There was a time when Republicans worked to lower taxes and respect individual right.
I'll give you that they have occasionally tried to lower taxes, but when did they ever work to respect individual rights? I know that's been a talking point of some Republicans, but I've never seen it reflected in their platform.
"Law and order" was a Republican strong point even before 9/11, but that generally meant the law that benefitted the state over the law that benefitted the individual. The Bill of Rights has never been a great talking point of the Republicans.
The Republicans have given us (or tried to give us) Porn Wars, Drug Wars, the anti-Flag Burning Amendment, the anti-Gay Marriage Amendment, the War on Terror, and a "so-called partial birth abortion ban" that the Republican Congress passed with language that the Supreme Court had already ruled unconstitutional because it didn't include an exception to protect the life of the mother. None of these things have been good for individual rights (unless, I suppose you consider the right of an non-viable foetus to have its mother die so that it MIGHT survive).
Incidentally, most of the groups that champion individual rights, such as the ACLU and NARAL are either identified with "Democrats" or "Liberals". The only individual rights group I've seen identified with Republicans is the NRA. And it's too bad that Democrats have not normally supported the Right to Bear Arms (IMHO), but some do, and I personally think the other rights are more important.
I've never figured out how Republicans are considered champions of individual rights (at least not for the past ~133 years)... though I've heard that sentiment expressed countless times.
Serious question - will there be a GPLv3 fork of the Linux kernel? I know that Torvalds is dead against the idea, but an independent fork could be created if enough kernel contributors would agree to dual-licence their code.
I don't think you would need to get permission for dual-licensing.
Doesn't GPL2 allow you to redistribute the software as long as it is covered by GPL2 **or any subsequent version of the GPL**?
This is not a review from PCWorld. It's a writer with the Chicago Sun-Times giving advice to parents for the holiday buying season.
The purpose of the review is not to give geeks a rundown of every single feature and whether it performs as expected. The purpose is to inform the reader about whether this is even a worthwhile product, given all the hype that surrounds it.
The reviewer did point out other options that don't suck as much as the Zune and are cheaper. So he's done his job in giving the average consumer an idea about whether this is a worthwhile product... just as a movie reviewer in the same paper would give you an idea about whether ANYONE should consider going to a particular movie. Most movies have some demographic that might enjoy watching it... but the same is not true for technology products, which may or may not even work as expected. There were at least two features the reviewer pointed out that do not work as expected, given the way they are portrayed on the box.
So it looks like the Zune isn't even worth considering. I'm glad that reviewer was honest enough to say so.
While criminal complaints are aimed at what Microsoft believes to be real criminals, the civil lawsuits are aimed mainly at young people without criminal intent. For them, settlements of 1,000 to 2,000 euros ($1,290-$2,570) are deemed to be enough of a deterrent, Microsoft said.
Those are much smaller settlements than the RIAA is asking for, and I dare say that they either don't cover, or barely cover the legal fees that Microsoft incurs from these actions.
This doesn't look at all like the kind of profit-making enterprise the RIAA is engaging in. Rather, it looks like MS is trying to deter criminals and criminals-in-training from ripping people off.
Of course, they are doing it for their own business reasons. It makes them look bad when people get scammed because of security vulnerabilities in IE. But I don't see how you can draw an evil motivation out of it.
Most Christians spread the Gospel not to fill up their church, but because we were commanded to share the one thing in life that we have discovered and that has been life-changing for us. Alright, there are Christians who do preach just to fill up their church. There are always people with corrupt motives. But majority does it out of pure concern for their fellow humans.
I don't have a problem with "spreading the gospel". That's fine. If you think you're helping people, great.
But don't hijack another forum with a captive audience and threaten people with eternal damnation if they don't start living like you.
That's the problem people have with Fundamentalist Christians. And no, it's not all Christians, it's those that want to control what our kids are taught in school, that want to get involved in the government and tell us all how to live, who we can or can't marry, what we can or can't do with our genitals, what kind of science we can study, what kind of movies we can watch, what kind of books we can read, and even what kind of vaccinations our kids can get.
-If- Christianity in fact was true, however, it would the atheist society that was committing child abuse. The atheist society today does alot more to try to spread atheism than the Christian society does to try spread the Gospel.
