Unfortunately, the preamble of the GPL is not legally binding. Only the "Terms and Conditions" are binding. See "End of terms and conditions." The "How to apply these terms and conditions" is not legally binding either.
Despite additional supporting documents that show intent, they don't hold up in court. The same thing happened with the Federalist Papers in support of the Constitution. Many times the courts have ignored the framers' intent despite it being in black and white.
It's unfortunate, BUT hopefully the FSF, Eben Moglen and other great minds will figure out how to make this go away with rapidity.
RP
If an army of zombies keep trying NEW codes - simple math says that in a matter of weeks nearly ALL Vista codes could be flagged as pirated. Making WGA point to false positives could be the death knell for Vista.
I agree with the above. No one is immune, and it can hit anyone.
I changed my site without prompting by my wife. Her smile alone was worth it because she knew I care.
Those who make jokes on this have obviously never even thought about it. Being on Slashdot it got my attention. I have known several women close to me wh have had it in some form. The reason that it is a high-profile cause is that men who have been affected by it have zero problem supporting their women in the fight against it.
300 men in the US die from it each year. 40,000 women do. Better than 130 to 1 odds that it will strike a woman instead of a man. A woman has about a 1 in 60 chance of dying from breast cancer in her lifetime.
It's worth going pink. Real men have no problem with supporting their woman.
eBay is restricting all competitors, plain and simple. If anyone has a way to contact Google directly, let me know. I've e-mailed in to GoogleBase, but who knows how much that will help.
eBay does some insidious things. With the new Googlebase (formerly Froogle) - eBay lists over 24 million items in an automated upload. This has the effect of killing off smaller businesses in the product listings at the top of Google searches. Because they have more items as a "seller" - no matter what is searched for in a specific category, like MIMO routers or any such search, eBay will come up first because they have more TOTAL items, even if those items are not relevant.
eBay also kills off their competition by banning their payment methods.
Contact Google, and use Yahoo! auctions - they are free to the buyer and free to the seller!
Yahoo! does not charge ANYTHING to list, sell or buy. When enough people start switching to Yahoo! auctions, it will put eBay out of business. Yahoo! ought to actually start a new site, use the same software to run it, and advertise it on television the way eBay does with their site. eBay also actually has a contest with the US Postal Service - there are actually ads in the Post Office to get people to enter an eBay contest.
Add to that the fact that PayPal (owned by eBay) charges you a fee on the TOTAL price (including shipping & handling) - you end up paying eBay TWICE.
It's time to stop paying eBay and start using services that actually make sense for the seller.
Hopefully Yahoo! will purchase StormPay or any of the other online payment services, keep the fees low there and take down the eBay behemoth.
The genuine insidiousness of this bill is that it is forced.
From the copyright office: " A key component is that the new compulsory license governs all nondramatic musical works and does not permit copyright owners to opt-out, which would otherwise jeopardize the efficiency of the entire blanket licensing structure."
The two key components of the bill are (1) Copyright holders CANNOT OPT OUT - they are forced to accept the blanket license, and (2) There are "no royalty" provisions.
In other words, the RIAA can demand money for you ripping an MP3 from your CD, or duplicating your original CD. (Mandated licensing of ripping protocols?)
They can also conscript an independent music producer. Don't want your independent music played on the air, but want to go through your own distribution system? Too bad. You're FORCED - cannot opt out. You MUST avail the recording insdustry of your work and they don't have to pay you for it.
Want to make a copy of your OWN CD - you bought and paid for it - too bad - you must pay a licensing fee for another copy. Call your local congressman - I did, and both senators, and a few others as well.
So, technology enables the police to more easily locate suspects without inconveniencing non-suspects.
Isn't that a good thing?
Actually, no, it's not. That completely circumvents due process. Locating someone suspected of something (a crime? not a crime?) is far different than arresting someone. A suspect is not guilty of something illegal or unlawful, they are merely a suspect. This and the use of the phrase alleged __________ has gotten us into significant trouble.
For what purpose are suspects being located? What exactly are they suspected of? If the police are looking to arrest someone, they are not supposed to arrest a suspect, but arrest someone who is guilty. There actually IS a difference.
