They will do nothing more that create opportunities for those protesting to be arrested and assaulted, and in the end discredited.
Figure out how to make enough people care more about who is in office and what they do than their favorite TV show or video game, and you might have a shot at improving things.
The problem here is that most people in the U.S. are willingly abdicating their right to hold government accountable.
Our nations' problems aren't the fault of stupid or corrupt politicians or greedy corporations. They are the fault of an ambivalent electorate.
If the people really cared, the politicians would be held accountable, and the problems (at least some of them) would be fixed.
It is impressive to so completely declare yourself a hypocrite in one post. Well done.
"People should be free to consume whatever media they want to, as long as it isn't hurting anybody no one should have the right to tell me what I can and can't see"
and yet:
"I would find it supremely offensive to have some clensing squad go over it and take out the stuff that might offend people"
So everyone should be able to watch whatever they want as long as they agree with you. What if there are people who WANT to watch santized versions? You just said they should be able to watch what they want.
This isn't enforced censorship. This is a group of people who are specificly ASKING for a censored version. Does the fact that you find it offensive for them to only want to watch part of your creation overrule your belief that people should be able to watch what they want? Does that hurt you?
Or is it just you that should be allowed to watch what you want? Or perhaps you think people should only be allowed to watch what they want if they don't place any limits on what that might be? Does fast fowarding through a scene offend you in the same way? Or perhaps just turning off a movie half way through? What, really, is the difference.
Which is it - the right to view what they want? Or the right to enforce your artisitc vision on others? The two are diametrically opposed.
Provided you disclose openly that you have modified it, why should I care?
It might also be important to note that the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, when copyrights actually had reasonable terms, so this ruling would not affect you at all. Were it still under copyright however, the real question with a book is unrelated to copyright law. You are free to take an original authorized version of the book, and rip pages out and resell it. Were that not true, many used books stores would be in big trouble. That is not what copyright law is for. A derivative work is taking parts of the material and using them in a new work you publish. It says nothing of physical modifications to an authorized work - that is a completely new interpretation of the law.
What makes a DVD different is that it is fixed in a medium that is effectively unmodifiable.
I find it amussing that so many here consider the "artistic integrity" of something they created more important that what I do with something I buy.
You can make whatever copyrighted work you want, and unless it is legal currency or a U.S. flag (or possiblly one or two other things), I have the legal rights with my copy to shred it, burn it, defacate on it, read every third line, read it backwards, or use it as wallpaper. I am free to do my best to find the treatment of it hte is absolutely the most offensive to the creator and copyright holder, and do precisly that, provided it is not one of the few, specific rights reserved under copyright law. I can resell my copy, in whole or in part. I am even free to rip it apart, and sell 1inch square sections of each page on eBay.
The limits of copyright law are very specific (or supposed to be). It is illegal to sell a deriative work. Fair use says I can make a completel copy of it is some cases. So the question is, is it illegal to pay someone to edit the copy I bought to remove parts I don't like? Is the single edited copy of the authorized orignal a fair use (simialar to the physical modification of an origanl authorized book), or distribution of a deriatvie work.
Whether one person thinks it is moral or not to not retain the full artistic integrity is uttery unimportant. Copyright law doesn't deal in "artistic integrity" or vision. It deals in specifc commerically exploitable rights.
This case turns on much finer points of copyright law than apparently most people here realize.
But then again, this is slashdot.
I fail to see any reason why this is amussing to you unless you oppose the right of an individual to have opinions differing from yours and fail to recognize thier right to promote them. You have gathered together a mixed bag of fruit here, and called it apples.
I am also a Mormon. Let me clarify for you a few thing on the points your raise.
You buying alcohol on Sunday does not necessarily affect me, though I could iterate a number of cases where it may. If a majority of people in a particular area happen to feel that Sunday is a holy day, and warrants respect as such, including limiting certain activities then so far, this nation allows them to support laws for thier area that provide for that. Not living in an area where this kind of law exists, I can only speulate, but I would tend to believe that those who do live there feel that such limits improve the overall quality and character of thier neighborhod. Would you deny them the right to vote to uphold a community envirnoment they want to live in and as such reflects the views of that majority, simply because you disagree? If it is not violating your fundamental rights, deal with it or don't go there. Respect for a sabbath day is a fundamental aspect of the Judeo-Christian philisophies which, regardless of your feeling on them, are a core underpining in the laws and culture of the US form the very beginning. Your criticism because you disagree is simply stating that you wish impose your will on others.
