If a lawyer doesn't think the person being sued is able to pay out, or if the lawyer thinks the person being sued has better "team" of lawyers than you do, you're pretty much out of luck unless you can front them the money. After all, it is in the best interest of the lawyer to somehow get the money, and there's no point to sueing the poor or corporate giants.
Well, yeah, you're right. If you hire an ambulance chaser who only gets his cut from your judgement, that is. If you want a real lawyer who doesn't look at you as a lottery ticket, you'll *gasp* actually have to pay up front. Like with anything else.
Something that increases freedom of use will stifle innovation? Someone help me out here.
OK. The idea is that companies won't create content when it can be easily replicated at will with little or no barrier to duplication. They won't be able to make money, or so the story goes.
I say horsecrap because 1) we hear this EVERY TIME any new technology comes out ("The VCR is to the movie indutry what the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone,") and 2) It's not like companies will just stop making content even if piracy is rampant (what, like it's not now?). Are all the record companies just going to say "It was fun, but we quit, we'll jsut close up shop?" No. They'll just have to find a new economic model, which is looooooong overdue. But people demand music and movies, so the companies won't go away, they just need to find a method that gives customers more than Grokster can.
Although I actually hope they succeed in curbing piracy so they discover that's not why their sales suck.
Yeah, I missed the bus on that one too, but it sure seemed to play the central role here. The logic seems to be that if one fears reprisal of a libel suit, that it will have the famous "chilling effect" on speech? Isn't that the...point of libel laws? That people will actually think about what they're about to write before they write it?
Re:Its a big freekin pitcher...
on
Nessus Closes Source
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I guess they didn't gain anything from Linux, libwhisker, nmap, Bugzilla (MPL, I know - but they use it, and the argument still works), or any of the countless other open source projects. Why is it that coders always feel they don't get their just rewards? Why ever release under the GPL to begin with? Didn't gain anything... pfft.
For them, those are the benefits of free (gratis) software. In this case - their *project* - the GPL didn't work because it didn't foster collaboration. No one else was working on it. Since that is the very point of free (libre) software, there was no benefit to this project being GPL'd. Since it was hurting their business, they had little reason to keep the thing open.
Yep. And what are they supposed to do? More passwords, more often? There's nothing that can't be spoofed if the user is stupid enough to give phishers the info.
Except MAYBE one thing. Biometrics. If you hold the banks responsible for user fuckups, that's where we inevitably end up. It's invasive, and expensive.
So how about we don't increase the costs of banking across the board because some people are too fucking stupid to notice that an email allegedly from their bank comes from a random IP address with grainy copies of the original images from the site.
Free as in beer is cool and all that, but if one excuse for dumping GPL is that they aren't getting any benefits in the way of free code, I guess they weren't really drinking the Kool-aid in the first place, eh?
That's *the* valid excuse. They were in fact drinking the kool-aid - they believed that by contributing to the codebase, that it would make everyone's project stronger. As it happened, they kept giving and the competition kept taking. The community didn't give back.
I agree, though, they could have written a license that gave other companies the right to reuse the code for non-commercial uses only, and that would have been a better compromise.
When I connect to an Internet server, I often don't use any infrastructure in the US at all, and when I do it I very much doubt that it was government funded.
Really? Then what are we even discussing, eh? ICANN is an international organization. If you don't run through a root DNS server sitting in the US, then what complaint have you?
Forget the fact that the US has disproportionate effect on UN activities in many ways, from Security Council to private negotiations to our preeminence in selling to the markets the UN keeps open. Applying your philosophy, do you want to get a vote proportional to your tax bill here in the US?
The US is a government of people. The UN is simply an organization. They are not the same thing. Where we differ is in the utopian ideal of some overarching world government that can solve all the world's problems, which you seem to believe in and I believe is a farce. The problem is that since the UN has effectively no power, placing significant responsibilities in its hands is not the best idea.
why would any foreigner take American assurances of equity seriously at all?
I don't think we have nor should assure any such thing. The idea is ridiculous. We are a nation, and our govermnent is employed to have our interests at heart. They do not represent other nations, nor do they need to pretend to be equal to, say, Equitorial Guinea.
Forget the fact that the US has disproportionate effect on UN activities in many ways, from Security Council to private negotiations to our preeminence in selling to the markets the UN keeps open. Applying your philosophy, do you want to get a vote proportional to your tax bill here in the US?
I've never listened to Bolton, am not particularly "conservative", but I simply don't see the point of America wasting money and getting little return. I don't want to spend a ton of money on things we don't agree with and aren't in our national interests. As a nation, I don't see that we gain much benefit, currently, from the UN outside of the ideology of believing in it in the first place.
What are you conserving, when you throw away hundreds of years of respectable policies in favor of cranking up American unilaterality?
