Make no mistake about it; there is a cultural war, and the ACLU, the scientific community and the debate over evolution is being used in an attempt to exterminate Christianity in public life.
Don't be moronic. Yes, the ACLU has gone too far in enforcing separation of Church and State by hindering individual and consensual religious expression. No, the scientific community and the debate over evolution do not have anything whatsoever to do with exterminating Christianity. Sure, a lot of scientists are not Christian, but many are.
The only reason evolution and the scientific community can be considered enemies of Christianity is because certain subsets of Christianity insist on promoting a dogmatic view of the world that contradicts basic facts. It's a silly as calling Galileo an enemy of God, when really he was only an enemy of the Church because he contradicted their dogma and thus undermined their secular authority. In reality the Church was simply wrong, not to mention hubristic in assuming that earth was the center of the universe.
That depends on what you mean by "evolution". There are certainly evolutionary theories that are simply theories. The mechanisms of evolution, its characteristics, the predictions that can be made for the future -- all theory. On the other hand, "change and differentiation of species over time" is not a theory, it's a fact that we've observed and even caused countless times.
This is similar to how General Relativity, or Newton's Theory of Gravity, are just theories. Yet gravity -- the attraction between masses -- is not a theory, it's a fact. The cause and nature of that attraction is what is theorized. Say Einstein's theory is just a theory, but don't tell me gravity is a theory when I can toss a ball into the air and watch it fall.
The problem with the "evolution is just a theory" sticker is that while, on its face, it may seem to be a simple statement of scientific fact (that theories are always theories and can only be disproven) with a much broader and stronger statement -- that speciation itself is just a theory, and that an alternative "theory" is that every species was created as-is six or ten or whatever thousand years ago in one day by God.
So when they say "evolution is just a theory", they're saying it because the existence of changes in species over time spans much longer than six thousand years contradicts their "theory". It's not enough that Punctuated Equilibrium be a falsifiable theory; the very idea that a species could over time develop into a different species must be false because a literal reading of Genesis implies it. The statement is based on religious dogma and is therefore a religious statement and therefore a violation of the First Ammendment.
Other than that political reality, you're absolutely correct.
No, it's not a free speech issue. The Government -- whether that be in the form of the Justice Department or the Board of a public school -- doesn't have the "free speech" right to dictate that students have stickers on their books. The Government imposing views on you is not free speech in any way, shape or form.
It's really simple: Student puts a sticker on their book: exercise of freedom of speech/religion. School Board puts sticker on every students' book: violation of freedom of speech/religion.
I know this gets confused in both ways (e.g. disallowing independent prayer), but it really is quite simple.
1) Those who don't see the light will be left behind in a world devoured by plagues. 2) Represents the beginning of the final battle between good and evil. 3) The object of worship has gone through several name changes and major reworkings, with many unaware of its history. 4) Nobody knew/knows when it was/is coming, and there are always false alarms. 5) Lots of people don't believe anything will ever come of it. 6) Even the ones who do believe argue over it an awful lot. 7) No matter how nice it looks, the representative of the Dark Side will try -- and often succeed -- in convincing people they're better off with him, even though everyone knows he's out to screw them. 8) You'll know the shit has really hit the fan when a giant seven-headed beast rises from the ocean and declares itself ruler of the world. That happens later, though. Maybe around 2.0.
Disney just neutered the endings and made them pretty.
Yeah, I always liked the version of Snow White where the evil queen snuck into Snow White's wedding, but they found her and made her dance in red-hot metal shoes until she died.
Come on, Disney! Put a good musical number to it, and it'd be a great scene!
Those things accomplish the same thing as GPS -- either tracking your movements or locating you, and they're all completely legal and, in my opinion, reasonable.
So you have no problem with a police officer, without a warrant or probable cause, tracking you everywhere you go?
We're not talking about someone seeing you on the road, we're talking about someone tailing you. If a civilian did that, I'd call the cops. If a cop does it...
Frankly, I don't consider it reasonable for a police officer to follow me everywhere I go without a warrant. I don't care if I happen to cross public places where I could be observed anyway -- the "expectation of privacy" is that once I leave your vicinity, you aren't going to start following me around.
If you are a police officer, and you feel the need to tail me wherever I go, go talk to a judge. Then and only then have you satisfied your Constitutional obligation.
