Which is something that critics of Sony should keep in mind when they publically complain over their use of this technology. You can't just throw out terminology that most people out there are not at all familiar with and expect them to instantly get it. And since those critics fail to recognize that, Sony's reputation is safe from the general public. I believe that is the point that he was trying to make in that quote.
They know plenty about germs in general, so I'm sure they would care about that. They likely will not care about some new staph treatment or something else specific to that specific bacteria.
The same could easily be said of "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?". While it may piss off Wired magazine, most people out there do not know what a rootkit is and do not care about it (note, the/. readership is not a good sample of 'most people').
I actually don't see any real 'foot in mouth' comments. Most were intended to be jokes so the humor involved in them should be expected. A few were attempts to cover up the truth, such as with the Hwang Woo-suk comment. No foot in mouth there, he said exactly what he intended to say. Thats like claiming a convicted murder made a foot in mouth comment when he pled 'not guilty'. The biggest 'foot in mouth' comment I see here is in the article's title. Good job Wired, nothing but quality reporting from you these days.
Actually, the restrictions on issue ads only applied to radio and television ads and only banned money from unions or corporations. They do not restrict you from spending your own money to advocate some political position. So none of those costs are included.
The only way blogging could be affected by these restrictions would be if you were to donate over $2000 for him to set up his blog. And if a politician is requesting more than 2 grand so that he can create a blog, he is pulling your leg.
If you are spending more than the amont of money allowed in a policitcal campaign on a weblog or a podcast, well first of all you have too much money lying around. Second, you are a really crappy shopper because you can get the exact same services for a much better price.
On a more serious note (and a bit off topic, this entire discussion has absolutely nothing to do with the actual article should you ever choose to read it), blogs are the perfect solution to the campaign finance problems. They are effective methods of communicating with people and both grassroots campaigns and billionare candidates can participate in them equally well.
The problem is if a real expert (say an actual historian) came along and wanted to contribute something about one of these 'protected' subjects, they would be unable to, at least unless they were willing to wait until enough people had joined for them to be allowed to modify the article (and I'm guessing actual historians have better things to do than sit around and wait for the Wikipedia to say they are qualified to make those changes). This makes the Wikipedia more of an inclusive project, which does go against what it was founded to do.
If they really wanted to stop trolls, they would require users to sign in (with real identifiable information) before they make changes, and if a user was consistently found to be putting in bad information (whether he was trolling or just a complete idiot) they would require reviews before their changes are accepted. But that would require too much effort...
"They have no right to come down to someone's dry cleaning business and tell the owners they have to do the military's laundry for free, or else they will be fined millions of dollars.
Yes they can and they do."
Thats right, I forgot I was talking to the guy who saw nothing wrong with the national socialism laws passed in Germany back in the 30's. Well, just know most people out there disagree with you.
"
I just fail to see which established right of natural persons is violated by fining a company for misbehaviour. Please give me a hint."
First America is too slow in adopting broadband, now we are addicted? Either these articles are just trolling or we made a really quick turnaround...
But then again this is Wired News +/., so what do you expect?
BTW, from TFA...
"The bill for being thoroughly plugged in to entertainment and communications runs more than $200 a month for a third of the households in this country. Four in 10 spend between $100 and $150 a month, according to the poll of 1,006 adults taken Dec. 13-15."
Is it really news now that people buy a lot of gadgets in December? Next thing you know you will see a breaking news article about how sales of fireworks go up in late June/early July or about how sales of candy goes up in late October...
Corporations are owned by natural persons, a government still is limited as to what it ethically can do regarding them. They have no right to come down to someone's dry cleaning business and tell the owners they have to do the military's laundry for free, or else they will be fined millions of dollars.
Anyways, yes, if you revise your previous statement and say that these specific rulings are within the bounds of a democratic government (as opposed to saying a democracy can do whatever it wants, if you don't like it leave), you have something that is at least debatable. Of course since you have yet to make a case for this specific ruling, so you really still havn't gotten anywhere.
"Which, of course, is not to say it won't happen... it just hasn't happened yet."
It very well could never happen. I have seen no evidence even suggesting that MS even wants Opera, other than a very speculative and not very well thought out article written by some troll. This is yellow journalism at its best, when someone comes out and refutes an entirely made up story, claim "it still could happen".
"Whitespace errors can occur far more easily than block delimiting errors. Consider the case of un-indenting one line too soon. That produces an if condition error in python. Consider failing to close a block in java: that produces a compile time error."
