Its the teaching of Creationism as science that's raised the hackles. Stick it in a religion or philosophy course, and I don't think anybody would mind.
The scientific method means creating hypothesis, running experiments to test your hypothesis, and being willing to discard your premise if you ran into even one experiment that invalidated your hypothesis.
You are putting too much emphasis on the word discard. Even though it is the correct word, people with scientific training understand that this does not mean throwing out an entire theory because one prediction doesn't come true - it means going back and working out why, using the failed experiment to grow and refine your investiagation.
Of course, this sits badly with the "You are either with us or you are against us" crowd currently calling the shots in D.C. While current evolutionary theory is not perfect, its the best theory we've got, and most of its predictions are observed. This is how science works.
An example in point - everybody was happy with Newtonian gravity until a few observations were made that didn't fit the theory. Did the scientific community throw out Newtonian gravity? Of course not. They worked under what conditions the theory was applicable, until Einstein came up with Relativity, which explained the spurious observations and made a few new ones - which were later observed, and under the correct boundary conditions, reduced to the tried and tested Newtonian Gravity.
Intelligent Design in not science as doesn't use the scientific method, except in the Sherlock Holmes sense of "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". If they do "destroy" evolution, an alternative scientifically testable theory will quickly spring up in its place, leaving the Intelligent Designers back at square one.
Anything over inflation is a bonus. If you change jobs within a company, you might get a bit more, but really the only way to get a decent hike (10% or more) is to change companies. To get a really good hike you need to bring a list of clients with you, then deliver on that.
Errk - I should know this. Off the top of my head -
A license grants you rights in excess of those you would normally have under law. The obvious example is that you are not permitted to operate a motor vehicle unless you have a license to do so. The GPL grants you rights in addition to those you would have under normal copyright law.
A contract is an agreement between parties to form a legal relationship. A contract requires consideration (money or goods) to be exchanged, which is not necessarily true of a license. In this case you can sign away some of your normal rights under the law. (Some rights cannot be waived, no matter whether you agree or not).
What I'm not sure about is whether you can or can't sign away rights in a "pure" license (one which doesn't fulfill the requirements to also be a contract). I have a feeling that you can't. Thus if you don't accept a license is you are left with your normal rights under the law. Anybody know?
If the 3rd party would be considered by a reasonable person to have the authority, then their actions on your behalf will bind.
If they did something you didn't know about or didn't authorise that would not be considered reasonable, then they wear it.
Yes, there is a a grey area there - which is what judges are paid to work out. If you a really motivated to look, go to http://www.austlii.edu.au/ and search for "apparent authority".
This is actually legal studies for an MBA. Honestly I don't think its any more difficult in terms of the content, but when you haven't done a proper written exam for ten years, it's bloody scary.
Yeah. In general our consumer rights are very very good. This is starting to change however. Some IP rights were signed away with our "Free" trade agreement with the US. We'll have to see what this turns into tho.
Matt
Woohoo! I'm enjoying this. Even though you don't care, I can post to slashdot and study for my legal studies exam at the same time!
So, under Australian law at least:
In this case your friend is acting as your agent. At some point in time you made a (verbal) agreement that your friend would install all the software. Unless you explicitly stated that he was not authorised to accept EULAs, as your agent, he as the apparent authority to do so because accepting these licenses is a necessary part of installing the software.
Thus anything he does in your name is legally binding in as much as it would be legally binding on you.. an unenforceable contract remains unenforcable not matter whether its "signed" by you or your agent.
Re:Can common/civil law override these licenses?
on
End User License Gems
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Wouldn't a click to agree thingie constitute merely a verbal agreement? Most legally binding things can't be done via a simple verbal contract, they require a signature. I don't know how good of a defense that would make, but that is a good start.
I can only talk about Australian Law:
Only a few types of contract must be written to be valid as long as there is an intention to create a legal relationship. Sale of Property is one, and there's something to do with Maritime insurance, and I have 9 days to learn the rest prior to my legal studies exam.
So, in short, as long as all the other requirements for a contract were satisfied*, whether the contract is written or verbal is immaterial.
*If my memory serves me correctly, the others are: Offer and Acceptance, Consideration, capacity to form a contract, intention to form a legal relationship, genuine consent (which may kill a lot of EULAs) and Legality of Object (which will also affect many).
