n other words, make the fuel cell hardware cheap and affordable and price-fix the actual fuel refill components as high as possible to maximize profits.
I know. I'm living in a fantasy world where I think everyone is ethical.:) However, it's ultimately up to the sell to say yes or no to the offer. The agent can't.
That may be true, but since the seller hired the agent because they are by definition incapable of doing the job, the distinction is thin enough as to be negligible. For all practical purposes, the seller generally controls the sale of a house. And they do what they can to sell quickly.
This is where ethics come into play. An ethical real estate agent won't make that decision for the seller. They can suggest to the seller to sell it for less to minimize the stress of selling the house and to sell it quicker. But they won't knock off 5% for their own gain. Their single purpose is to serve the seller. That's why you should never have the same agent serve both the seller and buyer. It's a conflict of interest.
Dunno if you've ever sold a house, or whether you're an agent, but the above is the idealistic version of real estate, not the actual. Even if you get your own seller's agent, it's still in their best interest to sell quickly (though that could be in yours too). They'll do what they can to pump up the price, sure, but bottom line is they want to move houses. When's the last time you heard a seller's agent say "I dunno...let's wait another two weeks and see what we get..." ? Not likely. Why? Because getting an extra 5% commission isn't worth doubling their work.
"After reviewing the decisions analyzing unauthorized electronic contact with computer systems as potential trespasses to chattels, we conclude that under California law the tort does not encompass, and should not be extended to encompass, an electronic communication that neither damages the recipient computer system nor impairs its functioning. Such an electronic communication does not constitute an actionable trespass to personal property," the high court says.
I think the difference can be understood in the realm of non-electronic world. Let's say I have a business. I have a customer inside, and one of his friends sees him and they end up having a conversation outside my door. Do I have a legitimate right to boot them? Probably not.
However, this is different if the person is a solicitor, as I believe businesses do have the right to prevent solicitation on their premises. I would assume the same for email - ie, I have the right to restrict solicitation on my premises, but likely not non-disruptive legitimate communication.
Not to mention which the server could make a strong argument toward spam impairing its functioning not to mention which eroding the value of the service they provide, ie, an email account to customers that isn't nailed by spam. This was alluded to by the decision. In the real world, this would be like a business owner who had so many solicitors on his doorstep that he had to clear them out so the customer could actually see the door.
SCO's legal costs are being paid under a contingency arrangement (about halfway down)
Good link - that being publically known, though, I still don't know if it changes IBM's strategy. Basically it means that Boies has a vested interest in settling as soon as possible, to get as much cash per time spent as possible. It's kind of like when you have a real estate agent - they get a fixed percentage of the sale price, and underpriced houses sell faster - so it's in their best interest to sell your house at 5% under value if they can sell it twice as fast. Same with Boies.
So if I'm IBM, the first thing I intimate to Boies is that there is NO settlement. What does he do then? Best get this thing to trial and try to get whatever he can, huh? I would say then that the more IBM stalls the more desperate Boies gets to not spend years on this thing when they may get nothing in return except losing a high-profile case, wasting time and killing his mystique. I believe he isn't anxious to try that on.
The other reason Boies has to hurry is that the investors who stupidly drove this thing up to $11/share are going to get restless eventually - I would bet that if this thing gets badly dragged out, share price goes down, shrinking the cash pie that is shared among Boies, Darl, etc.
Ultimately, I don't think Boies is a moron, so I bet a lot of this is starting to sink in. I'm sure he's also apprised Darl of the situation, and that's why Darl is sounding crazier than ever - and from the sound of things, trying to convince shareholders of value more than anything. He knows their share price is a bubble, and if it pops, the company comes apart.
I can't wait. Might just pop a beer and watch MSNBC all day when it goes down.;)
That's not really nanotech. They weren't using the nanomaterials directly, or intentionally. The particles just happened to be the right size.