Here is a mod I found that works AMAZINGLY well on ANY fan. It is more work than the money, however I don't know any fan that is made that can't be quieted in this manner. It's relatively easy to take apart a fan, removing the blade. Little pieces to keep track of, but that's okay. Taking a fine grit sandpaper like 220 to the edges of the blades (ALL of them) will result in significantly smoother blade edges, and half the noise or less, if you spend about an hour on it.
I've even done this on notebook fans. It may take 1-2 hours to fully complete, but you will definitely notice the difference.
Slashdot would have to be banned then. So would all Yahoo! groups - because they have a forum for communication. Similarly, ANY site employing "forums" - My PHP Nuke, Social MPN, etc. No more comments attached to articles, either, because that is a method of communication.
Requirements are the ability to create a profile (Yahoo! - personals etc.) and a forum for communication. ANY Linux forum would be banned, simply because most of them allow "swearing" - depends on the board, but then what becomes obscene. "Obscene" is not defined, either, and the Supreme Court of the US has refused to hear cases because what is obscene in one state may be permitted under the laws of another.
This legislation should be thrown out on its face, due to the simple fact that "obscene" is not defined, and in fact the states have the right to define that, not the federal government.
While I'm not in favor of child pornography in the least, this smacks of what several other posters are alluding to in their comparison to the Yahoo!/China debaucle. Contact your Senator TODAY and let them know this should not go through. This is ridiculous.
Believe it. If you are not a publicly traded company, you can refuse the IRS' audit request on 5th Amendment grounds. The IRS has no right to search your records and interrupt your business. A murderer CAN deny police access to their premises and strictly shut the door in their face. A warrant can override this but you cannot be compelled without one.
Similarly, if the police EVER pull you over and ask you if they can search your trunk or vehicle during a routine stop, you can refuse. I have done so, with no recriminations. I didn't have anything to hide but I take exception to the police searching without what I call a valid reason. I was stopped for expired tags, and after a 12-hour shift and 1 hour commute each way I was fully exhausted. Bloodshot eyes and the whole bit. Refused IMMEDIATELY and asked why they asked me. They told me that it was due to the bloodshot eyes and how I was obviously tired. I asked if they wanted me to pull over to sleep, they said no. I asked if they had any further reason for detaining me and again, they had to answer no, so I stated I would leave then. I already had the ticket in my hand - bing bang boom gone.
You don't have to incriminate yourself, and this guy will easily get out of it on appeal.
A better solution would be to ghost the hard drive when you get the laptop at your new job. Returning the computer to them in EXACTLY the same condition that it was given to you (data-wise) would then be trivial. How can they punish you for that? They can't. In fact, you can even prove that it IS in the same condition!
Lowe's DOES care, however. They match the last 4 digits of the card to the number that is embedded in the mag strip. Apparently a large number of crooks have figured out how to get valid card numbers and encode them onto different cards. If the two numbers don't match then Lowe's rejects the card. Apparently the crooks use their OWN card with their OWN signature and go to Lowe's to buy a riding mower or large-ticket item, just encoded with someone else's information.
These items can then be used or resold for cash.
Microsoft utilized its monopoly position to perpetuate the FAT filesystem. People put their data onto this filesystem. Now some of those people wish to move off the filesystem by converting to another OS, say Linux. MS wants to charge the person or company that makes the OS for access to the data of the person wishing to migrate. In other words, they illegally used their monopoly position to influence getting the patent, and getting the patent means that the data is locked on a Microsoft machine, unless the person wishing to migrate the data off migrates it first to another source, like uploading it to a box and then downloading it to the second box.
This patent makes it illegal for the person wishing to migrate their data to hook a hard drive up directly in a Linux system in order to obtain data that is wholly owned by THEM, not Microsoft!
Patent is invalid on its face, and if Microsoft tries to utilize its monopoly position to enforce this and make Linux pay up, they will be immediately sued on the basis that the format is proprietary and the user is penalized. The user purchased their software prior to the patent being enforced or valid, and had no way of knowing that they would be locked into the format without access to their data.
