They give me the source code for the kernel driver
Does that source code include a one MB file called "Module-nvkernel"? Tell me, what language was that file written in?
They're giving the program to me for free as in beer
Presumably you shelled out a fair sum of cash to buy an Nvidia card. That card will not work without drivers. I can assure you, you paid for the drivers when you bought the card.
I'm not a developer so issues about code modification isn't my concern.
Even though you might never exercise your right to modify code, it should still be a concern for you. You wouldn't be running Linux if it weren't for the ability to modify code. Developer or not, the ability to modify (and audit) code benefits almost everyone (it's debatable whether or not it benefits Nvidia more than keeping the source closed).
What happens when someone restrains a freedom that you want to exercise? Should I support those restraints because they don't effect me? Even if the ability to modify code never benefits you, that doesn't mean you should disregard other people's freedoms.
For the record, if Nvidia were to open source their driver, developers could port it to other operating systems, such as FreeBSD and AtheOS. The X11 side of their driver could be ported to other graphic systems, such as Berlin or the graphics system for AtheOS. The kernel side could be integrated and distributed with the Linux kernel. The X11 side could be integrated and distributed with XFree86. Their code could be used in research projects for new graphics systems. It is possible that Nvidia's GPU can perform operations that could accelerate other computations (perhaps image recognition, speech recognition, or some other project which the drivers were never intended for). Since Nvidia won't open the source, we may never know.
You mean that waste of 1,000,000 of your tax dollars on a piece-of-shit distribution that is less effective than OpenBSD and jail (total cost to the taxpayer: $0)?
You may notice that OpenBSD now claims "One remote hole in the default install, in nearly 6 years!" If OpenBSD utilized an SE Linux type security system, the remote exploit from two and a half weeks ago would have been far more limited in its scope.
Security Enhanced Linux was the motivating factor for the security framework being incorporated into the 2.5 Linux kernel. I would hardly consider that a waste of my tax dollars.
Based on the title, I assumed MIT Technology Review was a peer reviewed journal from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Turns out they're a mass-market rag devoted to making as much money as possible.
The entire site makes me sick. The MIT Technology Review staff is composed of 20 peole who do advertising and one person who does fact checking. It's no surprise their home page brings up a pop-up ad. Of the ten people on their board of directors, only one seems to have any knowledge of technology. That one, Jerome Friedman, is not listed on their staff.
Their CEO appears to be a money-grubbing sell out.
During his stewardship, circulation has tripled, revenues have increased tenfold
He used to work as a manager at both Time and Fortune. It clearly shows!
It is obvious that the author never read the book he is talking about. Seeing as their lone fact checker missed this crucial fact, I have to wonder if anything in that article (or the entire site for that matter) is correct.
What the heck are the letters 'MIT' supposed to mean?
The separation of hydrogen and oxygen from water is an endothermic reaction. The reverse, combining hydrogen and oxygen to form water is exothermic, and that's how rockets and fuel cells get their power.
Or an enzyme if you're feeling biological.
This brings up an interesting point. Perhaps we could have hydrogen farms where microbes collect solar energy and generate hydrogen from water. I wonder how that would compare to simply setting up solar panels all over the place.
Gnome and KDE both have support pages where you can donate money. The problem is, they won't tell you what they are doing with the money. At Kuro5hin, Rusty told everyone how much he needed, where the money was going, and he hyped it big time.
Gnome and KDE don't disclose anything about their finances. They don't say where their money is going. They don't tell you how much they have collected or how much they have on hand.
I donated to K5 by sending Rusty some cash. It's the only way I would donate, because I am paranoid and I did not want to disclose my name. Normally, I would not send cash since someone could swipe it and I would never know. However, with K5, my account was updated so I know the cash ended up in the right hands.
If open source projects want more people to donate, they should:
Prominantly link to the donation page from the home page.
Put up a spreadsheet describing their financial situation in detail. That "c/o Ximian" line at Gnome has me putting my wallet away.
That bar across the top of K5 was cool! You make a donation and The bar instantly moves. You may only contribute a few dollars, but you know you are making a difference. Open Source projects should provide up-to-the-minute feedback on how much money they have collected.
If lots of open source projects start taking donations, it would be wise to set up a signing authority which audits their books, makes sure the project really exists, tells us the "Support Project Z" page is real, and not some scam artist swindling contributors. This isn't such a big deal for major projects like Gnome and KDE, but smaller projects won't get my money without proper authentication.