Name 4 atheist churches. Name 4 atheist political groups. Name 4 atheist anything. I could come up with at least 20 so-called Christian groups that want to influence the government or the media or do something else to "spread the gospel". There is no organized atheist movement of any consequence.
People falsly accuse only Christians of being overly opinionated and biased.
I'm sorry, did I hear a victim? Let me get out my violin and play some music to go along with the moaning.
Honestly, I've never heard anyone accuse Christians--especially in the general sense--of being overly opinionated or biased.
Anybody who chooses to have faith in a belief has an absolute right to it. My problem is when they use their unproven beliefs to control how I'm allowed to live. That's not being overly opinionated or biased. That's being tyrannical.
Well then, since we can't really prove which of the two (atheism or theism) is correct, that means atheists -also- are as opinionated- as it is right now, they are even more opinionated and biased.
I'm not an atheist, and I'm not a Christian, so this dichotomy strikes me as rather silly. But that's fine. You've framed the discussion so let's go with it.
Atheists are not the polar opposite of Christians. The fact that neither can be proven does not mean that either is just as or more opinionated than the other.
Letting people make their own unbiased decisions of what to believe or not believe in can never be done by only spreading one side of it as fact.
Um, ok. So keep your nose out of it and let people make their own decisions. Public schools don't "teach atheism". There is no atheism class. There are no "atheist teachings" sprinkled throughout the curriculum. There is no statement on whether there is a god or not a god in a public school or even generally on television. There is generally no atheist thought projected in music or movies either. I've never seen a movie proclaim that there is no god. The only examples of music declaring a non-existence of God can be found in a couple of heavy metal songs.
There are, however, Christian music, Christian movies and Christian television. There are Christian schools if you want to send your kids there. I've never heard of an optional Atheist school to send your kids to, but maybe one exists... somewhere.
This kind of crap happens ALL THE TIME. It is a given for any fundamentalist Christian sect that they will take whatever forum where they think they can get away with it and use it to give the hard sell. (And I do mean "sell", because it's not benevolence they're offering, but a product.)
Another Baptist preacher once used my uncle's funeral as an opportunity to try and convince the non-Christians in our family that we had better accept Jesus before OUR time was up. This jerk didn't even know my uncle, but just wanted to exploit the situation to try to get more people into his church.
Here, another typical instance of high-pressure salesmanship from a fundamentalist preacher, only this time it's not just you he's trying to sell his product to... but it's your CHILDREN.
So he tells your kids that they are going to burn in hell if they don't buy his shtick. That's damn close to child abuse.
I also notice that some powerfully motivated people only need 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Martha Stewart...
Uhmmm.... motivated? Yes. Always the best judgment? Perhaps not.
Having a good night's sleep definitely helps me make the right decisions.
Maybe Martha should go back to eight hours a night.
Something web-based and easy to start using...
on
GoogleOS Scenarios
·
· Score: 1
is what it would be. It would be something that anyone with a web browser could start using instantly.
They might then phase it into a complete operating system, perhaps by offering a lightweight Linux distro. I say lightweight, because web-based AJAX apps tend to be slower than native apps, so you want to reserve as much processing power as possible. And Google has a history of keeping things simple and lightweight.
They already have an online word processor and spreadsheet program and about 1,000 other services. It will be interesting to see what they do.
Do not uncritically believe what others tell you about Enlightenment.
Anyone who suggests you should take a book (or other information source) literally and without question is either trying to con you or has already been conned themselves.
Funny how we Americans love to take things literally. Everything has to be perfect and described in simple terms or it doesn't fit into our view of what the world should be. Unfortunately, the world isn't what we think it should be. It is what it is.
By 2010 when they stop activating Office 2003 or earlier you will then most likely find a patch that makes activation for that product unnecessary.
Maybe I will... maybe it's already out there. Not sure if the DMCA already makes it illegal to circumvent "software activation" on your own software for the purpose of using the license. But if it isn't illegal they will make it illegal soon enough.
The problem is that just to install the software, you have to go through their crazy piracy check, which depends on contacting them after you have already bought the software.
