How many things are the way they are today because we went to space? How about that small, yet extremely powerful computer you used to post that message?
WRONG.
The transistor predates Sputnik by ten years.
The Traitorous Eight left months before Sputnik.
The integrated circuit was developed outside the space program the same year the U.S. launched its first satellite.
The microprocessor was designed for a handheld calculator two years after the first moon landing.
Also when Reagan (republican, for the kids who failed history) was president, Copyright laws were overhauled extending the life of the copyright to IIRC 75 years
Incorrect. Copyright was extended to 75 years or life+50 (depending on the nature of the work) under Jimmy Carter. It was then further extended to 95 years or life+70 under Bill Clinton.
Now, yes, the U.S. did join the Universal Copyright Convention (Berne) under Reagan; but it did not extend copyright term during Reagan's administration.
But would a court (the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, according to my high school government class)
Actually, you high-school government class is either oversimplifying or just wrong. The courts have ruled that they are the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, but that's an inherently circular argument. The Constitution never defines the "judicial Power" granted in the Constitution; multiple interpretations can be given to that grant, and only in some of them do the courts have the right to determine the scope of that grant. For example, it can be argued that the "judicial Power" only means the powers granted the courts under English law in the 18th Century; this is much more limited than the role that U.S. courts claim for themselves.
The owner of a a copyright has ABSOLUTE CONTROL over their work
No, they do not. They have the control granted to them by Congressionally-passed laws in accordance with Article I section 8 clause 8, limited by the doctrine of Fair Use.
For a member of Congress to make a copy of that work is to deprive them of their intellectual property rights. Note that phrase - "property rights." As in the government may not deprive you of your property without due process of law. As in eminent domain - the government can not take your property without compensating you. The congress-critters in question were not merely violating the law; they were violating the Constitution.
Except the Constitution never acknowledges "intellectual property rights". Instead, it assumes that an author has no inherent rights, and then gives the Congress permisssion to give authors exclusive rights for a limited time.
Unfortunately, many view their research as lots of money in, no useful technology out. People expect immediate results
Immediate results?
The scientists seeking funding in 1960 said that we'd have fusion power in twenty years. Today, we're being told that it will be another 10 before we get a reactor that produces more than we put into it, and probably another 10 before we get it commercially useable. So, forty years into funding a twenty-year project, it's still a twenty-year project. Is it any wonder why the funding people (who do not understand the real progress that has been made) have a hard time believing that it won't still be a twenty-year project forty years from now?
Under the Universal Copyright Convention (Berne), a copyright notice is not required. As most nations are members of either or both the UCC and WTO (which requires adherence to the UCC), there are only a handful of nations on Earth where a copyright notice can possibly be required, and in few of those is there any actual recognition of copyrights at all.
In that case, you are saying that RMS misunderstands the GPL, as RMS has repeatedly stated that position, and defended it as necessary to prevent the subversion of free software.
The important thing is that GPLed code remain GPLed. The executables are generated by the compiler. What if an OS-provided compiler is used which links in a propietary library without which the program cannot run? It is insane to say that this is wrong.
It's supposed to be impossible to link a GPLed program to a library that can't be distributed under the terms of the GPL, and it's supposed to be impossible to link a GPLed library to a program that can't be distributed under the terms of the GPL. It was done deliberately. The only exception given was for OS components, and only because it was necessary to allow that in order to make free software available for those OSes.
(Yes, the definition of OS is fuzzy, and one can make the case that Qt is an equivalent of Motif, a system library for the X subsystem of the OS. That addresses this specific case, not the general.)
If you have a piece of code with no license attached to it, you can do whatever you want with it.
Not at all. The 1980 Software Copyright Act specifically says what you can and cannot do with copyrighted software, license or no. Among the things you cannot do are distribute copies or derivative works without a license.
Everybody remember when Wang tried to use their 1988-issued videotex patent to get royalties on web browsers in 1998? No? Look here for the Mozilla.org description of the lawsuit, here for the patent, and here for the Mozilla.org description of its dismissal.
