I never understood why people turn SQL into Sequel. Aside from the fact that there's another language by that name, it seems to me that it adds adds an extra "e" to the thing. So I generally call it Squeal. It's not much better, but it's more fun to say.
First, while it seems that they know what a computer, a library and a school are well enough to cover it in the definitions section... the bill is conspicuously missing a definition for what exactly a "social networking" site is.
Second, the word "website" appears in no dictionary. Since it is not a word, it's hard to know what a "social networking website" is. Other than the fact that it must have something to do with computers that are connected to the Internet (which is also not defined in their definitions), it is hard to really understand what they are getting at. If they are talking about Web Sites, that's a completely different matter, and must be addressed properly if the law is to be binding.
And lastly, other than a section towards the end where they say something to the affect of "we'll figure out how to implement it" there's nothing in the wording that explains what a social networking "website" is or how they would go about doing it.
Now, we all know that Myspace calls itself a social networking site, but you could theoretically expand those parameters to anything that includes a networking system. You could expand it to include web based e-mail such as yahoo, or any and every message board on the Internet. While that may sound reasonable, this is an unreimbursable bill. Someone is going to need to be paid to research, find, and ban the billions of Web Sites that could fall under such a definition. Although at that point, how useful is the Internet in public (ie: state run) places? This could be less about children, and more about cost cutting.
If it's illegal, then there's cause for a share holder law suit, which is being filed.
It hasn't been proven that anything illegal has happened, simply that there is cause to investigate a complaint.
The current filing is nothing more than an allegation. Large companies deal with these things all the time whether or not there is any merit.
In a world where Microsoft is allowed to flourish unregulated and prosper for it's anti competitive practices, why should Intel be any different?
I think the distinction is key. If Intel is invoking the transaction, it's one thing. If Dell is requiring it (assuming it would be the same for AMD), it's quite another.
It's going to be interesting to watch this and see how it goes down.
So you're saying that Dell is owned by the government, and required to present equal time to competing products? That's a weird opinion, don't you think?
Isn't Dell a private company? I mean, if they prefer to use Intel over AMD, wouldn't a free market dictate that they would be allowed to do so, providing the market is willing to support it? And if Intel wants to pay them for the privilege, why not? If there are accounting irregularities, it's a completely different issue than the chips that are going into your Dell, and should be addressed as such. This article was almost light and fluffy enough to be useless. I would like to know more about the details.
There's another solution.
Wild card rules in adblock. They're great. The script that yahoo uses is hosted remotely on the same server the ad is coming from. Block the entire server, and you've solved the problem. Mine works great.
It all comes down to distribution. For example, if you download a song or piece of software, you are not guilty of infringement of a copyright unless you make copies and give those copies to other people by means of transmittal. And while the illicit copy of the material you received is proof of infringement, you have not "infringed" on anything. The person that gave or sold it to you did however, under current law*, unless there is no applicable law covering this issue in the jurisdiction in which the transmittal was initiated **. But the bar is very low. Most of the RIAA cases involve "intent" to transmit, which seems to be valid in court so far, even though it's a legal gray area.
In the case of Mickey Mouse, it's not copyright infringement if you take a picture of the billboard. It is copyright infringement (and a trademark violation) if you were to... say, put it on a t-shirt and give or sell it to your friends. In theory, this would also apply to most pictures taken at DisneyLand*** and put in family albums on the Web. However, no one seems to want to prosecute these flagrant picture sharing criminals like the unconscionable vermin they are. And home movies taken there? If they wanted to pursue grounds for punitive of "nominal" damages, infringement, defamation, or any number of other civil offenses, the grounds would be there as well.
* Under the old law, there had to be a financial transaction in order to constitute infringement.
** I think. If I'm wrong it's because he may be breaking the law by proxy, as is alleged in the AllofMP3.com case. In other words, someone could theoretically break the law in the US, while not breaking the law in Russia by involving an American in America in the violation using the Internet (if you follow that logic to it's conclusion). Not being a legal expert, I'm unclear as to the precedent that would validate such a line of reasoning.
*** Since DL does not technically meet the criteria for being a "public" place. Even if it did (which is doesn't), trademark law would still apply, as the base grounds for "commerce" and "distribution" have changed.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never had an IT job where a background and drug test were not required, and I've been at this for awhile.
What about the attacks from people on the inside that have no record. Does that factor in at all, or do we not care about it for the sake of argument?
