>Which does nothing to prevent a lawsuit from being filed.
It guarantees summary dismissal. *shrug*. You cannot sue a lawmaker for introducing legislation. Not even if the legislation is plainly unconstitutional on its face. Not even if it contains obscene language, or if it contains language of racist discrimination, or is otherwise illegal. Sorry. This immunity derives from the Constitution, and it's actually a good idea because the alternative is to allow a certain kind of tyranny.
>If only it had worked that way for Ted Stevens...
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, represents a *STATE* with a relatively wealthy population. Abandoned coal mine, local government representative on one end of the spectrum. Wealthy state, senior US Senator on the other end...
>>the average home value under $10,000 >I think you missed a decimal point there.;-)
No, I used a census source for that. The average home value in the county in question, is $9,900.
Your number is for the nation. That should help illustrate the basic problem this lawmaker has. He represents some of the poorest people anywhere, who have some of the fewest prospects of anyone in the world. All they had there was coal mining, and they are scraping the end of the mines.
It may be a tiny town, but it is very important as being the last big island before you get to Queen Charlotte Sound, where there are huge amounts of commercial fishing and ship transport, and some of the post popular recreation areas in Canada.
I was going on a photo assignment to a place with no electricity. I was going to be there for two weeks. I took a LOT of batteries, including quite a few rechargeable battery packs. Checking in at the TSA was a surreal experience, because the guy kept asking me why I needed all these batteries, and I kept explaining it. It was as if he could not understand the concept of going to a place with no electricity, and especially, not understand that going there could be for work purposes. He kept asking the same questions, and got his supervisor who also asked me; it seemed like they were hoping for some other answer, one they could process. Eventually they had to acknowledge that batteries are not on the list of banned items (although I'm surprised they get past the 3-ounces-of-gel restriction), and they let me fly.
FWIW, I hate to fly, and when I travel for work, I'm always secretly hoping the flight security won't let me go. Hoping for this seems to lead generally to being waved through to an on-time flight, *sigh*.
I'm a linux user (since 1992) and a computer gamer (since 1976). So how does this work in your study? I'm a linux user and my main gaming machine runs windows XP.
>A construction worker was killed while torguing such a bolt while building the Saturn car factory. The head >tore off and he fell to his death.
Even if it had not been a counterfeit bolt, it sounds like the root cause of the problem was the reliance on a single untested point of failure. The correct bolt could have failed in the same way. What was he doing? Bolting together the platform that he was standing on? Or using the wrench as the only thing between him and a deadly fall? What if it had been the wrench that broke, or he simply lost his grip? I hope there were more policy changes after that accident than merely vendor stuff.
>Why the hell doesn't someone sue one of these idiots for breach of trust?
Because they face re-election every few years. If they are supported by their constituents, they return to office. If lawmakers were subject to legal threats every time they proposed something, there would be so much abuse that would make today's level of corruption look like child's play.
Consider that a state assemblyman represents a rather limited group of constituents, and is a pretty small voice in a pretty big crowd. He is small potatoes even by Kentucky standards, representing a county of about 25,000 population, under 30 percent of them high schoolgraduates, where the average income is $16,000 and the average home value under $10,000.
Think about these numbers, and then ask yourself how much influence you think Rep. Tim Couch has, and how likely it is for this bill to get past committee.
>The major problem I have with these kinds of laws aren't IF they are enforcable, but how much the enforcement will cost and who will pay for it.
So you totally miss the part about it being illegal to establish a prior restraint on free speech, or for government to introduce a "chilling effect" on what is otherwise a First Amendment protected activity.
This legislation would be fought from so many different angles, it's almost amusing.
Conservatives will not want to be forced to reveal their identities when speaking on political forums. Liberals will not want their right to speak in opposition to government policy.
Consider what happens when people from the health professions start to talk about the effect on things like support forums for victims of sexual assault, or when representatives of the law enforcement community bring up the threat that is posed when anonymous reporting of crimes is suppressed.
How will the stock traders react when they discover they can't be anonymous on the message boards?
There are so many people that would oppose this legislation, it cuts through practically every walk of life.
>We should ban stupid politicians. Unfortunately, how do you ban ignorance?
In this case, you have other, better educated politicians talk to the stupid ones about things like equal protection, or chilling effects on free speech. You know, the stuff the ignorance of which has ended the careers of so many other stupid politicians.
On the other hand, the opinion of a single lawmaker in a state assembly has about the same merit as that of one slashdot poster. They say stupid stuff all the time and nothing comes of it.
This is not necessarily correct. It is possible for a URL to be non-trivial and original, and it is possible for that non-trivial URL to be fixed into a tangible form for more than a brief duration of time. Regardless of whether it is possible to include the notice, it certainly is possible for a URL to be subject to copyright protection.