Allow anonymous contributions, but let people confirm that their contribution was received. Some people want credit for their donation. Personally, I want to know that I am one of the X anonymous donors who have collectively contributed Y dollars. I know I could just make up a name and have it posted with the others, but I really just want to be listed as anonymous. To solve this problem, you could have a separate listing of anonymous contributions, each one with a transaction ID (or secret code) and dollar figure.
W3C backstabs their only significant supporters
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W3C Ponders RAND Again
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· Score: 3, Insightful
We all know RAND is incompatible with open source. Without open source, there would be no W3C! If every open source browser stopped supporting new standards, there would be only one dominant browser. That one browser shows no intentions of adhearing to the W3C's standards. How can the W3C not see this?!? Without open source, they are DEAD!
Translation: Excluding infomercials and ads, yes. It is illegal to record anything else, since you, the consumer, are thieves, murderers, pirating pices of shit and can not be trusted. Only big business can be trusted and knows what is good for us^H^Hyou.
Gee, you're optimistic. Since when have advertisers allowed people to copy their ads? If they shut off the broadcast flag, it would be trivial to skip everything until the broadcast flag comes back on. Why would the television networks allow people to skip over commercials like that? Besides, the networks want to be the sole distributers of advertisements. Why would they allow viewers to compete with them?
Many advertisements actually include a copyright notice. If someone were to intentionally shut off the broadcast flag, that would imply that they have surrendered the copyright on their content (just wait for the television networks to lobby for this). Pepsi would not be real happy to find their now public domain advertisement chopped up and used in KKK propoganda.
Oh yeah! My point! I guess I left that part out. My point was that people would be more likely to pay for content if it was convenient and confidential. The sky is not falling. Congress should address this issue before messing with digital rights management.
Obviously, security would be a major concern. I would hope that all key datum (account numbers, receipts, etc) are encrypted with some large randomly generated key. The key itself would be encrypted with a password. The key should only be accessible to a priveledged user, banker.
When a customer clicks on a payment link, the web browser would call a setuid banker program, passing a dollar amount, transaction ID, and any other pertinant data. Running under the banker userid, a window would pop up asking the user to select a payment method and to enter their password.
Any time someone tries to start a transaction, a window would pop up asking the user to type in their password. Even if someone physically sat down and started typing passwords, the system could control how often someone can enter their password, dramatically slowing a dictionary attack. All transactions, encryption, and decryption would be managed under the banker ID. The user would never see their encryption key, not even the encrypted version of their key.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this essentially how OpenSSH works? Except that OpenSSH lets the user access their encrypted key.
If someone wants to break this system, they will have to gain priveledged access to the user's machine, and then figure out the password. With a well designed system, such as SE Linux, rooting the box wouldn't even work.
Alternatively, someone could try breaking into the bank, or decrypting the user's data. But these things would be protected with keys much stronger than a password.
If people are to become accustomed to spending money on the internet, we need convenient online payment systems. We need electronic cash that can not be traced or otherwise used to invade our privacy. The technology exists, but it is encumbered with patents. Ironically, those patents are held by a Danish company, but they only apply in the United States.
We need a well established, open standard where people can just type in a password to authorize payment. Thus saving people the trouble of taking out their credit card and copying down a sixteen digit number. I envision a system were you click a button on a web page which accesses the financial transaction system in your web browser. When you click the link, your web browser pops up a window specifying the size of the transaction. You select a payment method, type in a password to authorize the transaction and the computer does the rest, transfering money, a reciept, and if applicable, the content.
That standard should permit open source implementations, so that the most popular web server in the world can use it, and so that free web browsers can use it.
The standard needs support from banks. The banks would be an excellent place to charge for modest patent royalties.
Keep in mind, the record companies do not want convenient online payment systems. With convenient online payment systems, people could buy music direct from the artists, skipping the record companies all together.
Congress should establish some grants to develop a convenient online payment standard.
Re:And you wonder why people hate Linux Supporters
on
DishPVR 721 Review
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Tip: Not everything is GPL. They don't have to give you jack shit if they wrote it and it's not under the GPL. Tip: The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL.
Tip: You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. Don't call their tech support and rag on them, you write them a nice letter on paper and request it, mentioning their 'oversight'. Good point.
