Lights and sirens can "tip off" a bad guy. The easier way is to ticket them no matter what and see what the 911 dispatch logs say for that time. If the logs verify they were on a call, the ticket is excused. If not, they are responsible for it.
Oh, get off your political soapbox. The owner of any media has always had final say in what goes in that media. If a blog wants to ban anon posts, that is their choice. Find another blog that doesn't if you don't like it. Or better yet, start your own then you can allow all the vitriol you want.
A code of conduct won't work for many reason but anon political posting isn't that high on the list. Many sites either don't allow anon or allow the user to filter them out (/. included). When it comes to civil dialog, anonymous political posts account for a very, very, VERY small percentage so your argument falls flat on its face right there.
It goes much deeper than that. SCO wants PJ's deposition to be taken in the Novell case and be used in the IBM case AFTER the time for depositions in the IBM case has expired. This is another attempt to get claims into the IBM case and waste more time there forcing IBM to answer yet another silly SCO memo. It is an end run around the IBM schedule as well as what you posted.
Which begs the question of was it a disgruntled tenant? This is the silliest thing I've heard of though. People actually believe what some numb-nut says on the Interweb?!?!? If so, I have some prime real estate for sale in Florida with such a pretty name....The Everglades...
The hardware is not that expensive now. It used to be. Anyway, Apple is a hardware company. The software just adds value to the hardware. Many buy Macs for the OS, not the hardware.
I've always wondered why it is OK for Apple to restrict to one OS but not Dell?!?! Big outcry went to Dell for not offering other OS choices yet not a peep out of anyone against Apple.
OSX will be at the center of many aspects of the home, but most importantly will be the delivery of content like music, TV, and movies.
And DRM will stop the uptake when users can't transfer the media from one device to another. There is already a backlash against Apple for this very reason.
They may also fear all of the horrible things that they hear about the internet, especially on their local TV news. FUD works.
A little healthy "FUD" is a good thing. Malware, spyware, torjans, pr0n, phishing, spam, **AA law suits, key loggers, stolen identities, and yes even murder by luring. They are all real. They all can land you in real trouble. I would say the "FUD" is justified especially for a non-technical user.
I had broadband and got rid of it. I went back to dialup. There isn't anything legal out there worth the cost of broadband. If all you are doing is email, a bit of web surfing, and the occasional light download then it is hard to justify broadband.
Although it gives you a "warm fuzzy feeling"(TM) that your company isn't contributing to the bot problem, too many kicks and you soon have no customers. All that you are doing is forcing that customer to go to an ISP that won't give them the boot. It does nothing to actually solve the problem.
An alternative would be instead of cutting them off completely, offer them an antivirus solution. Although I hate them, this is what companies like AOL and NetZero are doing.
Because the Microsoft security people are totally conservative when it comes to measuring risk, they assume that every one of these mitigations has been bypassed (or disabled), and measure vulnerabilities accordingly.
And that is a correct assumption to make. If a security "feature" can be bypassed or disabled, you can't make any other assumption. I firmly believe the biggest threat to Microsoft security is Microsoft itself. Policy from one section of Microsoft is fighting policy from another section. The security folk are fighting the "ease of use" folk. The piracy folk are using the critical updates as a means of checking legitimacy. WGA thinks you're not legit? You stay vulnerable making Microsoft a menace to networking. All these are policy fights that make being a Microsoft user less and less attractive.
"If lots of people started doing this, ISPs would get the hint that maybe, just maybe, they should examine a copyright claim before acting on it."
And just how do you propose they do that? ISPs are not copyright specialists. I would shudder to think of the fallout of making them the gatekeepers of online copyright.
What needs to be repealed isn't only the DMCA take-down provisions but the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension act itself. Specifically, the non-registration of copyright clause has caused untold havoc in even determining if a copyright even exists on a work.
The second is money. The government stands to make a hell of a lot more money reselling the channels and frequencies for uses other than TV than they will lose by this giveaway.
When thousands of voters find their TV is useless unless they Buy an expensive converter or some expensive pay service, they will demand it go back. There will be no choice but to take it back. This way, People aren't going to care and they can chop the channels up and sell them.