If you want to marry a person of the same sex (note I said marry, not engage in physical relations), it affects me because you are redefining what I view to be a sacred relationship that has been a core unit of our culture, and its predecessors for an incredibly long time. Moreover you are redefining it to include a practice which, completely within my rights, I find morally abhorrant. It affects me because you are taking something I find offensive, and elevating it to the level of something I consider sacred. Therefore, I oppose it. Should we reach a time where enough people disagree with me, it will become legal. And, while I will remain opposed to it and will continue to find it moraly offensive, my views will not affect the law.
Abortion does not affect me personally beyond the fact I view it as the murder of an innocent baby. I fully understand that not everyone shares this viewpoint. But given that I do, how could I not oppose murder? Do you support legalized murder? If not, then your only basis for supporting abortion must rest in a belief that it is not murder, a viewpoint to which you are just as entitled to as I am to mine. Niether viewpoint has a means to reconcile with the other, and therefore they will remain opposed.
Christian are continually defending what they view as critical values for a healthy society. Some do choose to try to impose thier beliefs on others. Likewise, people who hold other values are pushing just as hard to tear down the very things Christians hold as sacred. This goes both ways. You might notice that what the Christians are most often attemtping to do is to stop the elimination of these values which have been upheld in the law since the inception of thisnation, not impose new rules. You seem to feel you have some sort of high ground on this. You are wrong. You appear just as strongly opposed to these views. Unless you have some universal acceptable basis for declaring ultimate truth, your views and the views of other will differ, and each will press for the laws to reflect thier views.
So, in short, get a clue. You defend your views, I will defend mine, and the democratic republic will determine the outcome. To complain that a different group disagrees with you is to complain about the fundamental nature of a democratic system.
I find the court ruling disappointing, and hope it will be reversed on appeal. The situation created no harm to the copyright holder, depriveed them of no revenue and in fact created an increase in sales for them by creating a derivative that some people woul
Unfortunately, when you dispute something, the three big credit agencies go back to whoever reported the entry with the dispute, and ask them to verify. If they insist that it is valid, it stays on, like it or not.
You always have the right to have a disputing comment added to your report on any item, however comments are free form text, and have absolutely no effect on the computer-generated numerical credit scores that drive most credit decisions. So adding a disputing comment is next to useless in practice.
I had someone who was upset with me convince a collection agency to put an entry on my credit report. It was listed as an uncollected judgement even though it was an amount I didn't owe and there had never been any sort of legal action. It took me over a year and an eventually an attorney to get it cleared up. At that point the compnay who reported it said "oops, sorry, that was a mistake", and removed it. Of course they refused to do that for a year during mutiple letters and phone calls from me, and it took multiple contacts from my attorney. And the best part is that no one is liable for the fact that my credit was screwed up for a year and it cost me money to get it fixed. Apparently the law doesn't even have provisions for me to get back what I had to pay my attorney for someone elses "mistake" - which was really deliberate and malicious fraud.
So, really, getting things off of your credit is not always as easy as it sounds. There are tricks you can use to do it, some of them permenant, some temporary, but they don't always work.
I live in Florida and voted in Florida and amazingly enough I used a PAPER ballot. Not every part of Florida is incapable of conducting an election....
Vote for who? What vote can I possibly cast that will preserve my freedoms? It is going to be Bush or Kerry, and neither one is going to do anything but support this crap.
This is the first post of the entire thread that actually shows just a touch of insight. I am a U.S. citizen from birth, live in the US, and vote here. Who do I want in office? Clinton? Kerry? Bush? Or how about by party - the Republicans? Democrats? Greens? Libretarians? That is like asking if I want my left nut chopped off, or my right nut?
This is the problem right here though:
...if the citizens of the US...would be better informed...
I could go on for days about this - how it got this way and why it is a problem. I have strong disagreements with a lot of the posters on this thread, but the root cause of most of Americas problems is exactly this - political apathy.
(On the other hand, if we were all paying attnetion in the U.S., who knows what countries we may or may not invade.....)
I used to work for a company with a policy (a quiet one mind you, but I was a manager) of every year identifying the bottom 5% of the employees and laying them off. This wasn't just forced rating distributions - sorry, you rated low this year - you are gone. And 5% was expected to be identified every year.
I don't work there anymore...and I wouldn't work in the environment you talk about either unless I simply had no choice.
Obviously there are WAY too many people too high up in corporate America with ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE how to motivate and manage people.
The solution isn't to force them to unbundle the products. Let them bundle whatever they want. Just don't let them prevent unbundling, and anything that comes with the OS has to be completely documented - no "hidden" or "undocumented" features. Anything that is part of the base product distribution has to be documented enough that it can be replaced component by component. Prevent MS from shipping any other product that uses an API from the base O/S distribution - even a single function call - that has not been publically documented for at least 6 months.
Let them bundle anything, but let any vendor replace any part of the core, and force enough documentation to allow these replacement pieces to be developed.
