Am I the only one failing to see the damage done here?
It's plain and simple fraud. And "Reserve Prices" don't have anything to do with it. There is nothing dishonest or fraudulent about selling something with a Reserve Price, because the buyer is notified of it. Shill bidding is not an honest practice in the slightest.
I was trying to say that the possibility of corporate dissolution as a potential punishment for corporate misdeeds might act as an incentive for corps to follow the law while still providing limited liability for the shareholders. Sorry for the confusion.:-)
No need to apologize. I sometimes take pains to ensure that my point gets across. I didn't get the impression that you don't know the difference. But I wanted to make sure that I was being clear.
They would risk much more than their investment though. By investing in a corporation, you already risk the loss of your investment. This can happen if the stock goes down or if the company goes bankrupt and its assets are liquidated.
But when you are in a partnership*, you are personally liable. Your house, car, everything you own is subject to claims made against the partnership. That's because the partnership is you. It's the same as being a sole-proprietor. You are liable if an employee accidentally runs someone over while delivering your product. You are liable for a lot of things. It's very risky.
The beauty of a corporation (or an LLC) is that you risk only the amount that you invest and nothing more, because the corporation is treated as a separate person (thus, the root "corp" meaning body). A separate person that you can give money to. And which can give you money back.
* - I refer to an old-style general partnership, not one of the newer limited partnerships that were created by statute within the past 50 years. In reality, no one would intentionally create a general partnership these days, because there are other types of partnerships that give you protection similar to that of a corporation. But they, like corporations, are creatures of statute created by state governments.
It's government's place to stay the hell out of the way. All government needs to do is enforce contracts that any given set of individuals choose to make among themselves and arrest and punish those who initiate, attempt to initiate, or threaten to initiate physical force or fraud against the person or property of another without his consent.
You forget that corporations are created by government. So if government has to stay out of the way, then we start by getting rid of the corporate status.
If we did this, Sirius and XM would instead be partnerships. All of the investors in those companies would be jointly and severally liable for the contracts and the torts of the partnership (as you point out, enforcement of those things is the only purpose of government).
All the investors would be risking their life savings in order to start a satellite radio company. There wouldn't be a lot of people willing to invest in those partnerships. So there wouldn't be much danger of them becoming monopolies... Hell, there wouldn't even be much likelihood of them existing.
Have fun riding your horse and buggy to work... oh, and your computer just disappeared. No one was willing to invest the money to invent it (or to manufacture it even if it had been invented).
Still, I don't like having to choose a car based on which satellite radio service comes pre-installed, or considering whether I'd rather have Howard Stern or Oprah, because there is no practical way to get both.
Is there anyone on the planet who wants to listen to BOTH Howard Stern AND Oprah?
I would think the desire for one would automatically exclude the other.
Obviously that guy is full of crap, DRM does intrinsically limit interoperability.
Yes, but it only limits interoperability to "approved sellers and manufacturers."
He is fine with limiting interoperability to those who will follow his rules... what he didn't account for is that whoever invents the first DRM technology to take hold (Apple in this case), they are going to be very unlikely to share it with other companies.
is that everything would interoperate just fine if everyone used the same DRM scheme. But they don't.
Apple has the most popular store and the most popular devices. And it isn't about to let other stores or device-makers benefit from that. Basically, Mr. Bainwol is just crying about that big old meany Steve Jobs.
All this is very fortunate, because if they had been able to reach an industry-wide standard for DRM, it would have taken them even longer to realize what a stupid idea DRM is in the first place.
If the goal really was to commit election fraud, their candidate would have been in office for (potentially) multiple terms before anything is done - assuming that anything would be done anyway!
Hypothetical: We find out that John Kerry actually won Ohio... so BushCo. gets evicted and Kerry gets to be President for two weeks before Hillary gets sworn in.
What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really 'wrong,' presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.
I believe it is because of the Fairness Doctrine that I recall seeing a political ad when I was younger that featured a still photograph of some klansman and the caption of political candidate named J.B. Stoner.