Yes it is. Nanotech is the ability to control feature size on a nanometer level, generally considered to be smaller than 200nm. They had the ability to do that, whether they knew it or not, as the iridescent patterns depend on the regular ordering of features around that size. Had they not had the ability, they would have ended up with some crappy glaze that didn't have this effect.
On a different topic - hey, look, nanotech for hundreds of years and no apocalypse as predicted by screwball science fiction! Amazing!
I'm all for diversity, but to me the problem with Linux (and no flames, I use linux every day) is that each distro has a few good features, but none really nails it. I love slackware's simplicity, and have become accustomed to it's install, but I suppose a more user-friendly install would be nice. Debian, as you say, has some great features but suffers the same problems as slackware. Redhat and mandrake are very user friendly but do things in nonstandard ways sometimes, making it a pain to figure out why they do what they do. You get the idea.
It ultimately would be great for some distro to piece together all these features into something that has ease of use but allows great control as well. And since there are different definitions of what is great, there will still be different distros. Being a chemist, I would love to see a distro with more "science-y" tools. But what we need to see go away are needlessly clunky installs and some of the clearly inferior tools.
Sometimes, this arises from the same "reinvent the wheel syndorme" that plagues the linux office suite problem - why does KDE need to make a bad office suite while making a decent OE? Similarly, why write a bad package manager when a good one exists? What's surprising is that since this is open source, I would expect more "borrowing" than currently occurs since it's perfectly legal.
Bottom line is, I don't really care if Debian goes the way of the dodo, so long as the cool stuff that Debian gave to the OSS community stays with us.
I thought the beauty of open source was that even if the original author (be it a natural person(s) or a company) decides to no longer support a project that the source is there for you to look at and provide your own support
Typical. And what if I a) don't program and b) don't want to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to modify the OS I use at home?
Hopefully you can see the problems with this DYI coding theory.
Are you an idiot? All they have to do is sign a binary to run on the hardware. There is no source code or anything involved in that, no giving away of trade secrets. Hint: aquire clue before posting.
Ever hear of a disassembler? Particularly for something as small as a bootloader, disassembling it is going to be trivial, so releasing a binary is effectively releasing source code. Just because he didn't spell it out doesn't make him a moron, he actually has a good point.
They are supposed to be releasing a phone number to call in after a week (or few).
Yeah, but that's even worse! Then they'll have a *phone number* to link to my ph....oh. Nevermind.
Hey, is it just me or did we manage to/. the registration site? Their server seems to be curled up fetal on the bottom of the rack right now. Good job guys.
After waiting on hold for 30 to 45 minutes, the gentlemen on the other
> end of the phone informed that they were having an "issue" where their server
> were rejecting email from IP's starting with a 6.
Sounds like someone was being a bit happy with the wildcards. Why not just block *.*.*.*, that will block ALL the spam?
Just wonddering, but when you say anything starting with a 6, does that mean 6.*.*.*, or 6*.*.*.* ?
Blind beating sighted in quake? Nah.
on
Hacking the XBox
·
· Score: 1
"Sonic Information -- The sound in games like Quake is pretty good, but what if it was rendered with enough precision to let blind people grok the scene? The echoes from the tapping of a white cane already carry plenty of information to the blind. What if they could compete on an equal footing with the sighted? Who would win?"
I can see it now in a deathmatch:
...tap...tap...tap.....BLAM!!!!
So what does the echo of a rocket up your ass sound like? Huh! Huh!
I think we can all agree that, while this project may have its uses, you ain't playing quake without actual vision anytime soon. Seeing some poor bastard with a cane getting blowed up ain't funny.
Potentiall less progress in the arts, and less content generated
Definitely so. Of course, it depends what you call progress, huh? I might be inclined to grant that less commercialization is a good thing.
but the access to that content should be greater than currently.
