I must have happened at least once, or they never would have done the recall. Basic formula, if the cost of a recall is less than the legal bills, they do a recall. Guess someone got zapped pretty good to scare them into a recall.
I would add to that the loss of goodwill arising from not issuing a recall or only issuing it after being pressured. Sony extracts top dollar by being percieved as being a more supportive company. Not saying it's true, but still.
That's what this fellow wants to do. he doesn't want to wait for the new Hungarian language instructions on the new iPod to be ready, he wants his iPod now and screw the fact he'll have to read the directions in English.
Considering he's an American expat, I expect he prolly wants his crap in English anyway. I suspect this is the deal - he wants AMERICAN stuff while living in Hungary. Sorry, tho, that's just not how things work sometimes. The poster acts like this is some big US conspiracy to 0wnz0r the WWW, but it's generally a logistics thing - the few sales companies would get from Hungary isn't worth dealing with Hungary.
Considering the US has anachronistic laws dealing with export control of encryption and such, as well as other problems, it isn't worth the trouble of having the main sales unit deal with each country. For big companies like IBM, they have a unit for each country that are (hopefully) experts in local issues. So really, the only people with problems here are US expats who want stuff in English instead of the local language. In other words, him.
My advice to the guy would be to have some family in the states to order it for him and ship it. But complaining isn't going to help, and making it into some US vs. the world thing is silly.
Why should someone have to pay royalties to a body that doesn't hold any of the rights to the content that's being played?
No, they represent the companies that own the rights to the recordings, and these companies entered into this arrangement of their own free will. There are some labels not represented by the RIAA; presumably, the stations are free to seek their own deal with them individually. So what angle are you taking on this - I don't like payola either, but they do have every right to do it.
So you dont contribute to linux or open source apps (which tons of companies benefit from) either? Including submitting a bug report, or even using it? Slashcode is open source. Ask Brian uses it, as do hundereds of other sites.
First, I'm not a particularly accpomplished programmer (I'm a chemist), and I'm not familiar with slashcode and such - therefore, it would be tough for me to get up to speed.
But for someone who does know these things, how hard could this be? Search posted stories for all incidences of ''. That would be a URL. Store the URL's for each story. Then, for each submitted story, do the same. Do a simple string compare for all URL's and look for any matches over the last few days. Not tough.
As for a bug report, yeah, I do those. In this case, though, how necessary is it? Fairly obvious there's a dupe problem here.
I tried FreeBSD, heard it was cool, and I'm used to Slackware so I'm not afraid of any install. So I got it installed fine, but none of the commercial apps I use were supported. Vmware 3 is only supported by 5.0, despite vmware 3 being a couple of years old. Matlab seems to be unsupported.
So bottom line is, I really liked a lot of BSD's features, but unfortunately an OS without programs is useless. The ports guys do a great job, but can't make up for lack of vendor support.;(
PowerPC Linux has great feature for emulating mouse buttons in the kernel. I hit fn-ctrl for middle click and fn-alt for right-click; I actually prefer this to most laptops as I never accidently click the buttons as one will likely do on an intel laptop; accidental clicking of the middle button
No, then you have the problem of accidentally hitting the wrong button modifier. I'm not seeing the advantage outside of some serious klunkiness.
devestating if for instance your buffer contains 'rm -rf/' and you paste that into a root-shell:P
Not the first time it has happened. It is only the latest example. I had my thesis classified (1972) - to this day I still can't distribute the damn thing. I did my work on image enhancements through atmospheric perturbations. Being an amateur astronomer I wanted to be able to see images more clearly and the subject seemed natural for my thesis. In under a year I found it classified. Little did I realize what it was going to be used for.
Seems awfully familiar. Slashdot should look into applying some AI to submissions to see if it shares a high number of key words with a recent submisison.
That and/or check the URL's. That should actually be easier, since they should either match, or not. No fuzzy checking.
And, since the guts of the code could be implemented by a first-term CS undergrad, why *hasn't* this been done?
Nobody likes a dick. Fuck off. It was an example, you knob, so substitute instead one of the many distros without any copyright in the kernel, and the point holds.
It's not $150K, it's $150K per violation. Each time somebody downloads it, it is a separate violation.