[Spelling corrected automatically]
The government isn't going to sell the frequencies. They are already claimed by fire, police and other emergency response agencies across the nation as part of the Homeland Security Interoperable Communications Program. The current frequencies emergency personnel use is not capable of penetrating buildings. This was a finding of the 9-11 Commission. Also, the frequencies used by the various agencies caused all kinds of havoc such as one fire department not being able to communicate with another due to frequency range limitations. The idea is to get them all in the same range and as far as possible into a disaster zone. Katrina highlighted this same issue. So if anything, I suspect the date will be moved forward.
You are correct that there is no "right to life" enumeration in the Constitution. However, there is one in the Declaration of Independence. Add that to the 9th Amendment and you do have a right to life. The founders were religious men and these documents reflect that. The right to life was enumerated as one of their main reasons to sever the ties to England. They believed the right to life was granted by a higher power so its enumeration to the Constitution was unnecessary besides being already covered in the document that started this nation to begin with.
From the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I'd sure love to see you cite a source for your laughable interpretation of the 9th Amendment. The 9th has been routinely ignored by many, but no sane person has ever claimed it meant other than what it says.
There is a source for that interpretation. The sad fact is it comes from the lead attorney for the United States.
Linux is a kernel. Free Software is a concept. Both can be talked about intelligently. Linux can be compared to other kernels. Free software can be compared to other development models. The rest of his "arguments" are just as big a waste of time.
Not to defend Rob "foot-in-mouth" Enderly but...
The argument that "Linux is the kernel" is very weak in my opinion because how useful is JUST a kernel? If you installed JUST the kernel you wouldn't even have a machine that works. It is a clever sleight of hand that advocates use when convenient. Is there a security flaw in BASH? That's BASH's fault not Linux. Yet how many distributions use BASH as the default shell? How well will Linux run without a shell? See what I mean? You can't make the argument that "Linux is more secure than Windows" if all you are talking about is the kernel. To do that you would have to compare Windows kernel to Linux kernel or you are comparing apples to oranges.
Or even better, export it to the distro maker instead of India. A simple phone switch can handle that. Really, this is the silliest excuse I have ever heard. As part of their agreement with whatever distro they choose, make OS support the distro's job. It may cost more than a free download but you are already paying for the machine anyway.
And just what is difficult about compiling from source? It is 3 commands for god's sake. I have even seen install scripts that do it for you. That issue aside, binary distributions like Red Hat or SuSe are doomed to dependency hell because Linux programs are fast moving targets. Add to that the idiocy of distributors that don't install the "development" packages and I can see your point to some extent. I do use Gentoo here so I'm not in the dependency loop that others are but there are still times that an update can break libs. That is why revdep-rebuild exists. It all comes down to knowing the tools your system uses to solve these issues. Some distributions are subjectively better than others at it.
This is all academic since most users won't be installing things that aren't included with their distribution. And if Dell is distributing it a simple call to Dell to include (or at least make a package for you) can be part of the support.
As far as cost goes, yes, Linux desktops may well cost more than Windows ones because Dell gets paid for craplets. As unattractive as this may be, we should investigate whether this is feasible on Linux.
Craplets are part of the reason I despise Windows. I have never met a more annoying thing than having to uninstall all that shit. And of course, it has made the abomination known as the registry top heavy with turds left behind to prevent you from uninstalling / reinstalling after the time expires. I don't think this road is the way we want to go for a Linux distro though. But who knows, maybe it will be the way for Dell to scrape every penny out of a sale.
Let's see if we can let some wind out of your sails...
Linux on the desktop will always be a pipe dream. Why? Because Linux refuses to address it's fundamental deficiencies. How many decades longer will it take to get a real installer package which works on every distro?
There is an installer that works on every (and I mean EVERY) distro. Unlike windows, Linux distros includes all the software in one location generally called a software repository. If all else fails, there is always "./configure && make && make install". It isn't that hard.
How many decades longer will it take to get the OS to auto-detect and auto-configure new hardware? How many decades longer does Linux need to spend looking at the distant taillights of Windows 95?