Here (in Aus), the party claiming damages has to have made an effort to minimize their loss. If they don't, and try to use "damages" to make a profit, they will be kicked out of court with a spiky shoe.
Re:Breach Of Contract Is Not A Crime
on
End User License Gems
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Under Australian Law at least, the contract formed by the sale goods has three phases:
1) Invitation to treat - ie - Our software costs this much if you want it. 2) An offer - Buyer offers vendor/retailer consideration (cash/credit card) for the product. 3) An acceptance - The vendor/retailer accepts the offer, and supplies the goods.
At this point, the contract has been executed.
The vendor cannot now impose restrictions on the use of the product unless they were made clear to the buyer as a condition of the contract. Naturally, this excludes their rights under the law (ignorance of the law is no defense, however failure to adequately disclose an express term of a contract is.)
So anything that is shrinkwrapped is not valid as it did not form part of the contract of sale.
EULAs that display on websites prior to hitting "buy" however ("Click Through" agreements) are a different story, and you'd have to turn to consumer legislation and equity provisions in contract law to see whether these are enforceable or not. In general, if it interferes with a buyers right to enjoy their property, it will be illegal. Thus we get into the whole "What is property?" debate. This is far from being settled.
There. Now I feel like I've done some study for this bloody legal studies exam in 9 days time.
I never said we had a capitalist world, in fact i suggested that the label (and labels in general) weren't valid.
The chances of a multimillionaire posting to slashdot are so slim as to be negligible. The petfood VCs have been bitten, and are currently only pouring their money into safe bets - like google - okay.. so maybe they would throw money at a cure for cancer.
The post I responded to didn't mention cell-phone companies, just Telcos. Given that all the Telco's I've worked for have had cell-phone and internet operations, they weren't are worried about VoIP stealing their revenue, but about how to get their billing system and traffic control ready to handle with the new flow models. (Billing on CDRs doesn't work so good for VoIP).
The capitalist world is far from the ideal, and many argue that the label isn't even valid, and mentioning it doesn't destroy the argument at all.
Yes, you make zero from curing cancer, but you have zero to actually start the research.
Point is, to start your company to cure cancer, you need backing. We already know that there will be a huge investment required. That must come from somewhere. We also know that the investment is going to be locked up for an extended period of time. So we take out the drug companies.
So Bill Gates gives you some money as a tax deduction. You start developing a cure, you go public to raise more money, the drug companies buy you out. So you stay private, the drug companies steal your top researchers (idealists or not, everybody has their price, and the drug companies have the cash). So you wrap everything up in patent law - the drug companies drop a googol of lawyers on you.
It is possible, but [y]our-version-of-capitalism can just as easily be used to keep in supressed. Contrary to your faith in the system, I believe that it will have to be a State funded project to really get it off the ground, but we've seen time and time again that big business can influence government spending. Given China's history of telling western governments to get stuffed, maybe they will actually be the ones to fund it?
VoIP is probably not a good example of your argument, as the VoIP traffic still flows over the Telco infrastructure - its just that the billing shifts from trunks to throughput. There are probably more analogies with the petroleum industry.
Don't forget that during the Anthrax-in-the-Post scare, that most evil of all nations, Canada, declared that they would violate patents to produce vaccines for their citizens.
Its a difficult balance. On one hand, it does take a lot of research to develop novel drugs. However, a lot of drug development is based on "change every possible side-chain on a drug we know works and patent it in case its good for something".
I don't see how to fix this. Ideally, a company could patent the active part of a drug molecule so that it wouldn't need to patent every possible variation to protect itself from rivals, but given that its not actually know why certain drugs work, that would be impossible.
Maybe a change to patent law stating that the government could repossess a patent in moments of national crisis would be sensible. If they can take your house, your care and even your kids (conscription), why not patent rights?
I'm sitting here reading slashdot because my wife is sulking in front of the TV because I told her I didn't want to eat chicken this evening and failed to offer up an alternative*.
If we were supposed to be working together to land a space station, we'd be right fucked.
Matt
*Apparently dialing pizza isn't considered an alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
Its the teaching of Creationism as science that's raised the hackles. Stick it in a religion or philosophy course, and I don't think anybody would mind.
Mr and Mrs Malda of course!
You are putting too much emphasis on the word discard. Even though it is the correct word, people with scientific training understand that this does not mean throwing out an entire theory because one prediction doesn't come true - it means going back and working out why, using the failed experiment to grow and refine your investiagation.