OK, but if they lose the gambit they're bankrupted anyway, as that shar price will drop from $10 to about $0.20. So it doesn't really matter if a penalty is $6.37 or $200,000,000,000 - the money isn't going to be there to take, so it will be irrelevant.
You're right that copyright won't protect everybody else, but hopefully Linus will get his head out of the sand at some point and have his lawyer tell SCO they're going to get a bill that'll make their IBM lawsuit look like chump change if they don't give it up.
That would be the hope, certainly. And while one would hope he would, I definitely wouldn't want to bank my company's financial solvency on Linus's goodwill, however nice a guy he is.
In regards to the Linux community arguing for one and against the other, there are some differences. Other no-sunset clause licenses were shot down in court - there was a precedent.
That's of course a fair point, but unless I'm mistaken, sunset clauses are also held up sometimes. Bottom line is, without digging too far into the law, that there's a lot of wiggle room in all of the contract law involved, enough so I wouldn't feel too secure if I were invested in linux.
The GPL, as far as I know, has never been central to a court case for its legality to be tested. And I think, in all honesty, that the GPL has never seriously been tested because people on both sides fear testing the GPL - one side because they're afraid it will win, and the other side because they're afraid it might lose.
Ain't that the truth. But that in itself is enough to add enough uncertainty that I'm not as sure of IBM's ultimately victory, which seems to be a foregone conclusion around here.
In reference to the SCO case, the Linux community is arguing for one and against the other, but that's not really so selfish, because in essence, SCO is doing the same thing to their favor.
Naturally! But SCO has a few avenues it can "win" on - they're taking the tactic that a bunch of crappy attacks make one decent one. So they could conceivably punt the "sunset" thing, and they have many other bad arguments left. Linux has stronger positions, but has to win effectively all the issues.
If SCO is playing a gambit just to get bought out, its a dangerous one. All it takes is a clear court win for IBM to make the whole SCO thing look like a sad day in history when a little kid threw a temper tantrum.
Yes and no. Remember to distunguish SCO the company from the people who are running SCO, who have a lot of stock options made valuable from exactly the behavior they've shown so far (ie, FUD). SCO is currently being run by the Canopy group, lawsuit experts. So if SCO loses this, I'm sure Darl et al have golden parachutes waiting for them, and I bet they've all already cashed out enough options near the $10 share price to cover their initial investment and then some. So they don't expose themselves to the same kind of risk that the company does - but why do they care, eh? Run the company into the ground after cashing out, get a fat settlement, or get a fat award from a court case. Honestly, I can't think of *any* outcome of this that isn't a victory for the people running SCO. They've already won, and isn't that scary?
And finally, a disclaimer:
I'm just playing counterpoint to your arguments, my own views are more middle-of-the-road.
Hey, no problem. Only thing wrong with playing devil's advocate is the whole being in hell part.;)
Just a little fine point - only linux users with kernels containing SCO's "enterprise hardened" code would be subject to royalties in the first place. RCU, JFS, etc don't really touch a lot of users.
True, but does the fact that I don't use those features exonerate me? Let's say I'm a large company and I use linux because it's cheap (or whatever), and I think RCU is a university. Does that clear me? I dunno - I mean, I still acquired an OS with those features, whether I compile them into the kernel or not. I bet SCO could consider hitting a company like that.
Incidentally, GPL is no more non-standard than the clause in early Unix licenses that had no expiration. They were lacking what's referred to as a "sunset clause" which effectively returns the IP of the involved parties back to their creators at the end of the contract period. SCO is effectively asserting that there wasn't a sunset clause on ANYONE's contracts, and that they therefore own ALL Unix code, whether it was written by AT&T or not.
That's true, and it's a good comparison - the linux community is effectively arguing for one and against the other. So, if you believe in either completely strict or loose copyright law, you lose on one or the other.
In the end, looking at all the shaky issues surrounding SCO's case (patent ownership, questionable licenses that were issued 20-30 years ago, the difficulty in proving that THEY originated the code in question, SCO's opensourced old unixes), there's really no action that CAN be taken. We're only two moves into the chess game.
Right, but to continue your metaphor, SCO is playing like the guy who starts throwing his queen around on move 3. He's probably going to do something stupid and kill his game, but it's dangerous for you too. That's where we're at now.