Now, it says that BT is going to go after ISPs on this. Well, AOL (including Netscape) is the biggest one around, and the Netscape lawyers were sent tons of prior art during the Wang case. I rather doubt BT is going to have a chance on this...
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:Address space is going to kill off the x86
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
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· Score: 1
Well, sure the 64-bit programs won't run on a 386. Neither did 32-bit programs run on a 286, or protected-mode programs run on an 8086.
In any case, the claim was that a lack of address space kills ISAs. Price-performance and "what's special about Sledgehammer" is irrelevant to defending or refuting the claim that address space kills ISAs. If the 8086 and 286 are not the same ISA and neither is the same ISA as the 386, then the claim can be true. If they are all part of the x86 ISA (a common but possibly incorrect understanding), then I have proven it false.
There's a conditional you miss -- the line "if the authors of the program clearly intended it to be linked against Qt".
So if KDE includes any GPLed code that the original author didn't clearly intend to be linked against Qt, then that's illegal.
For example, asssume there's a small utility that was written by Programmer Foo in 1992 for plain-vanilla X under the GPL, and that Programmer Bar patched the program in 1992. If Progammer Baz then added a KDE front-end to that program in 1999, it cannot legally be distributed until both Foo and Bar give permission.
So until KDE does a code audit and confirms everything they're shipping was intended to be linked against Qt by the author, it is quite possible that there is illegally-included code in KDE, and that Debian cannot legally distribute it.
Well, then why doesn't Debian also include Windows 98 in their distribution, since it's what the majority of computer users want?
The reason, of course, is that it would be illegal for them to do so.
Similarly, Debian interprets the GPL as making it illegal to distribute a GPLed program linked to Qt. Since KDE is GPLed, Debian believes that they would be breaking the law if they included KDE.
And, of course, if you had BOTHERED TO READ THE ARTICLE, you would have known this, and I wouldn't have had to make this redundant post. But apparently you were too busy attempting to get a first post.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:Address space is going to kill off the x86
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
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· Score: 2
The original 8086 processor had a 1 MB addressing limit, but the x86 architecture still survived.
The 80286 had a 16 MB addressing limit, but the x86 architecture still survived.
The Athlon faces a 4 GB addressing limit, but AMD is developing a 64-bit version with a potential 16 EB addressing limit.
Addressing limits are *not* why the x86 won't survive.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Re:x86 is popular to hate, but not that bad really
on
Is The x86 Obsolete?
·
· Score: 2
Did you bother to read the article? It declares that x86 as a solution was obsolete before the 486, but legacy x86 compatibility as a problem isn't going away.
Sure, Intel could have killed their version of the x86 by not issuing the 486. In that case, buisness purchases would have simply turned Cyrix and AMD into huge companies, because their chips would have solved the buisness problem of having to run legacy code. Intel either would have had to go back to x86, or have become a non-player in the desktop market.
I have, and I'd like to point out three other posters interpreted what the original poster said the same way I did.
Second, given the syntactical structure of English, the subclause following the comma refers to the AOL policy. "[T]o reflexively block anyone who implements the protocol and tries to talk to their servers without their permission" is a prepositional phrase describing the policy, so the sentence is equivalent to saying "What likely happened here is that AOL has/had a policy which is arguably llegal."
But I do apologize if I misunderstood the author's intent. I did not intend to accidentally flame someone because of his grammar, given my tendency to make similar errors.
Look at what they're doing with Sun and Java. After working with Sun for 4 years, they refuse to ratify Sun's version of EJB, in effect leaving Sun out to dry.
And Sun deserved such a fate. IBM made huge contributions to Java with the understanding that it would be standardized; instead, Sun abandons the standardization process and charges $$$ for work that was in significant part done by IBM.
IBM's our best hope for a widely-adopted non-proprietary Java. IBM needs to integrate mainframes, Windows machines, OS/2 machines, Linux machines, and more; an open Java is a critical component of their buisness strategy. Sun wants to make money selling the replacement for Windows -- closed Java is they way they expect to do that.