Not sure what that means. The job of our government is to do what's best for our country. Period. Our government is and should be "unilateral" in that respect. I don't think anyone would throw away hundreds of years of respectable practices to simply do what's in the national interest.
I also can't see how you defend the tactics that the EU is following. "Do what we say or else?" That's the same attitude that people attack the US for adopting, and I agree it's a poor one. Negotiations are one thing, demands are another. If you're going to make demands, you'd better be able to back them up.
but Linux has a good chance of doing so because Linux is free (as in Freedom) and there are many thousands of developers giving freely of their time to it every day. Mac is still a closed, for-profit outfit (obviously), and hence will never take more market share
Where's the "we're the most trustworthy, the most reliable party to keep this essential system running"?
If that's the question, then the US keeps it, having a long track record for both.
The US has alienated enemy and ally alike
That's a two-way street. The US has made many mistakes, but the rest of the world has this way of forgetting that the US is basically the financier and implementor of tons of issues that the UN etc. get to basically execute with the stroke of a pen. Given that, we're sick of doing all the dirty work and getting only an equal say over how things are run. The way I see it, if we're doing the lion's share of the work, we get to set some terms.
The Bush people running our country today are clearly willing to risk the Internet in their desire to destroy that community.
Wait, who started this again? We're backing status quo. Seems the UN and Europe are the ones willing to play a game of chicken to feed their sense of self-importance. The internet works fine now. The UN has no experience running it. There's no compelling reason to switch other than politics. So who's playing games?
As I understand it, the internet flourished (by which I mean became more than a few hundred academic/military machines linked together) because it was build on open specifications - if you want to add a node, you can build one (to the specs), and run the right software on it (based on the specs), connect to the net, and you're in.
And that's still the case.
But apparently when it comes to the top-level organisation, this 'share and share alike' policy goes out the window, and it's all "We invented it! Get lost!"
There's a difference between sharing, joining, and controlling. The US has always graciously allowed anyone to join the networks. We've always controlled it - we're not trying to take something away. It's still the same policies that somehow weren't onerous before. And going from sharing to ceding control is a stretch.
Should Tim Berners-Lee take his web and ban the US from using it
He developed a protocol, not a network. The difference is one of intellectual vs. real property.
It all seems rather childish.
Yes, it does. The internet works fine. The UN has a way of making things not work. From the US's point of view, the way to ensure that the internet works best for Americans is to keep control of it. I don't know what's so hard to understand about that. If Europe wants the US to give up control of something that's vital to our national interests, we should get something in return. Europe wants something for free, and that's not the way the world works.
There SHOULD be a united body handling the internet.
Really? Then a united body should have invented it and funded the research. As of now, control belongs to the US. In the absence of a compelling reason in the US's best interest to do otherwise, why should we? You want to give us something in return, that's negotiable. Right now, this self-entitled crap is getting old - Europe's acting like it's owed something and it's not.
Don't like it? Too damned bad. I love this whole "force" thing. Ya gonna invade and take the root servers? Good luck.
There's tons of money to be made if you charge what people feel is a fair price.
Everyone's definition of that is different. And if they charge a price that's higher? Does that still justify the illegal acts?
Re:RIAA Sues a Guilty Person
on
RIAA Sues a Child
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
God, the extent to which the slashdot crowd will resort to pedantry to justify illegal behavior. The defendant in question has committed an illegal act. The defendant will get her trial, and will in all likelihood lose. So why is this wrong again?
The case in the article isn't parallel to the DMCA. There have been a few attempts to stifle free speech regarding technical topics that could have been used to commit illegal acts, and I don't know of a one where they weren't stricken down.
Why would it make you, as an American (or so you claim), glad that the freedom of the citizens of another nation have been eroded? A true American, one who actually believes in the ideals of freedom and liberty expressed by the Founding Fathers, would be horrified and disgusted by this development.
Dunno how you got that. He essentially said "I'm glad that didn't happen to me," not "I'm glad that happened to you." Pretty substantial difference there.
It's like if a rock falls on you, while I may certainly have pity for you, I'm still pretty glad it didn't fall on me.
In draft versions of this essay, i went to talk about how service positions i worked in the university ended up taking a lot more time then estimated. Combine that with the last semester senior crunch, and you've got no time for anything else.
In hindsight, surely you have to appreciate now that you prioritized that wrong? Your goals should have been 1) Find a job, 2) Do enough to not postpone your degree, and 3) everything else, in that order. Believe me, finding a good job is very hard, and I spent the better part of a year doing it.
As for ego, this is a field clogged with smart people and competitive people. You need one, and it has to be able to take a few hits. You never know when something you write/do/say might end up on slashdot where anyone can sum up who you are in two sentenances without ever having met, studied with, interviewed, or worked with you.
