It's better than that. At the same time that they made that purchase, they sold the same number of shares short, so that the "investment" was purely PR--they never had a stake in Apple.
Nah, ?? wouldn't do it, because then KazAA wouldn't match. *AA it is. Except to include Kazaa, you'd have to ignore case. Assuming we're talking about arguments passed to grep, that makes the term -i *aa. Getting a little long, isn't it?
I can't fault the teacher, since she was an excellent teacher, and seemed honestly regretful of giving me a low grade when I'd done fine on the tests and quizzes. It's the policy of the University of Michigan School of Music Piano Department to grade class piano based in part on attendance, so I fault the professor (my teacher having been a GSI, or graduate student instructor). Of course, she could have concealed my poor attendance from him, but since she was being graded in how well she taught the course, I presume she would only have taken such a risk in the case of someone truly amazing at the piano (meaning, maybe, someone who played at the level of an actual piano performance major), if at all.
The GSI system is an interesting way to teach, I'll say that. I haven't decided yet whether or not i like it.
You're right that the SAT doesn't have very good discrimination at the high or low ends. It isn't really designed to do that.
Well, it damned well should be, which was the point of the first couple of paragraphs of the grandparent post--either it should measure the ends well, or people who score well on it should take another test that discriminates more clearly within the high range.
That's the news from Lake Woebegone--where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average. --Garrison Keeler, Prairie Home Companion
I've witnessed two really smart people get totally tired of school and come close to flunking and not graduating from high school. They were me and my brother.
The odd thing, from my perspective, is that most of my friends get along just fine. I tend to consort with people about as smart as I am (146 IQ, 36 ACT, 1490 SAT, if you think standardized tests have much to do with intelligence), and they don't have the problems I have. I think my failure, and my brother's before mine, has more to do with the type of habits we've learned from our parents than with our intelligence. My parents are both fairly anti-establishment, and have both made relatively successful careers despite (or in my dad's case, because of) that. They've taught my brother and me to hold similar views.
While I call them anti-establishment, I don't mean in a knee-jerk kind of way. There are elements in the System that my parents believe in, and there are elements that they don't believe in. They taught my brother and me to weigh the facts and decide for ourselves what we believe and how to behave because of it. Now, I can't vouch for my brother, but a big part of any explanation for my poor performance in high school isn't so much apathy for learning itself as for demonstrating that I've learned something. I love reading Shakespeare, but I'm not much for doing some silly homework assignment meant to prove to the teacher that I've done the reading. I read books about physics in my spare time, so why should I bother completing some little bit of physics homework? My biggest complaint is classes that grade based on attendance. Quote from my piano teacher this past semester: "I am sure this section was the only one you could fit into your schedule, but if you ever have a chance to take another class piano course, try to schedule for later time; so that your grade will reflect what you can on the keyboard [sic], not when you wake up." That was in an email informing me I had gotten a C in the course. Now, why should what time I wake up ever, ever affect my grade in a class? I obviously came to class enough that she knew I could play the instrument as well as...well, as well as a bassoon major can be expected to; why should I get a C because I didn't come any more often than that? And this is in college!
Too often, performance in school reflect not a person's ability, nor their commitment, nor anything else that's relevant, but instead their ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told, and not get into any trouble (since suspensions, at least at my former high school, count as unexcused absences which then affect a person's grade adversely).
On the other hand, it could be argued that the concept of licensing as it's currently used in software is completely absurd.
If I rent an apartment, I pay a monthly fee to use that space. I don't own it. The fact that I don't own it has certain consequences: I have to continue to pay to continue to use it, but also, the owner is responsible for maintenance. If something breaks, the landlord is responsible for fixing it. If I'm renting a car, the company that owns it is also responsible for certain things. If the car breaks in some way under normal use, they have to fix it, as with the apartment; but if the car breaks something of mine--for instance, the CD player destroys a CD for no apparent reason--the company renting the car to me is responsible for damages.