Do any of you actually understand the patent system, and why and how it was designed? It is there to PROMOTE innovation by providing a limited monopoly to the inventor. However a patent is supposed to be original, non-obvious, etc.
In addition, patents used to be effectively restricted to manufacturing practices - i.e. turning raw materials into finished good. This worked, and worked well, and was necessary to promote innovation given the typical expense of a manufacturing process.
It is only through a really odd interpretation of a court decision that the USPTO decided that software is patentable (they denied a patent because one part of the manufacturing process required a bit software, the court ruled that that bit of software wasn't enough to make it unpatentable, and suddenly the PTO decides that must mean ALL software is patentable - who knows what they were smoking/inhaling/shooting up at the time) . And who knows why they decided busines methods should be patentable - I'm not aware of any basis in law or case law for that.
On top of that, the USPTO is neither inclined nor qualified to actually determine if a patent if original and non-obvious. They are a revenue center for other programs. I believe that started during the Clinton era, and last time a checked (several years ago) patent fees were contributing over $300M a year to other government programs.
Bad policy, combined with a perceived cash cow. It isn't going to change easily. What politician is going to willingly put that "invisible" funding at risk?
We need to go back to the actual legislative basis of patents rather than some half-assed interpretation of case law. Good luck on how to get there though.
I have consistenyl refused to sign that type of agreement - and it has never afected my employment. Most companies throw that in, but very few will refuse you employment if you don't agree. Get a lawyer, get the terms changed. Most of the employers I've had actually gave me the first few weeks of the job to have it reviewed and work out any changes.
Personally, I do not enjoy using the Windows OS, and only do so when I need to. For others it is well suited. But if thier O/S is so awesome, then they shouldn't have a problem relying on that for competition, should they? But they don't. The laws violated in both the US and EU are not about MS having a good or bad product, or even about htem having monopoly power with thier O/S. They are about leveraging monopoly power in one market to gain a monopoly in another. They are about using monopoly power to PREVENT competition.
Are the motivations fo government officals pure? Of course not, or they wouldn't have been elected in the first place. But the laws are there, they are being violated, and they should be either repealed or enforced. You don't like anti-trust laws, campaign to change them. If you would simply like them ignored, then why bother having laws in the first place?
Even though the license is under US law, it is the EU market that has been affected and the it is practices and activities in the EU market that ar ebeing looked at here. I don't think jusridiction will be an issue at all....
There is a fundamental difference being having a competitive advantage (which is a GOOD thing) and anti-comptetitive behavior. Having a monopoly isn't even illegal. Using an existing monopoly (such as Windows) as leverage to acquite another monoppoly (such as browsers or media players) is however illegal.
Sure they will publish them - then patent them so you still have to license them, and they loose no control. Nothing that has occurred or been proposed as a punishment for anti-completive behavior has made any difference except breaking them up. The MS culture is what drives this, and no directive will change that.
If someone wants to fix it, it would be simple, but MS wouldn't like it at all.
1. Allow MS to bundle and integrate anything they want into the operating system.
2. Require each and every exported function from any DLL, EXE, COM object or anything similar that can be called from outside of that compiled module to be publicly documented as part of the specification.
3. Create one or more third party (non-ms controlled) entities who control the Windows compatible logo certification program, basing their certification on the published API specs from MS.
4. Require MS to be, say, 98% or better compatible on any Windows O/S or product before it ships and allow any other company to certify with no MS input. If an MS product doesn't certify - it doesn't ship. This includes service packs.
5. Require MS to support their O/S even if third party components are installed in place of MS components provided the third party components are certified.
6. Treat failures to interoperate with certified third party products as MS compatibility certification failure - i.e. fix quickly, or stop ship until fixed.
Sure...you don't have to include DRM - so what? Tell me, if I encode my son's birthday party in WMA - content I own, and later want in another format, how would I do that? Guess what - I CAN'T! Not legally. The format is legally bound up so that you have to use MS tools to read and write it legally, and the licenses for those tools, last I checked, won't let you produce another digital copy in the same quality. Maybe I could burn and then re-rip a CD of it - unless MS can convince the market to forgo that as well...and what a dumb-ass way to have to do it in the first place.
WMA does even leave you with rights to your own content, let alone purchased rights to someone elses'.
Like cattle to the butcher we march, herded by corporate shepherds anxious to feed of us and our children...
There is a VERY good reason why Israel hasn't been invaded - they have comprehensively kicked the shit out of every one of thier neighbors who have tried - all within the confines of conventional warfare, in spite of being a nuclear nation. Which one of thier neighbors is really up to getting smacked down again these days? That is the NUMBER 1 reason Isreal hasn't been invaded.
In fact, the US spends a lot of money to both keep Isreal strong enough to do that, and to keep some level of influence of when they do it. I'm neihter condoning nor condeming these policies - just stating that they exist.