By definition. Obviously, your position is extreme (not as in bad, but it's impossible to grant *less* IP protection). And the current situation is extreme the other way in the sense that it's virtually infinite protection. Personally, I'd be willing to grant full copyright protection for 5 years, and protection against commercial uses for another 5.
Do you hold patents to the same standard as copyrights?
Hm...OK. At least that is a fully consistent, defensible position, unlike most of the others out there. Have you thought about the ramifications of that, though?
By that logic, though, anything that isn't physical is ultimately perceived by the brain or re-recorded on your own media. So I'm assuming that you don't believe in any IP of any kind, correct? In other words, no idea, no published work, no patent should ever be protected?
They may be bad, but don't them up with the other, clearly different crime. Clearly, one can be against theft, but not agree with "copyright infringment" as a crime.
Really? The only difference I really see is rationalization. Naturally, one doesn't want to think of oneself as a thief. So at the point where it's illegal, what is the legitimate rationalization for why it shouldn't be in the same ballpark as theft? I've heard some crappy stories so far, but nothing real. I'll grant that illegal != wrong, but it certainly establishes a greater burden.
Downloading a song or sharing a song with someone doesn't involve the taking of anything physical or making a profit on something that isn't their's. It's just sharing of information.
So if I stole the blueprints for Intel's next chip, photocopied them, put them back, and then put the copies on the web, that wouldn't be illegal right? They're just posting information without taking anything physical and without profiting, right?
I mean seriously, think about this in non-mp3 terms and it just doesn't even make sense. You do realize that stealing confidential or proprietary "information" as you put it is illegal too?
A man digs a hole in a national park. Does it make sense for him to own the hole?
Not seeing the analogy. One cannot claim ownership to something he doesn't own by modifying it (ie, park and whole). So I'm asusming the hole is analogous to a song in the RIAA thing, but what's the park?
I'd just like to point out that nothing in your post is supported in actual law. Rationalize your theft, or whatever you want to call it, because it amounts to the same thing.
Theft would be somebody physically taking a CD from a store, most people agree this isn't a good thing
You can steal something that isn't a physical object. What if I go for a simple haircut and dash on the bill? No consumables were involved in me getting my haircut, but I've still stolen from the barber. Similar with copyright - I have been provided something of value without consent of the owner. Rationalize it how you want, that sounds a lot like theft to me.
The RIAA is going after people for copyright infringement. There are a lot of people that do not agree with copyright infringement rules the way that they are (Fair Use looks like it's been taken away, people are being pressured not to build devices that remove commercials, etc).
That's a different argument - however, this isn't a fair use issue, as distributing to others has never come under the heading of fair use. This isn't a decrypction/DMCA issue either, as the CD's in this case can for argument's purpose all be unencumbered by copy protection.
Remember, theft involves physical property, copyright infringement is duplicating something that someone else built.
Like I said, whatever tags you put on it, what's the ultimate difference that makes one justifiable? Are you arguing that copyright infringement should be legal? Unpunished? Where are you going with this?
Slashdot Mirror
Allright, I'll distill my own. Bring it on! ;)
That may be true, but since the seller hired the agent because they are by definition incapable of doing the job, the distinction is thin enough as to be negligible. For all practical purposes, the seller generally controls the sale of a house. And they do what they can to sell quickly.
Dunno if you've ever sold a house, or whether you're an agent, but the above is the idealistic version of real estate, not the actual. Even if you get your own seller's agent, it's still in their best interest to sell quickly (though that could be in yours too). They'll do what they can to pump up the price, sure, but bottom line is they want to move houses. When's the last time you heard a seller's agent say "I dunno...let's wait another two weeks and see what we get..." ? Not likely. Why? Because getting an extra 5% commission isn't worth doubling their work.
I think the difference can be understood in the realm of non-electronic world. Let's say I have a business. I have a customer inside, and one of his friends sees him and they end up having a conversation outside my door. Do I have a legitimate right to boot them? Probably not.
