Here's what you do. Everyone in Kentucky who reads this article needs to write a letter (yes, a physical letter to be placed in an envelope with a postage stamp on it) commenting on the freedom of speech and sign it "Anonymous". Then post it at the post office to the mailing address of Tim Couch with a return address of the same. Be respectful (because angry words will only help him in his cause and make him "righteous") but informative on why anonymity is important and where this country would be without it.
For help in crafting your letter you might want to read the EFF article titled Speech: Anonimty
Next week, Tim Couch will likely want to add posting things through the mail as anonymous to the bill as well.;)
Actually, you didn't purchase the software and you don't own it. That's the nasty thing about the EULAs and what makes them so wrong.
According to most EULAs *cough*Microsoft*cough* I have read, what you actually laid your money on the table for was neither the software nor the CDs. It is for the license to use the software.
So in essence, sending a letter saying you don't agree to the EULA doesn't matter to them. They will happily point to the EULA and say "But you don't own the software, we do. You have paid for the license to use it on your computer. You sent a letter to us refusing to abide by our licensing terms, therefore you have no legal right to use the software. Have a nice day and the BSA will be visiting you soon."
Software companies look at the CDs and the software as just incidentals. They don't really matter. All that matters is the license.
The thing that bugs me is that the situation seems backwards. It should be an opt-in not opt-out. We shouldn't have to sign up on a list to disallow these types of calls. Instead, it should be automatic and if you want to opt-in to having your dinner interrupted by telemarketer calls then you simply add your name and number to the list.
The downside to an opt-in system is that you would need some form of identity verification process or you would have scumbags adding people to the system without their knowledge.
*sigh* Realizing just how hard it would be to maintain such a system, the current method may be about the best we can do for now.:(
I was airborne infantry in the US Army when these things came out.
My Gameboy went all over the place with me and survived more than 30 jumps.
Sadly, it was destroyed when my rucksack and I parted company at about 150 meters above a rocky drop zone.:(
All the author is saying is we need to reapply Moore's law to another aspect of electronic manufacturing. Specifically to the creation of better, more efficient, power supplies for our wireless devices.
This is hardly ground breaking. Companies like to permutate Moore's laws all of the time. I've even heard marketing guys try to use it as a model for deciding a schedule to promote the next product.
Focusing on more efficient power supplies is indeed a worthy cause. And there are already attempts out there to use things such as fuel cell technology to help rectify this problem. So the author of the article shouldn't feel as if the issue is being ignored.
Even so, I just know that someone's going to try to reproduce the T-stop at the end of the game of chicken, per the cartoon and this pic (as noted in the original post), as soon as they buy it. And that someone is in for a rude awakening, I'm afraid.
Okay that someone's probably going to be me.;)
Just for the coolness factor, it will make a great street cruiser! Even if the performance sucks.
Another official agreed: "They'd switch phones but use the same cards. The people were stupid enough to use the same cards all of the time. It was a very good thing for us."
So now that they have exposed this strategy so it won't work anymore, what is their next strategy that they aren't telling us? What is the cost to our right to privacy?
The article talks about the "accidental" listening of cell phone calls. I've worked for the government, nothing is accidental. There's usuall three forms of paperwork for everything
Has anyone in the core development team of Linux checked CVS to find out when and by whom the "offending" code was entered? I know SCO claims it to have been in 2000, but I'm skeptical of anything they say at this point.
Wouldn't it be ironic if some of the code quoted was implemented by someone unrelated to IBM? Or would it be on par with SCO's mishandling of this case (such as when they claimed the header files that Linus wrote)?
It might be interesting to find out exactly who was involved and when.
One thing that has been puzzling me about this whole thing is the trial (pardon the pun) and error procedures this litigation has gone through. It seems to me as if the SCO lawyers were testing the waters to determine what kind of case they could make and under what laws and conditions. Is this normal?
While products that allow this style of moding might get broken by said mods and void the warranty, this represents no bad reputation for the company who manufactures as anyone who mods it runs the risk on their own. If, on the other hand, the mods are successful, the very same people will pass on the 'virtues' of said product. The companies who make hardware that can be moded in this way just need to be smart and recommend against it. Also, they are likely to make additional money on broken or moded equipment. Some people are going to want a moded version and a "clean" version, while others are going to break theirs beyond their ability to repair it.
I know a few people who own more than one X-box because they had to mod it. Of course, this example would be better if Microsoft didn't lose money on the X-box, but it is still valid.