And you wonder why people hate Linux Supporters You go through all the trouble to develop, design, construct, and market a box that does something damned useful, and then a snot-nosed 14-year old who can't program other than running a vbs worm starts calling your tech support demanding your "GPL" code. If their product is based on Linux, they did not go to all the trouble to develop, design, and construct the product. If they don't want the benefits and obligations of the GPL, they can use BSD, sell their souls for a closed source alternative, or write their own code.
The first guy who buys a UL distro will get the binaries for UL all nicely packaged on one CD, and I can't see any legal reason why he couldn't just post the.iso on a server somewhere.
All United Linux has to do is create a nice little logo. Copyright that logo. And put a PNG of the logo somewhere on the CD. Since the PNG is simply aggregated with other software, it does not have to be licensed under the GPL.
If you redistribute the logo, you are violating their copyright. If you remove the PNG file from the CD and redistribute as United Linux, you are in violation of their trademark.
Of course, United Linux would probably do more than simply put a copyrighted logo on their CD.
Theft and copyright infringment are very different
on
Warcraft III Gone Gold
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· Score: 1
You're deriving value from a product you didn't pay for...You're STEALING something.
I've got a garden full of corn and lettuce. I am deriving value without paying for it. Am I stealing?
Last year, I gave an ear of corn to my neighbor. He took the kernels off and planted his own garden. Now he is deriving value without paying. Is he stealing?
Deriving value without paying is not theft. The fact that I buy less corn and lettuce at IGA does not mean I stole from them. Theft is the seizing of someone else's property. If someone takes my car and drives it into a lake. They have stolen it, even though they did not derive value from it.
Suppose I take a picture of you walking down the street. I post it on a web site, which generates revenue through advertisements. I am deriving value from your picture without paying. Does that constitute theft? No! Suppose you then copy that picture and distribute it. Does that make you a thief? No, but it does make you a copyright infringer since I own the copyright on that picture.
You are found guilty of anti-competitive behavior, you choke up 80% of your profits for the next two years (as from SEC filings) or 10% of the company net worth -- which ever is higher. if you do it again, 90%/15%
Companies can hide their profits by investing their money. If a company has $6 billion in profit, they can invest $5 billion, leaving them with $1 billion in profit.
Ten percent of Microsoft's net worth does not even begin to compare to the benefits Microsoft has gained from their anti-competitive actions. And that's only counting to the present day. The benefits of increased market share and customer lock-in will continue to go on long after the case is settled.
This case has been going on for six years. 80% of Microsoft's profits for the next two years is far less than their monopolistic practices netted. Your proposed minuscule punishment will tell Microsoft, "go ahead and carry out your anti-competitive practices. We might take 20% next decade."
third time -- dissolution of charter.
People (e.g. Ralph Nadar) say this all the time. What good would it actually do?
If you really want to fine them, why not force them to sell stock (with the government collecting the proceeds)? This will cause an immediate drop in their investor's net worth, and decrease the investor's control over the company.
An End User License Agreement effectively grants copyright holders rights the congress has not bestowed upon them.
This has profound implications for all consumer goods. Imagine if Ford used an EULA for their on-board computers. If you don't agree, you can keep the car, but the software (and your ability to use the car) will be disabled.
The makers of a SmartFridge can claim the right to keep track of anything you put in your refridgerator.
Copyright holders can claim that anything you do with their software belongs to them. You use MythicWord to write a your doctoral disertation, and Mythic owns the copyright. This is exactly the precedent the court has supported. You develop a character using Mythic's game, and they own your work.
Congress has the power to grant copyrights. Aside from some constantly expanding experiation date, are their any limits on those rights?
the case of a sub full of German soldiers and spies who landed in NY (?)
In the German sub case, there were two subs. One landed in New York, the other landed in Florida.
But they weren't citizens.
One of them claimed US citizenship. He was born in Germany. He moved to the US when he was five. His parants became naturalized citizens. He later returned to Germany. He claimed that he never lost his citizenship.
The Government, however, takes the position that on attaining his majority he elected to maintain German allegiance and citizenship or in any case that he has by his conduct renounced or abandoned his United States citizenship.
The court never resolved the issue, instead claiming that:
Citizenship in the United States of an enemy belligerent does not relieve him from the consequences of a belligerency which is unlawful because in violation of the law of war. Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid,... guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war.
Haupt never disputed that he took orders from the German High Command.
There is also the fact that congress had already declared war on Germany.
Finally, there is the issue that the USA PATRIOT act only allows for military tribunals of non-US citizens.