Hell, Windows XP doesn't even do that. If it wasn't for "idiot disks" made by manufacturers the average Joe Sixpack would be just as screwed when the malware ate his system. I have udev installed and it works just fine. I don't know what your problem is.
But on the positive side, Linux wins hands-down in the "air of undeserved superiority" department, and it also has more text editors than any other OS. When you have tens of thousands of options for text editing, it seems you really don't have to worry about getting it to work as well as Win95 did.
Well let's just look at what you get with an "out of the box" Windows XP install shall we...
You get paint, notepad, wordpad, solitare, Internet Explorer & Outlook Express, a broken media player and a calculator. That's it. I bet you can be real productive with those...Last time I looked in my distro's repository I had over 40,000 programs spanning 150 categories.
Dell's overtures toward Linux are nothing more than a bargaining chip in it's licensing fees with Microsoft. Consumers don't care about/for Linux, they just want something they know and can use. If someone drops a few hundy on a new PC then finds out they can't go to Best Buy to get software for it, that's going to be one pissed off consumer.
That may be. Only time will tell. That is one downfall to Linux is software availability in stores like Best Buy. Here you have a chicken and egg thing going on....Not enough users of Linux demanding stores carry software (mostly because it is readily available all over the Internet) and stores thinking there is no demand for it (which isn't necessarily true either). As for a customer using Windows software in Linux you are discounting the possibility of virtualization. If setup properly, by the manufacturer, then that takes away that argument.
As long as the software belongs to him, he can do whatever he wants with it, and as long as he tells you that if you are caught pirating, your files will be deleted, then you should realize the consequences of your actions, and not pirate, if you wish to keep your files.
I agree that THAT program is his but the files his program is deleting aren't. It would be more appropriate if the program deleted itself instead. In either event, this is a small time operation that depends on word of mouth to propagate and I would NEVER recommend a program to anyone that even remotely has the chance of doing damage. So when his program withers and dies due to lack of users, legitimate or otherwise, he will have nobody to blame but himself.
"I would think confiscation would be something that they do but auctioning someone's property before a conviction would be grounds for a constitutional challange to the law wouldn't it?"
"Under RICO, a person or group who commits any two of 35 crimes27 federal crimes and 8 state crimeswithin a 10-year period and, in the opinion of the United States Attorney bringing the case, has committed those crimes with similar purpose or results can be charged with racketeering. Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and/or sentenced to 20 years in prison. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of "racketeering activity." The act also contains a civil component that allows plaintiffs to sue for triple damages."
Which would explain why RICO was used by the RIAA. They get triple damages. In short, if the US Attorney can link so much as a dollar of your "ill-gotten gains" to your house for example, you can lose the house. I wasn't clear enough in my post but you do have to be convicted before auction (theoretically) and you are prevented from transferring control of property to anyone else while the trial goes on. Several states (including my own) have jumped the gun on this though and have auctioned off property BEFORE the trial. Eventually the worst is going to happen and someone will be acquitted catching that state with their pants down. It hasn't happened yet though.
the simplest solution may be to just include all dependencies inside it.
That's exactly how Microsoft tried to solve it and why their distributed software is huge. It also has led to problems of competing dlls which are often incompatible. If you think you have dependency problems now, just wait until you implement your idea! Imagine installing 16 applications each having a dependency on 16 different versions of the same lib.
Who pays for this? Is this tax payer money being thrown at the desire to feel badass in a dark blue jacket with yellow letters on the back?
They were arrested on RICO charges which is one of the most abused laws in the nation. RICO allows for the immediate confiscation and auction of the property of the accused. It was originally used against the mob and later applied to drug dealers. The idea is to prevent them from using "ill-gotten gains" to fund their defense. So things like houses, cars, money in the bank, and other valuable property is sold at auction with the proceeds going to the state to fund further raids like these. In short, the DJ's paid for their own raid.
IMO, if RICO should be applied to anyone it should be the RIAA.