Not this one though, even if it is original and has been fixed into a tangible media for more than a brief period of time.
The domain name may be a trademark, but that is distinct from copyright.
showthread.php is not mobitv's work, and in addition, it is a title. Not subject to copyright law under Berne, Canada, or USA law.
The questionmark and the single letter parameter name assignment are both trivial, as is the number 1332161 which may have been a trade secret until it was used publicly.
There is nothing here that any court will construe as being subject to copyright. You should let them go forward and force them to bring this evidence to a judicial hearing.
Essentially this company is claiming ownership of the number 1332161 and threatening to sue in a federal court to defend its use.
See, the same guy could write a cease and desist letter to Slashdot editors, or the New York Times for that matter. Unless and until that letter is attached to a court order to cease and desist, there's no reason to even respond to it. You should read it. You should keep it. Because it can be used as evidence against the person who wrote it later. But if you act on the demand in the letter, you should only do so because you were inclined to take that same action to begin with.
For anyone who gives in to "pressure" from a mere C&D letter... you make your choices, and the letter is irrelevant.
I have an issue for him that has to do with someone using his trademarks. I've found no way to bring it to his attention, but I would love to see hostile litigation ensue.
>Well, yes and no. Public school fails largely because they only teach >kids to pass just this one test...
The tragedy is that some of them could be taught to pass just one test and have that test be the GRE, the LSAT, or the MCAT. But the system in most places tends to *marginalize* those same kids, and they are not given the special opportunities they could make use of. Often, abuse of these same kids is encouraged.
And then they wonder why the smartest kids also sometimes are the most rebellious.
I read your post. You are wrong. There is no prior restraint on free speech, not even in an elementary school classroom. There may be social consequences or contracts at work in some specific cases, but you are completely wrong as to whether any law makes it illegal to "teach" (speak on) any given topic even in a public school classroom, except in the same narrowly constrained circumstances where "time, place, and manner" restrictions apply to everyone else.
Outright discrimination on the basis of race or gender is of course on that narrowly defined list. It's against the law everywhere, so it is also against the law in the classroom.
Organized prayer is another one. It's been held that organized prayer in a public accommodation is a form of discrimination.
You can't do something that you have a reasonable apprehension will start a riot or engender an act of violence.
etc., etc. The history of Free Speech in this country goes on and on.
Good luck with your Congressional hearing. Maybe "there oughta be a law" that says teachers can't lie to your kids in school. But there isn't one. Contract law helps you here. Make your teachers sign binding contracts for the consideration of employment by your district. When they violate those terms, apply the full force of contract law. It's much easier to get a county hearing on a contract enforcement than to get an appeals case to the Supreme court... or a Congressional investigation of something that goes on in your town...
For many -- perhaps for millions of users -- wireless networking was *THE* development that made personal computers interesting to them.
The fact of the matter is that with vanishingly rare exceptions, you cannot make a specification-based order for either desktop or laptop devices and have a reasonable apprehension of acquiring a working system. if the operating system happens to be Linux.
This may be the fault of the manufacturers of the Broadcom or Atheros chips, it may be the fault of the OEM's who are known to change chipsets without even changing the product codes on the packaging, and it may be the fault of the NDISWrapper folks who took the half-a-loaf opportunity and provided something that relieved some of the pressure of this, in my opinion, the most serious compatibility problem in the history of Linux.
It amazes me that, even to this day, I cannot reference a compatibility list for wireless devices in such a way that allows me to actually acquire a working device!
I think this was a huge enough problem that somebody like IBM and/or RedHat should have bought out the wi-fi chipset manufacturers for no other purpose than to force disclosure of their specs.
This wireless driver problem is the whip that has driven me to choose Macs for my last 3 portable computers. I wonder if we can even measure the impact of the lack of wireless support?
As an experiment try this: You are tasked with obtaining 255 Linux desktop computers. They must all have the same 802.11/g PCI card. It need not be "officially" supported by any company, but you do need to personally assure that it works after testing one unit. The remaining units will be deployed around the world based on your spec. Pre-assembled or in-house assembly is acceptable. What PCI card do you choose?
Try the same experiment with laptops. What wireless laptop do you order for Linux compatibility?
You can probably do both of these simply buy buying one of the few really expensive cards and/or laptops. Scale the experiment back down to the individual though, and the cost of special hardware combined with the difficulty of tracking down a compatible piece of hardware combined with the frustration that comes from buying a piece of hardware that was ON THE LIST, only to find it DOES NOT work... (Does anybody want a drawer full of Linksys USB radios that are supposed to be Prism2/Intersil according to the part number???)