The USA-PATRIOT act specifically requires the Attorney General or President to declare someone an enemy combatant. One of the restrictions is that the person must not be a US citizen.
The 1942 case involved persons who worked for an enemy that congress had declared war on. Congress has not declared war on Al Queda.
To deny the civil rights of a certain class of people amounts to a Bill of Attainder. The constitution specifically prohibits bills of attainder.
All the protections in the constitution are worthless if they can be eroded with a simple accusation. Even if one supports military tribunals for enemies of the state, the state should be required to prove, in open court, that the defendent is indeed an enemy of the state. In the 1942 case, the defendents did not dispute that they took orders from the German High Command.
Should you lose your right to a public jury trial if a member of Al Queda claims that you work for them? What burdon should the state have to meet before taking away someone's right to a public jury trial?
This all has to happen during this session, which only has 50 working days left
Well, the Copyright Term Extension Act was introduced in the senate. Witnesses presented their arguments in favor of it. The bill moved to the senate floor, and it was passed by voice vote all in one day (exactly one week before the 1998 election).
I was wondering if anybody sees this as the same type of monopolistic behavior MS was convicted of when they bundled IE with the OS?
Microsoft used their monopoly, the OS, to extend to another market, the web browser. Your phone company is doing the opposite. They are using their non-monopoly service, internet access, and requiring you to purchase their monopoly service, the voice line.
If you don't like the arrangement, you can purchase internet access from any number of alternative dial-up services, cable services, or wireless providers. If you've got enough money, you could even get a T1 straight to your home.
Once again, Slashdot got the summary totally wrong. From the Slashdot writeup:
it's worth noting that the privacy rules intended to protect us can also work against us.
The privacy policy was never intended to protect us. From the article:
Ccnow says it has a confidentiality agreement with Internet merchants.
The privacy policy is a contract, and its purpose is to protect the merchant (which in this case, may also be the perpetrator).
With all due respect, it is rare that I ever see a privacy policy intended to protect me. Usually, privacy policies have so many loopholes, that they do not constitute a privacy policy at all. There general purpose is to protect the merchant from liability. Even if there were a privacy policy to protect the author, that policy would not have impeded the investigation.
Finally, the article wasn't even about privacy policies. The article was about credit card fraud. The privacy issues just happened to be mentioned in the third-to-last paragraph.
As to the issue of stolen plates, well DMV knows your car's make and model. Take the picture, the police report and your registration to court and viola: instant dismissal.
One reason to steal a license plate, is so that if a cop runs a random check on it, it will come back clean. If the thief is driving a different make/model, the cop will know right away. So a thief would likely steal a plate from a car of the same make, model, and color. Of course, if the thief is smart enough to do that, they will probably be careful enough not to run a red light.
I would hope that simply stating under oath that your license plates were stolen would be grounds for dismissal.
This still doesn't address my biggest concern. At a place I used to frequent, the parking lot exit was right next to a stop light.
I would exit the parking lot and enter the intersection while the light was green. The light would turn yellow, and then red before I left the intersection. It happened all the time. The yellow light always seemed long enough when I drove down the street at 30 MPH. Checking the speed doesn't matter since my car has picked up speed by the time the light turns red. If there were a camera at that intersection, I would have gotten a half dozen tickets.
One more problem. A person does not know they've been accused until a citation shows up in the mail. To contest the allegations in court, you have to remember the incident. How is a person supposed to remember every single intersection they have driven through for the past couple days?
If you're mailed a ticket from a traffic camera, the facts are a) the light was red, and b) there's a picture of you running the light.
It is not a picture of "you running the light", it is a picture of a car with your license plate in the intersection while the light is red. There are three problems with this:
We do not know who was driving. It may have been you. It may have been your friend. It may have been a thief.
People have been known to steal license plates (for example, to generate false leads when they commit a crime, but still have a license plate from a car that has not been reported stolen).
Just because you are in the intersection, does not mean you ran the light.
It is entirely possible you were stuck in the intersection when the light turned red. This could happen when the car in front of you waits for an opportunity to turn left, or when traffic is backed up from the next intersection.
It is possible that the light was green when you entered the intersection, but since you were going slow, it turned red before you got to the other side. This could happen if the light has been green for a while, and you pull out of a parking lot right next to the light.
Probable Cause does not equate to guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
It does if the judge sees a picture of "you running the light".