Welcome to the world of market economics. There is always someone willing to build a better mouse trap. If your implementation of your algorithm is better, then there is nothing to worry about. If my implementation is better then you should worry that your code sucks and fix it to make it better. You should not, however, have an artificial monopoly on that algorithm preventing and stifling any betterment to that code.
Put another way, where is your incentive to make the code better when you are the only one who can produce it? The answer is there is no incentive and in fact there is every incentive to keep it the static because changes would require a new patent.
Creating something requires money. Raw materials for production aside, R&D has expenses. It's not code, and even coding something requires time. If you can't make money to survive using that time spent writing that code, why write it in the first place. Yes, there is personal gratification or charity. But this comes only after you can meet the daily needs of food, clothing, and shelter.
This is pure undiluted horse shit. Code is covered by copyright not patents. Method patents (of which software patents are a subset) should be abolished! If you have a patent on software, you should be required to relinquish any and all copyright claims to that code. Why should software methods be protected by both copyright and patents?
And that is how I would "fix" the patent system. Abolish all future method patents and give current holders the choice of continuing their current patents with no copyright protections after expiration or simply converting them to copyright where they belong. The choice would be theirs to make.
While I'm on a roll here, if you can also remove the assumption of validity of patents, that alone would go a long way to stopping the patent trolls.
Slashdot Mirror
Lights and sirens can "tip off" a bad guy. The easier way is to ticket them no matter what and see what the 911 dispatch logs say for that time. If the logs verify they were on a call, the ticket is excused. If not, they are responsible for it.
B.
"It doesn't make sense to have thick clients anymore, when the web apps can do everything that the desktop apps can..."
Until you don't have an Internet connection. I can type up 30 emails and queue them in the outbox until I do get connected if it is local.
Oh, get off your political soapbox. The owner of any media has always had final say in what goes in that media. If a blog wants to ban anon posts, that is their choice. Find another blog that doesn't if you don't like it. Or better yet, start your own then you can allow all the vitriol you want.
A code of conduct won't work for many reason but anon political posting isn't that high on the list. Many sites either don't allow anon or allow the user to filter them out (/. included). When it comes to civil dialog, anonymous political posts account for a very, very, VERY small percentage so your argument falls flat on its face right there.
It goes much deeper than that. SCO wants PJ's deposition to be taken in the Novell case and be used in the IBM case AFTER the time for depositions in the IBM case has expired. This is another attempt to get claims into the IBM case and waste more time there forcing IBM to answer yet another silly SCO memo. It is an end run around the IBM schedule as well as what you posted.
B.
Which begs the question of was it a disgruntled tenant? This is the silliest thing I've heard of though. People actually believe what some numb-nut says on the Interweb?!?!? If so, I have some prime real estate for sale in Florida with such a pretty name....The Everglades...
B.
I've had both doubleclick and google-syndication blocked in mine for some time as well. Sure speeds up my web browsing experience.
I've always wondered why it is OK for Apple to restrict to one OS but not Dell?!?! Big outcry went to Dell for not offering other OS choices yet not a peep out of anyone against Apple.
And DRM will stop the uptake when users can't transfer the media from one device to another. There is already a backlash against Apple for this very reason.
A little healthy "FUD" is a good thing. Malware, spyware, torjans, pr0n, phishing, spam, **AA law suits, key loggers, stolen identities, and yes even murder by luring. They are all real. They all can land you in real trouble. I would say the "FUD" is justified especially for a non-technical user.
I had broadband and got rid of it. I went back to dialup. There isn't anything legal out there worth the cost of broadband. If all you are doing is email, a bit of web surfing, and the occasional light download then it is hard to justify broadband.
Although it gives you a "warm fuzzy feeling"(TM) that your company isn't contributing to the bot problem, too many kicks and you soon have no customers. All that you are doing is forcing that customer to go to an ISP that won't give them the boot. It does nothing to actually solve the problem.
An alternative would be instead of cutting them off completely, offer them an antivirus solution. Although I hate them, this is what companies like AOL and NetZero are doing.
B.