If you want to reinstall Office 2003 in ten years, how can you be sure they will still do that for you? If they refuse, it will be bad PR, but MS already gets plenty of bad PR and it doesn't stop them from doing what they do.
I'm not sure there would be any legal recourse if, many years after you bought the software, they refused to activate it for you.
So basically, they are already on a subscription model. For them, it's just a matter of shortening the renewal period of the subscriptions they sell.
I have been through this exact same problem. I gave up and am now using a combination of Gmail (with GTDGmail extension) and my Nokia 9300's calendar application.
The 9300 has a really good full qwerty keyboard and a 640 pixels wide screen, so for the most part, I just stick with it and don't sync.
For tasks, I just use Gmail. The GTDGmail extension makes it pretty easy to use the "Getting Things Done" system with Gmail. And since the phone can access the web, I just use gmail's plain html interface over the phone. It is actually faster than using the phone's built-in email client.
I do backup the phone's data to my Windows machine frequently, and I sync the contacts with Outlook so that they can be exported to Gmail. But that's the only thing I use Outlook for. You could probably accomplish the same thing with SyncML using Mobical.net or a similar service.
The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest, fine and imprison offenders.
lese majesty also lèse majesté (lz mj-st) n. pl. lese majesties or lèse majestés
1. An offense or crime committed against the ruler or supreme power of a state.
2. An affront to another's dignity.
CIFS and FAT have zero to do with native Unix or native Linux
Bullshit. They are both in the Linux kernel. EVERY popular Linux distribution uses these technologies.
CIFS and FAT functionality have been added purely to be able to interoperate with Microsoft. And the right to interoperability has been protected in the courts for half a century now. It's one of the strongest technical legal rights.
More bullshit (no wonder you posted AC). A cite to a case or a statute would be nice, but none exists.
No and no! First, it's hard to have patent-infringing code that simply implements Unix concepts that were pioneered 30 years ago,
Thankfully, not all Linux concepts are based on Unix concepts that were pioneered 30 years ago. Some, however, are very obvious Microsoft concepts, such as CIFS and FAT. You can be forgiven for not realizing this, as someone on slashdot had to point this out to me recently.
And, software patents are just as bogus as a patent on gramma's chili ingredients.
You may not like them, but in the U.S. (home of both Microsoft and Novell), they are considered valid. If "business methods" are patentable, surely software processes can be.
Third, it matters. A company full of "experts" caving into this obvious extortion lends weight to both software patents and M$'s bogus claim to own concepts implemented in free software.
It doesn't look like "obvious extortion" to me. Novell is getting Microsoft's money, immunity from patent claims for its users, and sales help from Microsoft's support department. What part of that is extortion?
M$ would use "intellectual property" law to steal other people's work.
OK, you could have explained this better, but I see your point. This is what you should focus on, because this is the scariest part of the whole situation. But you need to explain it when you say this. Most people are not going to see how it works at first glance.
But I think you and Bruce are right. If Novell is paying "royalties" or a per-copy fee to Microsoft, then it is a patent licensing agreement. As such, Novell would be in violation of the GPL. But I haven't seen such a term mentioned in any of the articles about this deal. Maybe that is part of it. Maybe it isn't.
Microsoft can not kill off all Linux distributions but keep one for its own profit. That one remaining distribution would be in violation of the GPL. Microsoft can only kill off ALL Linux distributions (or at least force removal of its patented processes) if it chooses to. Would that be a worthwhile strategy for Microsoft? I don't think so, but you'd have to ask them what they intend to do with their patents.
The particular patent deal that they made is against section 7 of the GPL and also other parts of the license.
Novell is attempting to create a loophole in the license with a legal fiction. By paying Microsoft to make a covenant to Novell's users directly, instead of to Novell, they are attempting to get us, and whatever judges eventually rule on this, to believe that no patents are being licensed even though the effect is the same as if they were being licensed.
But isn't it true that if there is patent-infringing code in Linux that it won't matter whether Novell has made an agreement to immunize its users? Distributors of the patent-infringing code and their users are in violation of the patent either way.
I don't see how this helps Microsoft assert its patents except in a public relations sense. They could assert their patents before. They can assert their patents now. The only difference is that people might not scream "Monopolist!" as loudly. But the whole point of a patent is that it does give you a legal monopoly.