Microsoft cannot hold other people's property (data IS property and has been held to be so) hostage, for ransom, etc. That is what they are doing with this patent.
Further, once Microsoft does lose, they will be forced to open up their file formats as well, such as those for Word and Excel.
This sort of tyranny is why the US fought the Revolutionary War, and it is exactly the short-sighted thinking that will be the eventual demise of Microsoft.
Not to mention that Novell also dropped KDE recently. The "we're standardizing on Gnome" argument really isn't seeming to fly any longer (if it ever did). SUSE built a reputation for quality and Novell has turned SUSE into something else, and it's pretty evident.
Quality matters, and it showed with SUSE up until now. Novell is deprecating the OS and the people as well.
SCO has completely lost, and this is merely a tactic to keep the public and judicial eye off the fact that they have not produced anything remotely resembling proof that IBM took ANYTHING from them.
It's interesting to note that Novell open sourced SUSE, is now cutting 20% of Novell jobs and is standardizing on Gnome. I've heard speculation that the SUSE acquisition was to remove a competitor and they could proceed with Novell plans.
I'm not advocating that, I'm just noting that Novell has done a 180 and seems to be regressing. SUSE has always been considered one of the best distros out there, and at least OpenSUSE will continue with community support.
I heard a great analogy today. Software is like a vehicle. Software should be able to be modified just like buying a Harley and modifying it like West Coast Choppers does. As long as all the parties get paid, the Harley dealer, the suppliers of the mods, etc., then no one can stop it as long as it's not illegal.
Same with movies. If I owned a film copy of a movie, there is nothing that could stop me from splicing it together to make funny edits, have someone talking to themselves, flipping the picture backwards, etc.
Yet the *IAA want to prevent you from doing just exactly that. They want to force you to watch the commercials during broadcasts, and not do anything whatsoever with their material that they don't approve.
Freedom of expression - art made of books for instance - gives Americans the rights to do just exactly these things. In fact, we have the right to go taket the Harley, modify it, and sell it at a profit if we wish. CDs and DVDs come with printing on them that they may not be re-sold for any reason now. Not only can we not utilize a CD in art, we can't edit it to a new form and re-sell it with the same profit rules that we apply to any other physical property. How exactly is this fair?
Contact your local congressmen and senators. This is insidious and gives new meaning to underhanded tactics.
Apple didn't steal BSD wholesale - they used it under the terms of the license.
Microsoft didn't steal wholesale from BSD - they just used parts of it like the TCP/IP stack.
Both of them acted properly, although I recall that Microsoft didn't include the copyright and advertising clause properly at first.
But I agree with your point on Microsoft running out of ideas. Hosted Office - just remember that they will start to host your documents soon enough after that. THAT is enough not to utilize hosted software from anyone - I prefer to own my own documents.
I vote for the traditional notebook. I have a 17" Gateway widescreen, and it is my only computer now. It JUST squeezes in to airline regulation size for carryon with the case. I also have a printer and scanner along with all the accessories, and it just BARELY squeezes in. A 20" would require an upgrade to first class to stow it beneath the seat. But at 3 gigahertz with hyperthreading, it works just fine for all my needs, and can actually fit 3 hard drives if you remove the DVD burner. It's got a FULL-SIZE keyboard, plus numeric keypad.
Desktop replacements are a thing of beauty. I don't need a dual-screen any longer. For portability, it is heavy with all the gear, but the convenience of taking my entire office with me cannot be surpassed.
Think about this: What if one of these permafrost corpses thaws, a bird or animal ingests this, the virus comes back to life, and then spreads through humans again? Wouldn't it be great if we had a vaccine against it because we'd constructed it due to this regenerative research?
This was the Commodore PET, NOT the C=64. Never any problems with the 64. Many used it into the late 80's and early 90's. There is even a C-One - basically a 64 on steroids.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, the preamble of the GPL is not legally binding. Only the "Terms and Conditions" are binding. See "End of terms and conditions." The "How to apply these terms and conditions" is not legally binding either. Despite additional supporting documents that show intent, they don't hold up in court. The same thing happened with the Federalist Papers in support of the Constitution. Many times the courts have ignored the framers' intent despite it being in black and white. It's unfortunate, BUT hopefully the FSF, Eben Moglen and other great minds will figure out how to make this go away with rapidity. RP
If an army of zombies keep trying NEW codes - simple math says that in a matter of weeks nearly ALL Vista codes could be flagged as pirated. Making WGA point to false positives could be the death knell for Vista.
