real downside to webmail for me is (are you ready for this?) it's on the web. I keep a backlog of essentially every email I recieve. I have things burnt onto CD from over 4 years ago, which is when I first had a non-webmail, non-AOL account. Unless webmail places start giving insanely larger starage spaces (say, 50 megs instead of 5) and/or offer a very easy download solution, they are worthless for general use. Add to that the fact that you have to be online (okay, I have cable, so that's not a real issue) with a good connection to read, and even with a good connection it would take longer to move things between folders, read past messages, search, etc. and webmail starts to look very unappealing. The only benefit for power users at least is that you would have all your messages whereever you go.
As a general rule, there is *no way* to design a complex program (as in one that does a lot of things) in a way that is both simple enough to learn and use for beginners and yet powerful enough to satisfy advanced users. You need two modes of operation. I believe this is an actual design rule attributed to someone, but I forget who. Now, one of the ways doesn't have to be a wizard, but in order to make it easy for beginners to use, you have to hide advanced options. In order to make it efficient for advanced users, the advanced options need to be easily accessable. These two goals are contradictory.
In case you missed this when it was posted before or in the other posts in this thread, someone did make a real aquarium mod.
Because they don't know that. Actually, if you read some of the comments here, brokers aren't allowing shortselling of SCOX because it's too high risk. But some people for instance short sold Enron at a point when it looked like it was a strong stock and brokers lent it out because of it's appearance. Essentially if you are the person doing the lending, you want the stock to go up as well.
See this post. Your method would work, but it is unnecessary unless you're trying to steal the identity of a particular person. Why make it easier for identity thieves?
This may be the most sane idea I've yet seen regarding the recall.
>>knowhow for that matter
Shorting is done by borrowing stock. After a certain amount of time, you have to return that amount of stock, but in the meantime you can do whatever you want. In short selling, you typically sell all of the stock when you first get it, hopefully at a high price, then buy it back when you need to return the stock, hopefully at a lower price.
If you know that already and were instead wordering about specifics, then I can't help you.
Automatic installation? I'm prompted *twice* before anything is installed. I think that's the default settings, though I'm not sure.
You example is a good one because the pictuers are almost always reviewed by a human before letters are sent out.