However, this is different if the person is a solicitor, as I believe businesses do have the right to prevent solicitation on their premises. I would assume the same for email - ie, I have the right to restrict solicitation on my premises, but likely not non-disruptive legitimate communication.
Not to mention which the server could make a strong argument toward spam impairing its functioning not to mention which eroding the value of the service they provide, ie, an email account to customers that isn't nailed by spam. This was alluded to by the decision. In the real world, this would be like a business owner who had so many solicitors on his doorstep that he had to clear them out so the customer could actually see the door.
Good link - that being publically known, though, I still don't know if it changes IBM's strategy. Basically it means that Boies has a vested interest in settling as soon as possible, to get as much cash per time spent as possible. It's kind of like when you have a real estate agent - they get a fixed percentage of the sale price, and underpriced houses sell faster - so it's in their best interest to sell your house at 5% under value if they can sell it twice as fast. Same with Boies.
So if I'm IBM, the first thing I intimate to Boies is that there is NO settlement. What does he do then? Best get this thing to trial and try to get whatever he can, huh? I would say then that the more IBM stalls the more desperate Boies gets to not spend years on this thing when they may get nothing in return except losing a high-profile case, wasting time and killing his mystique. I believe he isn't anxious to try that on.
The other reason Boies has to hurry is that the investors who stupidly drove this thing up to $11/share are going to get restless eventually - I would bet that if this thing gets badly dragged out, share price goes down, shrinking the cash pie that is shared among Boies, Darl, etc.
Ultimately, I don't think Boies is a moron, so I bet a lot of this is starting to sink in. I'm sure he's also apprised Darl of the situation, and that's why Darl is sounding crazier than ever - and from the sound of things, trying to convince shareholders of value more than anything. He knows their share price is a bubble, and if it pops, the company comes apart.
I can't wait. Might just pop a beer and watch MSNBC all day when it goes down. ;)
Yes it is. Nanotech is the ability to control feature size on a nanometer level, generally considered to be smaller than 200nm. They had the ability to do that, whether they knew it or not, as the iridescent patterns depend on the regular ordering of features around that size. Had they not had the ability, they would have ended up with some crappy glaze that didn't have this effect.
On a different topic - hey, look, nanotech for hundreds of years and no apocalypse as predicted by screwball science fiction! Amazing!
Now we're back at the issue of using an OS that may not be around in X years, where upgrading might not actually be an option.
Bottom line is, if you have no ability or resources to modify the code, then "free as in speech" doesn't mean a thing.
I'm all for diversity, but to me the problem with Linux (and no flames, I use linux every day) is that each distro has a few good features, but none really nails it. I love slackware's simplicity, and have become accustomed to it's install, but I suppose a more user-friendly install would be nice. Debian, as you say, has some great features but suffers the same problems as slackware. Redhat and mandrake are very user friendly but do things in nonstandard ways sometimes, making it a pain to figure out why they do what they do. You get the idea.
It ultimately would be great for some distro to piece together all these features into something that has ease of use but allows great control as well. And since there are different definitions of what is great, there will still be different distros. Being a chemist, I would love to see a distro with more "science-y" tools. But what we need to see go away are needlessly clunky installs and some of the clearly inferior tools.
Sometimes, this arises from the same "reinvent the wheel syndorme" that plagues the linux office suite problem - why does KDE need to make a bad office suite while making a decent OE? Similarly, why write a bad package manager when a good one exists? What's surprising is that since this is open source, I would expect more "borrowing" than currently occurs since it's perfectly legal.
Bottom line is, I don't really care if Debian goes the way of the dodo, so long as the cool stuff that Debian gave to the OSS community stays with us.
Typical. And what if I a) don't program and b) don't want to pay someone tens of thousands of dollars to modify the OS I use at home?
Hopefully you can see the problems with this DYI coding theory.
Ever hear of a disassembler? Particularly for something as small as a bootloader, disassembling it is going to be trivial, so releasing a binary is effectively releasing source code. Just because he didn't spell it out doesn't make him a moron, he actually has a good point.