Why did that piss you off? The implication -- expressed numerous times in the series, by the way -- is that Vulcans weren't as unemotional as they wanted to be. Emotion was taboo as much as it was unknown, which is probably why he didn't study it. Is that illogical? You bet, but vulcans were a society that cherished logic, not a species that was inherently logical.
Wait... so are you saying the true goal of Skynet was to destroy mankind's football infrastructure -- civilization -- so as to win the World Cup? That's chilling! Not just the implications for A.I., but also for the possible plot of the next Terminator movie. *shudder*
No, I disagree. Patenting math is evil. Opening up some of the patented math to people dedicated to openness is a step in the right direction, but is (if you'll pardon the obviously overblown hyperbole) akin to releasing a few slaves and saying "See? It ain't so bad!"
I remember... barely. I came into computers at the trail end of their evilness, mostly when they were being beaten up for having their monopolistic attitude without the monopoly to back it up.
In the ensuing decade, IBM seemingly reinvented themselves, and have only been getting cooler still.
Yes, they used to be the bad guy. I have a relative who is an ex-alcoholic-turned-minister. People can change, and apparently giant corporations can too.
And before you ask, yes, if in ten years Microsoft has changed their tune and starts to act in the benefit of their customers and the industry, if they're half as cool as IBM, I'll sing their praises as well.
Yeah, it took me an extra second to parse as well. The funny part is that the editors could have gotten rid of one funny and twenty redundant posts simply by adding one word to the title and saying: "Microsoft Releases Tool to Remove Malicious Software"
No, wait, the funny part is I thought "editing", much less "clarifying confusing sentence structure", was something the editors here did.
Give the anti-feminazi-kneejerk shit a rest for a while and RTFA.
Also, the problem with Lara Croft wasn't much of a problem until Tomb Raider 2 which touted the increased polygon count of her chest as a selling point.
By the way, play something other than an FPS. Female are characters are stereotyped much more in all genres.
I avoided the Warrior Within when I saw that it was targeted at people that didn't like the first game. I guess the character design was similar in deviation.
The princess from the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was great. Competent, not immodestly dressed, saved the hero's ass as much as she needed to be saved.
Also, the article mentioned it, but I'll never tire of plugging it: Beyond Good and Evil had a great female lead, and was a great game. She was attractive (to me at least) while wearing quite practical clothing and was generaly cool; the game itself was Zelda-like gameplay only better.
It's too bad the game didn't sell well so there probably won't be a sequel. Then again, both PoP and BG&E were made by Ubisoft; if Warrior Within is an example of what they do with a sequel, maybe it's just as well.
The reason I bring up GTA and not things like History channel specials, is that I've never been tempted to do anything bad after watching the history channel (no matter how violent the show's content may be).
History of the Gun series, specifically the one on the Gattling Gun. Ooh man, did it make me want to build one and go shoot up some abandoned cars or something. I resisted the urge, though I still lust after the GE mini.:)
We're talking about fully functioning and normal adults who are sizing up cars after playing GTA, not little kids who would be influenced by anything.
I don't see what's wrong with that, honestly. As long as you are an adult who understands the consequences of actually doing what you fantasize about, I see nothing wrong with sizing up cars.
At an airport I once sized up the National Guard soldier standing in front of security with an M-4, and decided that with a suitable knife or concealed gun, I could easily take her out and get a nice weapon upgrade. I didn't do it, though!
The simple fact is that other forms of entertainment aren't nearly as immersive as present day videogames, and I think we're best off if we recognize this.
I agree, but I think the best way to do this is just to teach our children even more about the difference between fantasy and reality, "press start to continue from last save" versus real-life irreversable consequences. Teach them what would really happen if they ran over three pedestrians and a cop in their station wagon.
Sure, someone who is profoundly influenced by GTA is probably a little nutty in the first place, but I don't like the idea that videogames are the thing that could push someone over the edge.
Meh. If not video games, then what? You can't go around trying to predict what a crazy person's triggers are going to be, because first you end up making everything into a blank padded cell and second you still don't solve the problem.
This is one of the reason I call bullshit on anyone who says that videogames can't actually spawn violence, or that it's easy to entirely differentiate between videogames and real life. I'd like to hear more opinions on this.
But it is easy to tell, as evidenced by you not stealing any cars. You might feel a GTA-inspired urge to size up the car and take the nice fast one so you can evade the cops(I do too), but you know that you are in reality and that the real-world consequences (not just legal for you, but the consequences for the one you steal the car from) stop you.