Of course, this sits badly with the "You are either with us or you are against us" crowd currently calling the shots in D.C. While current evolutionary theory is not perfect, its the best theory we've got, and most of its predictions are observed. This is how science works.
An example in point - everybody was happy with Newtonian gravity until a few observations were made that didn't fit the theory. Did the scientific community throw out Newtonian gravity? Of course not. They worked under what conditions the theory was applicable, until Einstein came up with Relativity, which explained the spurious observations and made a few new ones - which were later observed, and under the correct boundary conditions, reduced to the tried and tested Newtonian Gravity.
Intelligent Design in not science as doesn't use the scientific method, except in the Sherlock Holmes sense of "When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". If they do "destroy" evolution, an alternative scientifically testable theory will quickly spring up in its place, leaving the Intelligent Designers back at square one.
Yeah, but as all their base are belong to us, maybe a boycott would be more in order.
Display messages:
Thus we can see all Robs posts at the top of the page, and all mine at the bottom.
There's a T-shirt or a bumper sticker or something in there somewhere.
Taco who?
Agreed.
Anything over inflation is a bonus. If you change jobs within a company, you might get a bit more, but really the only way to get a decent hike (10% or more) is to change companies. To get a really good hike you need to bring a list of clients with you, then deliver on that.
Matt
It is free, but that's not free as in beer, but free as in Mitnick.
Errk - I should know this. Off the top of my head -
A license grants you rights in excess of those you would normally have under law. The obvious example is that you are not permitted to operate a motor vehicle unless you have a license to do so. The GPL grants you rights in addition to those you would have under normal copyright law.
A contract is an agreement between parties to form a legal relationship. A contract requires consideration (money or goods) to be exchanged, which is not necessarily true of a license. In this case you can sign away some of your normal rights under the law. (Some rights cannot be waived, no matter whether you agree or not).
What I'm not sure about is whether you can or can't sign away rights in a "pure" license (one which doesn't fulfill the requirements to also be a contract). I have a feeling that you can't. Thus if you don't accept a license is you are left with your normal rights under the law. Anybody know?
I wish. Every time I've visited boston I've had to buy a new map. With the big-freeeking-dig the road closures and re-routes change daily.
I would be great if they could come up with a Boston map that changed when the road changed.
It comes down to "apparent authority".
If the 3rd party would be considered by a reasonable person to have the authority, then their actions on your behalf will bind.
If they did something you didn't know about or didn't authorise that would not be considered reasonable, then they wear it.
Yes, there is a a grey area there - which is what judges are paid to work out. If you a really motivated to look, go to http://www.austlii.edu.au/ and search for "apparent authority".
Matt
This is actually legal studies for an MBA. Honestly I don't think its any more difficult in terms of the content, but when you haven't done a proper written exam for ten years, it's bloody scary.
Yeah. In general our consumer rights are very very good. This is starting to change however. Some IP rights were signed away with our "Free" trade agreement with the US. We'll have to see what this turns into tho. Matt
Woohoo! I'm enjoying this. Even though you don't care, I can post to slashdot and study for my legal studies exam at the same time!
So, under Australian law at least:
In this case your friend is acting as your agent. At some point in time you made a (verbal) agreement that your friend would install all the software. Unless you explicitly stated that he was not authorised to accept EULAs, as your agent, he as the apparent authority to do so because accepting these licenses is a necessary part of installing the software.
Thus anything he does in your name is legally binding in as much as it would be legally binding on you.. an unenforceable contract remains unenforcable not matter whether its "signed" by you or your agent.
Anyone here an expert [...]
Don't we stupid, this is Slashdot.
We are ALL experts.
Because they hire Nigerian programmers and IRC Newbies to write them.
I can only talk about Australian Law:
Only a few types of contract must be written to be valid as long as there is an intention to create a legal relationship. Sale of Property is one, and there's something to do with Maritime insurance, and I have 9 days to learn the rest prior to my legal studies exam.
So, in short, as long as all the other requirements for a contract were satisfied*, whether the contract is written or verbal is immaterial.
*If my memory serves me correctly, the others are: Offer and Acceptance, Consideration, capacity to form a contract, intention to form a legal relationship, genuine consent (which may kill a lot of EULAs) and Legality of Object (which will also affect many).