The voiceover went something like this, "Thank God for AIDS, for killing the n******rs and f*********ts. Elect JB Stoner"
It was a bit shocking, but I think it's more dangerous that we NOT be exposed to this sort of thing. If it's out in the open, it is subject to public discourse, which inevitably rejects it. Keeping it underground for commercial reasons doesn't sit well with me.
Note that other fringe elements may be considerably more intelligent and valuable than my example.
Why not? Linux has never been against close sourced software,
But he is certainly against people making closed source software out of his GPLed software.
In your example, you do have access to the source code, you can modify it as you want, you can use it where you want. It may not run anywhere else as-is, but then that was never the goal of open-source software.
Yes it was, and yes it is. The GPL was created because of a printer driver that could not be fixed because it was closed source. The only party that could repair the driver was the manufacturer. That was the catalyst that brought about the GPL. If the printer manufacturer uses GPLv2 code for their driver, but uses a signed key to prevent the running of a modified driver, then they have gotten around the goal of the GPL through technical means, when they could not do so through legal means.
This is not about preventing people from making their own decisions. It's about preventing people from circumventing your goals when you share your code. If you don't want to stop people from using your code in DRM schemes, then you can keep using the GPLv2... or any other license of your choosing.
Isn't imposing a restriction on what someone can do with your code violating the freedoms that Stallman advocates and demands, or are we supposed to do as he says and not as he does where DRM is concerned?
No and no.
The point of the GPL is to allow sharing and modification, while disallowing activities that would prevent further sharing and modification.
If you don't prevent others from restricting sharing and modification, then you might as well release your code into the public domain.
I will give one thing to Linus. He is right that there is a lot of hot air involved. That's because people (including him) miss the point about DRM and the GPL.
For DRM to work, it has to use technical means to prevent modification of the code. This is open source we're talking about. If they don't prevent modification of the code, a crack will be easily implemented.
The GPL prevents a party from relicensing your code with a modification restriction... but DRM allows them to use technical means instead of legal means to accomplish the same result.
DRM (or at least, that part of it that I've described) is a loophole that should be closed. We are not talking about "someone's right to create programs that use DRM". We are talking about someone's right to modify **your** code, while preventing further modification by others. That's one of the core rights that the GPL is meant to preserve.
Is that just an omission on the part of the reporter or do you really believe you have no moral responsibility to intervene when you see someone doing something wrong?
I think he just means that if someone wants to write code that implements some sort of DRM scheme, he thinks they should be allowed to do that. What he should be saying is that he is OK if they do that with HIS code, because that is his position.
If he is really OK with "letting people do what they want," then why force them to allow further modification of works derived from your code?
Why not just let them take your code, create their own version and use a signed key to make any further modifications unusable on the device? Oh wait. That's what DRM does. He **is** OK with that.
The PureEdge Viewer is a small, free program which will allow you to access, complete and submit applications electronically and securely on Grants.gov.
I guess those great minds in the federal government have never heard of HTML forms and SSL.
I would guess it would be extremely rare for any of Red Hat's enterprise customers to let their subscription lapse and run non-updated & non-supported RHEL products.
And even if Red Hat did something like this, all these former customers would have to do is drop in CENTOS or one of the other recompiled clones of RHEL.
The grandparent's premise is ludicrous. Red Hat makes money by selling support, not software.
Slashdot Mirror
So the damage done is basically that someone somewhere on the internet is being dishonest.
Are you that dense?
The damage is an economic loss. Someone has lost money.
Often this happens when someone has set a "Maximum bid," so even if they somehow know that it's happening, they cannot stop it. It's fraud.
Holy fucking shit, call the president.
Please go die, thank you.
Am I the only one failing to see the damage done here?
It's plain and simple fraud. And "Reserve Prices" don't have anything to do with it. There is nothing dishonest or fraudulent about selling something with a Reserve Price, because the buyer is notified of it. Shill bidding is not an honest practice in the slightest.
The 8th Amendment says, "Excessive bail shall not be required..."
But the Supreme Court has held for a long time that this does not mean you have a right to bail.
IF you are granted bail, it can't be excessive. But if you aren't granted bail, then that text doesn't apply to you.