As for "Warranty" returns, people play this type of game all the time. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers have all come to accept these games as part of the price of business (if they are successful that is) and usually have a policy or solution. It's a constant headache that will never go away, but, you are right, an increase in this area would quickly turn a company away from this type of product model.
...that Tux will make an appearance as Ford Prefect turns into a penguin (the first movie) since he didn't even make the slashdot poll for favorite mascot!
In other news, SCO has just announced that Bradley didn't invent Ctl-Atl-Del it was stolen from their code. They are now starting a lawsuit against everyone who ever used this key combination.
IMHO, Mr. Roy's letter succinctly sums up what everyone who receives one of SCO's extortion letters should say. It won't stop SCO from pursuing this line by any means. However, if enough people respond this way, SCO may soon realize they've poked their head into the badger's den.
Perhaps Mr. Roy would allow others to use his words in thier letters to SCO?
Worst of all, we use Multi (GHS's development tool) for our embedded projects. It has some quirky behaviour of it's own. So it is hard to swallow his words of quality in commercial tools.
Still he raises some interesting points, but is it valid to say Linux won't work? Not really.
IMHO, the use of any OS for embedded projects should not be arbitrary (he seems to think that is how it is decided). Linux is a perfectly valid embedded OS if your project requires much of the kernel's functionality. It is equally bad to say embedded Linux projects won't work as to say you should only develop for an embedded Linux system.
Let's send the useless 1/3 of our population to Mars: Politicians, Phone Sanitizers, etc... Dubya could be their captain and have a bath the whole way!
Dubya: The spaceship isn't supposed to land, more sort of crash.... There was a reason for that, but I can't remember what it was right now.
Reading this article on Alan Ralsky leads me to believe that he lives a "sheltered" life away from his victims. He has a criminal record and apparently has trouble recognizing right from wrong. What's worse, he doesn't see the logic behind the laws, filters and rights of others to keep spam from thier inboxes.
I think it would be great to have a well publicized and open debate between this spammer and one of his victims. Furthermore, it would be even more interesting to allow viewer call-ins and people in the audience to ask questions. To be fair we would also have to have a non-spammer who likes to receive spam on stage as a third opinion (that might be extremely difficult to obtain).
On second thought, it sounds like an episode of Jerry Springer...
*CRASH - the chair splinters into pieces as the victim hits Al Ralsky with it*
At the company where I work we use Redhat for some of our servers and FreeBSD for others. Our company is rather unconcerned with the "potentials" of SCO's claims. At current we have no plans to switch our Redhat servers to anything else, but we have personnel well versed in FreeBSD, HP-UX and SCO Unix to be able to make a switch if need be.
In the mean time, we have discussed the possibility of doing a switch with certain key individuals in our company and the impacts involved. While my company doesn't have a contingency plan prepared, we are small enough that we can react quickly to such a change if necessary. For those larger companies, my advice is to make your contingency plans now. With everything I've seen about this recently, I would say you have little to worry about. But it never hurts to have the contingnecies prepared, just in case.
The trailer isn't very helpful in explaining what the movie is about. But this might be.
BTW, I have a lot of misgivings about a movie when they say things like 'This film is not a direct adaptation of any of the nine stories in that book, but is instead a prequel of sorts to them, having its origins in a script by Jeff Vintar that was originally called 'Hardwired' that was adapted to fit into Asimov's stories, but not based on any specific one. ' It sounds like they are capitalizing on the Asimov name without actually using his stories.
What most people don't realize, but what I hope most slashdotters do, is that the DMCA was driven by the politicians who were backed by groups like the RIAA and MPAA. This means that despite it's seeming purpose of protecting rights (which it doesn't do anyways), it merely gives the groups mentioned above more ways to pursue "pirates" and "hackers." The sad fact is they don't have to really prove anything, just invoke the DMCA and they've got a case.
In light of recent events (i.e. the RIAA's mass suing of people), it would be nice to see some one in Congress tackle the problem of eliminating this law, which has no useful purpose and serves the interest of a select few over those of the majority of the populous of the USA.
Of course, I'd also like a pony for Christmas too.
Actually, in Asimov's works the main purpose of Robots was to do work that was too dangerous for humans (i.e. asteroid mining) or that required a precision human operators couldn't achieve. (See I, Robot for more details.)
As for Robots designed for war, Asimov covered the possibility of it in one of the Robot Novels (which one, eludes me right now - I'm going to have to read them all again!). To get around the first law, there was a roboticist who was planning on making a robot that was a spaceship. The robot would then be conditioned, through its training, that all spaceships are robots and therefore safe to destroy.