Slashdot Mirror
Does that source code include a one MB file called "Module-nvkernel"? Tell me, what language was that file written in?
They're giving the program to me for free as in beer
Presumably you shelled out a fair sum of cash to buy an Nvidia card. That card will not work without drivers. I can assure you, you paid for the drivers when you bought the card.
I'm not a developer so issues about code modification isn't my concern.
Even though you might never exercise your right to modify code, it should still be a concern for you. You wouldn't be running Linux if it weren't for the ability to modify code. Developer or not, the ability to modify (and audit) code benefits almost everyone (it's debatable whether or not it benefits Nvidia more than keeping the source closed).
What happens when someone restrains a freedom that you want to exercise? Should I support those restraints because they don't effect me? Even if the ability to modify code never benefits you, that doesn't mean you should disregard other people's freedoms.
For the record, if Nvidia were to open source their driver, developers could port it to other operating systems, such as FreeBSD and AtheOS. The X11 side of their driver could be ported to other graphic systems, such as Berlin or the graphics system for AtheOS. The kernel side could be integrated and distributed with the Linux kernel. The X11 side could be integrated and distributed with XFree86. Their code could be used in research projects for new graphics systems. It is possible that Nvidia's GPU can perform operations that could accelerate other computations (perhaps image recognition, speech recognition, or some other project which the drivers were never intended for). Since Nvidia won't open the source, we may never know.
You may notice that OpenBSD now claims "One remote hole in the default install, in nearly 6 years!" If OpenBSD utilized an SE Linux type security system, the remote exploit from two and a half weeks ago would have been far more limited in its scope.
Security Enhanced Linux was the motivating factor for the security framework being incorporated into the 2.5 Linux kernel. I would hardly consider that a waste of my tax dollars.
The entire site makes me sick. The MIT Technology Review staff is composed of 20 peole who do advertising and one person who does fact checking. It's no surprise their home page brings up a pop-up ad. Of the ten people on their board of directors, only one seems to have any knowledge of technology. That one, Jerome Friedman, is not listed on their staff.
Their CEO appears to be a money-grubbing sell out.
He used to work as a manager at both Time and Fortune. It clearly shows!
It is obvious that the author never read the book he is talking about. Seeing as their lone fact checker missed this crucial fact, I have to wonder if anything in that article (or the entire site for that matter) is correct.
What the heck are the letters 'MIT' supposed to mean?
Or an enzyme if you're feeling biological.
This brings up an interesting point. Perhaps we could have hydrogen farms where microbes collect solar energy and generate hydrogen from water. I wonder how that would compare to simply setting up solar panels all over the place.
Gnome and KDE don't disclose anything about their finances. They don't say where their money is going. They don't tell you how much they have collected or how much they have on hand.
I donated to K5 by sending Rusty some cash. It's the only way I would donate, because I am paranoid and I did not want to disclose my name. Normally, I would not send cash since someone could swipe it and I would never know. However, with K5, my account was updated so I know the cash ended up in the right hands.
If open source projects want more people to donate, they should:
We all know RAND is incompatible with open source. Without open source, there would be no W3C! If every open source browser stopped supporting new standards, there would be only one dominant browser. That one browser shows no intentions of adhearing to the W3C's standards. How can the W3C not see this?!? Without open source, they are DEAD!
Gee, you're optimistic. Since when have advertisers allowed people to copy their ads? If they shut off the broadcast flag, it would be trivial to skip everything until the broadcast flag comes back on. Why would the television networks allow people to skip over commercials like that? Besides, the networks want to be the sole distributers of advertisements. Why would they allow viewers to compete with them?
Many advertisements actually include a copyright notice. If someone were to intentionally shut off the broadcast flag, that would imply that they have surrendered the copyright on their content (just wait for the television networks to lobby for this). Pepsi would not be real happy to find their now public domain advertisement chopped up and used in KKK propoganda.
Obviously, security would be a major concern. I would hope that all key datum (account numbers, receipts, etc) are encrypted with some large randomly generated key. The key itself would be encrypted with a password. The key should only be accessible to a priveledged user, banker.
When a customer clicks on a payment link, the web browser would call a setuid banker program, passing a dollar amount, transaction ID, and any other pertinant data. Running under the banker userid, a window would pop up asking the user to select a payment method and to enter their password.