And consider if you put the code outside of the block you intended because the idiot java developer who wrote the origional code used inconsistent indenting and you missed the &@$# end bracket. That causes a logical error which is even worse than a run-time error.
Well sure, they don't want to leave, but they also obviously don't want to comply with this ruling either. If they have to choose between doing something which they believe will ruin their business model and calling the EU's bluff, they certainly can do the latter.
"A socially responsible company would have left that country at some point."
First, it wasn't just companies that were affected then, it was also the people living there. Second, many companies couldn't leave as the state assumed control over them. Third, are you seriously suggesting there was nothing wrong with the laws that were passed back then, that if those living there didn't like them they should have moved to where, Poland? France?
My point was, just because a nation is a democracy does not give them carte blanche to do whatever it wants as your post implied.
"The EU and the US both have a GDP of roughly 11 USD trillion, of the 50 USD trillion world GDP."
Well yeah, the EU contains nearly twice as many people as the US, so their gross domestic product should be high. Per captia they end up being much smaller than in the US. And their economic growth (which is what I was talking about since you were not paying attention) has not been all that high in recent years and their unemployment rates are horrible. People are not going to go out and buy a new computer if they are unemployed and their nation's economic growth looks bleak. Believe me, I've seen it, my company's Europe numbers have been horrible recently compared to say the Americas or Asia. There is no way MS is going to potentially sacrifice their business in those markets just to make some politicians in Europe happy, especially since odds are at least 10-1 they are bluffing.
"That's democracy. A socially responsible company subjects itself to the rules of the jurisdictions it trades in. If you think a government is unreasonable, then stay out of that country."
No, thats absolutely not true. Just because a country is a democracy does not give them a right to pass any law they want to. Think Germany back in the '30s.
"NATO and the UN do not have the power to ban companies from a 11 trillion USD market."
With respect to text or data entered into and stored by publicly-accessible site features such as forums, comments and bug trackers ("OSTG Public Content"), the submitting user retains ownership of such OSTG Public Content; with respect to publicly-available statistical content which is generated by the site to monitor and display content activity, such content is owned by OSTG. In each such case, the submitting user grants OSTG the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable license
So yes, you are responsible for what you right, but you are granting them some rights over it. You cannot claim a copyright over it with terms like the one the origional poster claimed.
"Meaning, how could authors forbid the reproduction of works that are intended to be used privately?"
Well if you reproduce something and distribute it over the Internet, its no longer that private.
"
What does copyright actually mean? How is it binding? Can I say at the bottom of this post:
(C) 2006 by hackstraw..."
Well for starters, I believe/. retains some rights to your post, so you cannot claim copyright over it.
"To me, that statement seems like an EULA, and what validity do either of those have?"
I think people generally have to do something beyond just reading it to agree to a EULA.
"
Another thing, is I'm confused after this stuff that has come from France in the not so recent past."
This wasn't really a real vote, as I think it only got 30 out of 500+ votes. Just there were only 52 people present, so it passed.
Your point on the GPL is a good one though. With all the bashing of copyright laws on/., many have forgotten that open source software depends on copyrights. Though the law does allow them to prohibit the distribution for commerical use.
The European economy hasn't exactly been the strongest in recent years, I doubt dropping Europe would really matter that much. What would matter would be that people in Europe would be forced to go with alternative OSes, which would then incite people elsewhere to do the same thing as Windows would no longer be a de facto standard. Of course that is assuming Europe doesn't cry uncle and drop this whole silly thing.
I would love for MS to open its standards, but this cannot be the way to do this. If you don't like MS, use a different operating system, don't have your government bully around companies and force them to comply with unreasonable demands. Whats next, NATO demanding Google remove their ads from gmail or the UN demanding Nintendo stop selling games that involve graphic violence?
Ok, but there is still no way in hell that the bullet is going to go high enough for that difference to be in any way detectable, especially when compared to the other factors that will move it (such as wind). The radius of the earth is already nearly 4000 miles, the distance the bullet will go is going to make that much of a difference.
The differences in mass are going to be fairly significant, and when you consider that bullets are more areodynamic than pennies I'm sure the terminal velocity will be much greater and very likely could kill (especially since there are documented cases of people dying from stray bullets shot into the air, though many of those likely were not shot straight into the air and thus retained some horizontal velocity as well). Remember, bullets are designed to kill people, pennies are not.
And the rotation of the Earth won't move it westward. Want to see? Put a ball down on a level surface with no wind. Does it move westward? Neither will the bullet (unless there really is wind, which there almost certainly will be). The bullet was moving with the Earth when it was fired, and it will keep that motion while it is in the air.