If Microsoft had simply bought Novell, the effect would have been the same or worse. They at least claim they are open to agreements with other Linux distributors.
Copyright has covered "public performance" for a long time.
In the U.S., if you look closely, you will see a sticker for BMI or ASCAP when you walk into an establishment that plays music.
The story takes advantage of the fact that the guy is older, but this area of copyright law is not new at all.
Whenever you play copyrighted music in public, you are supposed to get the rights to the music (notes), the lyrics (if it's a song), and the recording (if you are playing a record rather than performing it yourself). If you don't get all those clearances, you can be sued by the owner of the respective copyright.
US district courts are the trial courts in the Federal system. The judges in those courts are Article III judges (except for the bankruptcy judges). They are separate from state courts. State supreme courts are appellate courts in their respective states (except in New York, where state trial courts are referred to as "Supreme Courts").
As was explained elsewhere, there are two Stephen Limbaughs (father and son). One of them is a Federal District Court judge. The other is up for reelection to the state supreme court. The moderator got them mixed up.
It is the Federal judge who ruled against video games as speech. But it is the state court judge who is up for reelection.
"US District Judge Stephen Limbaugh (yes, he IS related to Rush) along with other local judges will be up for retention vote . ..
How do I know he's not up for "retention vote"? Because he's a US district judge... a Federal judge. Federal judges are NEVER elected. They are appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate, and they stay there until they either resign or (if they really screw the pooch) are impeached.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft suggests that users 'not open or save Word files,' even from trusted sources.
Uhhhh, right.
How about just opening those files in openoffice, mmmmmkay?
There was a time when Republicans worked to lower taxes and respect individual right.
I'll give you that they have occasionally tried to lower taxes, but when did they ever work to respect individual rights? I know that's been a talking point of some Republicans, but I've never seen it reflected in their platform.
"Law and order" was a Republican strong point even before 9/11, but that generally meant the law that benefitted the state over the law that benefitted the individual. The Bill of Rights has never been a great talking point of the Republicans.
The Republicans have given us (or tried to give us) Porn Wars, Drug Wars, the anti-Flag Burning Amendment, the anti-Gay Marriage Amendment, the War on Terror, and a "so-called partial birth abortion ban" that the Republican Congress passed with language that the Supreme Court had already ruled unconstitutional because it didn't include an exception to protect the life of the mother. None of these things have been good for individual rights (unless, I suppose you consider the right of an non-viable foetus to have its mother die so that it MIGHT survive).
Incidentally, most of the groups that champion individual rights, such as the ACLU and NARAL are either identified with "Democrats" or "Liberals". The only individual rights group I've seen identified with Republicans is the NRA. And it's too bad that Democrats have not normally supported the Right to Bear Arms (IMHO), but some do, and I personally think the other rights are more important.
I've never figured out how Republicans are considered champions of individual rights (at least not for the past ~133 years)... though I've heard that sentiment expressed countless times.
Serious question - will there be a GPLv3 fork of the Linux kernel? I know that Torvalds is dead against the idea, but an independent fork could be created if enough kernel contributors would agree to dual-licence their code.
I don't think you would need to get permission for dual-licensing.
Doesn't GPL2 allow you to redistribute the software as long as it is covered by GPL2 **or any subsequent version of the GPL**?
This is not a review from PCWorld. It's a writer with the Chicago Sun-Times giving advice to parents for the holiday buying season.
The purpose of the review is not to give geeks a rundown of every single feature and whether it performs as expected. The purpose is to inform the reader about whether this is even a worthwhile product, given all the hype that surrounds it.
The reviewer did point out other options that don't suck as much as the Zune and are cheaper. So he's done his job in giving the average consumer an idea about whether this is a worthwhile product... just as a movie reviewer in the same paper would give you an idea about whether ANYONE should consider going to a particular movie. Most movies have some demographic that might enjoy watching it... but the same is not true for technology products, which may or may not even work as expected. There were at least two features the reviewer pointed out that do not work as expected, given the way they are portrayed on the box.
So it looks like the Zune isn't even worth considering. I'm glad that reviewer was honest enough to say so.