And that is a correct assumption to make. If a security "feature" can be bypassed or disabled, you can't make any other assumption. I firmly believe the biggest threat to Microsoft security is Microsoft itself. Policy from one section of Microsoft is fighting policy from another section. The security folk are fighting the "ease of use" folk. The piracy folk are using the critical updates as a means of checking legitimacy. WGA thinks you're not legit? You stay vulnerable making Microsoft a menace to networking. All these are policy fights that make being a Microsoft user less and less attractive.
B.
"If lots of people started doing this, ISPs would get the hint that maybe, just maybe, they should examine a copyright claim before acting on it."
And just how do you propose they do that? ISPs are not copyright specialists. I would shudder to think of the fallout of making them the gatekeepers of online copyright.
What needs to be repealed isn't only the DMCA take-down provisions but the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension act itself. Specifically, the non-registration of copyright clause has caused untold havoc in even determining if a copyright even exists on a work.
B.
The government isn't going to sell the frequencies. They are already claimed by fire, police and other emergency response agencies across the nation as part of the Homeland Security Interoperable Communications Program. The current frequencies emergency personnel use is not capable of penetrating buildings. This was a finding of the 9-11 Commission. Also, the frequencies used by the various agencies caused all kinds of havoc such as one fire department not being able to communicate with another due to frequency range limitations. The idea is to get them all in the same range and as far as possible into a disaster zone. Katrina highlighted this same issue. So if anything, I suspect the date will be moved forward.
B.
You are correct that there is no "right to life" enumeration in the Constitution. However, there is one in the Declaration of Independence. Add that to the 9th Amendment and you do have a right to life. The founders were religious men and these documents reflect that. The right to life was enumerated as one of their main reasons to sever the ties to England. They believed the right to life was granted by a higher power so its enumeration to the Constitution was unnecessary besides being already covered in the document that started this nation to begin with.
From the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
There is a source for that interpretation. The sad fact is it comes from the lead attorney for the United States.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/19/gonzales-habe
Of course, it isn't correct but shows that the man should never have been confirmed.
B.
Not to defend Rob "foot-in-mouth" Enderly but...
The argument that "Linux is the kernel" is very weak in my opinion because how useful is JUST a kernel? If you installed JUST the kernel you wouldn't even have a machine that works. It is a clever sleight of hand that advocates use when convenient. Is there a security flaw in BASH? That's BASH's fault not Linux. Yet how many distributions use BASH as the default shell? How well will Linux run without a shell? See what I mean? You can't make the argument that "Linux is more secure than Windows" if all you are talking about is the kernel. To do that you would have to compare Windows kernel to Linux kernel or you are comparing apples to oranges.
B.
Or even better, export it to the distro maker instead of India. A simple phone switch can handle that. Really, this is the silliest excuse I have ever heard. As part of their agreement with whatever distro they choose, make OS support the distro's job. It may cost more than a free download but you are already paying for the machine anyway.
B.
And just what is difficult about compiling from source? It is 3 commands for god's sake. I have even seen install scripts that do it for you. That issue aside, binary distributions like Red Hat or SuSe are doomed to dependency hell because Linux programs are fast moving targets. Add to that the idiocy of distributors that don't install the "development" packages and I can see your point to some extent. I do use Gentoo here so I'm not in the dependency loop that others are but there are still times that an update can break libs. That is why revdep-rebuild exists. It all comes down to knowing the tools your system uses to solve these issues. Some distributions are subjectively better than others at it.
This is all academic since most users won't be installing things that aren't included with their distribution. And if Dell is distributing it a simple call to Dell to include (or at least make a package for you) can be part of the support.
B.
Craplets are part of the reason I despise Windows. I have never met a more annoying thing than having to uninstall all that shit. And of course, it has made the abomination known as the registry top heavy with turds left behind to prevent you from uninstalling / reinstalling after the time expires. I don't think this road is the way we want to go for a Linux distro though. But who knows, maybe it will be the way for Dell to scrape every penny out of a sale.
B.
There is an installer that works on every (and I mean EVERY) distro. Unlike windows, Linux distros includes all the software in one location generally called a software repository. If all else fails, there is always "./configure && make && make install". It isn't that hard.