Please don't take this the wrong way. I have no intention of standing up for sex offenders rights, but there's a huge problem with this idea. Imagine this. Your name happens to be Joe smith, you live in Washington. Further more you happen to live on the same street as three other Joe Smith's one of whom happens to be a sex offender. If the MySpace system is going to be effective, they would have to implement something that would find... and delete you. Otherwise, there's no point unless you prohibit registered rapos from using free e-mail addresses.
That I would like to see anyone try to enforce. The next step of course is an internet flag on the ISP side to allow sites to pick up and detect sex offenders. But then there's the issue of free proxies that would also need to be regulated to make sure that they don't get through. While we're at it, let's do the same thing with houses that have children in them, after all you have to think of the children. But hey, you know this kind of thing is useful in other areas. Imagine the statistical possibilities when you can flag and document every sociological element of society using the Internet in the coming age when everyone and everything is online. What if you wanted to document based on ethnic criteria. Wouldn't it be nice if you knew how many Jews and Muslims were visiting your Web Site? Absolutely, everyone knows how those Jews like to steal images and that Muslims love that Avril Leveign music. It's certainly possible. Why not just do already?
But I have to wonder something: If we exist in a judicial framework where a case against Target for violating the 508 can be found to have enough merit to be aloud to proceed, how much of a leap is it to say that MySpace could be sued for discriminating against sex offenders when they have made no effort to make sure that said offenders and have and can provide no proof that said offenders used the site for illicit purposes? Personally, I do not actually care... but there's more than one slippery slope here.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: It is absurdly difficult to accommodate screen readers. They are undetectable, and cannot be sniffed.
Therefore, you have to assume that potentially anyone coming in can be using a screen reader. You have to program extra code, but not too much extra code, or the screen readers will be reading "spacer" "spacer" "spacer" for three hours. You need to have noscript, and noembed tags in everything, and offer an alternate text version of your site that needs to be up to date and relevant. The law even goes so far as to state that you need to have alternate text on images, or specify the location of a file with a description of the image in it. Style sheets can be against the rules or not, depending on which contradictory section you intend adhering to, and you can pretty much forget about rendering anything on the client side. Although flash can be accessible if you write your code in sequence, make your text selectable, and make sure to specify an alternate text version of your applet (just in case).
It's a frustrating, even maddening standard to work with, especially when your boss won't spring for Jaws (or the like), which he sees no point in doing because no one in your workplace actually needs it.
I wonder if Porn sites could be held to that kind standard... The entertainment value there would be priceless.
There was a case involving Netscape a few years ago where the court decided that a link to the contract was not good enough, and that in order for a click through Eula to be valid, it had to be displayed completely. There's another case pending that involves actually reading them that could have interesting ramifications through all of contract law though.
Anyway, I think the difference could all come back to a click being recorded and used as a signature for the purposes of digital contracts (not to be confused with digital signatures, which is a different issue). We have a whole subsection of law supporting that in the US. It doesn't sound like the rules are as robust in Oz. Oh well. Still interesting reading.
Just to point something out,
I didn't see anything especially Marxist about that post other than the poster's screen name. Do you judge the content of everyone on Slashdot based on what they call themselves?
Not that I disagree with either of you, but if you're using Slashdot as your baromerter for sanity, then there's something seriously wrong.
That said, there was an article a couple weeks ago here on/. about the first documented case of Web rage. Could this be a second?
Or how about this: Since we're talking about hypothetical conspiracies.
Paypal is owned by Ebay, who is largely controlled by the Saudis (don't actually know that, but it sounds good). The Bush Administration needed to demonstrate that we are still not safe in this country to the voting public (after all, it is an election year). So a call was placed to management at Ebay. Anyway, the Saudis worked with their contacts to find a bomber, who was more than happy to place the bomb (after all everyone knows there's no such thing as domestic terrorism, doncha know). And a deal was made, a bomb was placed, and a justification for ever more strict legislation was offered. Now to see if we take the bait as voters and elect more Republicans in California. Moo hah hah...
I think it all comes down to this: Will Paypal start selling pie? I believe they will. But only apple, and you will be required to like it.
I'm not building my own Orwellian universe. Our Congress and Senate have already done this for me fucknugget. Why don't you get your blind head out of your ass and pay attention to what's going on your country?
