Kudos on the analysis. I was attempting to make a slightly different point at which I pretty much failed. SCO is issuing all sorts of press releases about the case and is, indeed, attempting to continue their extortion through the media. To accomplish this they are pointing to factors which on the surface look bad, but which, in reality, are quite irrelevant.
The particular bit that I cited was SCO claiming that IBM didn't believe in the merits of their case because they wouldn't indemnify their customers. It has some "wow" on the surface, but really there is nothing to it. IBM's indemnification of all of its customers would take up considerable resources and is completely unecessary since any transgression on IBM's part does not in turn lead to liability on the customer side. And, once the code is finally revealed, it can be excised from the kernel and life can continue.
I felt that this was of a similar vein. We, the SCO execs, file a huge lawsuit and our stocks rise dramatically. IBM responds and countersues us. We dump our stock. So without looking deeper (ie your examples), doesn't this give the appearance of folks who are not confident in their company? I would argue that it does and that it is the same type of media spin that SCO is attempting to exert on IBM.
This is important because the court of public opinion rarely looks deeper. Its judgements are based on innuendo and hearsay, image and status. As long as SCO is winning that battle with the folks at the top of the line, their plans work for them. If that court of public opinion can be pointed to things which make SCO look bad, and remember that this is a court in which veracity makes but fleeting appearances, then why not counter the anti-IBM/linux fud with anti-SCO fud? As long as it blunts their initiative and throws of their extortion, er- plan, then I am all for it.
I'm not surpised at the move, but *jeesh*, could you be any more blatant?
What does this say about SCO's belief in the lawsuit? McBribe was blathering on about how IBM's refusal to indemnify its customers showed what IBM thought of its case. How about the chiefs dumping all of their stock? Yeah that's a major confidence builder!
The GPL, if I remember correctly, allows for companies to break its covenants if they inadvertantly released their code through it. SCO blew their chance on this bit when they failed to shut down their Linux sales. Its hard to argue that you are "unaware" of something once you have filed suit!
My reading of the GPL leads me to believe that it will be ruled enforceable. It is a well thought out contract that was crafted with instances like this in mind. Well maybe not SCO's Jerry Springer impersonations, but the general siuation nonetheless;-)
I was in the Bay Area a couple years ago when a FedEx truck overturned on the freeway. It was carrying some of the radioactive dies for an x-ray lab so the truck was placarded "radioactive." They did not, however, know how much radiation or of what type it was. Needless to say the freeway was shut down (I seem to recall it was 880 right by where 238 comes in) in both directions. One of my co-workers' normal hour commute became a 3.5 hour hell ride.
I somehow doubt that McBrides Dog and Pony show is going to have much of an impact on the CERF companies. These folks didn't just draw Linux out of a hat, they have been studying it for months now. Not only that but their lawyers have already looked at all sorts of fine print about this and concluded that the companies are OK.
I worked on an IP case as a paralegal once that involved the Japenese Patent and Copyright office. It is an amazingly complex system over there and I doubt that SCO would be able to do anything to them even it wanted to. Even if they tried to get a UTC injunction against the importation of the Linux embedded goods, they would still be limited to getting the infringing pieces removed. While I am not a developer, it certainly seems from what I have read that replacing the offending code would not be terribly onerous.
In the end, however, I can see potentially large blows coming to either the Linux community or SCO depending on how the companies respond to the presentation.
IANAL but I seem to recall hearing once that copyright damages are supposed to be worked out using the least invasive remedy first. In other words, should SCO prove its point that copyrighted code was placed into Linux, then the code should be removed. If the code cannot be removed, then the big penalties start kicking in. Since I haven't seen any mention of this in any of hte articles I am beginning to wonder if I misheard about this concept. Any IAAL out there know?
While it is not surpising that a lot of the TiVo owners skip commercials, I'm wondering whether or not you can consider TiVo owners as representative of the overall market of TV watchers. I would submit that TiVo owners do not represent a typical slice of the american viewing public, and as such the results would have to be taken with a grain of salt.