The problem is not that reading/seeing/playing a game involving some concept may cause you to think about doing it in reality. The problem is the "more easily influenced" people who actually would forget about the barrier between reality and fantasy and act on the urges.
If playing GTA can make you commit real-life crimes, then watching the History Channel can make you commit genocide, and either way you are a nutjob who should be locked away. That's just my opinion, anyway.
"fair use" doesn't allow anything you want to put under it. I'm not the one declaring this so - judges are doing that.
You're the one declaring things that no judge has declared -- specifically that reverse engineering is disallowed by copyright law.
Reverse engineering is not protected under fair use. Would that it were! People go to jail for such things, though...quite often, in fact.
Yes it is; you're simply wrong. Here's a summary of two cases regarding reverse engineering. One interesting note is that while the judge in the Atari case upheld reverse engineering as fair use, since Atari did not hold a legal copy of the software they did not have the right to reverse engineer and thus lost the case. On the other hand, Accolade actually copied a small portion of the reverse-engineered code necessary for interopability, and was deemed non-infringing.
Sadly, the right to reverse engineer has been challenged recently in the blizzard vs bnetd case. It is important to understand, however, that the EULA was understood to be a contract imposing additional restrictions and not a license under copyright law because no such license is needed to use, run, or reverse engineer the program. The right to reverse-engineer under copyright law was upheld; it was the contract that prohibited r.e. Click-wrap EULAs acting as real binding contracts is the danger here, and it is very recent (much more recent than the copyright law provisions allowing reverse engineering). That's why it is important for people (like you) to understand that reverse engineering is a right that we have enjoyed and benefitted from for decades that they are now trying to eliminate.
And again with the IBM clone thing - there were IBM clones for 2 reasons. 1) IBM licensed some people to make clones. Bad move. 2) The US government stepped in and broke up their monopoly.
You are mistaken about this important piece of computer history. This is sad, because understanding what a vital role r.e. plays in the development of all the technology that these companies so rabidly try to protect is important to understand why the protections they seek go too far.
Phoenix did not have a license for the IBM BIOS. They reverse engineered the BIOS, and then passed the specifications derived by the reverse-engineering team to a development team that had never viewed IBM BIOS code, and thus implemented an original but functionally identical BIOS. It was this that allowed IBM-compatible computers to be made. IBM did not choose to allow them to use it; it was only possible due to reverse engineering.
The licensing mistake you may be thinking of regards Microsoft: IBM purchased a non-exclusive license to MS-DOS from Microsoft, so when clone machines using Phoenix's BIOS arrived Microsoft was free to license MS-DOS to them creating a 100% "IBM-compatible" system. If IBM had an exclusive DOS license or had bought it outright, they may still be in control since a full OS is much more difficult to reverse engineer.
The anti-trust case had nothing to do with it, by the way, as the case was dropped. The government did not break up their monopoly. Which isn't to say the suit had no effect in terms of time, money, and reputation.
go look up derivative works, and just how much that restricts you.
I'm aware. The point, please?
Additionally, you can't do anything you want. To say such is silly. I want to have sex for the next 80 years, while being fed organic vegan cheesecake, and have my own personal string quartette playing for me. Copyright doesn't keep that from happening, right?
When you resort to such disingenuous pedantry it just makes you look stupid. I said "free to do" not "capable of doing". We were talking about what is prohibited, not what is physically possible. Which you knew, but were trying to score points by saying it was "silly" -- but only if you pretend to be an idiot.
But no, copyright doesn't keep that from happening.:)
He's a question, oh enlightened one - how do you reverse-engineer something without your work (the reverse engineering) being a *derivative work*, for which you did not obtain permission from the copyright owner?
That's easy. Reverse engineering of a legitimately owned copy is protected under fair use. You absolutely can not distribute said representation, or copy it into another work, which is why when re-implementing something via r.e. clean room techniques are used.
Ironically, if this wasn't the case and you were correct, then we probably wouldn't be talking to each other right now because the reverse engineering by Phoenix of IBM's BIOS would have been prohibited, and the explosion of cheap clone PCs may not have happened. The software and hardware industries are replete with the results of reverse engineering, very little of which was authorized because it needn't be.
By the way, another fair use provision that may interest you is the right to make those copies required by the standard operation of the software. E.g. the fact that the software must be copied onto your hard drive to be installed, and must be copied from your hard drive to main memory in order to run means that you can perform these copies without violating copyright.
Before you claim to know everything, start by knowing a little. All I'm asserting is that owning a car is different from owning a license to use software.