Like hell he is. He is voiced by Seth MacFarlane, hence why he sounds exactly like virtually every other character in either Family Guy or American Dad.
"There are simplistic jokes like farting, but when I say "intellectual", I mean they make jokes out of things you don't expect."
Is the word on the tip of your tongue 'irony'? Thats a very old comedic technique that has been used over and over again by virtually every comedy. I wouldn't consider it sufficient to make the program 'intellectual'.
For instance, your use of 'Family Guy' as an intellectual comedy could be an example of (possibly unintentional) irony, as 'Family Guy' is lowbrow carbon copy of the Simpsons. That doesn't make your post in any way 'intellectual'.
Add to that the text of the summary is plagiarized from the article he linked to. I don't think hiding a hyperlink in your text is legally sufficient for a citation. Luckily since the entire story was made up, I don't think we have to worry about/. getting sued.
Wouldn't it be easier to just set an away message saying you are working and may not be able to get back to someone right away? Then set it so that messages that you recieve while you are away are minimized (I don't remember specifically what the setting was called) so it won't get in your way and you will have an excuse as to why you didn't see the message.
The problem with just making it look like you are away when you are really not is that at some point your boss or someone will figure out that is what you are doing, and from that point on they will assume you are available and just hiding that fact, even when you really are not (I've seen that happen to people myself).
All this being said, it should be easy to create a plugin that enable those preferences. Since most people would have no use for them, it seems they would work better as plugins anyways.
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Which is something that critics of Sony should keep in mind when they publically complain over their use of this technology. You can't just throw out terminology that most people out there are not at all familiar with and expect them to instantly get it. And since those critics fail to recognize that, Sony's reputation is safe from the general public. I believe that is the point that he was trying to make in that quote.
They know plenty about germs in general, so I'm sure they would care about that. They likely will not care about some new staph treatment or something else specific to that specific bacteria.
I actually don't see any real 'foot in mouth' comments. Most were intended to be jokes so the humor involved in them should be expected. A few were attempts to cover up the truth, such as with the Hwang Woo-suk comment. No foot in mouth there, he said exactly what he intended to say. Thats like claiming a convicted murder made a foot in mouth comment when he pled 'not guilty'. The biggest 'foot in mouth' comment I see here is in the article's title. Good job Wired, nothing but quality reporting from you these days.
The only way blogging could be affected by these restrictions would be if you were to donate over $2000 for him to set up his blog. And if a politician is requesting more than 2 grand so that he can create a blog, he is pulling your leg.
On a more serious note (and a bit off topic, this entire discussion has absolutely nothing to do with the actual article should you ever choose to read it), blogs are the perfect solution to the campaign finance problems. They are effective methods of communicating with people and both grassroots campaigns and billionare candidates can participate in them equally well.
If they really wanted to stop trolls, they would require users to sign in (with real identifiable information) before they make changes, and if a user was consistently found to be putting in bad information (whether he was trolling or just a complete idiot) they would require reviews before their changes are accepted. But that would require too much effort...
Thats right, I forgot I was talking to the guy who saw nothing wrong with the national socialism laws passed in Germany back in the 30's. Well, just know most people out there disagree with you.
" I just fail to see which established right of natural persons is violated by fining a company for misbehaviour. Please give me a hint."
Here is a hint.
But then again this is Wired News + /., so what do you expect?
BTW, from TFA... "The bill for being thoroughly plugged in to entertainment and communications runs more than $200 a month for a third of the households in this country. Four in 10 spend between $100 and $150 a month, according to the poll of 1,006 adults taken Dec. 13-15."
Is it really news now that people buy a lot of gadgets in December? Next thing you know you will see a breaking news article about how sales of fireworks go up in late June/early July or about how sales of candy goes up in late October...
Anyways, yes, if you revise your previous statement and say that these specific rulings are within the bounds of a democratic government (as opposed to saying a democracy can do whatever it wants, if you don't like it leave), you have something that is at least debatable. Of course since you have yet to make a case for this specific ruling, so you really still havn't gotten anywhere.
It very well could never happen. I have seen no evidence even suggesting that MS even wants Opera, other than a very speculative and not very well thought out article written by some troll. This is yellow journalism at its best, when someone comes out and refutes an entirely made up story, claim "it still could happen".
And consider if you put the code outside of the block you intended because the idiot java developer who wrote the origional code used inconsistent indenting and you missed the &@$# end bracket. That causes a logical error which is even worse than a run-time error.