Hell, Windows XP doesn't even do that. If it wasn't for "idiot disks" made by manufacturers the average Joe Sixpack would be just as screwed when the malware ate his system. I have udev installed and it works just fine. I don't know what your problem is.
Well let's just look at what you get with an "out of the box" Windows XP install shall we...
You get paint, notepad, wordpad, solitare, Internet Explorer & Outlook Express, a broken media player and a calculator. That's it. I bet you can be real productive with those...Last time I looked in my distro's repository I had over 40,000 programs spanning 150 categories.
That may be. Only time will tell. That is one downfall to Linux is software availability in stores like Best Buy. Here you have a chicken and egg thing going on....Not enough users of Linux demanding stores carry software (mostly because it is readily available all over the Internet) and stores thinking there is no demand for it (which isn't necessarily true either). As for a customer using Windows software in Linux you are discounting the possibility of virtualization. If setup properly, by the manufacturer, then that takes away that argument.
B.
I agree that THAT program is his but the files his program is deleting aren't. It would be more appropriate if the program deleted itself instead. In either event, this is a small time operation that depends on word of mouth to propagate and I would NEVER recommend a program to anyone that even remotely has the chance of doing damage. So when his program withers and dies due to lack of users, legitimate or otherwise, he will have nobody to blame but himself.
B.
"I would think confiscation would be something that they do but auctioning someone's property before a conviction would be grounds for a constitutional challange to the law wouldn't it?"
See below for a clarification.. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rico_law:
"Under RICO, a person or group who commits any two of 35 crimes27 federal crimes and 8 state crimeswithin a 10-year period and, in the opinion of the United States Attorney bringing the case, has committed those crimes with similar purpose or results can be charged with racketeering. Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25,000 and/or sentenced to 20 years in prison. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of "racketeering activity." The act also contains a civil component that allows plaintiffs to sue for triple damages."
Which would explain why RICO was used by the RIAA. They get triple damages. In short, if the US Attorney can link so much as a dollar of your "ill-gotten gains" to your house for example, you can lose the house. I wasn't clear enough in my post but you do have to be convicted before auction (theoretically) and you are prevented from transferring control of property to anyone else while the trial goes on. Several states (including my own) have jumped the gun on this though and have auctioned off property BEFORE the trial. Eventually the worst is going to happen and someone will be acquitted catching that state with their pants down. It hasn't happened yet though.
B.
That's exactly how Microsoft tried to solve it and why their distributed software is huge. It also has led to problems of competing dlls which are often incompatible. If you think you have dependency problems now, just wait until you implement your idea! Imagine installing 16 applications each having a dependency on 16 different versions of the same lib.
B.
They were arrested on RICO charges which is one of the most abused laws in the nation. RICO allows for the immediate confiscation and auction of the property of the accused. It was originally used against the mob and later applied to drug dealers. The idea is to prevent them from using "ill-gotten gains" to fund their defense. So things like houses, cars, money in the bank, and other valuable property is sold at auction with the proceeds going to the state to fund further raids like these. In short, the DJ's paid for their own raid.
IMO, if RICO should be applied to anyone it should be the RIAA.
B.
Welcome to the world of market economics. There is always someone willing to build a better mouse trap. If your implementation of your algorithm is better, then there is nothing to worry about. If my implementation is better then you should worry that your code sucks and fix it to make it better. You should not, however, have an artificial monopoly on that algorithm preventing and stifling any betterment to that code.
Put another way, where is your incentive to make the code better when you are the only one who can produce it? The answer is there is no incentive and in fact there is every incentive to keep it the static because changes would require a new patent.
B.
This is pure undiluted horse shit. Code is covered by copyright not patents. Method patents (of which software patents are a subset) should be abolished! If you have a patent on software, you should be required to relinquish any and all copyright claims to that code. Why should software methods be protected by both copyright and patents?
And that is how I would "fix" the patent system. Abolish all future method patents and give current holders the choice of continuing their current patents with no copyright protections after expiration or simply converting them to copyright where they belong. The choice would be theirs to make.
While I'm on a roll here, if you can also remove the assumption of validity of patents, that alone would go a long way to stopping the patent trolls.
B.