You own a copy of the software, just like you own a copy of a CD or a car. The difference between cars and software is that software is copyrighted. Of course there are plenty of copyrighted portions of a car, e.g. the software for the various microcontrollers, so they really aren't that different at all.
But let me put it another way: Owning software and owning a car are the same in every way until such time as you run afoul of one of the provisions of copyright law.
You, on the other hand, are completely ignoring vast sections of the laws protecting software and other creative works.
Not at all. Those "vast sections of law" are collectively called "copyright law" and they don't work in the way that you think they do. For example, you ignore that you can still own an instance of a creative work (all that is prohibited are those things protected by copyright), and you ignore the existence of fair use.
And as I've said several times...I don't *like* that its different. It just *is*.
It's not different in the way you think it is. That's all.
Copyright is what requires you to have the license to broadcast over the radio. You are perfectly free to do anything that copyright doesn't restrict you from doing without any kind of license whatsoever.
Actually, companies usually don't take any different stance when they're notified of their bugs before public disclosure. But at least that gives them the chance.
The chance to what? Sue or threaten to sue the researcher and get a gag order placed on them before they're able to warn the users of the software, preventing the vulnerability from ever being seen?
I agree that notifying the company first is the responsible thing to do, but only if the company is going to be responsible which fewer and fewer are showing the capacity for. It isn't clear to me how this situation would have been different for Tena if he had first told Tegam about the exploit, they told him to be quiet about it and did nothing themselves, then he published. Maybe we would think him more diligent and responsible... or maybe we wouldn't have heard about him -- or the flaws he discovered -- at all.
did I say that copyright did any such thing? On what planet are you "insightful" for such a retort?
Because your radio station analogy only makes sense in the context of copyright.
The EXACT same damn thing as a radio station owner buying a cd at a store, and then feeling like they can play it whenever they want on their station. They don't have license to do that. Gosh, its almost as if I already gave that example...
But that example sucks, because it depends on copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
Make no mistake about it; there is a cultural war, and the ACLU, the scientific community and the debate over evolution is being used in an attempt to exterminate Christianity in public life.
Don't be moronic. Yes, the ACLU has gone too far in enforcing separation of Church and State by hindering individual and consensual religious expression. No, the scientific community and the debate over evolution do not have anything whatsoever to do with exterminating Christianity. Sure, a lot of scientists are not Christian, but many are.
The only reason evolution and the scientific community can be considered enemies of Christianity is because certain subsets of Christianity insist on promoting a dogmatic view of the world that contradicts basic facts. It's a silly as calling Galileo an enemy of God, when really he was only an enemy of the Church because he contradicted their dogma and thus undermined their secular authority. In reality the Church was simply wrong, not to mention hubristic in assuming that earth was the center of the universe.
That depends on what you mean by "evolution". There are certainly evolutionary theories that are simply theories. The mechanisms of evolution, its characteristics, the predictions that can be made for the future -- all theory. On the other hand, "change and differentiation of species over time" is not a theory, it's a fact that we've observed and even caused countless times.
This is similar to how General Relativity, or Newton's Theory of Gravity, are just theories. Yet gravity -- the attraction between masses -- is not a theory, it's a fact. The cause and nature of that attraction is what is theorized. Say Einstein's theory is just a theory, but don't tell me gravity is a theory when I can toss a ball into the air and watch it fall.
The problem with the "evolution is just a theory" sticker is that while, on its face, it may seem to be a simple statement of scientific fact (that theories are always theories and can only be disproven) with a much broader and stronger statement -- that speciation itself is just a theory, and that an alternative "theory" is that every species was created as-is six or ten or whatever thousand years ago in one day by God.
So when they say "evolution is just a theory", they're saying it because the existence of changes in species over time spans much longer than six thousand years contradicts their "theory". It's not enough that Punctuated Equilibrium be a falsifiable theory; the very idea that a species could over time develop into a different species must be false because a literal reading of Genesis implies it. The statement is based on religious dogma and is therefore a religious statement and therefore a violation of the First Ammendment.
Other than that political reality, you're absolutely correct.
No, it's not a free speech issue. The Government -- whether that be in the form of the Justice Department or the Board of a public school -- doesn't have the "free speech" right to dictate that students have stickers on their books. The Government imposing views on you is not free speech in any way, shape or form.
It's really simple:
Student puts a sticker on their book: exercise of freedom of speech/religion.