Do remember too that SCO's strategy doesn't appear to be winning a court case. I believe, as do many, that they're playing for a buyout/payoff. To accomplish that, all they have to do (in their mind) is hurt the value of linux to the point that it makes it worth IBM's cash to have them go away. For that, they don't need a real case, they need FUD. Of which they've provided ample amounts.
I cringe every time I see this point being made. The GPL isn't relevant, really. If the GPL doesn't "stand up in court", then no problem, standard copyright law takes over. SCO has no other right to distribute the Linux kernel under copyright law beyond those given by the copyright holder.
You're right, but that's not quite where I'm going with it. I'm just saying that the GPL isn't a savior in this case, I don't believe, despite that people want it to be.
What this means practically speaking is that if SCO violated the GPL, and the GPL is declared invalid, then SCO has instead violated standard copyright law. The statutory damages are $150,000 per incident. Everytime someone downloads the Linux kernel source from their website, ka-ching. Every sale that they've made, ka-ching. Pissing off Richard Stallman suddenly sounds like the better way off, eh?
Well, they're betting the company anyway, so if they lose then Stallman can get his $150,000 after all the other creditors have picked over the carcass. In other words, heads they win, tails don't matter anyway.
The bottom line is that SCO continues to distribute the Linux source code. As such, they're either agreeing to distribute it under the terms of the GNU GPL (which don't allow extra burdens to be placed on the code) or they are directly violating copyrights. They are far better off if they get off with a simple GPL violation
Potentially, although I still don't think that this situation gets all linux users/distros out of the woods. In other words, SCO might be on the hook to Linus (who owns copyright on the kernel), but Red Hat et al might be on the hook for distributing SCO's code - and they don't have any copyrights to fight back with (well, none that matter here). And I don't know how that will shake out - I don't know for sure that they cancel. Basically we have a Mexican standoff, but Red Hat doesn't have a gun. The question might be how far Linus would go to protect them.
Bottom line is you are completely correct, but I'm not sure that it matters, because standard copyright doesn't ultimately protect Linux users and redistributors - only the GPL would do that by effectively open-sourcing SCO's stuff.
A lot of what they say is complete bullshit. I would love to see Linux come out of this stronger than ever, I really would, but this guy's way off the mark on a lot of things.
First, he claims that Linux is fine becuase SCO indemnified users. No, only customers of SCO linux. There's a big difference there.
Then, he claims that Linux is OK because it only affects IBM from a breach-of-contract standpoint. Yeah, except for it establishing a finding of fact that can be used in later suits against linux users/distros.
Finally, he makes the old, tired argument that the GPL saves us. That's all well and good except that the GPL, being a bit of a non-standard contract, has never been tested in court.
A great deal of what they wrote is either false or misinterpreted. Like the article in Forbes (I think) last month said, the linux community is NOT served by sticking its collective head in the sand and expecting IBM and the GPL to come riding in on their respective white horses to save us. There are real risks here - granted, some of them are farfetched, but stranger things have happened.
(if anyone tries quoting the 'all software is produced by a turing machine, so is all obvious argument, I'll hit them!),
Best comeback to that inane crap is "Turing thought the brain was a Turing machine - therefore, all innovation of any kind is obvious and unpatentable." See how they like that.
And yet, you don't see anyone rising up in arms about how the general populace doesn't know enough about cars and how we need to change automotive terminology. People need to educate themselves, and all the same resources for cars are there for computers.
I don't know about "up in arms," perhaps I missed that one. Although one could certainly make a case that computer education in schools, say, is pretty important. Rare is the decent job today that doesn't require computer literacy as a minimum.
For instance I don't understand a thing about certain cooking terms, like basting or searing, but that's okay because I'm not a chef, so it doesn't affect me.
Yeah but I'm not going to get ripped off at a restaurant and end up paying $850 for a curry because I don't know how to cook. However, one can end up paying way too much for a computer that is complete overkill by listening to the damned salesman, which is all the uneducated public has to go on. Same applies to car mechanics.
As such, getting some minimal education about how a computer works is a good idea, just like it's a good idea to learn a bit about cars so you at least have an idea of when the mechanic is lying out his ass.
Nah.. only people that want or need to know will care. It's the over-used car analogy again. My wife has heard the word carburetor, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts she has no idea what it does.
If your wife thinks her car has a carburetor then:
Your wife is really old. Why are you married to an 80 year old? Is she rich? Does she have a sister?
or...