Apologies for the late reply. Things have been a bit busy these days, which also ties into giving you a bit more information about myself and the kids. You see, they are not actually "mine," so to speak. I have been living with them and their mother for the last year and half and am less than 30 days away from calling her my wife and them my step kids. I do, however, love them very much and do what I can to be a positive role model in their lives. That being said I am very respectful of the fact that at this stage of the game 15 and a hair shy of 10, respectively, they do indeed have their own personalities. Of course the 30 day countdown to matrimony is what is leading to the busy schedule;-)
This also brings up the subject of choice. I would wager that the choices you have made were choices with a high degree of risk. I make that assumption because in my experience the higher reward associated with a decision, the higher the risk as well.
In my present situation I am looking to, in the next couple of years, looking t quit the legal profession entirely and devote myself to writing Science Fiction. This will be a large gamble for me and part of the reason why I am waiting a couple years is so that the kids will be older when the time comes. It gives me time to get myself into a good financial position and lowers the risk to the kids. It also will put less pressure on my fiancee (wife when all this happens).
If I dod not have a significant other or kids, however, I would have far greater freedom to chuck my job and write in the cheapest apartment I could find whilse subsisting of of Top Ramen until I get a break. The end reward would be big (writing fiction professionally) but the potential risk (destitute poverty;-)
So while the choices are there for anyone to take a running leap at success, for many people, especially those who are providing for others, they cannot in good concious take a risk that will adversly affect their children. So instead of the home run swing, as it were, they instead try for the right side of the infeild to move the runners over;-)
Nanotechnology and AI do have a great deal of potential, and I can see how they could make the Transhuman idea a viable possibility. I remain, however, skeptical. The vast population of the Earth remains outside of Western Civilization. The people in the US and Europe are far outnumbered by the remaining people on the planet. In a sense then, anyone in one of these affluent cultures is already a Transhumanist in comparison to a member of one of these other, majority, cultures. Yet despite that you speak of being a Transhumanist in regards to those who are already, de facto, Transhuman on a global level.
I think this illustrates on of the largest issues with human kind. Namely that we are afraid of change. I am sure it fulfilled a biological urge somewhere along the old time frame that enabled folks to stay alive by not messing with that which works. It is also that must surely be contended with as our species evolves.
An interesting thought that I have had along these points, spurned in no small part by some of Douglas Adams' writing, is the relationship between perception and reality, and whether or not it is possible for perception to create reality. In other words, if you believe something with enough passion, does it make actually real (as opposed to real in your mind). If enough people believe in the God Thor, does Thor actually come into existence?
If enough people believe, then, that they are Transhumanist and have unlimited abilities ranging from thought to the manipulation of matter and energy through thought alone, does this indeed give these people such an ability? In essence then, is the only thing that is holding you back from being a Transhumanist now your belief that you require Nanotechnology and AI as a means to further the process? Since we are all a part of the reality we share, regardless of our perceptions, then making such a belief reality would be affected by the perce
The article only talks about large retailers specializing in new CD's. What about the local CD stores that sell local bands and used CD's? Does anyone know how they are doing?
An excellent point. I was, however, thinking of the world chaning to those promissed by futurists. Lasers may have changed the world, but not in the way that were promised to. Not until I get my laser gun;-)
Please do not pity me for my 8-5 job. I work with incredibly sharp folks at a challenging and highly rewarding job. I have enjoyed paralegalling for several years now and will continue to do it as long as I enjoy it. I appluad you for fortune but even by your own admission you have only the means now to support yourself for a year or two. After that it is always possible that you could end up working the 8-5 thing yourself, which would be another drastic change in your life.
I wrote the reply more as a means of stimulating conversation than of espousing a philosophy but I certainly agree with what I wrote. That technological change has left the bulk of the world untouched, and that for those whom have been touched, it has not changed lives significantly. While I do not know your full circumstances, I cannot imagine that you believe yourself to be an average individual;-) So for the rest of us, all the leaps and bounds that technology has made has not yet changed us dramatically. The needs for human survival remain ever unchanged, but the average American's distance from the basics of those needs is getting progressively further way.
The point then is not that our lives are more interesting than any other time is, per se, so much as that there are different dimensions to the average stressors with which all people cope.
It is the affluence of Western Society that enables us to take so seriously things like SCO and Mariah Carey, and it has allowed us to touch space and create wonders that our ancestors could only perceive of as magic. Yet we have before us well the remnants of long dead civilizations which collapsed into ruin because the populace became to far removed basic needs of human survival.