Sure, Jesse Berst ranted about it. AOL keeping it closed stops Microsoft from getting to use AOL's capital investments for free, and Microsoft (through ads) pays Jesse Berst's salary.
What likely happened here is that AOL has/had a policy to reflexively block anyone who implements the protocol and tries to talk to their servers without their permission, which is arguably illegal
Now, that gets the Dumb Statment of the Day award.
AOL owns the servers, so AOL is allowed to set conditions on their use. Otherwise every person who used the RBL, which deny some others access to the users' servers, would be acting illegally.
It's not only legal for them to deny permission, but using their servers without their permission is illegal under current law. When MS bypassed AOL's restrictions, they were cracking the AOL servers, and opened themselves to criminal charges.
For all the bullshit about openess you heard from the likes of MS, nobody asked a simple question -- why didn't they set up their own open servers? AIM can be targeted at non-AOL servers, after all; but MS didn't even set up a single AIM-accessible server.
No, what MS wanted was free access to an infrastructure and community AOL built. Why the hell should MS have free access to something AOL paid for?
Q12: Is the Names Council's recommendation that a "limited number of new top-level domains be introduced initially" a sensible way to minimize risks to Internet stability?
Yes.
Q16: Should any particular goal for, or limit on, the number of TLDs to be included in the initial introduction be established in advance, or alternatively should the number included in the initial introduction be guided by the extent to which proposals establish sound proofs of concept of varied new TLD attributes?
Fixed; a second trial-introduction phase can be done later if we need to test new concepts. An inital limitation will make the initial introduction easier to manage and analyze.
Q17: In view of the current competitive conditions, should the promotion of effective competition in the provision of registration services continue to be a significant motivation for adding fully open TLDs?
No, we've already got competition on that level.
Q18: Should the desire for diverse vendors of registry services in open TLDs be an important motivation in adding fully open TLDs?
Absolutely. Competition in registry services is necessary to gain the full benefits of competition in registration services.
Q22: How effective would other fully open TLDs be in providing effective competition to.com?
Not very;.com has control of the mindspace.
Q24: Would the likelihood of effective competition with.com be enhanced by making one or more of the single-character.com domains (which are currently registered to the IANA) available for use as the basis of a third-level registry (i.e. a registry that took registration of names in the form of or )? Should the single-character.com domains be made available for possible registry usage in conjunction with the initial group of additional TLDs?
Absolutely, and yes, a limited number.
Q25: Is increasing the utility of the DNS as a resource-location tool an appropriate goal in the introduction of new TLDs?
Yes.
Q26: Would the introduction of unrestricted, undifferentiated TLDs run counter to this goal? Q27: If so, are there ways of accommodating the goal of enhancing registry-level competition with the goal of enhancing the utility of the DNS?
Yes. The logical method would be to introduce several.?.com domains as new unrestricted, undifferentiated pseudoTLDs, and make all new gTLDs restricted and differentiated.
Q28: Is the concept of TLD "charters" helpful in promoting the appropriate evolution of the DNS?
Yes.
Q32: Should chartered TLDs be introduced according to a pre-defined system, or should proposals be evaluated on an individualized basis?
A pre-defined system; DNS should be an orderly and stable system.
Q34: Has the inventory of useful and available domain names reached an unacceptably low level?
No; however, the squatters seizing a large segment of the useful domain names in a specific field is a problem.
Q35: Assuming it is important to increase the inventory of available domain names, should that be done by adding TLDs that are not differentiated from the present ones?
Only in the.?.com space. New gTLDs should be chartered and the charers enforced; that way squatters cannot seize them.
Q36: Should the formulation of policies for limited-purpose TLDs be delegated to sponsoring organizations? In all cases or only in some?
In all cases. Let's keep the work as decentralized as possible.
Q37: What measures should be employed to encourage or require that a sponsoring organization is appropriately representative of the TLD's intended stakeholders?
ICANN should review those organizations on a regular basis; if they are acting inappropriately, the TLD should be transferred to the oversight of another group. The agreement with a sponsoring organization should be clear that ICANN may take such action at any time for any reason; the organization is acting as a delegate of ICANN, and has no rights not delegated by ICANN.