There's a difference between confidence and arrogance. Yes, you're absolutely right - this is an arena of smart people, many of whom lack social skills. People will say rude and jackassed things, and you have to be able to take it. However, that's not a license to be arrogant or condescending, particularly to management. I'd suggest figuring out what makes management tick, rather than writing them off as useless burnt-out has-beens who don't have the sense to listen to the brilliant young gun straight out of school.
In addition, you're the one who submitted this to slashdot. I'd think that since your employment situation flamed out pretty well, you'd be in a position to take some advice, because you desperately need it. You went about this whole "working in the real world" thing about as poorly as could be, given your absent approach to finding a job and what appears (given your statements)to be condescending methods of dealing with your superiors. If you don't learn a lot from this experience about yourself and how you might have handled this better, then it's even more of a wasted year than it is already.
Some people would call those people "ass clowns".
Not me, tho.:)
How clever. Can't possibly figure out why you were fired.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah, you're right. If you hire an ambulance chaser who only gets his cut from your judgement, that is. If you want a real lawyer who doesn't look at you as a lottery ticket, you'll *gasp* actually have to pay up front. Like with anything else.
That's funny. I typed in "tape hiss" and got both her and Milli Vanilli.
OK. The idea is that companies won't create content when it can be easily replicated at will with little or no barrier to duplication. They won't be able to make money, or so the story goes.
I say horsecrap because 1) we hear this EVERY TIME any new technology comes out ("The VCR is to the movie indutry what the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone,") and 2) It's not like companies will just stop making content even if piracy is rampant (what, like it's not now?). Are all the record companies just going to say "It was fun, but we quit, we'll jsut close up shop?" No. They'll just have to find a new economic model, which is looooooong overdue. But people demand music and movies, so the companies won't go away, they just need to find a method that gives customers more than Grokster can.
Although I actually hope they succeed in curbing piracy so they discover that's not why their sales suck.
Yeah, I missed the bus on that one too, but it sure seemed to play the central role here. The logic seems to be that if one fears reprisal of a libel suit, that it will have the famous "chilling effect" on speech? Isn't that the...point of libel laws? That people will actually think about what they're about to write before they write it?
For them, those are the benefits of free (gratis) software. In this case - their *project* - the GPL didn't work because it didn't foster collaboration. No one else was working on it. Since that is the very point of free (libre) software, there was no benefit to this project being GPL'd. Since it was hurting their business, they had little reason to keep the thing open.
No brainer decision, really.
Except MAYBE one thing. Biometrics. If you hold the banks responsible for user fuckups, that's where we inevitably end up. It's invasive, and expensive.
So how about we don't increase the costs of banking across the board because some people are too fucking stupid to notice that an email allegedly from their bank comes from a random IP address with grainy copies of the original images from the site.
That's *the* valid excuse. They were in fact drinking the kool-aid - they believed that by contributing to the codebase, that it would make everyone's project stronger. As it happened, they kept giving and the competition kept taking. The community didn't give back.
I agree, though, they could have written a license that gave other companies the right to reuse the code for non-commercial uses only, and that would have been a better compromise.
Like what, knighthood?
Really? Then what are we even discussing, eh? ICANN is an international organization. If you don't run through a root DNS server sitting in the US, then what complaint have you?
Forget the fact that the US has disproportionate effect on UN activities in many ways, from Security Council to private negotiations to our preeminence in selling to the markets the UN keeps open. Applying your philosophy, do you want to get a vote proportional to your tax bill here in the US?
The US is a government of people. The UN is simply an organization. They are not the same thing. Where we differ is in the utopian ideal of some overarching world government that can solve all the world's problems, which you seem to believe in and I believe is a farce. The problem is that since the UN has effectively no power, placing significant responsibilities in its hands is not the best idea.
why would any foreigner take American assurances of equity seriously at all?
I don't think we have nor should assure any such thing. The idea is ridiculous. We are a nation, and our govermnent is employed to have our interests at heart. They do not represent other nations, nor do they need to pretend to be equal to, say, Equitorial Guinea.
Forget the fact that the US has disproportionate effect on UN activities in many ways, from Security Council to private negotiations to our preeminence in selling to the markets the UN keeps open. Applying your philosophy, do you want to get a vote proportional to your tax bill here in the US?
I've never listened to Bolton, am not particularly "conservative", but I simply don't see the point of America wasting money and getting little return. I don't want to spend a ton of money on things we don't agree with and aren't in our national interests. As a nation, I don't see that we gain much benefit, currently, from the UN outside of the ideology of believing in it in the first place.
What are you conserving, when you throw away hundreds of years of respectable policies in favor of cranking up American unilaterality?
Not sure what that means. The job of our government is to do what's best for our country. Period. Our government is and should be "unilateral" in that respect. I don't think anyone would throw away hundreds of years of respectable practices to simply do what's in the national interest.