My point is that there is always an underlying level of stress. For those in a remote village in Africa, it is whether or not there will be enough rain for the crops. For a techie in SV it whether the SCo suit will invalidate Linux meaning that all the development work he is doing will dry up and he will be enemployed and ergo not have enough money to eat. Same stress, different layers.
For our own society then I think we would be wise to consider the lessons learned from earlier ancient civilizations and to try and understand how their fall came about. There is, after all, no single date upon which you can affirmitavely place the end of the Roman Empire as having occured. It faded in its glory over hundreds of years. I think it more than a bit egotistical of us a country to think that any single technology will ensure our survival.
As to the kids, I appreciate your advice, but even children at a young age already have their predispositions. It is just as wrong to push a non-conformist artsy lifestyle on a child that needs structure as it is to push a free spirited child into a corporate suit. We encourage them to be who they are, and for one I see the 8-5 structure as being extremely beneficial. I think the other would do well to understand some of the discipline that the 8-5 world requires, but will probably not want to take up permanent residence there. That being said both will, and do, receive as much love and support as we can give them;-)
Finally, I would offer a completely unsolicted piece of advice which you are more than welcome to ignore. It is related to an anecdote of a talk I had with my borther once about Master of Orion. My brother, you see, has a PhD. in Mathematics. He mentioned to me that while all of the reviews for MoO found it to be difficult, he found it to be quite easy. I asked him if he honestly thought that he was the target audience, to which he replied, "[T]hat he had never of it that way before." You, Danila, are obviously not the target audience either. And while I believe you are quite aware of that, you must also remember that the course of the world is as much determined by the momentum of the masses as it is by the unceasing tug of the outlyers.
While nanotechnology has many great potentials, they are still in a hazy future. Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world. Same with Computers. Yet the bulk of the world is still relatively unchanged by either of these. Certainly the developed nations have changed substantially, but in many respects they have not changed much if at all.
I get up in the morning, go to work from 8-5 every weekday morning for 40 hrs a week. Same as my dad did, and same as my kids will. How we do our work has changed, but the simple pattern of society in which we work to earn money to pay for housing, food, et al. has remained unchanged.
In the bulk of the world, life is much closer akin to my grandfolks time. People work from sunrise to sunset to scratch out a living, and their sustenance, from the land. Nano technology is not going to dramatically change their lives. Drought or other climatic changes will be the key variable to their lives.
We do indeed live in interesting times, but I do not think that our time is any more interesting on an individual level than any other time. We live in a time that has seen the average american progress steadily further from the basic compnents of survival. How many average americans would be able to fend for themselves in the "wild?" The "interesting" past of our American lives is when all the artificial walls separating us from basic needs come crashing down.
Nanotechnology then does but attempt to fortify those walls and afford us protection from our fear of being without. Earlier times had the same fear, the difference being that they lived closer to their fear than we do.
I agree that relevance is more important than hits overall, but I find it disturbing that there are several million less hits!
If I look for something random or wierd with Google and I get 10 results, I feel confident that there are just not a whole lot of pages on the subject. If MSN returns only 10 I wonder if there are another hundred thousand or so pages that it didn't catch.
I did a web search on MSN for the word "Google" which turned up 184 hits. A search on Google for the word "Google" turned up 18,700,000. For curiosity I repeated the procedure using "MSN." MSN listed 11,357 hits, Google listed 18,500,000. Finally, I went ahead and tried "Slashdot" on both. MSN says it rang up 23! But when click to get to the next page it bumps it up to 864,467 hits. Google has 2,400,000. I just don't see MSN beating out Google unless they tie the search features directly into Explorer such that it takes actual effort on the users part to get to Google. Google greatest strength is that it not only works, but that it works well.
The other thing to note is that MSN does not have an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but it does have an annoyingly fugly butterfly. I think the last two items will be the determining factor in the Search Wars.
I've been there. The best part is when you get mod'd down as redundant and you posted within like 3min of the story coming out;-) Of course when I read looser I was thinking along entirely different lines...