So, now we get into the software. By analogy, the "owner" of the software--i.e., the company that developed it--is responsible for maintaining that software. "Normal use" would be defined as running the software for its intended purpose on supporting hardware under a particular operating system. If I'm running MS Word X for Mac, on my Mac, under Mac OS X, and the software corrupts itself and refuses to run again, Microsoft is responsible for fixing the software, regardless of what sort of "warranty" I may or may not have--after all, warranties are for things we purchase, not for things we rent. Further, if Word suddenly crashes for no reason, and I lose data, MS is responsible for reimbursing me for any losses incurred as a result of the crash. That is, unless I actually own the software.
If we extend this to hardware, the vendors get themselves into even more of a mess, because once again, it doesn't matter what sort of "warranty" I have, the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that I have working hardware--indefinitely. There's no clause in any contract I signed when I "licensed" my computer that my license to use it expires after a certain amount of time; there's no clause that says that I can only expect it to work for a certain amount of time. Thus, if the processor fries itself under normal use ten years down the road, the manufacturer had damned well better fix it! Licensing software is pushing things; licensing hardware would be insane.
I think that criminal intent chould be criminalized.
Welcome to 1984. The Thought Police are watching you.
Seriously, how else do you intend to criminalize intent? Criminalize actions.
I think that defining unauthorized access is easy. It is an access that the owner would not give explicit permission for.
So, if I'm operating a wireless access point that I want people to use at their whim, how do I explicitly make it public? By making it so that people can use it. If someone else has a wireless access point that they don't want people to use, they'd better close it up, because if it's open it's indistinguishable from WAPs like mine, which are intended for public use.
The comparison to a house is idiotic. My computer is not a house. The only thing my computer has in common with a house is that they both are containers for my stuff. Digital "stuff", however, is qualitatively different from physical stuff, and has to follow different rules. This article is about figuring out exactly what those rules should be.
But the sad Mac appears remarkably often, in my experience.
Man, you must be doing something wrong. I've been a Mac user for over a decade, and currently have six of them in the house, and I've never seen a sad mac. Besides, the sad mac only existed in Mac OS 9. As overblown as OS 9's supposed "stability" was, OS X really is stable.
This is the best argument in this direction I've seen on this thread. Though my first reaction when I read the article was the complete opposite, I think you have a very good point. However, I still think this suit has the potential to go too far, too fast.
If this lawsuit is successful, it will set a precedent that EULAs are legally untenable, no matter what. The patch was out there for six months, and Microsoft is still responsible? That will be interpreted to mean that all software vendors are responsible for all problems with their products, always.
What needs to happen is to start with a bug that's undocumented, and show that the software company is accountable for that. Once the courts have some experience dealing with these cases, then we can start to get into subtleties like the fact that the patch required taking down the server, the patch introduced other vulnerabilities, etc., that would hold the company liable in this case without the bug being undocumented, but also without them being liable in all cases.
This is a good point, and might make something good come of what otherwise sounds like a ludicrous lawsuit. If retaining "ownership" of the software, and only "licensing" it to us, makes software companies liable for bugs, maybe they'll start letting us actually buy the stuff we pay for.
Not bloody likely, though. This lawsuit is being brought in South Korea, so that even if they win, the precedent doesn't really apply over here (here being U.S. in my case).
Oh, I assumed it was from the one Halloween episode of the Simpsons where the faculty of Springfield Elementary were fattening up the students and eating them for lunch. Sorry.
Increased border patrols? Moreso than they already are, what with the terrorist attacks and general threats that the US always seems to be coming up with, I don't see how they could increase border patrols, or even security at border crossings!
Actually, there's very little security coming into the U.S., at least in some places. I live near Detroit, and since I'm 19, a friend and I recently went into Canada to acquire some alcohol. As soon as we got to the other side of the tunnel, we were questioned, and since there were holes in our story as far as why we were in Canada, my friend's car was searched. Finally, after half an hour of an elevated pulse and sweating hands as we waited for them to let us into the coutry, we drove out of Customs.