...you just have to fill that backdoor, then, don't you? I hear that's Gates' specialty.
Yeah, but that's even worse! Then they'll have a *phone number* to link to my ph....oh. Nevermind.
Hey, is it just me or did we manage to /. the registration site? Their server seems to be curled up fetal on the bottom of the rack right now. Good job guys.
Sounds like someone was being a bit happy with the wildcards. Why not just block *.*.*.*, that will block ALL the spam?
Just wonddering, but when you say anything starting with a 6, does that mean 6.*.*.*, or 6*.*.*.* ?
I can see it now in a deathmatch:
...tap...tap...tap.....BLAM!!!!
So what does the echo of a rocket up your ass sound like? Huh! Huh!
I think we can all agree that, while this project may have its uses, you ain't playing quake without actual vision anytime soon. Seeing some poor bastard with a cane getting blowed up ain't funny.
23...17! i!!uminati 0wnZ0rz youz!
Definitely so. Of course, it depends what you call progress, huh? I might be inclined to grant that less commercialization is a good thing.
but the access to that content should be greater than currently.
By definition. Obviously, your position is extreme (not as in bad, but it's impossible to grant *less* IP protection). And the current situation is extreme the other way in the sense that it's virtually infinite protection. Personally, I'd be willing to grant full copyright protection for 5 years, and protection against commercial uses for another 5.
Do you hold patents to the same standard as copyrights?
Hm...OK. At least that is a fully consistent, defensible position, unlike most of the others out there. Have you thought about the ramifications of that, though?
Wow that's clever. So since 1960, huh?
By that logic, though, anything that isn't physical is ultimately perceived by the brain or re-recorded on your own media. So I'm assuming that you don't believe in any IP of any kind, correct? In other words, no idea, no published work, no patent should ever be protected?
I gather you're going to attempt to say something like the public consciousness, but that's a bit too metaphysical for me. ;)
Really? The only difference I really see is rationalization. Naturally, one doesn't want to think of oneself as a thief. So at the point where it's illegal, what is the legitimate rationalization for why it shouldn't be in the same ballpark as theft? I've heard some crappy stories so far, but nothing real. I'll grant that illegal != wrong, but it certainly establishes a greater burden.
So if I stole the blueprints for Intel's next chip, photocopied them, put them back, and then put the copies on the web, that wouldn't be illegal right? They're just posting information without taking anything physical and without profiting, right?
I mean seriously, think about this in non-mp3 terms and it just doesn't even make sense. You do realize that stealing confidential or proprietary "information" as you put it is illegal too?
Not seeing the analogy. One cannot claim ownership to something he doesn't own by modifying it (ie, park and whole). So I'm asusming the hole is analogous to a song in the RIAA thing, but what's the park?
I'd just like to point out that nothing in your post is supported in actual law. Rationalize your theft, or whatever you want to call it, because it amounts to the same thing.
You can steal something that isn't a physical object. What if I go for a simple haircut and dash on the bill? No consumables were involved in me getting my haircut, but I've still stolen from the barber. Similar with copyright - I have been provided something of value without consent of the owner. Rationalize it how you want, that sounds a lot like theft to me.
The RIAA is going after people for copyright infringement. There are a lot of people that do not agree with copyright infringement rules the way that they are (Fair Use looks like it's been taken away, people are being pressured not to build devices that remove commercials, etc).
That's a different argument - however, this isn't a fair use issue, as distributing to others has never come under the heading of fair use. This isn't a decrypction/DMCA issue either, as the CD's in this case can for argument's purpose all be unencumbered by copy protection.
Remember, theft involves physical property, copyright infringement is duplicating something that someone else built.
Like I said, whatever tags you put on it, what's the ultimate difference that makes one justifiable? Are you arguing that copyright infringement should be legal? Unpunished? Where are you going with this?