This is actually one of the most important parts to IP cases as both sides will be attempting to "educate" the Judge as to the technology. In many of these cases a Special Master is appointed by the Judge to handle the technical side. The Special Master is usual an independant 3rd party who is an expert in the field. I believe (but IANAL) that both sides have to agree to the Special Master for appointment.
There are exceptions to it though, such as Lawyer client privilege and confessions to Priests. I think the press is afforded some protection as well. Even if the press is not afforded any protection, due process must still occur in order to throw the journalist in jail.
My main point is that it is not the subpoenas that are the problem so much as the means by which they are obtained. At least that is what bothers me about this particular aspect of the DMCA. The US legal system puts far greater value on process than the UK one (unless it has changed substantially from my college days when we compared the two). This is not to say that UK system does not value process, nor that either system is better, it is just to say that that is why I find this troubling.
According to the sticky remnants of this morning's hot chocolate and coffee (poor man's mocha), SCO is still looking for a case. I would tell you more (third cushion on the left *wink*)but there is this NDA thingy...
The other thing to remember is that our hypothetical journalist could only be compelled to reveal the murderer's name by a Judge (albiet a hypothetical one;-).
That is, in my opinion, the largest issue here. I do not have an issue with the RIAA subpoenaing ISP's for customers they believe to be infringing as long as they have to go through the court process and show their hand to a Judge in order to get the subpoena. As long as due process is followed, then it should be OK.
Slashdot Mirror
The particular bit that I cited was SCO claiming that IBM didn't believe in the merits of their case because they wouldn't indemnify their customers. It has some "wow" on the surface, but really there is nothing to it. IBM's indemnification of all of its customers would take up considerable resources and is completely unecessary since any transgression on IBM's part does not in turn lead to liability on the customer side. And, once the code is finally revealed, it can be excised from the kernel and life can continue.
I felt that this was of a similar vein. We, the SCO execs, file a huge lawsuit and our stocks rise dramatically. IBM responds and countersues us. We dump our stock. So without looking deeper (ie your examples), doesn't this give the appearance of folks who are not confident in their company? I would argue that it does and that it is the same type of media spin that SCO is attempting to exert on IBM.
This is important because the court of public opinion rarely looks deeper. Its judgements are based on innuendo and hearsay, image and status. As long as SCO is winning that battle with the folks at the top of the line, their plans work for them. If that court of public opinion can be pointed to things which make SCO look bad, and remember that this is a court in which veracity makes but fleeting appearances, then why not counter the anti-IBM/linux fud with anti-SCO fud? As long as it blunts their initiative and throws of their extortion, er- plan, then I am all for it.
What does this say about SCO's belief in the lawsuit? McBribe was blathering on about how IBM's refusal to indemnify its customers showed what IBM thought of its case. How about the chiefs dumping all of their stock? Yeah that's a major confidence builder!
My reading of the GPL leads me to believe that it will be ruled enforceable. It is a well thought out contract that was crafted with instances like this in mind. Well maybe not SCO's Jerry Springer impersonations, but the general siuation nonetheless;-)
So, um, yeah I think they deliver!
I worked on an IP case as a paralegal once that involved the Japenese Patent and Copyright office. It is an amazingly complex system over there and I doubt that SCO would be able to do anything to them even it wanted to. Even if they tried to get a UTC injunction against the importation of the Linux embedded goods, they would still be limited to getting the infringing pieces removed. While I am not a developer, it certainly seems from what I have read that replacing the offending code would not be terribly onerous.
In the end, however, I can see potentially large blows coming to either the Linux community or SCO depending on how the companies respond to the presentation.
IANAL but I seem to recall hearing once that copyright damages are supposed to be worked out using the least invasive remedy first. In other words, should SCO prove its point that copyrighted code was placed into Linux, then the code should be removed. If the code cannot be removed, then the big penalties start kicking in. Since I haven't seen any mention of this in any of hte articles I am beginning to wonder if I misheard about this concept. Any IAAL out there know?
Max: But chief, that's incredible. Do you realize what this could mean to our energy supply?
Chief: Unfortunately its an extremely rare type of ink that can only be found in the Middle East.
Yes I'm paraphrasing, but that's the first thing that came to mind;-)
Does anyone know if there is a TiVo demographic?