This problem goes much further than any argument of whether the authors of NDISWrapper should be allowed to paste the GPL header at the top of their code. On that subject: Anybody who holds a legitimate copyright may use the GPL, or NO ONE may use it. It's copyright that allows the use of the license, and nothing else. You want your "tested in court" failure of the GPL? Assert that Linus or anyone else has some authority over your right to use the license for your work. Unfortunately, prevailing in this assertion will tend to weaken the license, since you've just made it revocable by some third party without consideration.
This theory that a piece of software cannot be released under GPL if the software loads non-GPL objects, falls flat on its face. There's simply no mechanism for a third party to constrain distribution based on that argument.
>How can evidence be considered valid if the source of how it is >obtained is not disclosed?
Some evidence stands "on its face" regardless of its source or the motivation for its introduction. The evidence itself can be tested. The legality of its acquisition (valid discovery in a civil case) can be addressed, and that is the nature of the complaint being reported and discussed by the amateurs at Slashdot.
A criminal case in Florida is a different beast from a copyright case in a Federal District Court. About the only thing they have in common is the basic fact that these cases fall under rules of more-or-less the same government.
If a jury can be convinced that the evidence is reasonably correct and was reasonably required, that's all that is needed. IF Lindor can collect this other evidence in the petition, that's their discovery, considered separately.
That's how civil cases go. Sometimes literally with a truckload of file boxes involved.
Discovery is a game of getting as big a pile of paper on YOUR table as THEY have on THEIR table.
Free speech doctrine actually allows all of this to begin with, no need for any affirmative right. The question is whether the employer (school district) is constrained in its choice of whether to retain the employee. This law eliminates causes for termination, more than anything, because it does not actually grant any rights the teacher (or anyone else) already has.
>How are any of these better than using TrueCrypt in traveller mode?
There is a possibility that the average IT decision maker will have heard of one of them. The de-facto media embargo against Free software does not help.
What product available through your wholesale office supply dealer uses TrueCrypt? As an independent person you know better than to base a security decision on a Computerworld article, but what if your professional hands are tied? (My answer to this is "get promoted to a level where you have the authority to untie them").
Few who complain about IT management ever seem willing to listen to my solution:-)
>Why do people think Diebold is primarily election systems-based?
The position of control over a whole country's election system is far more valuable than the revenue of the business. Why do you think that the voting machine business being less valuable on the bottom line makes it a less important part of the company's portfolio?
>Congress will be forced to give IP rights holders increased power to police infringement.
Then all copyright holders would have the same authority under Equal Protection, which means individuals would have more power against media corporations.
Slashdot Mirror
>I mean, the CoS would easily bomb a data center
Being linked to a literal act of terrorism would be the end of Scientology in the US.
>Which does nothing to prevent a lawsuit from being filed.
It guarantees summary dismissal. *shrug*.
You cannot sue a lawmaker for introducing legislation. Not even if the legislation is plainly unconstitutional on its face.
Not even if it contains obscene language, or if it contains language of racist discrimination, or is otherwise illegal.
Sorry. This immunity derives from the Constitution, and it's actually a good idea because the alternative is to allow
a certain kind of tyranny.
>If only it had worked that way for Ted Stevens...
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, represents a *STATE* with a relatively wealthy population.
Abandoned coal mine, local government representative on one end of the spectrum.
Wealthy state, senior US Senator on the other end...
What's your point.
>>the average home value under $10,000 ;-)
>I think you missed a decimal point there.
No, I used a census source for that. The average home value in the county in question, is $9,900.
Your number is for the nation. That should help illustrate the basic problem this lawmaker has.
He represents some of the poorest people anywhere, who have some of the fewest prospects of anyone in the world.
All they had there was coal mining, and they are scraping the end of the mines.
It may be a tiny town, but it is very important as being the last big island before you get to Queen Charlotte Sound, where
there are huge amounts of commercial fishing and ship transport, and some of the post popular recreation areas in Canada.
I was going on a photo assignment to a place with no electricity. I was going to be there for two weeks.
I took a LOT of batteries, including quite a few rechargeable battery packs. Checking in at the TSA was
a surreal experience, because the guy kept asking me why I needed all these batteries, and I kept explaining
it. It was as if he could not understand the concept of going to a place with no electricity, and especially,
not understand that going there could be for work purposes. He kept asking the same questions, and got his
supervisor who also asked me; it seemed like they were hoping for some other answer, one they could process.
Eventually they had to acknowledge that batteries are not on the list of banned items (although I'm surprised
they get past the 3-ounces-of-gel restriction), and they let me fly.
FWIW, I hate to fly, and when I travel for work, I'm always secretly hoping the flight security won't let me
go. Hoping for this seems to lead generally to being waved through to an on-time flight, *sigh*.
It's a difficult thing to survey.