...and keep microsoft from abusing thier position it would be very easy - without even breaking them up.
1 - Establish an independant (i.e. not MS controlled) program for certifying a piece of software is compliant with the Windows API. Any vendor wishing to claim "logo" compliance would have to be certified by this company. Microsoft software would have to be certified by this company in all cases.
2 - Allow Microsoft to incorporate ANY feature into the OS that they want, but allow any component to be substitutded by another certified componenet by either the user or a vendor without penalties or losing support.
3 - Require Microsoft to disclose the complete API (DLL exports, COM interfaces, etc) for EVERY component that ships as part of the OS to the certification company. This disclosure must be sufficient to allow comprehensive complaince validation - functions, return types, paramters, valid inputs and outputs, etc - enough to build solid test cases. Any program that uses any "undocumented" functions or features may not be logo certified. In Microsoft's case, failing certification means that it can't ship the product.
4 - Require the certification company to make the documented APIs available to the public, but allow it to charge fees for logo certifications. (Non-MS vendors are not required to be certified)
5 - Empower the certification company to broker and resolve post-certification compliance and compatibility issues by requiring updates to compliant componenets and/or further disclosure of API details.
This lets MS innovate in any way they want, embedd anything they want in the OS, and protect any API they want. But if they bundle it with the OS (thier monopoly) they have to subject it to external certification and full API disclosure.
I completely support the repeal of the Patriot Act - the dead white men were right, and there were many, many other men who died before them fighting for it. The men we quote are the leaders who survived the conflict to gain freedom. How many more great men died in the battle?
Now, without actually being asked, these freedoms are consistently compromised. The PR is to make us happy about it. But the law does nothing to fix the problems it claims to address.
If you would like to give up your freedoms, there are plenty of other countries I could recommend that would be more than happy to have some more citizens to oppress.
I must disagree however that Bush and Ashcroft have more damage than anyone else in our history. That is simply not fair to those shining examples of despotism who have gone before. The patriot act of today only builds on the foundations of a solid police state laid quietly, year after year, decade after decade, by men who were misguided by fear and/or blinded by greed and power. Don't give our current administration more credit than the deserve. If anything, they are simply less adept at hiding thier actions.
By sadly, the problem remains how to fix it. Would you have elected Gore instead? Would he have run the country better? No, we would simply have had different special interests getting thier way. Who would you vote for in the next election? What candidate has not already sold his soul to get on the ballot? Pick a candidate, and then guess which of your rights will be denied during that term? Would you like your freeedom of religion removed? Spyed on by your government? You right to bear arms revoked? Your free speech limited because it offends someone? Your free association limited? You property rights restricted in favor or corporate profits? Your taxes raised to promote the interests of billion dollar corporations? Or perhaps some truely innovative new way of subjugating citiziens in favor of some group or other?
Name a candidate who has the faintest hope of being elected that will not actively destroy some aspect of the foundation of the nation. Name one in the last 50 years.
THere is no point to oppoosing this or any other particular law change.
If something (who knows what) is not done to stop the direct translation of money into legislation, it won't matter.
Fix the root cause, the rest will come into line.
If you don't, any other stops won't really matter...
A significant portion of the linux user based could go get the source tree, recompile, and fix the bug. ANY distro could have produced a patch from that point forward. Some distros (like Gentoo) would have picked that up very quickly, possibly in a couple hours as has happened with soem of the recent SSH issues.
With Windows, patching the sources does nothing for the user. It is only the final binary release that helps, and nothing before that.
So if you are a competent Linux admin, and need the fix, it was there long before Windows. We already know Linux needs to grow some more for the average user.
I regularly recoomend PHP to people for web applicaitons - a huge amount of the work that is needed on most web sites is best suited to something like PHP - a scripting language.
I am a Java devleoper though, and was an early adopter of the technology. Use the tool that suits your problem. If you are looking to hack something together for a web site - use a scripting language. If you are building something that will be reusable and extensible, have an actual architecture, and warrants the design and implementations complexities that are simply not well suited to scripting languages, then use a language like Java.
I don't personally recommend VB for anything really, though I realize it has a fanatic following as well. As for.Net, well, let's see if it is still the big "MS-thing" when it has been around long enough for anyone to actually have the experience to claim to be a.Net archiitect. Right now, there simply hasn't been enough time to achieve that.
As far as the article - the guy is an idiot, and his view on software development is clearly limited to a very narrow scope of the problems. The real worlld is far more complex that he apparently realizes.
One nice thing about living in the US - it is so damn big and has enough people that it takes true creativity to imple,ent that kind of police state. But they are working on it as fast as they can.....
Slashdot Mirror
Riots? Please....