On our way back in, the conversation between us and the customs agent went something like this:
"Citizenship?" "U.S., both of us." "How long have you been here?" "Just a day--we went to the casino." "Any alcohol or firearms in the vehicle?" [nervously] "No." "Okay, go ahead."
We had planned out everything, down to what games we would say we had played in the casino, and it turned out to be completely unnecessary.
You said his analogy sucked, but you then proceeded to make an elaborate argument that agreed completely with the point of his analogy. Frankly, when you can get a point across quickly with an analogy to a more familiar situation, that's better for helping people understand this idea than constructing a detailed argument...which ultimately also depends on an analogy:
Off line, the equivelent [sic] word for [sic] "entering without invitation". If you enter and steel [sic] it is a crime. If you enter and say, woops, wrong house, that is not a crime. If it is raining and you enter someone's barn to get out of the rain, it is not a crime.
Not that rumors sites are ever accurate this far in advance, but this site claims to have heard that Apple will be adding video services to its content-on-demand array in two years' time.
One thing that lends this a tiny bit of credibility is that ripping all those DVDs takes time. They've been working for the past year and a half to build up a library of 200,000 songs for the music service they launched Monday, so finding out this far in advance of a similar movie service isn't a totally wild idea.
Slashdot Mirror
It's better than that. At the same time that they made that purchase, they sold the same number of shares short, so that the "investment" was purely PR--they never had a stake in Apple.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit; there's no point in making a damn fool of yourself.
Maybe the RIAA should take your advice...
Nah, ?? wouldn't do it, because then KazAA wouldn't match. *AA it is. Except to include Kazaa, you'd have to ignore case. Assuming we're talking about arguments passed to grep, that makes the term -i *aa. Getting a little long, isn't it?
I can't fault the teacher, since she was an excellent teacher, and seemed honestly regretful of giving me a low grade when I'd done fine on the tests and quizzes. It's the policy of the University of Michigan School of Music Piano Department to grade class piano based in part on attendance, so I fault the professor (my teacher having been a GSI, or graduate student instructor). Of course, she could have concealed my poor attendance from him, but since she was being graded in how well she taught the course, I presume she would only have taken such a risk in the case of someone truly amazing at the piano (meaning, maybe, someone who played at the level of an actual piano performance major), if at all.
The GSI system is an interesting way to teach, I'll say that. I haven't decided yet whether or not i like it.
It was originally from a BBC article, so maybe the original said "piss" and FOXNews misinterpreted it.
How many computers do you want smashed with a rock?
...wait. Don't answer that.
How many computers are running Windows?
Likewise.
Or maybe it wasn't Windows, and they were trying to find a way to crash it.
Some such as this person?
Then my 1490 must explain why I'm so ambivalent about the whole issue.
You're right that the SAT doesn't have very good discrimination at the high or low ends. It isn't really designed to do that.
Well, it damned well should be, which was the point of the first couple of paragraphs of the grandparent post--either it should measure the ends well, or people who score well on it should take another test that discriminates more clearly within the high range.
That's the news from Lake Woebegone--where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average.
--Garrison Keeler, Prairie Home Companion
I've witnessed two really smart people get totally tired of school and come close to flunking and not graduating from high school. They were me and my brother.
The odd thing, from my perspective, is that most of my friends get along just fine. I tend to consort with people about as smart as I am (146 IQ, 36 ACT, 1490 SAT, if you think standardized tests have much to do with intelligence), and they don't have the problems I have. I think my failure, and my brother's before mine, has more to do with the type of habits we've learned from our parents than with our intelligence. My parents are both fairly anti-establishment, and have both made relatively successful careers despite (or in my dad's case, because of) that. They've taught my brother and me to hold similar views.