Well sure, they don't want to leave, but they also obviously don't want to comply with this ruling either. If they have to choose between doing something which they believe will ruin their business model and calling the EU's bluff, they certainly can do the latter.
"A socially responsible company would have left that country at some point."
First, it wasn't just companies that were affected then, it was also the people living there. Second, many companies couldn't leave as the state assumed control over them. Third, are you seriously suggesting there was nothing wrong with the laws that were passed back then, that if those living there didn't like them they should have moved to where, Poland? France?
My point was, just because a nation is a democracy does not give them carte blanche to do whatever it wants as your post implied.
Well yeah, the EU contains nearly twice as many people as the US, so their gross domestic product should be high. Per captia they end up being much smaller than in the US. And their economic growth (which is what I was talking about since you were not paying attention) has not been all that high in recent years and their unemployment rates are horrible. People are not going to go out and buy a new computer if they are unemployed and their nation's economic growth looks bleak. Believe me, I've seen it, my company's Europe numbers have been horrible recently compared to say the Americas or Asia. There is no way MS is going to potentially sacrifice their business in those markets just to make some politicians in Europe happy, especially since odds are at least 10-1 they are bluffing.
"That's democracy. A socially responsible company subjects itself to the rules of the jurisdictions it trades in. If you think a government is unreasonable, then stay out of that country."
No, thats absolutely not true. Just because a country is a democracy does not give them a right to pass any law they want to. Think Germany back in the '30s.
"NATO and the UN do not have the power to ban companies from a 11 trillion USD market."
Wanna bet?
Well if you reproduce something and distribute it over the Internet, its no longer that private.
" What does copyright actually mean? How is it binding? Can I say at the bottom of this post: (C) 2006 by hackstraw..."
Well for starters, I believe /. retains some rights to your post, so you cannot claim copyright over it.
"To me, that statement seems like an EULA, and what validity do either of those have?"
I think people generally have to do something beyond just reading it to agree to a EULA.
" Another thing, is I'm confused after this stuff that has come from France in the not so recent past."
This wasn't really a real vote, as I think it only got 30 out of 500+ votes. Just there were only 52 people present, so it passed.
Your point on the GPL is a good one though. With all the bashing of copyright laws on /., many have forgotten that open source software depends on copyrights. Though the law does allow them to prohibit the distribution for commerical use.
I would love for MS to open its standards, but this cannot be the way to do this. If you don't like MS, use a different operating system, don't have your government bully around companies and force them to comply with unreasonable demands. Whats next, NATO demanding Google remove their ads from gmail or the UN demanding Nintendo stop selling games that involve graphic violence?
Ok, but there is still no way in hell that the bullet is going to go high enough for that difference to be in any way detectable, especially when compared to the other factors that will move it (such as wind). The radius of the earth is already nearly 4000 miles, the distance the bullet will go is going to make that much of a difference.
And the rotation of the Earth won't move it westward. Want to see? Put a ball down on a level surface with no wind. Does it move westward? Neither will the bullet (unless there really is wind, which there almost certainly will be). The bullet was moving with the Earth when it was fired, and it will keep that motion while it is in the air.
I see, the AC comment bringing them up was filtered out of my view.
Like hell he is. He is voiced by Seth MacFarlane, hence why he sounds exactly like virtually every other character in either Family Guy or American Dad.
Is the word on the tip of your tongue 'irony'? Thats a very old comedic technique that has been used over and over again by virtually every comedy. I wouldn't consider it sufficient to make the program 'intellectual'.
For instance, your use of 'Family Guy' as an intellectual comedy could be an example of (possibly unintentional) irony, as 'Family Guy' is lowbrow carbon copy of the Simpsons. That doesn't make your post in any way 'intellectual'.
So is your post. Origional can be found here.
Of course, so is my post complaining of duplicate dupe complaints.
You've got to admit it though, that was a great move by Brandon Routh in starting this rumor.
Add to that the text of the summary is plagiarized from the article he linked to. I don't think hiding a hyperlink in your text is legally sufficient for a citation. Luckily since the entire story was made up, I don't think we have to worry about /. getting sued.
The problem with just making it look like you are away when you are really not is that at some point your boss or someone will figure out that is what you are doing, and from that point on they will assume you are available and just hiding that fact, even when you really are not (I've seen that happen to people myself).
All this being said, it should be easy to create a plugin that enable those preferences. Since most people would have no use for them, it seems they would work better as plugins anyways.