I believe your opinion is both off topic, and unsupported my friend. Would you care to sight sources to verify or give credence to your assertion that my opinions are offtopic and unsubstantiated?
A China run internet is not related to the parent topic at all. But if you were going to tell me that they do not deserve to have a say in a root system that was supposed to be global, then you would be wrong.... if the Internet is supposed to be global. If it's not, then it's whole different issue.
I think the push towards this over the last few years has been growing because there is a perception that the US is and has been abusing the root system, and illegally mining for information.
Think about it this way: if you are sending information via e-mail to a colleague, and neither he or you is in the US, that information passes through the department of commerce in the US because that's where to root servers are. The US is pretty open about the fact that they monitor the root, and they tout it as an essential tool in the war on terror. It's no secret.
There are merits and metrics for that argument, however if the root system falls into the hands of the UN, would it be any better? There's been a lot of US FUD over the years that such a move would mean more internet taxes, loss of freedoms, postage for e-mails, whatever. Given the UN's track record of late, I'm not so sure they should be holding the keys either.
It seems to me that if you are going to start talking about internationalizing the internet, would it really be so difficult to build a second comparable or even compatible DNS?
Actually I think the problem is that it takes $90,000 a year to be over the poverty level in most counties in California, and those kind of wages just aren't there for most of us. Rent is astronomical, and a programmer (or anyone for that matter) can't afford to get bye unemployed in an extremely competitive market for more than a month or two. In the rest of the country a programmer can do well for himself on a mere $70-80k. I highly recommend Minneapolis! uhm... scratch that... Don't move to Minneapolis. It's uh... cold. Yeah, that's it. Too cold for competing programmers. Freezing in fact.
Uhm... Wifi comes to mind, and it is an incredible pain in the ass to set up, work with, and troubleshoot under Linux. In real world software houses where the professionals work during the week, we know that eye candy is the topping on the cake. You don't usually say, wow, here's a flower and egg concoction... I think the frosting should be pink.
The answer is not in front of me. The link you're looking at is for the last public revision. There's been at least one revision since then that was not released. Apple has also noted that due to security concerns, they have no intention of making any future version of MacOSX or Darwin publicly available. Therein lies the point of contention that I was asking about. Thank you for not being obnoxious.
Slashdot Mirror
I never understood why people turn SQL into Sequel.
Aside from the fact that there's another language by that name, it seems to me that it adds adds an extra "e" to the thing. So I generally call it Squeal. It's not much better, but it's more fun to say.
A couple of things concern me about this bill:
Now, we all know that Myspace calls itself a social networking site, but you could theoretically expand those parameters to anything that includes a networking system. You could expand it to include web based e-mail such as yahoo, or any and every message board on the Internet. While that may sound reasonable, this is an unreimbursable bill. Someone is going to need to be paid to research, find, and ban the billions of Web Sites that could fall under such a definition. Although at that point, how useful is the Internet in public (ie: state run) places? This could be less about children, and more about cost cutting.
If it's illegal, then there's cause for a share holder law suit, which is being filed.
It hasn't been proven that anything illegal has happened, simply that there is cause to investigate a complaint.
The current filing is nothing more than an allegation.
Large companies deal with these things all the time whether or not there is any merit.
In a world where Microsoft is allowed to flourish unregulated and prosper for it's anti competitive practices, why should Intel be any different?
I think the distinction is key.
If Intel is invoking the transaction, it's one thing.
If Dell is requiring it (assuming it would be the same for AMD), it's quite another.
It's going to be interesting to watch this and see how it goes down.
So you're saying that Dell is owned by the government, and required to present equal time to competing products? That's a weird opinion, don't you think?
Isn't Dell a private company? I mean, if they prefer to use Intel over AMD, wouldn't a free market dictate that they would be allowed to do so, providing the market is willing to support it? And if Intel wants to pay them for the privilege, why not? If there are accounting irregularities, it's a completely different issue than the chips that are going into your Dell, and should be addressed as such. This article was almost light and fluffy enough to be useless. I would like to know more about the details.
There's another solution. Wild card rules in adblock. They're great. The script that yahoo uses is hosted remotely on the same server the ad is coming from. Block the entire server, and you've solved the problem. Mine works great.