As for actually making robots for war. It not only isn't unreasonable, it is very likely. Most people think of robots in the general humanoid shape. Whether a robot is humanoid or not is completely irrelevent for its use for war. In fact it might be more of a liability, because of the complexity involved. Robotic war-machines have been the stuff of SF for quite a while. But just looking at today's posts there is an article on a helicopter with a robotic brain. This seems to me to be the better direction to go for robots for war - specialization.
As for actually using the 3(or 4) laws of robotics in real robots, keep in mind Asimov was trying to give the robots a morality to work within his stories. Again, if you read I, Robot, Asimov makes the case that a decent human being would follow the precepts laid out by the 3 laws of robotics anyways within reason anyways...Of course that is one reason it is called Science Fiction.;)
People fear what they do not understand. Sadly, in this case, it is the leaders of our government who do not understand.
Any time I see debate over anything like this, I see the fear in the "eyes" of one side.
For the many who are against this because they fear mankind will play god, I can only extend my deep sadness. They fear for the validity of thier faith by the actions of mankind. Mankind will always strive for perfection and it always seems to create the fear in some that we may succeed. What then of our faith? This is sad, for these people will never know true peace.
Perhaps what they should really fear is the loss of the scientists who do any of this research. If we have a ban in the United States that the rest of the UN does not support, then the research will move to other countries. This is good for the other countries, but bad for the US. How long before other industries and researches follow? If the ban is lifted later, do we really think the scientists will return to our country to continue the research?
Bans on anything have historically been bad ideas (prohibition springs immediately to mind but history is riddled with other, better examples). But bans on scientific research seems to be particularly bad. When that happens, we loose a resource more precious than any metal or gem - the human mind!
Slashdot Mirror
This is great news! Now I can bash Seinfeld and Microsoft at the same time! ;)
Here's what you do. Everyone in Kentucky who reads this article needs to write a letter (yes, a physical letter to be placed in an envelope with a postage stamp on it) commenting on the freedom of speech and sign it "Anonymous". Then post it at the post office to the mailing address of Tim Couch with a return address of the same. Be respectful (because angry words will only help him in his cause and make him "righteous") but informative on why anonymity is important and where this country would be without it.
For help in crafting your letter you might want to read the EFF article titled Speech: Anonimty
Next week, Tim Couch will likely want to add posting things through the mail as anonymous to the bill as well. ;)
I've bbbeeen bbbeeeta tesstingg the rumbbbllle pppaack for the llaaast tttwwoo dddayys.
Actually, you didn't purchase the software and you don't own it. That's the nasty thing about the EULAs and what makes them so wrong.
According to most EULAs *cough*Microsoft*cough* I have read, what you actually laid your money on the table for was neither the software nor the CDs. It is for the license to use the software.
So in essence, sending a letter saying you don't agree to the EULA doesn't matter to them. They will happily point to the EULA and say "But you don't own the software, we do. You have paid for the license to use it on your computer. You sent a letter to us refusing to abide by our licensing terms, therefore you have no legal right to use the software. Have a nice day and the BSA will be visiting you soon."
Software companies look at the CDs and the software as just incidentals. They don't really matter. All that matters is the license.
Actually, Virtual PC does work on XP Home. I use it on a laptop with XP Home to use Windows 2000 and a couple of linux distros. It works just fine.
It isn't listed as a supported host OS on Microsoft's website, but who reads the manual these days anyways? ;)
The thing that bugs me is that the situation seems backwards. It should be an opt-in not opt-out. We shouldn't have to sign up on a list to disallow these types of calls. Instead, it should be automatic and if you want to opt-in to having your dinner interrupted by telemarketer calls then you simply add your name and number to the list.
The downside to an opt-in system is that you would need some form of identity verification process or you would have scumbags adding people to the system without their knowledge.
*sigh* Realizing just how hard it would be to maintain such a system, the current method may be about the best we can do for now. :(
I was airborne infantry in the US Army when these things came out. My Gameboy went all over the place with me and survived more than 30 jumps. Sadly, it was destroyed when my rucksack and I parted company at about 150 meters above a rocky drop zone. :(
All the author is saying is we need to reapply Moore's law to another aspect of electronic manufacturing. Specifically to the creation of better, more efficient, power supplies for our wireless devices.