School Board puts sticker on every students' book: violation of freedom of speech/religion.
I know this gets confused in both ways (e.g. disallowing independent prayer), but it really is quite simple.
1) Those who don't see the light will be left behind in a world devoured by plagues.
2) Represents the beginning of the final battle between good and evil.
3) The object of worship has gone through several name changes and major reworkings, with many unaware of its history.
4) Nobody knew/knows when it was/is coming, and there are always false alarms.
5) Lots of people don't believe anything will ever come of it.
6) Even the ones who do believe argue over it an awful lot.
7) No matter how nice it looks, the representative of the Dark Side will try -- and often succeed -- in convincing people they're better off with him, even though everyone knows he's out to screw them.
8) You'll know the shit has really hit the fan when a giant seven-headed beast rises from the ocean and declares itself ruler of the world. That happens later, though. Maybe around 2.0.
Erm, maybe I'm missing your joke. Either way, it only makes sense to talk about % increase in heat with respect to degrees K.
Disney just neutered the endings and made them pretty.
Yeah, I always liked the version of Snow White where the evil queen snuck into Snow White's wedding, but they found her and made her dance in red-hot metal shoes until she died.
Come on, Disney! Put a good musical number to it, and it'd be a great scene!
Those things accomplish the same thing as GPS -- either tracking your movements or locating you, and they're all completely legal and, in my opinion, reasonable.
So you have no problem with a police officer, without a warrant or probable cause, tracking you everywhere you go?
We're not talking about someone seeing you on the road, we're talking about someone tailing you. If a civilian did that, I'd call the cops. If a cop does it...
Frankly, I don't consider it reasonable for a police officer to follow me everywhere I go without a warrant. I don't care if I happen to cross public places where I could be observed anyway -- the "expectation of privacy" is that once I leave your vicinity, you aren't going to start following me around.
If you are a police officer, and you feel the need to tail me wherever I go, go talk to a judge. Then and only then have you satisfied your Constitutional obligation.
Why did that piss you off? The implication -- expressed numerous times in the series, by the way -- is that Vulcans weren't as unemotional as they wanted to be. Emotion was taboo as much as it was unknown, which is probably why he didn't study it. Is that illogical? You bet, but vulcans were a society that cherished logic, not a species that was inherently logical.
Wait... so are you saying the true goal of Skynet was to destroy mankind's football infrastructure -- civilization -- so as to win the World Cup? That's chilling! Not just the implications for A.I., but also for the possible plot of the next Terminator movie. *shudder*
No, I disagree. Patenting math is evil. Opening up some of the patented math to people dedicated to openness is a step in the right direction, but is (if you'll pardon the obviously overblown hyperbole) akin to releasing a few slaves and saying "See? It ain't so bad!"
I remember... barely. I came into computers at the trail end of their evilness, mostly when they were being beaten up for having their monopolistic attitude without the monopoly to back it up.
In the ensuing decade, IBM seemingly reinvented themselves, and have only been getting cooler still.
Yes, they used to be the bad guy. I have a relative who is an ex-alcoholic-turned-minister. People can change, and apparently giant corporations can too.
And before you ask, yes, if in ten years Microsoft has changed their tune and starts to act in the benefit of their customers and the industry, if they're half as cool as IBM, I'll sing their praises as well.
I love sleep and eating! Don't make me choose!
Yeah, it took me an extra second to parse as well. The funny part is that the editors could have gotten rid of one funny and twenty redundant posts simply by adding one word to the title and saying: "Microsoft Releases Tool to Remove Malicious Software"
No, wait, the funny part is I thought "editing", much less "clarifying confusing sentence structure", was something the editors here did.
Give the anti-feminazi-kneejerk shit a rest for a while and RTFA.
Also, the problem with Lara Croft wasn't much of a problem until Tomb Raider 2 which touted the increased polygon count of her chest as a selling point.
By the way, play something other than an FPS. Female are characters are stereotyped much more in all genres.
I avoided the Warrior Within when I saw that it was targeted at people that didn't like the first game. I guess the character design was similar in deviation.
The princess from the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was great. Competent, not immodestly dressed, saved the hero's ass as much as she needed to be saved.
Also, the article mentioned it, but I'll never tire of plugging it: Beyond Good and Evil had a great female lead, and was a great game. She was attractive (to me at least) while wearing quite practical clothing and was generaly cool; the game itself was Zelda-like gameplay only better.