While criminal complaints are aimed at what Microsoft believes to be real criminals, the civil lawsuits are aimed mainly at young people without criminal intent. For them, settlements of 1,000 to 2,000 euros ($1,290-$2,570) are deemed to be enough of a deterrent, Microsoft said.
Those are much smaller settlements than the RIAA is asking for, and I dare say that they either don't cover, or barely cover the legal fees that Microsoft incurs from these actions.
This doesn't look at all like the kind of profit-making enterprise the RIAA is engaging in. Rather, it looks like MS is trying to deter criminals and criminals-in-training from ripping people off.
Of course, they are doing it for their own business reasons. It makes them look bad when people get scammed because of security vulnerabilities in IE. But I don't see how you can draw an evil motivation out of it.
Most Christians spread the Gospel not to fill up their church, but because we were commanded to share the one thing in life that we have discovered and that has been life-changing for us. Alright, there are Christians who do preach just to fill up their church. There are always people with corrupt motives. But majority does it out of pure concern for their fellow humans.
I don't have a problem with "spreading the gospel". That's fine. If you think you're helping people, great.
But don't hijack another forum with a captive audience and threaten people with eternal damnation if they don't start living like you.
That's the problem people have with Fundamentalist Christians. And no, it's not all Christians, it's those that want to control what our kids are taught in school, that want to get involved in the government and tell us all how to live, who we can or can't marry, what we can or can't do with our genitals, what kind of science we can study, what kind of movies we can watch, what kind of books we can read, and even what kind of vaccinations our kids can get.
-If- Christianity in fact was true, however, it would the atheist society that was committing child abuse. The atheist society today does alot more to try to spread atheism than the Christian society does to try spread the Gospel.
Name 4 atheist churches. Name 4 atheist political groups. Name 4 atheist anything. I could come up with at least 20 so-called Christian groups that want to influence the government or the media or do something else to "spread the gospel". There is no organized atheist movement of any consequence.
People falsly accuse only Christians of being overly opinionated and biased.
I'm sorry, did I hear a victim? Let me get out my violin and play some music to go along with the moaning.
Honestly, I've never heard anyone accuse Christians--especially in the general sense--of being overly opinionated or biased.
Anybody who chooses to have faith in a belief has an absolute right to it. My problem is when they use their unproven beliefs to control how I'm allowed to live. That's not being overly opinionated or biased. That's being tyrannical.
Well then, since we can't really prove which of the two (atheism or theism) is correct, that means atheists -also- are as opinionated- as it is right now, they are even more opinionated and biased.
I'm not an atheist, and I'm not a Christian, so this dichotomy strikes me as rather silly. But that's fine. You've framed the discussion so let's go with it.
Atheists are not the polar opposite of Christians. The fact that neither can be proven does not mean that either is just as or more opinionated than the other.
Letting people make their own unbiased decisions of what to believe or not believe in can never be done by only spreading one side of it as fact.
Um, ok. So keep your nose out of it and let people make their own decisions. Public schools don't "teach atheism". There is no atheism class. There are no "atheist teachings" sprinkled throughout the curriculum. There is no statement on whether there is a god or not a god in a public school or even generally on television. There is generally no atheist thought projected in music or movies either. I've never seen a movie proclaim that there is no god. The only examples of music declaring a non-existence of God can be found in a couple of heavy metal songs.
There are, however, Christian music, Christian movies and Christian television. There are Christian schools if you want to send your kids there. I've never heard of an optional Atheist school to send your kids to, but maybe one exists... somewhere.
and wonder why non-Christians hate them.
This kind of crap happens ALL THE TIME. It is a given for any fundamentalist Christian sect that they will take whatever forum where they think they can get away with it and use it to give the hard sell. (And I do mean "sell", because it's not benevolence they're offering, but a product.)
Another Baptist preacher once used my uncle's funeral as an opportunity to try and convince the non-Christians in our family that we had better accept Jesus before OUR time was up. This jerk didn't even know my uncle, but just wanted to exploit the situation to try to get more people into his church.
Here, another typical instance of high-pressure salesmanship from a fundamentalist preacher, only this time it's not just you he's trying to sell his product to... but it's your CHILDREN.