They will do nothing more that create opportunities for those protesting to be arrested and assaulted, and in the end discredited.
Figure out how to make enough people care more about who is in office and what they do than their favorite TV show or video game, and you might have a shot at improving things.
The problem here is that most people in the U.S. are willingly abdicating their right to hold government accountable.
Our nations' problems aren't the fault of stupid or corrupt politicians or greedy corporations. They are the fault of an ambivalent electorate.
If the people really cared, the politicians would be held accountable, and the problems (at least some of them) would be fixed.
It is impressive to so completely declare yourself a hypocrite in one post. Well done.
"People should be free to consume whatever media they want to, as long as it isn't hurting anybody no one should have the right to tell me what I can and can't see"
and yet:
"I would find it supremely offensive to have some clensing squad go over it and take out the stuff that might offend people"
So everyone should be able to watch whatever they want as long as they agree with you. What if there are people who WANT to watch santized versions? You just said they should be able to watch what they want.
This isn't enforced censorship. This is a group of people who are specificly ASKING for a censored version. Does the fact that you find it offensive for them to only want to watch part of your creation overrule your belief that people should be able to watch what they want? Does that hurt you?
Or is it just you that should be allowed to watch what you want? Or perhaps you think people should only be allowed to watch what they want if they don't place any limits on what that might be? Does fast fowarding through a scene offend you in the same way? Or perhaps just turning off a movie half way through? What, really, is the difference.
Which is it - the right to view what they want? Or the right to enforce your artisitc vision on others? The two are diametrically opposed.
Provided you disclose openly that you have modified it, why should I care? It might also be important to note that the Book of Mormon was published in 1830, when copyrights actually had reasonable terms, so this ruling would not affect you at all. Were it still under copyright however, the real question with a book is unrelated to copyright law. You are free to take an original authorized version of the book, and rip pages out and resell it. Were that not true, many used books stores would be in big trouble. That is not what copyright law is for. A derivative work is taking parts of the material and using them in a new work you publish. It says nothing of physical modifications to an authorized work - that is a completely new interpretation of the law. What makes a DVD different is that it is fixed in a medium that is effectively unmodifiable. I find it amussing that so many here consider the "artistic integrity" of something they created more important that what I do with something I buy. You can make whatever copyrighted work you want, and unless it is legal currency or a U.S. flag (or possiblly one or two other things), I have the legal rights with my copy to shred it, burn it, defacate on it, read every third line, read it backwards, or use it as wallpaper. I am free to do my best to find the treatment of it hte is absolutely the most offensive to the creator and copyright holder, and do precisly that, provided it is not one of the few, specific rights reserved under copyright law. I can resell my copy, in whole or in part. I am even free to rip it apart, and sell 1inch square sections of each page on eBay. The limits of copyright law are very specific (or supposed to be). It is illegal to sell a deriative work. Fair use says I can make a completel copy of it is some cases. So the question is, is it illegal to pay someone to edit the copy I bought to remove parts I don't like? Is the single edited copy of the authorized orignal a fair use (simialar to the physical modification of an origanl authorized book), or distribution of a deriatvie work. Whether one person thinks it is moral or not to not retain the full artistic integrity is uttery unimportant. Copyright law doesn't deal in "artistic integrity" or vision. It deals in specifc commerically exploitable rights. This case turns on much finer points of copyright law than apparently most people here realize. But then again, this is slashdot.
I fail to see any reason why this is amussing to you unless you oppose the right of an individual to have opinions differing from yours and fail to recognize thier right to promote them. You have gathered together a mixed bag of fruit here, and called it apples.
I am also a Mormon. Let me clarify for you a few thing on the points your raise.
You buying alcohol on Sunday does not necessarily affect me, though I could iterate a number of cases where it may. If a majority of people in a particular area happen to feel that Sunday is a holy day, and warrants respect as such, including limiting certain activities then so far, this nation allows them to support laws for thier area that provide for that. Not living in an area where this kind of law exists, I can only speulate, but I would tend to believe that those who do live there feel that such limits improve the overall quality and character of thier neighborhod. Would you deny them the right to vote to uphold a community envirnoment they want to live in and as such reflects the views of that majority, simply because you disagree? If it is not violating your fundamental rights, deal with it or don't go there. Respect for a sabbath day is a fundamental aspect of the Judeo-Christian philisophies which, regardless of your feeling on them, are a core underpining in the laws and culture of the US form the very beginning. Your criticism because you disagree is simply stating that you wish impose your will on others.
If you want to marry a person of the same sex (note I said marry, not engage in physical relations), it affects me because you are redefining what I view to be a sacred relationship that has been a core unit of our culture, and its predecessors for an incredibly long time. Moreover you are redefining it to include a practice which, completely within my rights, I find morally abhorrant. It affects me because you are taking something I find offensive, and elevating it to the level of something I consider sacred. Therefore, I oppose it. Should we reach a time where enough people disagree with me, it will become legal. And, while I will remain opposed to it and will continue to find it moraly offensive, my views will not affect the law.