I agree with the above. No one is immune, and it can hit anyone.
I changed my site without prompting by my wife. Her smile alone was worth it because she knew I care.
Those who make jokes on this have obviously never even thought about it. Being on Slashdot it got my attention. I have known several women close to me wh have had it in some form. The reason that it is a high-profile cause is that men who have been affected by it have zero problem supporting their women in the fight against it.
300 men in the US die from it each year. 40,000 women do. Better than 130 to 1 odds that it will strike a woman instead of a man. A woman has about a 1 in 60 chance of dying from breast cancer in her lifetime.
It's worth going pink. Real men have no problem with supporting their woman.
eBay is restricting all competitors, plain and simple. If anyone has a way to contact Google directly, let me know. I've e-mailed in to GoogleBase, but who knows how much that will help.
eBay does some insidious things. With the new Googlebase (formerly Froogle) - eBay lists over 24 million items in an automated upload. This has the effect of killing off smaller businesses in the product listings at the top of Google searches. Because they have more items as a "seller" - no matter what is searched for in a specific category, like MIMO routers or any such search, eBay will come up first because they have more TOTAL items, even if those items are not relevant.
eBay also kills off their competition by banning their payment methods.
Contact Google, and use Yahoo! auctions - they are free to the buyer and free to the seller!
Two words:
Yahoo! Auctions.
Yahoo! does not charge ANYTHING to list, sell or buy. When enough people start switching to Yahoo! auctions, it will put eBay out of business. Yahoo! ought to actually start a new site, use the same software to run it, and advertise it on television the way eBay does with their site. eBay also actually has a contest with the US Postal Service - there are actually ads in the Post Office to get people to enter an eBay contest.
Add to that the fact that PayPal (owned by eBay) charges you a fee on the TOTAL price (including shipping & handling) - you end up paying eBay TWICE.
It's time to stop paying eBay and start using services that actually make sense for the seller.
Hopefully Yahoo! will purchase StormPay or any of the other online payment services, keep the fees low there and take down the eBay behemoth.
The genuine insidiousness of this bill is that it is forced.
From the copyright office: " A key component is that the new compulsory license governs all nondramatic musical works and does not permit copyright owners to opt-out, which would otherwise jeopardize the efficiency of the entire blanket licensing structure."
The two key components of the bill are (1) Copyright holders CANNOT OPT OUT - they are forced to accept the blanket license, and (2) There are "no royalty" provisions.
In other words, the RIAA can demand money for you ripping an MP3 from your CD, or duplicating your original CD. (Mandated licensing of ripping protocols?)
They can also conscript an independent music producer. Don't want your independent music played on the air, but want to go through your own distribution system? Too bad. You're FORCED - cannot opt out. You MUST avail the recording insdustry of your work and they don't have to pay you for it.
Want to make a copy of your OWN CD - you bought and paid for it - too bad - you must pay a licensing fee for another copy. Call your local congressman - I did, and both senators, and a few others as well.
So, technology enables the police to more easily locate suspects without inconveniencing non-suspects.
Isn't that a good thing?
Actually, no, it's not. That completely circumvents due process. Locating someone suspected of something (a crime? not a crime?) is far different than arresting someone. A suspect is not guilty of something illegal or unlawful, they are merely a suspect. This and the use of the phrase alleged __________ has gotten us into significant trouble.
For what purpose are suspects being located? What exactly are they suspected of? If the police are looking to arrest someone, they are not supposed to arrest a suspect, but arrest someone who is guilty. There actually IS a difference.
Here is a mod I found that works AMAZINGLY well on ANY fan. It is more work than the money, however I don't know any fan that is made that can't be quieted in this manner. It's relatively easy to take apart a fan, removing the blade. Little pieces to keep track of, but that's okay. Taking a fine grit sandpaper like 220 to the edges of the blades (ALL of them) will result in significantly smoother blade edges, and half the noise or less, if you spend about an hour on it.