I also can't see how you defend the tactics that the EU is following. "Do what we say or else?" That's the same attitude that people attack the US for adopting, and I agree it's a poor one. Negotiations are one thing, demands are another. If you're going to make demands, you'd better be able to back them up.
You need a little more sugar in the kool-aid.
If that's the question, then the US keeps it, having a long track record for both.
The US has alienated enemy and ally alike
That's a two-way street. The US has made many mistakes, but the rest of the world has this way of forgetting that the US is basically the financier and implementor of tons of issues that the UN etc. get to basically execute with the stroke of a pen. Given that, we're sick of doing all the dirty work and getting only an equal say over how things are run. The way I see it, if we're doing the lion's share of the work, we get to set some terms.
The Bush people running our country today are clearly willing to risk the Internet in their desire to destroy that community.
Wait, who started this again? We're backing status quo. Seems the UN and Europe are the ones willing to play a game of chicken to feed their sense of self-importance. The internet works fine now. The UN has no experience running it. There's no compelling reason to switch other than politics. So who's playing games?
And that's still the case.
But apparently when it comes to the top-level organisation, this 'share and share alike' policy goes out the window, and it's all "We invented it! Get lost!"
There's a difference between sharing, joining, and controlling. The US has always graciously allowed anyone to join the networks. We've always controlled it - we're not trying to take something away. It's still the same policies that somehow weren't onerous before. And going from sharing to ceding control is a stretch.
Should Tim Berners-Lee take his web and ban the US from using it
He developed a protocol, not a network. The difference is one of intellectual vs. real property.
It all seems rather childish.
Yes, it does. The internet works fine. The UN has a way of making things not work. From the US's point of view, the way to ensure that the internet works best for Americans is to keep control of it. I don't know what's so hard to understand about that. If Europe wants the US to give up control of something that's vital to our national interests, we should get something in return. Europe wants something for free, and that's not the way the world works.
In short, what do we get out of it?
Really? Then a united body should have invented it and funded the research. As of now, control belongs to the US. In the absence of a compelling reason in the US's best interest to do otherwise, why should we? You want to give us something in return, that's negotiable. Right now, this self-entitled crap is getting old - Europe's acting like it's owed something and it's not.
Don't like it? Too damned bad. I love this whole "force" thing. Ya gonna invade and take the root servers? Good luck.
I'll have you know that Albert Gore, Jr. most certainly is an American citizen.
Nobody's making you give up your copy of office.
Everyone's definition of that is different. And if they charge a price that's higher? Does that still justify the illegal acts?
God, the extent to which the slashdot crowd will resort to pedantry to justify illegal behavior. The defendant in question has committed an illegal act. The defendant will get her trial, and will in all likelihood lose. So why is this wrong again?
Can we stop modding this up? This pedantic discussion has been done enough already.
Only someone who reads slashdot every other day would say that. The rest of us know it's much more common than that.
The case in the article isn't parallel to the DMCA. There have been a few attempts to stifle free speech regarding technical topics that could have been used to commit illegal acts, and I don't know of a one where they weren't stricken down.
Nope. They tried that shit and the Supreme Court told them to fuck themselves.
Dunno how you got that. He essentially said "I'm glad that didn't happen to me," not "I'm glad that happened to you." Pretty substantial difference there.
It's like if a rock falls on you, while I may certainly have pity for you, I'm still pretty glad it didn't fall on me.
In hindsight, surely you have to appreciate now that you prioritized that wrong? Your goals should have been 1) Find a job, 2) Do enough to not postpone your degree, and 3) everything else, in that order. Believe me, finding a good job is very hard, and I spent the better part of a year doing it.
As for ego, this is a field clogged with smart people and competitive people. You need one, and it has to be able to take a few hits. You never know when something you write/do/say might end up on slashdot where anyone can sum up who you are in two sentenances without ever having met, studied with, interviewed, or worked with you.
There's a difference between confidence and arrogance. Yes, you're absolutely right - this is an arena of smart people, many of whom lack social skills. People will say rude and jackassed things, and you have to be able to take it. However, that's not a license to be arrogant or condescending, particularly to management. I'd suggest figuring out what makes management tick, rather than writing them off as useless burnt-out has-beens who don't have the sense to listen to the brilliant young gun straight out of school.
In addition, you're the one who submitted this to slashdot. I'd think that since your employment situation flamed out pretty well, you'd be in a position to take some advice, because you desperately need it. You went about this whole "working in the real world" thing about as poorly as could be, given your absent approach to finding a job and what appears (given your statements)to be condescending methods of dealing with your superiors. If you don't learn a lot from this experience about yourself and how you might have handled this better, then it's even more of a wasted year than it is already.
Some people would call those people "ass clowns". Not me, tho. :)
How clever. Can't possibly figure out why you were fired.
Pisses me off, I just left 7 months ago...I imagine I'm missing some great Chem department parties.