This is hardly ground breaking. Companies like to permutate Moore's laws all of the time. I've even heard marketing guys try to use it as a model for deciding a schedule to promote the next product.
Focusing on more efficient power supplies is indeed a worthy cause. And there are already attempts out there to use things such as fuel cell technology to help rectify this problem. So the author of the article shouldn't feel as if the issue is being ignored.
By the looks of it, it steers like a train.
Even so, I just know that someone's going to try to reproduce the T-stop at the end of the game of chicken, per the cartoon and this pic (as noted in the original post), as soon as they buy it. And that someone is in for a rude awakening, I'm afraid.
Okay that someone's probably going to be me. ;)
Just for the coolness factor, it will make a great street cruiser! Even if the performance sucks.
So now that they have exposed this strategy so it won't work anymore, what is their next strategy that they aren't telling us? What is the cost to our right to privacy?
The article talks about the "accidental" listening of cell phone calls. I've worked for the government, nothing is accidental. There's usuall three forms of paperwork for everything
Well this time Judge Wells told SCO to "put up and shut up." So if they don't comply, they get slammed.
That's about as win-win as we can get until April 17.
Has anyone in the core development team of Linux checked CVS to find out when and by whom the "offending" code was entered? I know SCO claims it to have been in 2000, but I'm skeptical of anything they say at this point.
Wouldn't it be ironic if some of the code quoted was implemented by someone unrelated to IBM? Or would it be on par with SCO's mishandling of this case (such as when they claimed the header files that Linus wrote)?
It might be interesting to find out exactly who was involved and when.
One thing that has been puzzling me about this whole thing is the trial (pardon the pun) and error procedures this litigation has gone through. It seems to me as if the SCO lawyers were testing the waters to determine what kind of case they could make and under what laws and conditions. Is this normal?
While products that allow this style of moding might get broken by said mods and void the warranty, this represents no bad reputation for the company who manufactures as anyone who mods it runs the risk on their own. If, on the other hand, the mods are successful, the very same people will pass on the 'virtues' of said product. The companies who make hardware that can be moded in this way just need to be smart and recommend against it. Also, they are likely to make additional money on broken or moded equipment. Some people are going to want a moded version and a "clean" version, while others are going to break theirs beyond their ability to repair it.
I know a few people who own more than one X-box because they had to mod it. Of course, this example would be better if Microsoft didn't lose money on the X-box, but it is still valid.
As for "Warranty" returns, people play this type of game all the time. Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers have all come to accept these games as part of the price of business (if they are successful that is) and usually have a policy or solution. It's a constant headache that will never go away, but, you are right, an increase in this area would quickly turn a company away from this type of product model.
...that Tux will make an appearance as Ford Prefect turns into a penguin (the first movie) since he didn't even make the slashdot poll for favorite mascot!
do we all have to stop using it?
In other news, SCO has just announced that Bradley didn't invent Ctl-Atl-Del it was stolen from their code. They are now starting a lawsuit against everyone who ever used this key combination.
IMHO, Mr. Roy's letter succinctly sums up what everyone who receives one of SCO's extortion letters should say. It won't stop SCO from pursuing this line by any means. However, if enough people respond this way, SCO may soon realize they've poked their head into the badger's den.
Perhaps Mr. Roy would allow others to use his words in thier letters to SCO?
Eventually, one has to put the game controller down to move on with life (hey what's this in my hand?).
And where are the other three going to go for multiplayer games?
Worst of all, we use Multi (GHS's development tool) for our embedded projects. It has some quirky behaviour of it's own. So it is hard to swallow his words of quality in commercial tools.
Still he raises some interesting points, but is it valid to say Linux won't work? Not really.
IMHO, the use of any OS for embedded projects should not be arbitrary (he seems to think that is how it is decided). Linux is a perfectly valid embedded OS if your project requires much of the kernel's functionality. It is equally bad to say embedded Linux projects won't work as to say you should only develop for an embedded Linux system.
Pure Fallacy!
Let's send the useless 1/3 of our population to Mars: Politicians, Phone Sanitizers, etc... Dubya could be their captain and have a bath the whole way!
Dubya: The spaceship isn't supposed to land, more sort of crash. ... There was a reason for that, but I can't remember what it was right now.
Arthur Dent: You're all a bunch of loonies!
Dubya: Ah, yes, that was it.
Reading this article on Alan Ralsky leads me to believe that he lives a "sheltered" life away from his victims. He has a criminal record and apparently has trouble recognizing right from wrong. What's worse, he doesn't see the logic behind the laws, filters and rights of others to keep spam from thier inboxes.