I've even done this on notebook fans. It may take 1-2 hours to fully complete, but you will definitely notice the difference.
Slashdot would have to be banned then. So would all Yahoo! groups - because they have a forum for communication. Similarly, ANY site employing "forums" - My PHP Nuke, Social MPN, etc. No more comments attached to articles, either, because that is a method of communication.
Requirements are the ability to create a profile (Yahoo! - personals etc.) and a forum for communication. ANY Linux forum would be banned, simply because most of them allow "swearing" - depends on the board, but then what becomes obscene. "Obscene" is not defined, either, and the Supreme Court of the US has refused to hear cases because what is obscene in one state may be permitted under the laws of another.
This legislation should be thrown out on its face, due to the simple fact that "obscene" is not defined, and in fact the states have the right to define that, not the federal government.
While I'm not in favor of child pornography in the least, this smacks of what several other posters are alluding to in their comparison to the Yahoo!/China debaucle. Contact your Senator TODAY and let them know this should not go through. This is ridiculous.
Believe it. If you are not a publicly traded company, you can refuse the IRS' audit request on 5th Amendment grounds. The IRS has no right to search your records and interrupt your business. A murderer CAN deny police access to their premises and strictly shut the door in their face. A warrant can override this but you cannot be compelled without one.
Similarly, if the police EVER pull you over and ask you if they can search your trunk or vehicle during a routine stop, you can refuse. I have done so, with no recriminations. I didn't have anything to hide but I take exception to the police searching without what I call a valid reason. I was stopped for expired tags, and after a 12-hour shift and 1 hour commute each way I was fully exhausted. Bloodshot eyes and the whole bit. Refused IMMEDIATELY and asked why they asked me. They told me that it was due to the bloodshot eyes and how I was obviously tired. I asked if they wanted me to pull over to sleep, they said no. I asked if they had any further reason for detaining me and again, they had to answer no, so I stated I would leave then. I already had the ticket in my hand - bing bang boom gone.
You don't have to incriminate yourself, and this guy will easily get out of it on appeal.
A better solution would be to ghost the hard drive when you get the laptop at your new job. Returning the computer to them in EXACTLY the same condition that it was given to you (data-wise) would then be trivial. How can they punish you for that? They can't. In fact, you can even prove that it IS in the same condition!
Lowe's DOES care, however. They match the last 4 digits of the card to the number that is embedded in the mag strip. Apparently a large number of crooks have figured out how to get valid card numbers and encode them onto different cards. If the two numbers don't match then Lowe's rejects the card. Apparently the crooks use their OWN card with their OWN signature and go to Lowe's to buy a riding mower or large-ticket item, just encoded with someone else's information. These items can then be used or resold for cash.
There is no personal state income tax in Washington.
Also, you forget that Bill Gates' stock is not taxed until sold, so he doesn't have $47B in the bank.
Here's the problem:
Microsoft utilized its monopoly position to perpetuate the FAT filesystem. People put their data onto this filesystem. Now some of those people wish to move off the filesystem by converting to another OS, say Linux. MS wants to charge the person or company that makes the OS for access to the data of the person wishing to migrate. In other words, they illegally used their monopoly position to influence getting the patent, and getting the patent means that the data is locked on a Microsoft machine, unless the person wishing to migrate the data off migrates it first to another source, like uploading it to a box and then downloading it to the second box.
This patent makes it illegal for the person wishing to migrate their data to hook a hard drive up directly in a Linux system in order to obtain data that is wholly owned by THEM, not Microsoft!
Patent is invalid on its face, and if Microsoft tries to utilize its monopoly position to enforce this and make Linux pay up, they will be immediately sued on the basis that the format is proprietary and the user is penalized. The user purchased their software prior to the patent being enforced or valid, and had no way of knowing that they would be locked into the format without access to their data.
Microsoft cannot hold other people's property (data IS property and has been held to be so) hostage, for ransom, etc. That is what they are doing with this patent.