Here (in Aus), the party claiming damages has to have made an effort to minimize their loss. If they don't, and try to use "damages" to make a profit, they will be kicked out of court with a spiky shoe.
Under Australian Law at least, the contract formed by the sale goods has three phases:
1) Invitation to treat - ie - Our software costs this much if you want it.
2) An offer - Buyer offers vendor/retailer consideration (cash/credit card) for the product.
3) An acceptance - The vendor/retailer accepts the offer, and supplies the goods.
At this point, the contract has been executed.
The vendor cannot now impose restrictions on the use of the product unless they were made clear to the buyer as a condition of the contract. Naturally, this excludes their rights under the law (ignorance of the law is no defense, however failure to adequately disclose an express term of a contract is.)
So anything that is shrinkwrapped is not valid as it did not form part of the contract of sale.
EULAs that display on websites prior to hitting "buy" however ("Click Through" agreements) are a different story, and you'd have to turn to consumer legislation and equity provisions in contract law to see whether these are enforceable or not. In general, if it interferes with a buyers right to enjoy their property, it will be illegal. Thus we get into the whole "What is property?" debate. This is far from being settled.
There. Now I feel like I've done some study for this bloody legal studies exam in 9 days time.
I never said we had a capitalist world, in fact i suggested that the label (and labels in general) weren't valid.
The chances of a multimillionaire posting to slashdot are so slim as to be negligible. The petfood VCs have been bitten, and are currently only pouring their money into safe bets - like google - okay.. so maybe they would throw money at a cure for cancer.
The post I responded to didn't mention cell-phone companies, just Telcos. Given that all the Telco's I've worked for have had cell-phone and internet operations, they weren't are worried about VoIP stealing their revenue, but about how to get their billing system and traffic control ready to handle with the new flow models. (Billing on CDRs doesn't work so good for VoIP).
The capitalist world is far from the ideal, and many argue that the label isn't even valid, and mentioning it doesn't destroy the argument at all.
Yes, you make zero from curing cancer, but you have zero to actually start the research.
Point is, to start your company to cure cancer, you need backing. We already know that there will be a huge investment required. That must come from somewhere. We also know that the investment is going to be locked up for an extended period of time. So we take out the drug companies.
So Bill Gates gives you some money as a tax deduction. You start developing a cure, you go public to raise more money, the drug companies buy you out. So you stay private, the drug companies steal your top researchers (idealists or not, everybody has their price, and the drug companies have the cash). So you wrap everything up in patent law - the drug companies drop a googol of lawyers on you.
It is possible, but [y]our-version-of-capitalism can just as easily be used to keep in supressed. Contrary to your faith in the system, I believe that it will have to be a State funded project to really get it off the ground, but we've seen time and time again that big business can influence government spending. Given China's history of telling western governments to get stuffed, maybe they will actually be the ones to fund it?
VoIP is probably not a good example of your argument, as the VoIP traffic still flows over the Telco infrastructure - its just that the billing shifts from trunks to throughput. There are probably more analogies with the petroleum industry.
Drugs that cure people don't make money. Healthy people don't use drugs.
Drugs that don't cure people don't make money. Dead people don't use drugs.
Drugs that control an incurable disease make the money. Sick people use drugs.
Where is the incentive to develop new drugs that work? There will never be a cure for cancer. There is no money in it.
Don't forget that during the Anthrax-in-the-Post scare, that most evil of all nations, Canada, declared that they would violate patents to produce vaccines for their citizens.
Its a difficult balance. On one hand, it does take a lot of research to develop novel drugs. However, a lot of drug development is based on "change every possible side-chain on a drug we know works and patent it in case its good for something".
I don't see how to fix this. Ideally, a company could patent the active part of a drug molecule so that it wouldn't need to patent every possible variation to protect itself from rivals, but given that its not actually know why certain drugs work, that would be impossible.
Maybe a change to patent law stating that the government could repossess a patent in moments of national crisis would be sensible. If they can take your house, your care and even your kids (conscription), why not patent rights?
Hey,
I'm sitting here reading slashdot because my wife is sulking in front of the TV because I told her I didn't want to eat chicken this evening and failed to offer up an alternative*.
If we were supposed to be working together to land a space station, we'd be right fucked.
Matt
*Apparently dialing pizza isn't considered an alternative.