This also brings up the subject of choice. I would wager that the choices you have made were choices with a high degree of risk. I make that assumption because in my experience the higher reward associated with a decision, the higher the risk as well.
In my present situation I am looking to, in the next couple of years, looking t quit the legal profession entirely and devote myself to writing Science Fiction. This will be a large gamble for me and part of the reason why I am waiting a couple years is so that the kids will be older when the time comes. It gives me time to get myself into a good financial position and lowers the risk to the kids. It also will put less pressure on my fiancee (wife when all this happens).
If I dod not have a significant other or kids, however, I would have far greater freedom to chuck my job and write in the cheapest apartment I could find whilse subsisting of of Top Ramen until I get a break. The end reward would be big (writing fiction professionally) but the potential risk (destitute poverty;-)
So while the choices are there for anyone to take a running leap at success, for many people, especially those who are providing for others, they cannot in good concious take a risk that will adversly affect their children. So instead of the home run swing, as it were, they instead try for the right side of the infeild to move the runners over;-)
Nanotechnology and AI do have a great deal of potential, and I can see how they could make the Transhuman idea a viable possibility. I remain, however, skeptical. The vast population of the Earth remains outside of Western Civilization. The people in the US and Europe are far outnumbered by the remaining people on the planet. In a sense then, anyone in one of these affluent cultures is already a Transhumanist in comparison to a member of one of these other, majority, cultures. Yet despite that you speak of being a Transhumanist in regards to those who are already, de facto, Transhuman on a global level.
I think this illustrates on of the largest issues with human kind. Namely that we are afraid of change. I am sure it fulfilled a biological urge somewhere along the old time frame that enabled folks to stay alive by not messing with that which works. It is also that must surely be contended with as our species evolves.
An interesting thought that I have had along these points, spurned in no small part by some of Douglas Adams' writing, is the relationship between perception and reality, and whether or not it is possible for perception to create reality. In other words, if you believe something with enough passion, does it make actually real (as opposed to real in your mind). If enough people believe in the God Thor, does Thor actually come into existence?
If enough people believe, then, that they are Transhumanist and have unlimited abilities ranging from thought to the manipulation of matter and energy through thought alone, does this indeed give these people such an ability? In essence then, is the only thing that is holding you back from being a Transhumanist now your belief that you require Nanotechnology and AI as a means to further the process? Since we are all a part of the reality we share, regardless of our perceptions, then making such a belief reality would be affected by the perce
So now we know conclusively that Disney owns 2% of the copyrights between 55 and 75 years old.
There's just no telling how the students will cope after having been labelled "sensitive."
Well Script Kiddies do have to come from somewhere...
The article only talks about large retailers specializing in new CD's. What about the local CD stores that sell local bands and used CD's? Does anyone know how they are doing?
An excellent point. I was, however, thinking of the world chaning to those promissed by futurists. Lasers may have changed the world, but not in the way that were promised to. Not until I get my laser gun;-)
I wrote the reply more as a means of stimulating conversation than of espousing a philosophy but I certainly agree with what I wrote. That technological change has left the bulk of the world untouched, and that for those whom have been touched, it has not changed lives significantly. While I do not know your full circumstances, I cannot imagine that you believe yourself to be an average individual;-) So for the rest of us, all the leaps and bounds that technology has made has not yet changed us dramatically. The needs for human survival remain ever unchanged, but the average American's distance from the basics of those needs is getting progressively further way.
The point then is not that our lives are more interesting than any other time is, per se, so much as that there are different dimensions to the average stressors with which all people cope.
It is the affluence of Western Society that enables us to take so seriously things like SCO and Mariah Carey, and it has allowed us to touch space and create wonders that our ancestors could only perceive of as magic. Yet we have before us well the remnants of long dead civilizations which collapsed into ruin because the populace became to far removed basic needs of human survival.
My point is that there is always an underlying level of stress. For those in a remote village in Africa, it is whether or not there will be enough rain for the crops. For a techie in SV it whether the SCo suit will invalidate Linux meaning that all the development work he is doing will dry up and he will be enemployed and ergo not have enough money to eat. Same stress, different layers.