I think it would be great to have a well publicized and open debate between this spammer and one of his victims. Furthermore, it would be even more interesting to allow viewer call-ins and people in the audience to ask questions. To be fair we would also have to have a non-spammer who likes to receive spam on stage as a third opinion (that might be extremely difficult to obtain).
On second thought, it sounds like an episode of Jerry Springer...
*CRASH - the chair splinters into pieces as the victim hits Al Ralsky with it*
At the company where I work we use Redhat for some of our servers and FreeBSD for others. Our company is rather unconcerned with the "potentials" of SCO's claims. At current we have no plans to switch our Redhat servers to anything else, but we have personnel well versed in FreeBSD, HP-UX and SCO Unix to be able to make a switch if need be.
In the mean time, we have discussed the possibility of doing a switch with certain key individuals in our company and the impacts involved. While my company doesn't have a contingency plan prepared, we are small enough that we can react quickly to such a change if necessary. For those larger companies, my advice is to make your contingency plans now. With everything I've seen about this recently, I would say you have little to worry about. But it never hurts to have the contingnecies prepared, just in case.
The trailer isn't very helpful in explaining what the movie is about. But this might be.
BTW, I have a lot of misgivings about a movie when they say things like 'This film is not a direct adaptation of any of the nine stories in that book, but is instead a prequel of sorts to them, having its origins in a script by Jeff Vintar that was originally called 'Hardwired' that was adapted to fit into Asimov's stories, but not based on any specific one. ' It sounds like they are capitalizing on the Asimov name without actually using his stories.
What most people don't realize, but what I hope most slashdotters do, is that the DMCA was driven by the politicians who were backed by groups like the RIAA and MPAA. This means that despite it's seeming purpose of protecting rights (which it doesn't do anyways), it merely gives the groups mentioned above more ways to pursue "pirates" and "hackers." The sad fact is they don't have to really prove anything, just invoke the DMCA and they've got a case.
In light of recent events (i.e. the RIAA's mass suing of people), it would be nice to see some one in Congress tackle the problem of eliminating this law, which has no useful purpose and serves the interest of a select few over those of the majority of the populous of the USA.
Of course, I'd also like a pony for Christmas too.
Actually, in Asimov's works the main purpose of Robots was to do work that was too dangerous for humans (i.e. asteroid mining) or that required a precision human operators couldn't achieve. (See I, Robot for more details.)
As for Robots designed for war, Asimov covered the possibility of it in one of the Robot Novels (which one, eludes me right now - I'm going to have to read them all again!). To get around the first law, there was a roboticist who was planning on making a robot that was a spaceship. The robot would then be conditioned, through its training, that all spaceships are robots and therefore safe to destroy.
As for actually making robots for war. It not only isn't unreasonable, it is very likely. Most people think of robots in the general humanoid shape. Whether a robot is humanoid or not is completely irrelevent for its use for war. In fact it might be more of a liability, because of the complexity involved. Robotic war-machines have been the stuff of SF for quite a while. But just looking at today's posts there is an article on a helicopter with a robotic brain. This seems to me to be the better direction to go for robots for war - specialization.
As for actually using the 3(or 4) laws of robotics in real robots, keep in mind Asimov was trying to give the robots a morality to work within his stories. Again, if you read I, Robot, Asimov makes the case that a decent human being would follow the precepts laid out by the 3 laws of robotics anyways within reason anyways...Of course that is one reason it is called Science Fiction. ;)
People fear what they do not understand. Sadly, in this case, it is the leaders of our government who do not understand.
Any time I see debate over anything like this, I see the fear in the "eyes" of one side. For the many who are against this because they fear mankind will play god, I can only extend my deep sadness. They fear for the validity of thier faith by the actions of mankind. Mankind will always strive for perfection and it always seems to create the fear in some that we may succeed. What then of our faith? This is sad, for these people will never know true peace.
Perhaps what they should really fear is the loss of the scientists who do any of this research. If we have a ban in the United States that the rest of the UN does not support, then the research will move to other countries. This is good for the other countries, but bad for the US. How long before other industries and researches follow? If the ban is lifted later, do we really think the scientists will return to our country to continue the research?
Bans on anything have historically been bad ideas (prohibition springs immediately to mind but history is riddled with other, better examples). But bans on scientific research seems to be particularly bad. When that happens, we loose a resource more precious than any metal or gem - the human mind!