Your wife's car is really old. Buy the poor woman a new car, for Chrissakes!
IMNSHO, that ought to be standard for any mission-critical software. Bugs and the places that bugs live in are not created equal. The beauty of Apache (at least 1.13) is that the overall system can be very robust and reliable with rather buggy modules. I suspect the problem with IIS is that everything assumes everything else is perfect, which overall doesn't quite work so well.
I looked at the "defect" report for apache, and 29 of the 31 errors were null pointer dereferences (the other two were references to unitialized variables). NO array overruns. I'd rather much have a null de-reference (from run-time allocated memory, ostensibly) than an array overrun, which could be used to do a buffer-overflow attack. Apache had none of those.
Furthermore, almost all the errors were in a handful of files, which one could probably assume weren't particularly critical. I'd love to see a re-analysis of Apache's "guts," as I believe it would be rock-solid.
...that all sides use self-serving logic. Blame the tool or the user? Well, if you're a good democrat, you blame gunmakers in addition to users, but not file-sharing systems. On the contrary, if you're a good conservative, you blame file-sharers and the systems, but not gunmakers.
Of course, I realize there are a bunch of libertarians around here who want their guns and file-sharing.;)
It might be that the domain was not a priority for brute force attacks. A brute forcer would probably target a more known and populated domain.
That's what I'm thinking. But I've heard of guys hosting their own domains get hit with dictionary by spammers who I guess are too dumb to check that out. So I do think these guys got lucky on the whole.
Actually, my new theory is that spammers don't spam spammers for the same reason that snakes don't bite lawyers: professional courtesy.;)
Slashdot Mirror
www.apple.com, of course! Where else? ;)
I would add to that the loss of goodwill arising from not issuing a recall or only issuing it after being pressured. Sony extracts top dollar by being percieved as being a more supportive company. Not saying it's true, but still.
Considering he's an American expat, I expect he prolly wants his crap in English anyway. I suspect this is the deal - he wants AMERICAN stuff while living in Hungary. Sorry, tho, that's just not how things work sometimes. The poster acts like this is some big US conspiracy to 0wnz0r the WWW, but it's generally a logistics thing - the few sales companies would get from Hungary isn't worth dealing with Hungary.
Considering the US has anachronistic laws dealing with export control of encryption and such, as well as other problems, it isn't worth the trouble of having the main sales unit deal with each country. For big companies like IBM, they have a unit for each country that are (hopefully) experts in local issues. So really, the only people with problems here are US expats who want stuff in English instead of the local language. In other words, him.
My advice to the guy would be to have some family in the states to order it for him and ship it. But complaining isn't going to help, and making it into some US vs. the world thing is silly.
...an abacus, but I'm not going to use one in an $800 machine.
No, they represent the companies that own the rights to the recordings, and these companies entered into this arrangement of their own free will. There are some labels not represented by the RIAA; presumably, the stations are free to seek their own deal with them individually. So what angle are you taking on this - I don't like payola either, but they do have every right to do it.
First, I'm not a particularly accpomplished programmer (I'm a chemist), and I'm not familiar with slashcode and such - therefore, it would be tough for me to get up to speed.
But for someone who does know these things, how hard could this be? Search posted stories for all incidences of ''. That would be a URL. Store the URL's for each story. Then, for each submitted story, do the same. Do a simple string compare for all URL's and look for any matches over the last few days. Not tough.
As for a bug report, yeah, I do those. In this case, though, how necessary is it? Fairly obvious there's a dupe problem here.
Gee, because I don't do volunteer work for a for-profit company.
So bottom line is, I really liked a lot of BSD's features, but unfortunately an OS without programs is useless. The ports guys do a great job, but can't make up for lack of vendor support. ;(
Don't swallow everything you read. If it doesn't come from Netcraft, I'm not believing it. What? Oh.
BSD is dead! Long live BSD...
No, then you have the problem of accidentally hitting the wrong button modifier. I'm not seeing the advantage outside of some serious klunkiness.
devestating if for instance your buffer contains 'rm -rf /' and you paste that into a root-shell :P
I might close those root shells, eh?
Is your identity classified too, AC? ;)
That and/or check the URL's. That should actually be easier, since they should either match, or not. No fuzzy checking.
And, since the guts of the code could be implemented by a first-term CS undergrad, why *hasn't* this been done?