Abortion does not affect me personally beyond the fact I view it as the murder of an innocent baby. I fully understand that not everyone shares this viewpoint. But given that I do, how could I not oppose murder? Do you support legalized murder? If not, then your only basis for supporting abortion must rest in a belief that it is not murder, a viewpoint to which you are just as entitled to as I am to mine. Niether viewpoint has a means to reconcile with the other, and therefore they will remain opposed.
Christian are continually defending what they view as critical values for a healthy society. Some do choose to try to impose thier beliefs on others. Likewise, people who hold other values are pushing just as hard to tear down the very things Christians hold as sacred. This goes both ways. You might notice that what the Christians are most often attemtping to do is to stop the elimination of these values which have been upheld in the law since the inception of thisnation, not impose new rules. You seem to feel you have some sort of high ground on this. You are wrong. You appear just as strongly opposed to these views. Unless you have some universal acceptable basis for declaring ultimate truth, your views and the views of other will differ, and each will press for the laws to reflect thier views.
So, in short, get a clue. You defend your views, I will defend mine, and the democratic republic will determine the outcome. To complain that a different group disagrees with you is to complain about the fundamental nature of a democratic system.
I find the court ruling disappointing, and hope it will be reversed on appeal. The situation created no harm to the copyright holder, depriveed them of no revenue and in fact created an increase in sales for them by creating a derivative that some people woul
Unfortunately, when you dispute something, the three big credit agencies go back to whoever reported the entry with the dispute, and ask them to verify. If they insist that it is valid, it stays on, like it or not.
You always have the right to have a disputing comment added to your report on any item, however comments are free form text, and have absolutely no effect on the computer-generated numerical credit scores that drive most credit decisions. So adding a disputing comment is next to useless in practice.
I had someone who was upset with me convince a collection agency to put an entry on my credit report. It was listed as an uncollected judgement even though it was an amount I didn't owe and there had never been any sort of legal action. It took me over a year and an eventually an attorney to get it cleared up. At that point the compnay who reported it said "oops, sorry, that was a mistake", and removed it. Of course they refused to do that for a year during mutiple letters and phone calls from me, and it took multiple contacts from my attorney. And the best part is that no one is liable for the fact that my credit was screwed up for a year and it cost me money to get it fixed. Apparently the law doesn't even have provisions for me to get back what I had to pay my attorney for someone elses "mistake" - which was really deliberate and malicious fraud.
So, really, getting things off of your credit is not always as easy as it sounds. There are tricks you can use to do it, some of them permenant, some temporary, but they don't always work.
I live in Florida and voted in Florida and amazingly enough I used a PAPER ballot. Not every part of Florida is incapable of conducting an election....
Vote for who? What vote can I possibly cast that will preserve my freedoms? It is going to be Bush or Kerry, and neither one is going to do anything but support this crap.
This is the first post of the entire thread that actually shows just a touch of insight. I am a U.S. citizen from birth, live in the US, and vote here. Who do I want in office? Clinton? Kerry? Bush? Or how about by party - the Republicans? Democrats? Greens? Libretarians? That is like asking if I want my left nut chopped off, or my right nut?
...if the citizens of the US...would be better informed...
This is the problem right here though:
I could go on for days about this - how it got this way and why it is a problem. I have strong disagreements with a lot of the posters on this thread, but the root cause of most of Americas problems is exactly this - political apathy.
(On the other hand, if we were all paying attnetion in the U.S., who knows what countries we may or may not invade.....)
I used to work for a company with a policy (a quiet one mind you, but I was a manager) of every year identifying the bottom 5% of the employees and laying them off. This wasn't just forced rating distributions - sorry, you rated low this year - you are gone. And 5% was expected to be identified every year.
I don't work there anymore...and I wouldn't work in the environment you talk about either unless I simply had no choice.
Obviously there are WAY too many people too high up in corporate America with ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE how to motivate and manage people.
The solution isn't to force them to unbundle the products. Let them bundle whatever they want. Just don't let them prevent unbundling, and anything that comes with the OS has to be completely documented - no "hidden" or "undocumented" features. Anything that is part of the base product distribution has to be documented enough that it can be replaced component by component. Prevent MS from shipping any other product that uses an API from the base O/S distribution - even a single function call - that has not been publically documented for at least 6 months.
Let them bundle anything, but let any vendor replace any part of the core, and force enough documentation to allow these replacement pieces to be developed.