Any time someone tries to start a transaction, a window would pop up asking the user to type in their password. Even if someone physically sat down and started typing passwords, the system could control how often someone can enter their password, dramatically slowing a dictionary attack. All transactions, encryption, and decryption would be managed under the banker ID. The user would never see their encryption key, not even the encrypted version of their key.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this essentially how OpenSSH works? Except that OpenSSH lets the user access their encrypted key.
If someone wants to break this system, they will have to gain priveledged access to the user's machine, and then figure out the password. With a well designed system, such as SE Linux, rooting the box wouldn't even work.
Alternatively, someone could try breaking into the bank, or decrypting the user's data. But these things would be protected with keys much stronger than a password.
We need a well established, open standard where people can just type in a password to authorize payment. Thus saving people the trouble of taking out their credit card and copying down a sixteen digit number. I envision a system were you click a button on a web page which accesses the financial transaction system in your web browser. When you click the link, your web browser pops up a window specifying the size of the transaction. You select a payment method, type in a password to authorize the transaction and the computer does the rest, transfering money, a reciept, and if applicable, the content.
That standard should permit open source implementations, so that the most popular web server in the world can use it, and so that free web browsers can use it.
The standard needs support from banks. The banks would be an excellent place to charge for modest patent royalties.
Keep in mind, the record companies do not want convenient online payment systems. With convenient online payment systems, people could buy music direct from the artists, skipping the record companies all together.
Congress should establish some grants to develop a convenient online payment standard.
Tip: The Linux kernel is licensed under the GPL.
Tip: You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. Don't call their tech support and rag on them, you write them a nice letter on paper and request it, mentioning their 'oversight'.
Good point.
And you wonder why people hate Linux Supporters
You go through all the trouble to develop, design, construct, and market a box that does something damned useful, and then a snot-nosed 14-year old who can't program other than running a vbs worm starts calling your tech support demanding your "GPL" code.
If their product is based on Linux, they did not go to all the trouble to develop, design, and construct the product. If they don't want the benefits and obligations of the GPL, they can use BSD, sell their souls for a closed source alternative, or write their own code.
All United Linux has to do is create a nice little logo. Copyright that logo. And put a PNG of the logo somewhere on the CD. Since the PNG is simply aggregated with other software, it does not have to be licensed under the GPL.
If you redistribute the logo, you are violating their copyright. If you remove the PNG file from the CD and redistribute as United Linux, you are in violation of their trademark.
Of course, United Linux would probably do more than simply put a copyrighted logo on their CD.
Cray advertisement for the SX-6
Cray product sheet on the SX-6 (PDF).
I've got a garden full of corn and lettuce. I am deriving value without paying for it. Am I stealing?
Last year, I gave an ear of corn to my neighbor. He took the kernels off and planted his own garden. Now he is deriving value without paying. Is he stealing?
Deriving value without paying is not theft. The fact that I buy less corn and lettuce at IGA does not mean I stole from them. Theft is the seizing of someone else's property. If someone takes my car and drives it into a lake. They have stolen it, even though they did not derive value from it.
Suppose I take a picture of you walking down the street. I post it on a web site, which generates revenue through advertisements. I am deriving value from your picture without paying. Does that constitute theft? No! Suppose you then copy that picture and distribute it. Does that make you a thief? No, but it does make you a copyright infringer since I own the copyright on that picture.
Companies can hide their profits by investing their money. If a company has $6 billion in profit, they can invest $5 billion, leaving them with $1 billion in profit.
Ten percent of Microsoft's net worth does not even begin to compare to the benefits Microsoft has gained from their anti-competitive actions. And that's only counting to the present day. The benefits of increased market share and customer lock-in will continue to go on long after the case is settled.
This case has been going on for six years. 80% of Microsoft's profits for the next two years is far less than their monopolistic practices netted. Your proposed minuscule punishment will tell Microsoft, "go ahead and carry out your anti-competitive practices. We might take 20% next decade."
third time -- dissolution of charter.
People (e.g. Ralph Nadar) say this all the time. What good would it actually do?
If you really want to fine them, why not force them to sell stock (with the government collecting the proceeds)? This will cause an immediate drop in their investor's net worth, and decrease the investor's control over the company.
An End User License Agreement effectively grants copyright holders rights the congress has not bestowed upon them.
This has profound implications for all consumer goods. Imagine if Ford used an EULA for their on-board computers. If you don't agree, you can keep the car, but the software (and your ability to use the car) will be disabled.