Q38: In cases where sponsoring organizations are appointed, what measures should be established to ensure that the interests of the global Internet community are served in the operation of the TLD?
As above.
Q41: Does the start up of a new TLD pose additional risks to intellectual property rights that warrant additional protections?
No.
Q42: Should the protections afforded intellectual property in the start-up phase of new TLDs differ depending on the type of TLD?
No.
Q43: Is the availability of the UDRP and court proceedings as remedies for violations of enforceable legal rights an appropriate element of protection of intellectual-property rights that should apply to all new TLDs? Are there any other protections that should be made available in all new TLDs, regardless of their type?
Yes. No new protections are necessary.
Q44: Does the start up of a new TLD pose difficulties for those other than intellectual property owners that should be addressed through special procedures?
No.
Q45: What mechanisms for start up of a new TLD should be followed to ensure that all persons receive a fair chance to obtain registrations?
Each registrar should register one name at a time in order until any backlog is resolved; then new names should be registered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Q46: Is exclusion of names appearing on a globally famous trademark list a workable method of protecting such marks from infringement at the present time? Would an exclusion mechanism be approprate in the future?
No and no. Any company with a "globally famous trademark" can afford the attorneys to enforce it via court proceedings. ICANN's job is not to make the lives of companies with "globally famous trademarks" easier.
Q55: Should there be minimum or maximum length requirements for TLD codes? Are restrictions appropriate to avoid possible future conflicts with ISO 3166-1 codes?
Yes. All new TLD codes should be four letters in length; this avoids conflicts with all 2- and 3-letter ISO 3166-1 codes and will not break any hard-length limits in software currently in use (as.arpa is a four letter domain already active).
Q56: Should there be restrictions on the types of TLD labels that are established (for example, a prohibition of country names)?
Yes.
Q57: What should be the criteria for selecting between potential TLD labels? Should non-English language TLD labels be favored?
English, currently the language most closely resembing an international language, is the most appropriate language for TLD labels. Evaluating such labels against the Interlingua vocabulary would be appropriate. TLDs with charters limiting themselves to single-language pages may be appropriate for languages with significant populations of users in more than one country (for example, in order of number of speakers; Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, German, French, and Malay-Indonesian).
Q63: Should ICANN accept proposals from companies formed/forming for the purpose of operating or sponsoring a new TLD? If so, how should ICANN determine the competence of the company?
No.
Q64: If a company has significant operational or policy positions not yet filled, how should ICANN evaluate the level of competence of officers and employees?
Bill Gates, on Nightline, claimed that a direct appeal to the Supreme Court would have only included the federal portion of the case; the state part had to go to the Appeals court first anyway. If that were true, a direct SC appeal would have had the effect of making the litigation more complex and slower to resolve.
Fact 3: America has far higher levels of criminal violence than any of the countries that spend less on health care and have higher life expectancies. For example, the total murder rate in Japan is lower than the non-gun murder rate in the U.S.
Guess what? Criminal violence simultaneously reduces life expectancy and increases health-care costs, and the problem can't be solved by changing the health care system.
When adjusted for the affects of criminal violence, U.S. life expectancy is very near the top, and health care costs are rather lower. The rest can be explained by the higher U.S. levels of arteriosclerosis, which is an effect of our having the fattest society on Earth, which is the result of lifestyle choices and affluence. We have the fattest "poor" on the planet.
In short, the factors that make Americans shorter lived and pay more for health care are not because of the health system, but because of other problems in society.
Nah -- it's not that I'm an American, it's that I blabber[1]. When asked where I went to college in an over-the-phone credit card application, I gave lots of detail, including the per-capita income rank in the U.S. of the county in which it's located[2].
[1] Unless you are saying there are no Canadians who blabber, in which case I will be forced to name a long list of prominent Canadians who do. And I'll probably also throw in their political affiliations, home towns, and other detail.