Do any of you actually understand the patent system, and why and how it was designed? It is there to PROMOTE innovation by providing a limited monopoly to the inventor. However a patent is supposed to be original, non-obvious, etc.
In addition, patents used to be effectively restricted to manufacturing practices - i.e. turning raw materials into finished good. This worked, and worked well, and was necessary to promote innovation given the typical expense of a manufacturing process.
It is only through a really odd interpretation of a court decision that the USPTO decided that software is patentable (they denied a patent because one part of the manufacturing process required a bit software, the court ruled that that bit of software wasn't enough to make it unpatentable, and suddenly the PTO decides that must mean ALL software is patentable - who knows what they were smoking/inhaling/shooting up at the time) . And who knows why they decided busines methods should be patentable - I'm not aware of any basis in law or case law for that.
On top of that, the USPTO is neither inclined nor qualified to actually determine if a patent if original and non-obvious. They are a revenue center for other programs. I believe that started during the Clinton era, and last time a checked (several years ago) patent fees were contributing over $300M a year to other government programs.
Bad policy, combined with a perceived cash cow. It isn't going to change easily. What politician is going to willingly put that "invisible" funding at risk?
We need to go back to the actual legislative basis of patents rather than some half-assed interpretation of case law. Good luck on how to get there though.
...was...well...a long time ago. But at the time AMI Diag was pretty good. It is still available, but I'm not sure how good the current version is.
I have consistenyl refused to sign that type of agreement - and it has never afected my employment. Most companies throw that in, but very few will refuse you employment if you don't agree. Get a lawyer, get the terms changed. Most of the employers I've had actually gave me the first few weeks of the job to have it reviewed and work out any changes.
Personally, I do not enjoy using the Windows OS, and only do so when I need to. For others it is well suited. But if thier O/S is so awesome, then they shouldn't have a problem relying on that for competition, should they? But they don't. The laws violated in both the US and EU are not about MS having a good or bad product, or even about htem having monopoly power with thier O/S. They are about leveraging monopoly power in one market to gain a monopoly in another. They are about using monopoly power to PREVENT competition. Are the motivations fo government officals pure? Of course not, or they wouldn't have been elected in the first place. But the laws are there, they are being violated, and they should be either repealed or enforced. You don't like anti-trust laws, campaign to change them. If you would simply like them ignored, then why bother having laws in the first place?
Even though the license is under US law, it is the EU market that has been affected and the it is practices and activities in the EU market that ar ebeing looked at here. I don't think jusridiction will be an issue at all....
There is a fundamental difference being having a competitive advantage (which is a GOOD thing) and anti-comptetitive behavior. Having a monopoly isn't even illegal. Using an existing monopoly (such as Windows) as leverage to acquite another monoppoly (such as browsers or media players) is however illegal.
Sure they will publish them - then patent them so you still have to license them, and they loose no control. Nothing that has occurred or been proposed as a punishment for anti-completive behavior has made any difference except breaking them up. The MS culture is what drives this, and no directive will change that.
If someone wants to fix it, it would be simple, but MS wouldn't like it at all.
1. Allow MS to bundle and integrate anything they want into the operating system.
2. Require each and every exported function from any DLL, EXE, COM object or anything similar that can be called from outside of that compiled module to be publicly documented as part of the specification.
3. Create one or more third party (non-ms controlled) entities who control the Windows compatible logo certification program, basing their certification on the published API specs from MS.
4. Require MS to be, say, 98% or better compatible on any Windows O/S or product before it ships and allow any other company to certify with no MS input. If an MS product doesn't certify - it doesn't ship. This includes service packs.
5. Require MS to support their O/S even if third party components are installed in place of MS components provided the third party components are certified.
6. Treat failures to interoperate with certified third party products as MS compatibility certification failure - i.e. fix quickly, or stop ship until fixed.
Sure...you don't have to include DRM - so what? Tell me, if I encode my son's birthday party in WMA - content I own, and later want in another format, how would I do that? Guess what - I CAN'T! Not legally. The format is legally bound up so that you have to use MS tools to read and write it legally, and the licenses for those tools, last I checked, won't let you produce another digital copy in the same quality. Maybe I could burn and then re-rip a CD of it - unless MS can convince the market to forgo that as well...and what a dumb-ass way to have to do it in the first place. WMA does even leave you with rights to your own content, let alone purchased rights to someone elses'. Like cattle to the butcher we march, herded by corporate shepherds anxious to feed of us and our children...
There is a VERY good reason why Israel hasn't been invaded - they have comprehensively kicked the shit out of every one of thier neighbors who have tried - all within the confines of conventional warfare, in spite of being a nuclear nation. Which one of thier neighbors is really up to getting smacked down again these days? That is the NUMBER 1 reason Isreal hasn't been invaded. In fact, the US spends a lot of money to both keep Isreal strong enough to do that, and to keep some level of influence of when they do it. I'm neihter condoning nor condeming these policies - just stating that they exist.