It's too bad the game didn't sell well so there probably won't be a sequel. Then again, both PoP and BG&E were made by Ubisoft; if Warrior Within is an example of what they do with a sequel, maybe it's just as well.
If they're drunk, that's the problem. I personnaly can't imagine anyone so sleepy that they forget they shouldn't hit pedestrians.
:P
As to Quake, few people have rocket launchers but many people have nail guns.
*claps* Very good. Excellent "Michael is an asshat who should be fired" post. We can't really have enough.
The reason I bring up GTA and not things like History channel specials, is that I've never been tempted to do anything bad after watching the history channel (no matter how violent the show's content may be).
:)
History of the Gun series, specifically the one on the Gattling Gun. Ooh man, did it make me want to build one and go shoot up some abandoned cars or something. I resisted the urge, though I still lust after the GE mini.
We're talking about fully functioning and normal adults who are sizing up cars after playing GTA, not little kids who would be influenced by anything.
I don't see what's wrong with that, honestly. As long as you are an adult who understands the consequences of actually doing what you fantasize about, I see nothing wrong with sizing up cars.
At an airport I once sized up the National Guard soldier standing in front of security with an M-4, and decided that with a suitable knife or concealed gun, I could easily take her out and get a nice weapon upgrade. I didn't do it, though!
The simple fact is that other forms of entertainment aren't nearly as immersive as present day videogames, and I think we're best off if we recognize this.
I agree, but I think the best way to do this is just to teach our children even more about the difference between fantasy and reality, "press start to continue from last save" versus real-life irreversable consequences. Teach them what would really happen if they ran over three pedestrians and a cop in their station wagon.
Sure, someone who is profoundly influenced by GTA is probably a little nutty in the first place, but I don't like the idea that videogames are the thing that could push someone over the edge.
Meh. If not video games, then what? You can't go around trying to predict what a crazy person's triggers are going to be, because first you end up making everything into a blank padded cell and second you still don't solve the problem.
This is one of the reason I call bullshit on anyone who says that videogames can't actually spawn violence, or that it's easy to entirely differentiate between videogames and real life. I'd like to hear more opinions on this.
But it is easy to tell, as evidenced by you not stealing any cars. You might feel a GTA-inspired urge to size up the car and take the nice fast one so you can evade the cops(I do too), but you know that you are in reality and that the real-world consequences (not just legal for you, but the consequences for the one you steal the car from) stop you.
The problem is not that reading/seeing/playing a game involving some concept may cause you to think about doing it in reality. The problem is the "more easily influenced" people who actually would forget about the barrier between reality and fantasy and act on the urges.
If playing GTA can make you commit real-life crimes, then watching the History Channel can make you commit genocide, and either way you are a nutjob who should be locked away. That's just my opinion, anyway.
"fair use" doesn't allow anything you want to put under it. I'm not the one declaring this so - judges are doing that.
You're the one declaring things that no judge has declared -- specifically that reverse engineering is disallowed by copyright law.
Reverse engineering is not protected under fair use. Would that it were! People go to jail for such things, though...quite often, in fact.
Yes it is; you're simply wrong. Here's a summary of two cases regarding reverse engineering. One interesting note is that while the judge in the Atari case upheld reverse engineering as fair use, since Atari did not hold a legal copy of the software they did not have the right to reverse engineer and thus lost the case. On the other hand, Accolade actually copied a small portion of the reverse-engineered code necessary for interopability, and was deemed non-infringing.
Sadly, the right to reverse engineer has been challenged recently in the blizzard vs bnetd case. It is important to understand, however, that the EULA was understood to be a contract imposing additional restrictions and not a license under copyright law because no such license is needed to use, run, or reverse engineer the program. The right to reverse-engineer under copyright law was upheld; it was the contract that prohibited r.e. Click-wrap EULAs acting as real binding contracts is the danger here, and it is very recent (much more recent than the copyright law provisions allowing reverse engineering). That's why it is important for people (like you) to understand that reverse engineering is a right that we have enjoyed and benefitted from for decades that they are now trying to eliminate.
And again with the IBM clone thing - there were IBM clones for 2 reasons. 1) IBM licensed some people to make clones. Bad move. 2) The US government stepped in and broke up their monopoly.
You are mistaken about this important piece of computer history. This is sad, because understanding what a vital role r.e. plays in the development of all the technology that these companies so rabidly try to protect is important to understand why the protections they seek go too far.