While I call them anti-establishment, I don't mean in a knee-jerk kind of way. There are elements in the System that my parents believe in, and there are elements that they don't believe in. They taught my brother and me to weigh the facts and decide for ourselves what we believe and how to behave because of it. Now, I can't vouch for my brother, but a big part of any explanation for my poor performance in high school isn't so much apathy for learning itself as for demonstrating that I've learned something. I love reading Shakespeare, but I'm not much for doing some silly homework assignment meant to prove to the teacher that I've done the reading. I read books about physics in my spare time, so why should I bother completing some little bit of physics homework? My biggest complaint is classes that grade based on attendance. Quote from my piano teacher this past semester: "I am sure this section was the only one you could fit into your schedule, but if you ever have a chance to take another class piano course, try to schedule for later time; so that your grade will reflect what you can on the keyboard [sic], not when you wake up." That was in an email informing me I had gotten a C in the course. Now, why should what time I wake up ever, ever affect my grade in a class? I obviously came to class enough that she knew I could play the instrument as well as...well, as well as a bassoon major can be expected to; why should I get a C because I didn't come any more often than that? And this is in college!
Too often, performance in school reflect not a person's ability, nor their commitment, nor anything else that's relevant, but instead their ability to get up in the morning, follow a set schedule, do what they're told, and not get into any trouble (since suspensions, at least at my former high school, count as unexcused absences which then affect a person's grade adversely).
On the other hand, it could be argued that the concept of licensing as it's currently used in software is completely absurd.
If I rent an apartment, I pay a monthly fee to use that space. I don't own it. The fact that I don't own it has certain consequences: I have to continue to pay to continue to use it, but also, the owner is responsible for maintenance. If something breaks, the landlord is responsible for fixing it. If I'm renting a car, the company that owns it is also responsible for certain things. If the car breaks in some way under normal use, they have to fix it, as with the apartment; but if the car breaks something of mine--for instance, the CD player destroys a CD for no apparent reason--the company renting the car to me is responsible for damages.
So, now we get into the software. By analogy, the "owner" of the software--i.e., the company that developed it--is responsible for maintaining that software. "Normal use" would be defined as running the software for its intended purpose on supporting hardware under a particular operating system. If I'm running MS Word X for Mac, on my Mac, under Mac OS X, and the software corrupts itself and refuses to run again, Microsoft is responsible for fixing the software, regardless of what sort of "warranty" I may or may not have--after all, warranties are for things we purchase, not for things we rent. Further, if Word suddenly crashes for no reason, and I lose data, MS is responsible for reimbursing me for any losses incurred as a result of the crash. That is, unless I actually own the software.
If we extend this to hardware, the vendors get themselves into even more of a mess, because once again, it doesn't matter what sort of "warranty" I have, the manufacturer is responsible for ensuring that I have working hardware--indefinitely. There's no clause in any contract I signed when I "licensed" my computer that my license to use it expires after a certain amount of time; there's no clause that says that I can only expect it to work for a certain amount of time. Thus, if the processor fries itself under normal use ten years down the road, the manufacturer had damned well better fix it! Licensing software is pushing things; licensing hardware would be insane.
I think that criminal intent chould be criminalized.
Welcome to 1984. The Thought Police are watching you.
Seriously, how else do you intend to criminalize intent? Criminalize actions.
I think that defining unauthorized access is easy. It is an access that the owner would not give explicit permission for.
So, if I'm operating a wireless access point that I want people to use at their whim, how do I explicitly make it public? By making it so that people can use it. If someone else has a wireless access point that they don't want people to use, they'd better close it up, because if it's open it's indistinguishable from WAPs like mine, which are intended for public use.
The comparison to a house is idiotic. My computer is not a house. The only thing my computer has in common with a house is that they both are containers for my stuff. Digital "stuff", however, is qualitatively different from physical stuff, and has to follow different rules. This article is about figuring out exactly what those rules should be.