...and keep microsoft from abusing thier position it would be very easy - without even breaking them up.
1 - Establish an independant (i.e. not MS controlled) program for certifying a piece of software is compliant with the Windows API. Any vendor wishing to claim "logo" compliance would have to be certified by this company. Microsoft software would have to be certified by this company in all cases.
2 - Allow Microsoft to incorporate ANY feature into the OS that they want, but allow any component to be substitutded by another certified componenet by either the user or a vendor without penalties or losing support.
3 - Require Microsoft to disclose the complete API (DLL exports, COM interfaces, etc) for EVERY component that ships as part of the OS to the certification company. This disclosure must be sufficient to allow comprehensive complaince validation - functions, return types, paramters, valid inputs and outputs, etc - enough to build solid test cases. Any program that uses any "undocumented" functions or features may not be logo certified. In Microsoft's case, failing certification means that it can't ship the product.
4 - Require the certification company to make the documented APIs available to the public, but allow it to charge fees for logo certifications. (Non-MS vendors are not required to be certified)
5 - Empower the certification company to broker and resolve post-certification compliance and compatibility issues by requiring updates to compliant componenets and/or further disclosure of API details.
This lets MS innovate in any way they want, embedd anything they want in the OS, and protect any API they want. But if they bundle it with the OS (thier monopoly) they have to subject it to external certification and full API disclosure.
I completely support the repeal of the Patriot Act - the dead white men were right, and there were many, many other men who died before them fighting for it. The men we quote are the leaders who survived the conflict to gain freedom. How many more great men died in the battle?
Now, without actually being asked, these freedoms are consistently compromised. The PR is to make us happy about it. But the law does nothing to fix the problems it claims to address.
If you would like to give up your freedoms, there are plenty of other countries I could recommend that would be more than happy to have some more citizens to oppress.
I must disagree however that Bush and Ashcroft have more damage than anyone else in our history. That is simply not fair to those shining examples of despotism who have gone before. The patriot act of today only builds on the foundations of a solid police state laid quietly, year after year, decade after decade, by men who were misguided by fear and/or blinded by greed and power. Don't give our current administration more credit than the deserve. If anything, they are simply less adept at hiding thier actions.
By sadly, the problem remains how to fix it. Would you have elected Gore instead? Would he have run the country better? No, we would simply have had different special interests getting thier way. Who would you vote for in the next election? What candidate has not already sold his soul to get on the ballot? Pick a candidate, and then guess which of your rights will be denied during that term? Would you like your freeedom of religion removed? Spyed on by your government? You right to bear arms revoked? Your free speech limited because it offends someone? Your free association limited? You property rights restricted in favor or corporate profits? Your taxes raised to promote the interests of billion dollar corporations? Or perhaps some truely innovative new way of subjugating citiziens in favor of some group or other?
Name a candidate who has the faintest hope of being elected that will not actively destroy some aspect of the foundation of the nation. Name one in the last 50 years.
THere is no point to oppoosing this or any other particular law change. If something (who knows what) is not done to stop the direct translation of money into legislation, it won't matter. Fix the root cause, the rest will come into line. If you don't, any other stops won't really matter...
A significant portion of the linux user based could go get the source tree, recompile, and fix the bug. ANY distro could have produced a patch from that point forward. Some distros (like Gentoo) would have picked that up very quickly, possibly in a couple hours as has happened with soem of the recent SSH issues. With Windows, patching the sources does nothing for the user. It is only the final binary release that helps, and nothing before that. So if you are a competent Linux admin, and need the fix, it was there long before Windows. We already know Linux needs to grow some more for the average user.
I regularly recoomend PHP to people for web applicaitons - a huge amount of the work that is needed on most web sites is best suited to something like PHP - a scripting language. I am a Java devleoper though, and was an early adopter of the technology. Use the tool that suits your problem. If you are looking to hack something together for a web site - use a scripting language. If you are building something that will be reusable and extensible, have an actual architecture, and warrants the design and implementations complexities that are simply not well suited to scripting languages, then use a language like Java. I don't personally recommend VB for anything really, though I realize it has a fanatic following as well. As for .Net, well, let's see if it is still the big "MS-thing" when it has been around long enough for anyone to actually have the experience to claim to be a .Net archiitect. Right now, there simply hasn't been enough time to achieve that.
As far as the article - the guy is an idiot, and his view on software development is clearly limited to a very narrow scope of the problems. The real worlld is far more complex that he apparently realizes.
One nice thing about living in the US - it is so damn big and has enough people that it takes true creativity to imple,ent that kind of police state. But they are working on it as fast as they can.....