Further, once Microsoft does lose, they will be forced to open up their file formats as well, such as those for Word and Excel.
This sort of tyranny is why the US fought the Revolutionary War, and it is exactly the short-sighted thinking that will be the eventual demise of Microsoft.
Not to mention that Novell also dropped KDE recently. The "we're standardizing on Gnome" argument really isn't seeming to fly any longer (if it ever did). SUSE built a reputation for quality and Novell has turned SUSE into something else, and it's pretty evident.
Quality matters, and it showed with SUSE up until now. Novell is deprecating the OS and the people as well.
SCO has completely lost, and this is merely a tactic to keep the public and judicial eye off the fact that they have not produced anything remotely resembling proof that IBM took ANYTHING from them.
The proof of security would lie more in whether or not your hosting company has patched for this or not. It might be trying, but come on, port 80?
Makes you wonder if the Freedom of Information Act applies? Just exactly how long will those letters remain "classified?"
It's interesting to note that Novell open sourced SUSE, is now cutting 20% of Novell jobs and is standardizing on Gnome. I've heard speculation that the SUSE acquisition was to remove a competitor and they could proceed with Novell plans.
I'm not advocating that, I'm just noting that Novell has done a 180 and seems to be regressing. SUSE has always been considered one of the best distros out there, and at least OpenSUSE will continue with community support.
I heard a great analogy today. Software is like a vehicle. Software should be able to be modified just like buying a Harley and modifying it like West Coast Choppers does. As long as all the parties get paid, the Harley dealer, the suppliers of the mods, etc., then no one can stop it as long as it's not illegal.
Same with movies. If I owned a film copy of a movie, there is nothing that could stop me from splicing it together to make funny edits, have someone talking to themselves, flipping the picture backwards, etc.
Yet the *IAA want to prevent you from doing just exactly that. They want to force you to watch the commercials during broadcasts, and not do anything whatsoever with their material that they don't approve.
Freedom of expression - art made of books for instance - gives Americans the rights to do just exactly these things. In fact, we have the right to go taket the Harley, modify it, and sell it at a profit if we wish. CDs and DVDs come with printing on them that they may not be re-sold for any reason now. Not only can we not utilize a CD in art, we can't edit it to a new form and re-sell it with the same profit rules that we apply to any other physical property. How exactly is this fair?
Contact your local congressmen and senators. This is insidious and gives new meaning to underhanded tactics.
Apple didn't steal BSD wholesale - they used it under the terms of the license.
Microsoft didn't steal wholesale from BSD - they just used parts of it like the TCP/IP stack.
Both of them acted properly, although I recall that Microsoft didn't include the copyright and advertising clause properly at first.
But I agree with your point on Microsoft running out of ideas. Hosted Office - just remember that they will start to host your documents soon enough after that. THAT is enough not to utilize hosted software from anyone - I prefer to own my own documents.
Mod away!
I vote for the traditional notebook. I have a 17" Gateway widescreen, and it is my only computer now. It JUST squeezes in to airline regulation size for carryon with the case. I also have a printer and scanner along with all the accessories, and it just BARELY squeezes in. A 20" would require an upgrade to first class to stow it beneath the seat. But at 3 gigahertz with hyperthreading, it works just fine for all my needs, and can actually fit 3 hard drives if you remove the DVD burner. It's got a FULL-SIZE keyboard, plus numeric keypad.
Desktop replacements are a thing of beauty. I don't need a dual-screen any longer. For portability, it is heavy with all the gear, but the convenience of taking my entire office with me cannot be surpassed.
Unless ebiinc.com is NOT one of your sites or one of your customers, I am on Comcast (WA state) and can see you just fine.
Think about this: What if one of these permafrost corpses thaws, a bird or animal ingests this, the virus comes back to life, and then spreads through humans again? Wouldn't it be great if we had a vaccine against it because we'd constructed it due to this regenerative research?
This was the Commodore PET, NOT the C=64. Never any problems with the 64. Many used it into the late 80's and early 90's. There is even a C-One - basically a 64 on steroids.
Windows is perfectly stable, as long as you don't add any third party software to it, including anything that comes on the installation CDs.
=)