I was trying to say that the possibility of corporate dissolution as a potential punishment for corporate misdeeds might act as an incentive for corps to follow the law while still providing limited liability for the shareholders. Sorry for the confusion. :-)
No need to apologize. I sometimes take pains to ensure that my point gets across. I didn't get the impression that you don't know the difference. But I wanted to make sure that I was being clear.
Cheers!
They would risk much more than their investment though. By investing in a corporation, you already risk the loss of your investment. This can happen if the stock goes down or if the company goes bankrupt and its assets are liquidated.
But when you are in a partnership*, you are personally liable. Your house, car, everything you own is subject to claims made against the partnership. That's because the partnership is you. It's the same as being a sole-proprietor. You are liable if an employee accidentally runs someone over while delivering your product. You are liable for a lot of things. It's very risky.
The beauty of a corporation (or an LLC) is that you risk only the amount that you invest and nothing more, because the corporation is treated as a separate person (thus, the root "corp" meaning body). A separate person that you can give money to. And which can give you money back.
* - I refer to an old-style general partnership, not one of the newer limited partnerships that were created by statute within the past 50 years. In reality, no one would intentionally create a general partnership these days, because there are other types of partnerships that give you protection similar to that of a corporation. But they, like corporations, are creatures of statute created by state governments.
Explain how my parents work then. My father's a Stern fan, and my mother's an Oprah fan. Doesn't make sense...
Chewbacca is a wookie from the planet Endor.
Look at the silly monkey!
You must acquit.
It's government's place to stay the hell out of the way. All government needs to do is enforce contracts that any given set of individuals choose to make among themselves and arrest and punish those who initiate, attempt to initiate, or threaten to initiate physical force or fraud against the person or property of another without his consent.
You forget that corporations are created by government. So if government has to stay out of the way, then we start by getting rid of the corporate status.
If we did this, Sirius and XM would instead be partnerships. All of the investors in those companies would be jointly and severally liable for the contracts and the torts of the partnership (as you point out, enforcement of those things is the only purpose of government).
All the investors would be risking their life savings in order to start a satellite radio company. There wouldn't be a lot of people willing to invest in those partnerships. So there wouldn't be much danger of them becoming monopolies... Hell, there wouldn't even be much likelihood of them existing.
Have fun riding your horse and buggy to work... oh, and your computer just disappeared. No one was willing to invest the money to invent it (or to manufacture it even if it had been invented).
How could such a mysterious circumstance come about? How should I know; I'm a slashdotter too.
I don't know either, but I can tell you that Stern fans do not marry Oprah fans. Their DNA would magnetically repel them from each other.
Still, I don't like having to choose a car based on which satellite radio service comes pre-installed, or considering whether I'd rather have Howard Stern or Oprah, because there is no practical way to get both.
Is there anyone on the planet who wants to listen to BOTH Howard Stern AND Oprah?
I would think the desire for one would automatically exclude the other.
Obviously that guy is full of crap, DRM does intrinsically limit interoperability.
Yes, but it only limits interoperability to "approved sellers and manufacturers."
He is fine with limiting interoperability to those who will follow his rules... what he didn't account for is that whoever invents the first DRM technology to take hold (Apple in this case), they are going to be very unlikely to share it with other companies.
is that everything would interoperate just fine if everyone used the same DRM scheme. But they don't.
Apple has the most popular store and the most popular devices. And it isn't about to let other stores or device-makers benefit from that. Basically, Mr. Bainwol is just crying about that big old meany Steve Jobs.
All this is very fortunate, because if they had been able to reach an industry-wide standard for DRM, it would have taken them even longer to realize what a stupid idea DRM is in the first place.
If the goal really was to commit election fraud, their candidate would have been in office for (potentially) multiple terms before anything is done - assuming that anything would be done anyway!
Hypothetical: We find out that John Kerry actually won Ohio... so BushCo. gets evicted and Kerry gets to be President for two weeks before Hillary gets sworn in.
What does he do?
(think of this as a very unscientific poll)
What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really 'wrong,' presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.
Laziness is a great excuse for election fraud.
They are scum who would see your kid get blown up if they can get their agenda.
Our kids are getting blown up... but that disgrace is the work of the Republicans.