[2] Third in the U.S., after Manhattan and whatever county Silicon Valley's located in. And we still don't have a four-star restauraunt within a hundred miles. Steven E. Ehrbar
As the "British" part was dropped years ago, the answer cannot be "yes", since Canada is now no longer a member of anything called the British Commonwealth.
Second, I know plenty of Americans who say "eh". The standard southern Michigan caricature of Yoopers has them saying "eh" all the time, but plenty of southern Michiganians say it, too.
Slashdot Mirror
How many things are the way they are today because we went to space? How about that small, yet extremely powerful computer you used to post that message?
WRONG.
The transistor predates Sputnik by ten years.
The Traitorous Eight left months before Sputnik.
The integrated circuit was developed outside the space program the same year the U.S. launched its first satellite.
The microprocessor was designed for a handheld calculator two years after the first moon landing.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Also when Reagan (republican, for the kids who failed history) was president, Copyright laws were overhauled extending the life of the copyright to IIRC 75 years
Incorrect. Copyright was extended to 75 years or life+50 (depending on the nature of the work) under Jimmy Carter. It was then further extended to 95 years or life+70 under Bill Clinton.
Now, yes, the U.S. did join the Universal Copyright Convention (Berne) under Reagan; but it did not extend copyright term during Reagan's administration.
Steven E. Ehrbar
But would a court (the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, according to my high school government class)
Actually, you high-school government class is either oversimplifying or just wrong. The courts have ruled that they are the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, but that's an inherently circular argument. The Constitution never defines the "judicial Power" granted in the Constitution; multiple interpretations can be given to that grant, and only in some of them do the courts have the right to determine the scope of that grant. For example, it can be argued that the "judicial Power" only means the powers granted the courts under English law in the 18th Century; this is much more limited than the role that U.S. courts claim for themselves.
The owner of a a copyright has ABSOLUTE CONTROL over their work
No, they do not. They have the control granted to them by Congressionally-passed laws in accordance with Article I section 8 clause 8, limited by the doctrine of Fair Use.
For a member of Congress to make a copy of that work is to deprive them of their intellectual property rights. Note that phrase - "property rights." As in the government may not deprive you of your property without due process of law. As in eminent domain - the government can not take your property without compensating you. The congress-critters in question were not merely violating the law; they were violating the Constitution.
Except the Constitution never acknowledges "intellectual property rights". Instead, it assumes that an author has no inherent rights, and then gives the Congress permisssion to give authors exclusive rights for a limited time.
Steven E. Ehrbar
At around M8, it was the coolest thing on Earth
Given that M8 used the same cross-platform self-rendering technology that M16 uses and that you are criticizing...
It's always fun when people who disagree with me refute themselves.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Unfortunately, many view their research as lots of money in, no useful technology out. People expect immediate results
Immediate results?
The scientists seeking funding in 1960 said that we'd have fusion power in twenty years. Today, we're being told that it will be another 10 before we get a reactor that produces more than we put into it, and probably another 10 before we get it commercially useable. So, forty years into funding a twenty-year project, it's still a twenty-year project. Is it any wonder why the funding people (who do not understand the real progress that has been made) have a hard time believing that it won't still be a twenty-year project forty years from now?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Under the Universal Copyright Convention (Berne), a copyright notice is not required. As most nations are members of either or both the UCC and WTO (which requires adherence to the UCC), there are only a handful of nations on Earth where a copyright notice can possibly be required, and in few of those is there any actual recognition of copyrights at all.
Steven E. Ehrbar
That is one opinion. IMHO it is incorrect.
In that case, you are saying that RMS misunderstands the GPL, as RMS has repeatedly stated that position, and defended it as necessary to prevent the subversion of free software.
The important thing is that GPLed code remain GPLed. The executables are generated by the compiler. What if an OS-provided compiler is used which links in a propietary library without which the program cannot run? It is insane to say that this is wrong.
See this FSF text written by RMS. And point two of this one. And this other one.