The makers of a SmartFridge can claim the right to keep track of anything you put in your refridgerator.
Copyright holders can claim that anything you do with their software belongs to them. You use MythicWord to write a your doctoral disertation, and Mythic owns the copyright. This is exactly the precedent the court has supported. You develop a character using Mythic's game, and they own your work.
Congress has the power to grant copyrights. Aside from some constantly expanding experiation date, are their any limits on those rights?
In the German sub case, there were two subs. One landed in New York, the other landed in Florida.
But they weren't citizens.
One of them claimed US citizenship. He was born in Germany. He moved to the US when he was five. His parants became naturalized citizens. He later returned to Germany. He claimed that he never lost his citizenship.
The court never resolved the issue, instead claiming that:
Haupt never disputed that he took orders from the German High Command.
There is also the fact that congress had already declared war on Germany.
Finally, there is the issue that the USA PATRIOT act only allows for military tribunals of non-US citizens.
The USA-PATRIOT act specifically requires the Attorney General or President to declare someone an enemy combatant. One of the restrictions is that the person must not be a US citizen.
The 1942 case involved persons who worked for an enemy that congress had declared war on. Congress has not declared war on Al Queda.
To deny the civil rights of a certain class of people amounts to a Bill of Attainder. The constitution specifically prohibits bills of attainder.
All the protections in the constitution are worthless if they can be eroded with a simple accusation. Even if one supports military tribunals for enemies of the state, the state should be required to prove, in open court, that the defendent is indeed an enemy of the state. In the 1942 case, the defendents did not dispute that they took orders from the German High Command.
Should you lose your right to a public jury trial if a member of Al Queda claims that you work for them? What burdon should the state have to meet before taking away someone's right to a public jury trial?
Please stop using this stupid argument. We may not live in a "Direct Democracy", but we still live in a "Democracy":
The "we don't live in a democracy" argument is a bald faced lie, invented by politicians as an excuse to disregard the will of the people.
Well, the Copyright Term Extension Act was introduced in the senate. Witnesses presented their arguments in favor of it. The bill moved to the senate floor, and it was passed by voice vote all in one day (exactly one week before the 1998 election).
Microsoft used their monopoly, the OS, to extend to another market, the web browser. Your phone company is doing the opposite. They are using their non-monopoly service, internet access, and requiring you to purchase their monopoly service, the voice line.
If you don't like the arrangement, you can purchase internet access from any number of alternative dial-up services, cable services, or wireless providers. If you've got enough money, you could even get a T1 straight to your home.
The privacy policy was never intended to protect us. From the article:
The privacy policy is a contract, and its purpose is to protect the merchant (which in this case, may also be the perpetrator).
With all due respect, it is rare that I ever see a privacy policy intended to protect me. Usually, privacy policies have so many loopholes, that they do not constitute a privacy policy at all. There general purpose is to protect the merchant from liability. Even if there were a privacy policy to protect the author, that policy would not have impeded the investigation.
Finally, the article wasn't even about privacy policies. The article was about credit card fraud. The privacy issues just happened to be mentioned in the third-to-last paragraph.
It's just a hypothetical argument. I live in Minnesota. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have these cameras anywhere :P
One reason to steal a license plate, is so that if a cop runs a random check on it, it will come back clean. If the thief is driving a different make/model, the cop will know right away. So a thief would likely steal a plate from a car of the same make, model, and color. Of course, if the thief is smart enough to do that, they will probably be careful enough not to run a red light.
I would hope that simply stating under oath that your license plates were stolen would be grounds for dismissal.
This still doesn't address my biggest concern. At a place I used to frequent, the parking lot exit was right next to a stop light.
I would exit the parking lot and enter the intersection while the light was green. The light would turn yellow, and then red before I left the intersection. It happened all the time. The yellow light always seemed long enough when I drove down the street at 30 MPH. Checking the speed doesn't matter since my car has picked up speed by the time the light turns red. If there were a camera at that intersection, I would have gotten a half dozen tickets.
One more problem. A person does not know they've been accused until a citation shows up in the mail. To contest the allegations in court, you have to remember the incident. How is a person supposed to remember every single intersection they have driven through for the past couple days?
It's standard practice. Do a google search on BSA raid.
It is not a picture of "you running the light", it is a picture of a car with your license plate in the intersection while the light is red. There are three problems with this:
Probable Cause does not equate to guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
It does if the judge sees a picture of "you running the light".