That it was such a close vote... and even more that most Democrats voted for it.
'Freeman claims that he is not a political person (and adds "I despise the Democrats")'
So hating one of the major political parties involved in that election makes him neutral?
He's probably a Green. They despise the Democrats without being political people. Or at least, without being **elected** people.
I believe it is because of the Fairness Doctrine that I recall seeing a political ad when I was younger that featured a still photograph of some klansman and the caption of political candidate named J.B. Stoner.
The voiceover went something like this, "Thank God for AIDS, for killing the n******rs and f*********ts. Elect JB Stoner"
It was a bit shocking, but I think it's more dangerous that we NOT be exposed to this sort of thing. If it's out in the open, it is subject to public discourse, which inevitably rejects it. Keeping it underground for commercial reasons doesn't sit well with me.
Note that other fringe elements may be considerably more intelligent and valuable than my example.
Why not? Linux has never been against close sourced software,
But he is certainly against people making closed source software out of his GPLed software.
In your example, you do have access to the source code, you can modify it as you want, you can use it where you want. It may not run anywhere else as-is, but then that was never the goal of open-source software.
Yes it was, and yes it is. The GPL was created because of a printer driver that could not be fixed because it was closed source. The only party that could repair the driver was the manufacturer. That was the catalyst that brought about the GPL. If the printer manufacturer uses GPLv2 code for their driver, but uses a signed key to prevent the running of a modified driver, then they have gotten around the goal of the GPL through technical means, when they could not do so through legal means.
This is not about preventing people from making their own decisions. It's about preventing people from circumventing your goals when you share your code. If you don't want to stop people from using your code in DRM schemes, then you can keep using the GPLv2... or any other license of your choosing.
Isn't imposing a restriction on what someone can do with your code violating the freedoms that Stallman advocates and demands, or are we supposed to do as he says and not as he does where DRM is concerned?
No and no.
The point of the GPL is to allow sharing and modification, while disallowing activities that would prevent further sharing and modification.
If you don't prevent others from restricting sharing and modification, then you might as well release your code into the public domain.
I will give one thing to Linus. He is right that there is a lot of hot air involved. That's because people (including him) miss the point about DRM and the GPL.
For DRM to work, it has to use technical means to prevent modification of the code. This is open source we're talking about. If they don't prevent modification of the code, a crack will be easily implemented.
The GPL prevents a party from relicensing your code with a modification restriction... but DRM allows them to use technical means instead of legal means to accomplish the same result.
DRM (or at least, that part of it that I've described) is a loophole that should be closed. We are not talking about "someone's right to create programs that use DRM". We are talking about someone's right to modify **your** code, while preventing further modification by others. That's one of the core rights that the GPL is meant to preserve.
Is that just an omission on the part of the reporter or do you really believe you have no moral responsibility to intervene when you see someone doing something wrong?
I think he just means that if someone wants to write code that implements some sort of DRM scheme, he thinks they should be allowed to do that. What he should be saying is that he is OK if they do that with HIS code, because that is his position.
If he is really OK with "letting people do what they want," then why force them to allow further modification of works derived from your code?
Why not just let them take your code, create their own version and use a signed key to make any further modifications unusable on the device? Oh wait. That's what DRM does. He **is** OK with that.
Linus sure is a confusing guy.
The PureEdge Viewer is a small, free program which will allow you to access, complete and submit applications electronically and securely on Grants.gov.
I guess those great minds in the federal government have never heard of HTML forms and SSL.
I wonder who got bribed for this crap.
I would guess it would be extremely rare for any of Red Hat's enterprise customers to let their subscription lapse and run non-updated & non-supported RHEL products.
And even if Red Hat did something like this, all these former customers would have to do is drop in CENTOS or one of the other recompiled clones of RHEL.
The grandparent's premise is ludicrous. Red Hat makes money by selling support, not software.
No Blu-ray disk manufacturer would make their disks because Sony doesn't want porn on Blu-ray (just as with Betamax).
Sony seems to love championing formats that are dead in the water.
I have to run off now and rip my cd collection to ATRAC.
And of course, in the end, the lawyers win.
I like happy endings.