It's supposed to be impossible to link a GPLed program to a library that can't be distributed under the terms of the GPL, and it's supposed to be impossible to link a GPLed library to a program that can't be distributed under the terms of the GPL. It was done deliberately. The only exception given was for OS components, and only because it was necessary to allow that in order to make free software available for those OSes.
(Yes, the definition of OS is fuzzy, and one can make the case that Qt is an equivalent of Motif, a system library for the X subsystem of the OS. That addresses this specific case, not the general.)
Steven E. Ehrbar
Loading the software into RAM is copying and not fair use
Incorrect. The 1980 Software Copyright Act specifically gives you that right.
Steven E. Ehrbar
If you have a piece of code with no license attached to it, you can do whatever you want with it.
Not at all. The 1980 Software Copyright Act specifically says what you can and cannot do with copyrighted software, license or no. Among the things you cannot do are distribute copies or derivative works without a license.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Everybody remember when Wang tried to use their 1988-issued videotex patent to get royalties on web browsers in 1998? No? Look here for the Mozilla.org description of the lawsuit, here for the patent, and here for the Mozilla.org description of its dismissal.
Now, it says that BT is going to go after ISPs on this. Well, AOL (including Netscape) is the biggest one around, and the Netscape lawyers were sent tons of prior art during the Wang case. I rather doubt BT is going to have a chance on this...
Steven E. Ehrbar
Well, sure the 64-bit programs won't run on a 386. Neither did 32-bit programs run on a 286, or protected-mode programs run on an 8086.
In any case, the claim was that a lack of address space kills ISAs. Price-performance and "what's special about Sledgehammer" is irrelevant to defending or refuting the claim that address space kills ISAs. If the 8086 and 286 are not the same ISA and neither is the same ISA as the 386, then the claim can be true. If they are all part of the x86 ISA (a common but possibly incorrect understanding), then I have proven it false.
Steven E. Ehrbar
There's a conditional you miss -- the line "if the authors of the program clearly intended it to be linked against Qt".
So if KDE includes any GPLed code that the original author didn't clearly intend to be linked against Qt, then that's illegal.
For example, asssume there's a small utility that was written by Programmer Foo in 1992 for plain-vanilla X under the GPL, and that Programmer Bar patched the program in 1992. If Progammer Baz then added a KDE front-end to that program in 1999, it cannot legally be distributed until both Foo and Bar give permission.
So until KDE does a code audit and confirms everything they're shipping was intended to be linked against Qt by the author, it is quite possible that there is illegally-included code in KDE, and that Debian cannot legally distribute it.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Well, then why doesn't Debian also include Windows 98 in their distribution, since it's what the majority of computer users want?
The reason, of course, is that it would be illegal for them to do so.
Similarly, Debian interprets the GPL as making it illegal to distribute a GPLed program linked to Qt. Since KDE is GPLed, Debian believes that they would be breaking the law if they included KDE.
And, of course, if you had BOTHERED TO READ THE ARTICLE, you would have known this, and I wouldn't have had to make this redundant post. But apparently you were too busy attempting to get a first post.
Steven E. Ehrbar
The original 8086 processor had a 1 MB addressing limit, but the x86 architecture still survived.
The 80286 had a 16 MB addressing limit, but the x86 architecture still survived.
The Athlon faces a 4 GB addressing limit, but AMD is developing a 64-bit version with a potential 16 EB addressing limit.
Addressing limits are *not* why the x86 won't survive.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Did you bother to read the article? It declares that x86 as a solution was obsolete before the 486, but legacy x86 compatibility as a problem isn't going away.
Sure, Intel could have killed their version of the x86 by not issuing the 486. In that case, buisness purchases would have simply turned Cyrix and AMD into huge companies, because their chips would have solved the buisness problem of having to run legacy code. Intel either would have had to go back to x86, or have become a non-player in the desktop market.
Steven E. Ehrbar
I have, and I'd like to point out three other posters interpreted what the original poster said the same way I did.
Second, given the syntactical structure of English, the subclause following the comma refers to the AOL policy. "[T]o reflexively block anyone who implements the protocol and tries to talk to their servers without their permission" is a prepositional phrase describing the policy, so the sentence is equivalent to saying "What likely happened here is that AOL has/had a policy which is arguably llegal."