It all comes down to distribution. For example, if you download a song or piece of software, you are not guilty of infringement of a copyright unless you make copies and give those copies to other people by means of transmittal. And while the illicit copy of the material you received is proof of infringement, you have not "infringed" on anything. The person that gave or sold it to you did however, under current law*, unless there is no applicable law covering this issue in the jurisdiction in which the transmittal was initiated **. But the bar is very low. Most of the RIAA cases involve "intent" to transmit, which seems to be valid in court so far, even though it's a legal gray area.
In the case of Mickey Mouse, it's not copyright infringement if you take a picture of the billboard. It is copyright infringement (and a trademark violation) if you were to... say, put it on a t-shirt and give or sell it to your friends. In theory, this would also apply to most pictures taken at DisneyLand*** and put in family albums on the Web. However, no one seems to want to prosecute these flagrant picture sharing criminals like the unconscionable vermin they are. And home movies taken there? If they wanted to pursue grounds for punitive of "nominal" damages, infringement, defamation, or any number of other civil offenses, the grounds would be there as well.
* Under the old law, there had to be a financial transaction in order to constitute infringement.
** I think. If I'm wrong it's because he may be breaking the law by proxy, as is alleged in the AllofMP3.com case. In other words, someone could theoretically break the law in the US, while not breaking the law in Russia by involving an American in America in the violation using the Internet (if you follow that logic to it's conclusion). Not being a legal expert, I'm unclear as to the precedent that would validate such a line of reasoning.
*** Since DL does not technically meet the criteria for being a "public" place. Even if it did (which is doesn't), trademark law would still apply, as the base grounds for "commerce" and "distribution" have changed.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I've never had an IT job where a background and drug test were not required, and I've been at this for awhile. What about the attacks from people on the inside that have no record. Does that factor in at all, or do we not care about it for the sake of argument?
Please don't take this the wrong way. I have no intention of standing up for sex offenders rights, but there's a huge problem with this idea. Imagine this. Your name happens to be Joe smith, you live in Washington. Further more you happen to live on the same street as three other Joe Smith's one of whom happens to be a sex offender. If the MySpace system is going to be effective, they would have to implement something that would find... and delete you. Otherwise, there's no point unless you prohibit registered rapos from using free e-mail addresses.
That I would like to see anyone try to enforce. The next step of course is an internet flag on the ISP side to allow sites to pick up and detect sex offenders. But then there's the issue of free proxies that would also need to be regulated to make sure that they don't get through. While we're at it, let's do the same thing with houses that have children in them, after all you have to think of the children. But hey, you know this kind of thing is useful in other areas. Imagine the statistical possibilities when you can flag and document every sociological element of society using the Internet in the coming age when everyone and everything is online. What if you wanted to document based on ethnic criteria. Wouldn't it be nice if you knew how many Jews and Muslims were visiting your Web Site? Absolutely, everyone knows how those Jews like to steal images and that Muslims love that Avril Leveign music. It's certainly possible. Why not just do already?
But I have to wonder something: If we exist in a judicial framework where a case against Target for violating the 508 can be found to have enough merit to be aloud to proceed, how much of a leap is it to say that MySpace could be sued for discriminating against sex offenders when they have made no effort to make sure that said offenders and have and can provide no proof that said offenders used the site for illicit purposes? Personally, I do not actually care... but there's more than one slippery slope here.
Just my 2c
I've said it before, I'll say it again:
It is absurdly difficult to accommodate screen readers.
They are undetectable, and cannot be sniffed.
Therefore, you have to assume that potentially anyone coming in can be using a screen reader. You have to program extra code, but not too much extra code, or the screen readers will be reading "spacer" "spacer" "spacer" for three hours. You need to have noscript, and noembed tags in everything, and offer an alternate text version of your site that needs to be up to date and relevant. The law even goes so far as to state that you need to have alternate text on images, or specify the location of a file with a description of the image in it. Style sheets can be against the rules or not, depending on which contradictory section you intend adhering to, and you can pretty much forget about rendering anything on the client side. Although flash can be accessible if you write your code in sequence, make your text selectable, and make sure to specify an alternate text version of your applet (just in case).
It's a frustrating, even maddening standard to work with, especially when your boss won't spring for Jaws (or the like), which he sees no point in doing because no one in your workplace actually needs it.
I wonder if Porn sites could be held to that kind standard...
The entertainment value there would be priceless.
There was a case involving Netscape a few years ago where the court decided that a link to the contract was not good enough, and that in order for a click through Eula to be valid, it had to be displayed completely. There's another case pending that involves actually reading them that could have interesting ramifications through all of contract law though.