Nobody likes a dick. Fuck off. It was an example, you knob, so substitute instead one of the many distros without any copyright in the kernel, and the point holds.
OK, but if they lose the gambit they're bankrupted anyway, as that shar price will drop from $10 to about $0.20. So it doesn't really matter if a penalty is $6.37 or $200,000,000,000 - the money isn't going to be there to take, so it will be irrelevant.
You're right that copyright won't protect everybody else, but hopefully Linus will get his head out of the sand at some point and have his lawyer tell SCO they're going to get a bill that'll make their IBM lawsuit look like chump change if they don't give it up.
That would be the hope, certainly. And while one would hope he would, I definitely wouldn't want to bank my company's financial solvency on Linus's goodwill, however nice a guy he is.
That's of course a fair point, but unless I'm mistaken, sunset clauses are also held up sometimes. Bottom line is, without digging too far into the law, that there's a lot of wiggle room in all of the contract law involved, enough so I wouldn't feel too secure if I were invested in linux.
The GPL, as far as I know, has never been central to a court case for its legality to be tested. And I think, in all honesty, that the GPL has never seriously been tested because people on both sides fear testing the GPL - one side because they're afraid it will win, and the other side because they're afraid it might lose.
Ain't that the truth. But that in itself is enough to add enough uncertainty that I'm not as sure of IBM's ultimately victory, which seems to be a foregone conclusion around here.
In reference to the SCO case, the Linux community is arguing for one and against the other, but that's not really so selfish, because in essence, SCO is doing the same thing to their favor.
Naturally! But SCO has a few avenues it can "win" on - they're taking the tactic that a bunch of crappy attacks make one decent one. So they could conceivably punt the "sunset" thing, and they have many other bad arguments left. Linux has stronger positions, but has to win effectively all the issues.
If SCO is playing a gambit just to get bought out, its a dangerous one. All it takes is a clear court win for IBM to make the whole SCO thing look like a sad day in history when a little kid threw a temper tantrum.
Yes and no. Remember to distunguish SCO the company from the people who are running SCO, who have a lot of stock options made valuable from exactly the behavior they've shown so far (ie, FUD). SCO is currently being run by the Canopy group, lawsuit experts. So if SCO loses this, I'm sure Darl et al have golden parachutes waiting for them, and I bet they've all already cashed out enough options near the $10 share price to cover their initial investment and then some. So they don't expose themselves to the same kind of risk that the company does - but why do they care, eh? Run the company into the ground after cashing out, get a fat settlement, or get a fat award from a court case. Honestly, I can't think of *any* outcome of this that isn't a victory for the people running SCO. They've already won, and isn't that scary?
And finally, a disclaimer: I'm just playing counterpoint to your arguments, my own views are more middle-of-the-road.
Hey, no problem. Only thing wrong with playing devil's advocate is the whole being in hell part. ;)
True, but does the fact that I don't use those features exonerate me? Let's say I'm a large company and I use linux because it's cheap (or whatever), and I think RCU is a university. Does that clear me? I dunno - I mean, I still acquired an OS with those features, whether I compile them into the kernel or not. I bet SCO could consider hitting a company like that.
Incidentally, GPL is no more non-standard than the clause in early Unix licenses that had no expiration. They were lacking what's referred to as a "sunset clause" which effectively returns the IP of the involved parties back to their creators at the end of the contract period. SCO is effectively asserting that there wasn't a sunset clause on ANYONE's contracts, and that they therefore own ALL Unix code, whether it was written by AT&T or not.
That's true, and it's a good comparison - the linux community is effectively arguing for one and against the other. So, if you believe in either completely strict or loose copyright law, you lose on one or the other.
In the end, looking at all the shaky issues surrounding SCO's case (patent ownership, questionable licenses that were issued 20-30 years ago, the difficulty in proving that THEY originated the code in question, SCO's opensourced old unixes), there's really no action that CAN be taken. We're only two moves into the chess game.
Right, but to continue your metaphor, SCO is playing like the guy who starts throwing his queen around on move 3. He's probably going to do something stupid and kill his game, but it's dangerous for you too. That's where we're at now.
