You should be right. The requirement of the police and attorneys to prosecute every crime they get to know of (principle of legality) should force them to do it. But this doesn't necessarily mean they also do what they ought to. I'm not sure what the consequences for an attorney could be when not prosecuting a crime. I think a disciplinary action could be the consequence -- since I'm not a lawyer and not quite involved with the US judicial system I cannot really tell. But I think at least in Germany it wouldn't be possible for someone in the future to use such a one case of inaction for defense. This would be different if it would show up that such cases are in general prosecuted arbitrarily - but this would still be hard to be proved.
If he doesn't get charged with a violation of the DMCA then nothing will have been accomplished -- failure to enforce a law does not invalidate the law (there are caveats, but a singlular failure does not do so).
Yes, and for that reason an attorney who wants the DMCA to persist won't move his fingers when Bruce holds his speech.
If you want to make a difference, go to the sites that are coded for IE only and let them know there is a demand for them to be cross-browser compliant. Word your email rationally and explain why they are losing customers due to their lack of support for other platforms. If they don't respond, don't go there anymore. Enough people doing that should get the suits attention (if they care, and if they don't then why do you bother). MS will only take over the web if you let them.
What about establishing a register of web site owners who don't comply with coding standards and don't react to mails asking them for recoding?
This would publicly blame them not only as dumb (not knowing about standards) but also unwilling (not caring about standards).
Or does such a register already exist?
It's misinterpretation of "User friendliness" that it is a concerned with users at all. It is about marketing. It is a "The customer is right" mentality which doesn't concern itself with the question what is good for people but about what can be sold to them. The problem with studies about user friendliness is that you won't find many people who aren't biased towards a specific UI style. When you take a casual Windows user and ask him about a Gnome/KDE/Mac UI he will most likely compare it to the Windows UI he is accustomed to. The first point will be that it's somehow different and that means, of course, that it takes some time to get accustomed to the "new" system. If you do this by force the resulting opinion will not be very valuable regarding to free decisions. If you don't use force and the Windows UI is not so very bad that it's impossible to use, he will most likely stay with that because the computer is merely a tool for him and not his most desirable object of attention. A strategy which will really enable a move towards new UIs won't be easy.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. (Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
I don't think the measurement of the length of code or the time one has or might have been taken to produce the code is in any way related to the value for the use of the software produced.
The same people that argue in these categories do also try to legitimate open source software by their better "quality" in terms of fewer errors. The result of this argument is that MS software would be great to use if it contained less errors. But that's not the main point. As can be seen when MS does such horrible things like allowing themselves to destroy your software (DRM EULA change) the problem is not the result but the way they produce their software. I'd argue that because their development model is bad the resulting software is bad, too, bad that's only a minor problem in comparison to the harm they do to the software culture in general.
From the US governmental point of view of course the whole world (and beyond) has to comply with US laws. Besides, since the IEEE journals are published in the US it is also reasonable to believe that US law applies to all articles, regardless where the authors are residing.
But of course it's a good sign the IEEE is "dropping active support" for the DMCA.
The article says "They say they are claiming copyright", so I think they haven't been writing him just for fun. Besides, music publishers don't send letters if there's no money involved...
If we provide such a security update, we will use reasonable efforts to post notices on a web site explaining the update.
So even if they send out patches killing off all non-MS software, they can bury a notice so deep in microsoft.com that no one will ever find it, and claim (correctly) they are going above and beyond the EULA. Damn, I'm glad I use Macs and NetBSD.
On a web site doesn't even say they'll put it on their own... Perhaps they will publish it merely as a comment on slashdot...
I wonder why this story has been published on slashdot at all... The value of this story is as great as a story about my hamster dying of a heart attack...
Unless Mr Diaz was a fucked-up-important-businessman the main purpose he took the mobile phone for a hiking trip in the andes would be to use it to possibly place an emergency call. Either he informed himself about the local (and global) customs of the GSM standard 112 emergency call number or otherwise he shouldn't have gone on this trip whatsoever...
Slashdot Mirror
You should be right. The requirement of the police and attorneys to prosecute every crime they get to know of (principle of legality) should force them to do it. But this doesn't necessarily mean they also do what they ought to. I'm not sure what the consequences for an attorney could be when not prosecuting a crime. I think a disciplinary action could be the consequence -- since I'm not a lawyer and not quite involved with the US judicial system I cannot really tell. But I think at least in Germany it wouldn't be possible for someone in the future to use such a one case of inaction for defense. This would be different if it would show up that such cases are in general prosecuted arbitrarily - but this would still be hard to be proved.
If he doesn't get charged with a violation of the DMCA then nothing will have been accomplished -- failure to enforce a law does not invalidate the law (there are caveats, but a singlular failure does not do so).
Yes, and for that reason an attorney who wants the DMCA to persist won't move his fingers when Bruce holds his speech.Of course this accounts for empirical social studies in general...
I don't think the measurement of the length of code or the time one has or might have been taken to produce the code is in any way related to the value for the use of the software produced.
The same people that argue in these categories do also try to legitimate open source software by their better "quality" in terms of fewer errors. The result of this argument is that MS software would be great to use if it contained less errors. But that's not the main point. As can be seen when MS does such horrible things like allowing themselves to destroy your software (DRM EULA change) the problem is not the result but the way they produce their software. I'd argue that because their development model is bad the resulting software is bad, too, bad that's only a minor problem in comparison to the harm they do to the software culture in general.
From the US governmental point of view of course the whole world (and beyond) has to comply with US laws. Besides, since the IEEE journals are published in the US it is also reasonable to believe that US law applies to all articles, regardless where the authors are residing.
But of course it's a good sign the IEEE is "dropping active support" for the DMCA.
The article says "They say they are claiming copyright", so I think they haven't been writing him just for fun. Besides, music publishers don't send letters if there's no money involved...
I wonder why this story has been published on slashdot at all... The value of this story is as great as a story about my hamster dying of a heart attack...
Unless Mr Diaz was a fucked-up-important-businessman the main purpose he took the mobile phone for a hiking trip in the andes would be to use it to possibly place an emergency call. Either he informed himself about the local (and global) customs of the GSM standard 112 emergency call number or otherwise he shouldn't have gone on this trip whatsoever...