But I do apologize if I misunderstood the author's intent. I did not intend to accidentally flame someone because of his grammar, given my tendency to make similar errors.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Look at what they're doing with Sun and Java. After working with Sun for 4 years, they refuse to ratify Sun's version of EJB, in effect leaving Sun out to dry.
And Sun deserved such a fate. IBM made huge contributions to Java with the understanding that it would be standardized; instead, Sun abandons the standardization process and charges $$$ for work that was in significant part done by IBM.
IBM's our best hope for a widely-adopted non-proprietary Java. IBM needs to integrate mainframes, Windows machines, OS/2 machines, Linux machines, and more; an open Java is a critical component of their buisness strategy. Sun wants to make money selling the replacement for Windows -- closed Java is they way they expect to do that.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Sure, Jesse Berst ranted about it. AOL keeping it closed stops Microsoft from getting to use AOL's capital investments for free, and Microsoft (through ads) pays Jesse Berst's salary.
Steven E. Ehrbar
What likely happened here is that AOL has/had a policy to reflexively block anyone who implements the protocol and tries to talk to their servers without their permission, which is arguably illegal
Now, that gets the Dumb Statment of the Day award.
AOL owns the servers, so AOL is allowed to set conditions on their use. Otherwise every person who used the RBL, which deny some others access to the users' servers, would be acting illegally.
It's not only legal for them to deny permission, but using their servers without their permission is illegal under current law. When MS bypassed AOL's restrictions, they were cracking the AOL servers, and opened themselves to criminal charges.
For all the bullshit about openess you heard from the likes of MS, nobody asked a simple question -- why didn't they set up their own open servers? AIM can be targeted at non-AOL servers, after all; but MS didn't even set up a single AIM-accessible server.
No, what MS wanted was free access to an infrastructure and community AOL built. Why the hell should MS have free access to something AOL paid for?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Steven E. Ehrbar
Bill Gates, on Nightline, claimed that a direct appeal to the Supreme Court would have only included the federal portion of the case; the state part had to go to the Appeals court first anyway. If that were true, a direct SC appeal would have had the effect of making the litigation more complex and slower to resolve.
Any lawyers care to comment?
Steven E. Ehrbar
Fact 3: America has far higher levels of criminal violence than any of the countries that spend less on health care and have higher life expectancies. For example, the total murder rate in Japan is lower than the non-gun murder rate in the U.S.
Guess what? Criminal violence simultaneously reduces life expectancy and increases health-care costs, and the problem can't be solved by changing the health care system.
When adjusted for the affects of criminal violence, U.S. life expectancy is very near the top, and health care costs are rather lower. The rest can be explained by the higher U.S. levels of arteriosclerosis, which is an effect of our having the fattest society on Earth, which is the result of lifestyle choices and affluence. We have the fattest "poor" on the planet.
In short, the factors that make Americans shorter lived and pay more for health care are not because of the health system, but because of other problems in society.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Nah -- it's not that I'm an American, it's that I blabber[1]. When asked where I went to college in an over-the-phone credit card application, I gave lots of detail, including the per-capita income rank in the U.S. of the county in which it's located[2].
[1] Unless you are saying there are no Canadians who blabber, in which case I will be forced to name a long list of prominent Canadians who do. And I'll probably also throw in their political affiliations, home towns, and other detail.
[2] Third in the U.S., after Manhattan and whatever county Silicon Valley's located in. And we still don't have a four-star restauraunt within a hundred miles.
Steven E. Ehrbar
As the "British" part was dropped years ago, the answer cannot be "yes", since Canada is now no longer a member of anything called the British Commonwealth.
Second, I know plenty of Americans who say "eh". The standard southern Michigan caricature of Yoopers has them saying "eh" all the time, but plenty of southern Michiganians say it, too.
Steven E. Ehrbar
Nah. There's several Tim Horton's here in Detroit, along with those ads.
Steven E. Ehrbar