Anyway,
I think the difference could all come back to a click being recorded and used as a signature for the purposes of digital contracts (not to be confused with digital signatures, which is a different issue). We have a whole subsection of law supporting that in the US. It doesn't sound like the rules are as robust in Oz. Oh well. Still interesting reading.
Just to point something out, I didn't see anything especially Marxist about that post other than the poster's screen name. Do you judge the content of everyone on Slashdot based on what they call themselves? Not that I disagree with either of you, but if you're using Slashdot as your baromerter for sanity, then there's something seriously wrong. That said, there was an article a couple weeks ago here on /. about the first documented case of Web rage. Could this be a second?
Or how about this:
Since we're talking about hypothetical conspiracies.
Paypal is owned by Ebay, who is largely controlled by the Saudis (don't actually know that, but it sounds good). The Bush Administration needed to demonstrate that we are still not safe in this country to the voting public (after all, it is an election year). So a call was placed to management at Ebay. Anyway, the Saudis worked with their contacts to find a bomber, who was more than happy to place the bomb (after all everyone knows there's no such thing as domestic terrorism, doncha know). And a deal was made, a bomb was placed, and a justification for ever more strict legislation was offered. Now to see if we take the bait as voters and elect more Republicans in California. Moo hah hah...
I think it all comes down to this:
Will Paypal start selling pie?
I believe they will.
But only apple, and you will be required to like it.
Thanks for the insight.
Jackass.
Yes, but they are still bound to IP numbers which run through American root servers.
You may have my license, but you cannot take my dignity.
Nice solution.
I highly recommend that you submit it the the UN, thus making the committee they've formed to deal with a null point.
Right.
That's what I said.
I'm not building my own Orwellian universe.
Our Congress and Senate have already done this for me fucknugget. Why don't you get your blind head out of your ass and pay attention to what's going on your country?
I believe your opinion is both off topic, and unsupported my friend.
Would you care to sight sources to verify or give credence to your assertion that my opinions are offtopic and unsubstantiated?
A China run internet is not related to the parent topic at all.
But if you were going to tell me that they do not deserve to have a say in a root system that was supposed to be global, then
you would be wrong.... if the Internet is supposed to be global. If it's not, then it's whole different issue.
I think the push towards this over the last few years has been growing because there is a perception that the US is and has been abusing the root system, and illegally mining for information.
Think about it this way: if you are sending information via e-mail to a colleague, and neither he or you is in the US, that information passes through the department of commerce in the US because that's where to root servers are. The US is pretty open about the fact that they monitor the root, and they tout it as an essential tool in the war on terror. It's no secret.
There are merits and metrics for that argument, however if the root system falls into the hands of the UN, would it be any better? There's been a lot of US FUD over the years that such a move would mean more internet taxes, loss of freedoms, postage for e-mails, whatever. Given the UN's track record of late, I'm not so sure they should be holding the keys either.
It seems to me that if you are going to start talking about internationalizing the internet, would it really be so difficult to build a second comparable or even compatible DNS?
The US, complaining about the loss of freedom of speech...really? Anyone else sense the irony there?
Actually I think the problem is that it takes $90,000 a year to be over the poverty level in most counties in California, and those kind of wages just aren't there for most of us. Rent is astronomical, and a programmer (or anyone for that matter) can't afford to get bye unemployed in an extremely competitive market for more than a month or two. In the rest of the country a programmer can do well for himself on a mere $70-80k. I highly recommend Minneapolis! uhm... scratch that... Don't move to Minneapolis. It's uh... cold. Yeah, that's it. Too cold for competing programmers. Freezing in fact.
Uhm... Wifi comes to mind, and it is an incredible pain in the ass to set up, work with, and troubleshoot under Linux. In real world software houses where the professionals work during the week, we know that eye candy is the topping on the cake. You don't usually say, wow, here's a flower and egg concoction... I think the frosting should be pink.
Much as I would love to agree with you...
The answer is not in front of me. The link you're looking at is for the last public revision. There's been at least one revision since then that was not released. Apple has also noted that due to security concerns, they have no intention of making any future version of MacOSX or Darwin publicly available. Therein lies the point of contention that I was asking about. Thank you for not being obnoxious.
Yes, and then they closed it. Please keep up.