Do remember too that SCO's strategy doesn't appear to be winning a court case. I believe, as do many, that they're playing for a buyout/payoff. To accomplish that, all they have to do (in their mind) is hurt the value of linux to the point that it makes it worth IBM's cash to have them go away. For that, they don't need a real case, they need FUD. Of which they've provided ample amounts.
You're right, but that's not quite where I'm going with it. I'm just saying that the GPL isn't a savior in this case, I don't believe, despite that people want it to be.
What this means practically speaking is that if SCO violated the GPL, and the GPL is declared invalid, then SCO has instead violated standard copyright law. The statutory damages are $150,000 per incident. Everytime someone downloads the Linux kernel source from their website, ka-ching. Every sale that they've made, ka-ching. Pissing off Richard Stallman suddenly sounds like the better way off, eh?
Well, they're betting the company anyway, so if they lose then Stallman can get his $150,000 after all the other creditors have picked over the carcass. In other words, heads they win, tails don't matter anyway.
The bottom line is that SCO continues to distribute the Linux source code. As such, they're either agreeing to distribute it under the terms of the GNU GPL (which don't allow extra burdens to be placed on the code) or they are directly violating copyrights. They are far better off if they get off with a simple GPL violation
Potentially, although I still don't think that this situation gets all linux users/distros out of the woods. In other words, SCO might be on the hook to Linus (who owns copyright on the kernel), but Red Hat et al might be on the hook for distributing SCO's code - and they don't have any copyrights to fight back with (well, none that matter here). And I don't know how that will shake out - I don't know for sure that they cancel. Basically we have a Mexican standoff, but Red Hat doesn't have a gun. The question might be how far Linus would go to protect them.
Bottom line is you are completely correct, but I'm not sure that it matters, because standard copyright doesn't ultimately protect Linux users and redistributors - only the GPL would do that by effectively open-sourcing SCO's stuff.
First, he claims that Linux is fine becuase SCO indemnified users. No, only customers of SCO linux. There's a big difference there.
Then, he claims that Linux is OK because it only affects IBM from a breach-of-contract standpoint. Yeah, except for it establishing a finding of fact that can be used in later suits against linux users/distros.
Finally, he makes the old, tired argument that the GPL saves us. That's all well and good except that the GPL, being a bit of a non-standard contract, has never been tested in court.
A great deal of what they wrote is either false or misinterpreted. Like the article in Forbes (I think) last month said, the linux community is NOT served by sticking its collective head in the sand and expecting IBM and the GPL to come riding in on their respective white horses to save us. There are real risks here - granted, some of them are farfetched, but stranger things have happened.
Best comeback to that inane crap is "Turing thought the brain was a Turing machine - therefore, all innovation of any kind is obvious and unpatentable." See how they like that.
I don't know about "up in arms," perhaps I missed that one. Although one could certainly make a case that computer education in schools, say, is pretty important. Rare is the decent job today that doesn't require computer literacy as a minimum.
Yeah but I'm not going to get ripped off at a restaurant and end up paying $850 for a curry because I don't know how to cook. However, one can end up paying way too much for a computer that is complete overkill by listening to the damned salesman, which is all the uneducated public has to go on. Same applies to car mechanics.
As such, getting some minimal education about how a computer works is a good idea, just like it's a good idea to learn a bit about cars so you at least have an idea of when the mechanic is lying out his ass.
If your wife thinks her car has a carburetor then:
Your wife is really old. Why are you married to an 80 year old? Is she rich? Does she have a sister?
or...
Your wife's car is really old. Buy the poor woman a new car, for Chrissakes!
I looked at the "defect" report for apache, and 29 of the 31 errors were null pointer dereferences (the other two were references to unitialized variables). NO array overruns. I'd rather much have a null de-reference (from run-time allocated memory, ostensibly) than an array overrun, which could be used to do a buffer-overflow attack. Apache had none of those.
Furthermore, almost all the errors were in a handful of files, which one could probably assume weren't particularly critical. I'd love to see a re-analysis of Apache's "guts," as I believe it would be rock-solid.
Of course, I realize there are a bunch of libertarians around here who want their guns and file-sharing. ;)
That's what I'm thinking. But I've heard of guys hosting their own domains get hit with dictionary by spammers who I guess are too dumb to check that out. So I do think these guys got lucky on the whole.
Actually, my new theory is that spammers don't spam spammers for the same reason that snakes don't bite lawyers: professional courtesy. ;)