So he tells your kids that they are going to burn in hell if they don't buy his shtick. That's damn close to child abuse.
I also notice that some powerfully motivated people only need 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Martha Stewart...
Uhmmm.... motivated? Yes. Always the best judgment? Perhaps not.
Having a good night's sleep definitely helps me make the right decisions.
Maybe Martha should go back to eight hours a night.
is what it would be. It would be something that anyone with a web browser could start using instantly.
They might then phase it into a complete operating system, perhaps by offering a lightweight Linux distro. I say lightweight, because web-based AJAX apps tend to be slower than native apps, so you want to reserve as much processing power as possible. And Google has a history of keeping things simple and lightweight.
They already have an online word processor and spreadsheet program and about 1,000 other services. It will be interesting to see what they do.
"If you meet the Buddha on the road... kill him."
Do not uncritically believe what others tell you about Enlightenment.
Anyone who suggests you should take a book (or other information source) literally and without question is either trying to con you or has already been conned themselves.
Funny how we Americans love to take things literally. Everything has to be perfect and described in simple terms or it doesn't fit into our view of what the world should be. Unfortunately, the world isn't what we think it should be. It is what it is.
By 2010 when they stop activating Office 2003 or earlier you will then most likely find a patch
that makes activation for that product unnecessary.
Maybe I will... maybe it's already out there. Not sure if the DMCA already makes it illegal to circumvent "software activation" on your own software for the purpose of using the license. But if it isn't illegal they will make it illegal soon enough.
The problem is that just to install the software, you have to go through their crazy piracy check, which depends on contacting them after you have already bought the software.
If you want to reinstall Office 2003 in ten years, how can you be sure they will still do that for you? If they refuse, it will be bad PR, but MS already gets plenty of bad PR and it doesn't stop them from doing what they do.
I'm not sure there would be any legal recourse if, many years after you bought the software, they refused to activate it for you.
So basically, they are already on a subscription model. For them, it's just a matter of shortening the renewal period of the subscriptions they sell.
this would seem to indicate, parents CAN in fact be liable for child actions.. can you resolve please, this difference of opinion?
Under no sane interpretation has a copyright violation ever been considered a "damage, destruction, concealment, or theft of property."
Besides, state law doesn't matter here. We are dealing with Federal copyright law.
Granted it is a pretty open license, but UW Still owns it.
FYI, if you write something under the GPL, you own it too.
If someone violates the GPL as to code you have released under the GPL, you may sue them for copyright violation.
I have been through this exact same problem. I gave up and am now using a combination of Gmail (with GTDGmail extension) and my Nokia 9300's calendar application.
The 9300 has a really good full qwerty keyboard and a 640 pixels wide screen, so for the most part, I just stick with it and don't sync.
For tasks, I just use Gmail. The GTDGmail extension makes it pretty easy to use the "Getting Things Done" system with Gmail. And since the phone can access the web, I just use gmail's plain html interface over the phone. It is actually faster than using the phone's built-in email client.
I do backup the phone's data to my Windows machine frequently, and I sync the contacts with Outlook so that they can be exported to Gmail. But that's the only thing I use Outlook for. You could probably accomplish the same thing with SyncML using Mobical.net or a similar service.
The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest, fine and imprison offenders.
lese majesty also lèse majesté (lz mj-st)
n. pl. lese majesties or lèse majestés
1. An offense or crime committed against the ruler or supreme power of a state.
2. An affront to another's dignity.
Cookie Monster replied, "Me not guilty. Cookie goooooooooooood!"
CIFS and FAT have zero to do with native Unix or native Linux
Bullshit. They are both in the Linux kernel. EVERY popular Linux distribution uses these technologies.
CIFS and FAT functionality have been added purely to be able to interoperate with Microsoft. And the right to interoperability has been protected in the courts for half a century now. It's one of the strongest technical legal rights.
More bullshit (no wonder you posted AC). A cite to a case or a statute would be nice, but none exists.
No and no! First, it's hard to have patent-infringing code that simply implements Unix concepts that were pioneered 30 years ago,
Thankfully, not all Linux concepts are based on Unix concepts that were pioneered 30 years ago. Some, however, are very obvious Microsoft concepts, such as CIFS and FAT. You can be forgiven for not realizing this, as someone on slashdot had to point this out to me recently.