Phoenix did not have a license for the IBM BIOS. They reverse engineered the BIOS, and then passed the specifications derived by the reverse-engineering team to a development team that had never viewed IBM BIOS code, and thus implemented an original but functionally identical BIOS. It was this that allowed IBM-compatible computers to be made. IBM did not choose to allow them to use it; it was only possible due to reverse engineering.
The licensing mistake you may be thinking of regards Microsoft: IBM purchased a non-exclusive license to MS-DOS from Microsoft, so when clone machines using Phoenix's BIOS arrived Microsoft was free to license MS-DOS to them creating a 100% "IBM-compatible" system. If IBM had an exclusive DOS license or had bought it outright, they may still be in control since a full OS is much more difficult to reverse engineer.
The anti-trust case had nothing to do with it, by the way, as the case was dropped. The government did not break up their monopoly. Which isn't to say the suit had no effect in terms of time, money, and reputation.
go look up derivative works, and just how much that restricts you.
:)
I'm aware. The point, please?
Additionally, you can't do anything you want. To say such is silly. I want to have sex for the next 80 years, while being fed organic vegan cheesecake, and have my own personal string quartette playing for me. Copyright doesn't keep that from happening, right?
When you resort to such disingenuous pedantry it just makes you look stupid. I said "free to do" not "capable of doing". We were talking about what is prohibited, not what is physically possible. Which you knew, but were trying to score points by saying it was "silly" -- but only if you pretend to be an idiot.
But no, copyright doesn't keep that from happening.
He's a question, oh enlightened one - how do you reverse-engineer something without your work (the reverse engineering) being a *derivative work*, for which you did not obtain permission from the copyright owner?
That's easy. Reverse engineering of a legitimately owned copy is protected under fair use. You absolutely can not distribute said representation, or copy it into another work, which is why when re-implementing something via r.e. clean room techniques are used.
Ironically, if this wasn't the case and you were correct, then we probably wouldn't be talking to each other right now because the reverse engineering by Phoenix of IBM's BIOS would have been prohibited, and the explosion of cheap clone PCs may not have happened. The software and hardware industries are replete with the results of reverse engineering, very little of which was authorized because it needn't be.
By the way, another fair use provision that may interest you is the right to make those copies required by the standard operation of the software. E.g. the fact that the software must be copied onto your hard drive to be installed, and must be copied from your hard drive to main memory in order to run means that you can perform these copies without violating copyright.
Before you claim to know everything, start by knowing a little. All I'm asserting is that owning a car is different from owning a license to use software.
You own a copy of the software, just like you own a copy of a CD or a car. The difference between cars and software is that software is copyrighted. Of course there are plenty of copyrighted portions of a car, e.g. the software for the various microcontrollers, so they really aren't that different at all.
But let me put it another way: Owning software and owning a car are the same in every way until such time as you run afoul of one of the provisions of copyright law.
You, on the other hand, are completely ignoring vast sections of the laws protecting software and other creative works.
Not at all. Those "vast sections of law" are collectively called "copyright law" and they don't work in the way that you think they do. For example, you ignore that you can still own an instance of a creative work (all that is prohibited are those things protected by copyright), and you ignore the existence of fair use.
And as I've said several times...I don't *like* that its different. It just *is*.
It's not different in the way you think it is. That's all.
Copyright is what requires you to have the license to broadcast over the radio. You are perfectly free to do anything that copyright doesn't restrict you from doing without any kind of license whatsoever.
Actually, companies usually don't take any different stance when they're notified of their bugs before public disclosure. But at least that gives them the chance.
The chance to what? Sue or threaten to sue the researcher and get a gag order placed on them before they're able to warn the users of the software, preventing the vulnerability from ever being seen?
I agree that notifying the company first is the responsible thing to do, but only if the company is going to be responsible which fewer and fewer are showing the capacity for. It isn't clear to me how this situation would have been different for Tena if he had first told Tegam about the exploit, they told him to be quiet about it and did nothing themselves, then he published. Maybe we would think him more diligent and responsible... or maybe we wouldn't have heard about him -- or the flaws he discovered -- at all.
did I say that copyright did any such thing? On what planet are you "insightful" for such a retort?
Because your radio station analogy only makes sense in the context of copyright.
The EXACT same damn thing as a radio station owner buying a cd at a store, and then feeling like they can play it whenever they want on their station. They don't have license to do that. Gosh, its almost as if I already gave that example...
But that example sucks, because it depends on copyright.