RTFA. The article is mostly about P2P, with a note about the iTunes Music Store at the end.
But the sad Mac appears remarkably often, in my experience.
Man, you must be doing something wrong. I've been a Mac user for over a decade, and currently have six of them in the house, and I've never seen a sad mac. Besides, the sad mac only existed in Mac OS 9. As overblown as OS 9's supposed "stability" was, OS X really is stable.
This is the best argument in this direction I've seen on this thread. Though my first reaction when I read the article was the complete opposite, I think you have a very good point. However, I still think this suit has the potential to go too far, too fast.
If this lawsuit is successful, it will set a precedent that EULAs are legally untenable, no matter what. The patch was out there for six months, and Microsoft is still responsible? That will be interpreted to mean that all software vendors are responsible for all problems with their products, always.
What needs to happen is to start with a bug that's undocumented, and show that the software company is accountable for that. Once the courts have some experience dealing with these cases, then we can start to get into subtleties like the fact that the patch required taking down the server, the patch introduced other vulnerabilities, etc., that would hold the company liable in this case without the bug being undocumented, but also without them being liable in all cases.
This is a good point, and might make something good come of what otherwise sounds like a ludicrous lawsuit. If retaining "ownership" of the software, and only "licensing" it to us, makes software companies liable for bugs, maybe they'll start letting us actually buy the stuff we pay for.
Not bloody likely, though. This lawsuit is being brought in South Korea, so that even if they win, the precedent doesn't really apply over here (here being U.S. in my case).
Oh, I assumed it was from the one Halloween episode of the Simpsons where the faculty of Springfield Elementary were fattening up the students and eating them for lunch. Sorry.
Your .sig belongs to Principal Skinner, I believe, not Principal Snyder.
Increased border patrols? Moreso than they already are, what with the terrorist attacks and general threats that the US always seems to be coming up with, I don't see how they could increase border patrols, or even security at border crossings!
Actually, there's very little security coming into the U.S., at least in some places. I live near Detroit, and since I'm 19, a friend and I recently went into Canada to acquire some alcohol. As soon as we got to the other side of the tunnel, we were questioned, and since there were holes in our story as far as why we were in Canada, my friend's car was searched. Finally, after half an hour of an elevated pulse and sweating hands as we waited for them to let us into the coutry, we drove out of Customs.
On our way back in, the conversation between us and the customs agent went something like this:
"Citizenship?"
"U.S., both of us."
"How long have you been here?"
"Just a day--we went to the casino."
"Any alcohol or firearms in the vehicle?"
[nervously] "No."
"Okay, go ahead."
We had planned out everything, down to what games we would say we had played in the casino, and it turned out to be completely unnecessary.
Hey, Doc--I gotta buy you like a proverb book or somethin. This mix 'n match shit's gotta go.
--The Funny Man, Boondock Saints
Probably not. Well, maybe the moms would want him sniffing packets looking for porn...but the dads would be concerned about blowing their own cover.
You said his analogy sucked, but you then proceeded to make an elaborate argument that agreed completely with the point of his analogy. Frankly, when you can get a point across quickly with an analogy to a more familiar situation, that's better for helping people understand this idea than constructing a detailed argument...which ultimately also depends on an analogy:
Off line, the equivelent [sic] word for [sic] "entering without invitation". If you enter and steel [sic] it is a crime. If you enter and say, woops, wrong house, that is not a crime. If it is raining and you enter someone's barn to get out of the rain, it is not a crime.
Not that rumors sites are ever accurate this far in advance, but this site claims to have heard that Apple will be adding video services to its content-on-demand array in two years' time.
One thing that lends this a tiny bit of credibility is that ripping all those DVDs takes time. They've been working for the past year and a half to build up a library of 200,000 songs for the music service they launched Monday, so finding out this far in advance of a similar movie service isn't a totally wild idea.