And, software patents are just as bogus as a patent on gramma's chili ingredients.
You may not like them, but in the U.S. (home of both Microsoft and Novell), they are considered valid. If "business methods" are patentable, surely software processes can be.
Third, it matters. A company full of "experts" caving into this obvious extortion lends weight to both software patents and M$'s bogus claim to own concepts implemented in free software.
It doesn't look like "obvious extortion" to me. Novell is getting Microsoft's money, immunity from patent claims for its users, and sales help from Microsoft's support department. What part of that is extortion?
M$ would use "intellectual property" law to steal other people's work.
OK, you could have explained this better, but I see your point. This is what you should focus on, because this is the scariest part of the whole situation. But you need to explain it when you say this. Most people are not going to see how it works at first glance.
But I think you and Bruce are right. If Novell is paying "royalties" or a per-copy fee to Microsoft, then it is a patent licensing agreement. As such, Novell would be in violation of the GPL. But I haven't seen such a term mentioned in any of the articles about this deal. Maybe that is part of it. Maybe it isn't.
Microsoft can not kill off all Linux distributions but keep one for its own profit. That one remaining distribution would be in violation of the GPL. Microsoft can only kill off ALL Linux distributions (or at least force removal of its patented processes) if it chooses to. Would that be a worthwhile strategy for Microsoft? I don't think so, but you'd have to ask them what they intend to do with their patents.
The particular patent deal that they made is against section 7 of the GPL and also other parts of the license.
Novell is attempting to create a loophole in the license with a legal fiction. By paying Microsoft to make a covenant to Novell's users directly, instead of to Novell, they are attempting to get us, and whatever judges eventually rule on this, to believe that no patents are being licensed even though the effect is the same as if they were being licensed.
But isn't it true that if there is patent-infringing code in Linux that it won't matter whether Novell has made an agreement to immunize its users? Distributors of the patent-infringing code and their users are in violation of the patent either way.
I don't see how this helps Microsoft assert its patents except in a public relations sense. They could assert their patents before. They can assert their patents now. The only difference is that people might not scream "Monopolist!" as loudly. But the whole point of a patent is that it does give you a legal monopoly.
If Microsoft had simply bought Novell, the effect would have been the same or worse. They at least claim they are open to agreements with other Linux distributors.
Copyright has covered "public performance" for a long time.
In the U.S., if you look closely, you will see a sticker for BMI or ASCAP when you walk into an establishment that plays music.
The story takes advantage of the fact that the guy is older, but this area of copyright law is not new at all.
Whenever you play copyrighted music in public, you are supposed to get the rights to the music (notes), the lyrics (if it's a song), and the recording (if you are playing a record rather than performing it yourself). If you don't get all those clearances, you can be sued by the owner of the respective copyright.
While I agree that an article on configuring fetchmail and mutt is not exactly ground breaking
Yeah, especially since the article is over a year old.
State supreme courts are US Districut courts
You couldn't be more mistaken.
US district courts are the trial courts in the Federal system. The judges in those courts are Article III judges (except for the bankruptcy judges). They are separate from state courts. State supreme courts are appellate courts in their respective states (except in New York, where state trial courts are referred to as "Supreme Courts").
As was explained elsewhere, there are two Stephen Limbaughs (father and son). One of them is a Federal District Court judge. The other is up for reelection to the state supreme court. The moderator got them mixed up.
It is the Federal judge who ruled against video games as speech. But it is the state court judge who is up for reelection.
"US District Judge Stephen Limbaugh (yes, he IS related to Rush) along with other local judges will be up for retention vote . . .
How do I know he's not up for "retention vote"? Because he's a US district judge... a Federal judge. Federal judges are NEVER elected. They are appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate, and they stay there until they either resign or (if they really screw the pooch) are impeached.
Has been a comic staple for a long time.
You've got Bronson Pinchot's character Valky.
Even earlier, you've got Andy Kaufmann's character from Taxi.
I'm sure if you look you can find countless other examples.
So both these guys have moustaches. Big deal.