For our own society then I think we would be wise to consider the lessons learned from earlier ancient civilizations and to try and understand how their fall came about. There is, after all, no single date upon which you can affirmitavely place the end of the Roman Empire as having occured. It faded in its glory over hundreds of years. I think it more than a bit egotistical of us a country to think that any single technology will ensure our survival.
As to the kids, I appreciate your advice, but even children at a young age already have their predispositions. It is just as wrong to push a non-conformist artsy lifestyle on a child that needs structure as it is to push a free spirited child into a corporate suit. We encourage them to be who they are, and for one I see the 8-5 structure as being extremely beneficial. I think the other would do well to understand some of the discipline that the 8-5 world requires, but will probably not want to take up permanent residence there. That being said both will, and do, receive as much love and support as we can give them;-)
Finally, I would offer a completely unsolicted piece of advice which you are more than welcome to ignore. It is related to an anecdote of a talk I had with my borther once about Master of Orion. My brother, you see, has a PhD. in Mathematics. He mentioned to me that while all of the reviews for MoO found it to be difficult, he found it to be quite easy. I asked him if he honestly thought that he was the target audience, to which he replied, "[T]hat he had never of it that way before." You, Danila, are obviously not the target audience either. And while I believe you are quite aware of that, you must also remember that the course of the world is as much determined by the momentum of the masses as it is by the unceasing tug of the outlyers.
While nanotechnology has many great potentials, they are still in a hazy future. Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world. Same with Computers. Yet the bulk of the world is still relatively unchanged by either of these. Certainly the developed nations have changed substantially, but in many respects they have not changed much if at all.
I get up in the morning, go to work from 8-5 every weekday morning for 40 hrs a week. Same as my dad did, and same as my kids will. How we do our work has changed, but the simple pattern of society in which we work to earn money to pay for housing, food, et al. has remained unchanged.
In the bulk of the world, life is much closer akin to my grandfolks time. People work from sunrise to sunset to scratch out a living, and their sustenance, from the land. Nano technology is not going to dramatically change their lives. Drought or other climatic changes will be the key variable to their lives.
We do indeed live in interesting times, but I do not think that our time is any more interesting on an individual level than any other time. We live in a time that has seen the average american progress steadily further from the basic compnents of survival. How many average americans would be able to fend for themselves in the "wild?" The "interesting" past of our American lives is when all the artificial walls separating us from basic needs come crashing down.
Nanotechnology then does but attempt to fortify those walls and afford us protection from our fear of being without. Earlier times had the same fear, the difference being that they lived closer to their fear than we do.
Steve Job's shat in his pants when he saw this at a NASA preview...
If I look for something random or wierd with Google and I get 10 results, I feel confident that there are just not a whole lot of pages on the subject. If MSN returns only 10 I wonder if there are another hundred thousand or so pages that it didn't catch.
And did I mention that I hate the butterfly?
The other thing to note is that MSN does not have an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but it does have an annoyingly fugly butterfly. I think the last two items will be the determining factor in the Search Wars.
I think what he meant was, "You are plan has failed. All your patent are belong to us."
I've been there. The best part is when you get mod'd down as redundant and you posted within like 3min of the story coming out;-) Of course when I read looser I was thinking along entirely different lines...
This is actually one of the most important parts to IP cases as both sides will be attempting to "educate" the Judge as to the technology. In many of these cases a Special Master is appointed by the Judge to handle the technical side. The Special Master is usual an independant 3rd party who is an expert in the field. I believe (but IANAL) that both sides have to agree to the Special Master for appointment.
My main point is that it is not the subpoenas that are the problem so much as the means by which they are obtained. At least that is what bothers me about this particular aspect of the DMCA. The US legal system puts far greater value on process than the UK one (unless it has changed substantially from my college days when we compared the two). This is not to say that UK system does not value process, nor that either system is better, it is just to say that that is why I find this troubling.
According to the sticky remnants of this morning's hot chocolate and coffee (poor man's mocha), SCO is still looking for a case. I would tell you more (third cushion on the left *wink*)but there is this NDA thingy...
That is, in my opinion, the largest issue here. I do not have an issue with the RIAA subpoenaing ISP's for customers they believe to be infringing as long as they have to go through the court process and show their hand to a Judge in order to get the subpoena. As long as due process is followed, then it should be OK.