I'm a linux user (since 1992) and a computer gamer (since 1976).
So how does this work in your study? I'm a linux user and my main
gaming machine runs windows XP.
>A construction worker was killed while torguing such a bolt while building the Saturn car factory. The head
>tore off and he fell to his death.
Even if it had not been a counterfeit bolt, it sounds like the root cause of the problem was the reliance on a single untested point of failure. The correct bolt could have failed in the same way. What was he doing? Bolting together the platform that he was standing on? Or using the wrench as the only thing between him and a deadly fall? What if it had been the wrench that broke, or he simply lost his grip? I hope there were more policy changes after that accident than merely vendor stuff.
>Why the hell doesn't someone sue one of these idiots for breach of trust?
Because they face re-election every few years. If they are supported by their constituents,
they return to office. If lawmakers were subject to legal threats every time they proposed
something, there would be so much abuse that would make today's level of corruption look like
child's play.
Consider that a state assemblyman represents a rather limited group of constituents, and is
a pretty small voice in a pretty big crowd. He is small potatoes even by Kentucky standards,
representing a county of about 25,000 population, under 30 percent of them high schoolgraduates,
where the average income is $16,000 and the average home value under $10,000.
Think about these numbers, and then ask yourself how much influence you think Rep. Tim Couch has,
and how likely it is for this bill to get past committee.
>The major problem I have with these kinds of laws aren't IF they are enforcable, but how much the enforcement will cost and who will pay for it.
So you totally miss the part about it being illegal to establish a prior restraint on free speech, or for government
to introduce a "chilling effect" on what is otherwise a First Amendment protected activity.
This legislation would be fought from so many different angles, it's almost amusing.
Conservatives will not want to be forced to reveal their identities when speaking on political forums.
Liberals will not want their right to speak in opposition to government policy.
Consider what happens when people from the health professions start to talk about the effect on things like
support forums for victims of sexual assault, or when representatives of the law enforcement community bring
up the threat that is posed when anonymous reporting of crimes is suppressed.
How will the stock traders react when they discover they can't be anonymous on the message boards?
There are so many people that would oppose this legislation, it cuts through practically every walk of life.
>We should ban stupid politicians. Unfortunately, how do you ban ignorance?
In this case, you have other, better educated politicians talk to the stupid ones
about things like equal protection, or chilling effects on free speech. You know,
the stuff the ignorance of which has ended the careers of so many other stupid politicians.
On the other hand, the opinion of a single lawmaker in a state assembly has about the same merit as that of one slashdot poster. They say stupid stuff all the time and nothing comes of it.
>What exactly is MobiTV trying to claim is their IP? The URL? I didn't >think such short addresses were copyrightable.
A domain name can be considered a trademark in some cases, but that's trademark.
showthread.php is not MobiTV's property, and if this URL can be copyrighted it is a derivative work.
>Silly MobiTV -- you can't copyright an URL!
This is not necessarily correct. It is possible for a URL to be non-trivial and original, and it is possible for that non-trivial URL to be fixed into a tangible form for more than a brief duration of time. Regardless of whether it is possible to include the notice, it certainly is possible for a URL to be subject to copyright protection.
Not this one though, even if it is original and has been fixed into a tangible media for more than a brief period of time.
The domain name may be a trademark, but that is distinct from copyright.
showthread.php is not mobitv's work, and in addition, it is a title. Not subject to copyright law under Berne, Canada, or USA law.
The questionmark and the single letter parameter name assignment are both trivial, as is the number 1332161 which may have been a trade secret until it was used publicly.
There is nothing here that any court will construe as being subject to copyright. You should let them go forward and force them to bring this evidence to a judicial hearing.
Essentially this company is claiming ownership of the number 1332161 and threatening to sue in a federal court to defend its use.
See, the same guy could write a cease and desist letter to Slashdot editors, or the New York Times for that matter. Unless and until that letter is attached to a court order to cease and desist, there's no reason to even respond to it. You should read it. You should keep it. Because it can be used as evidence against the person who wrote it later. But if you act on the demand in the letter, you should only do so because you were inclined to take that same action to begin with.
For anyone who gives in to "pressure" from a mere C&D letter... you make your choices, and the letter is irrelevant.
>No career will be "sexy" so long as it remains 80-90% male.
Firemen and rugby players are considered sexy, I'm told.
>I'll tell you the same thing I told U2s manager.
Did Paul respond to you?
I have an issue for him that has to do with someone using his trademarks.
I've found no way to bring it to his attention, but I would love to see
hostile litigation ensue.
All I needed was to realize they weren't claiming the losses to "piracy" as financial losses for insurance claims or on tax returns.
Until they do one or both of those things, which basically puts the board under oath on the matter, I do not believe them.
>Well, yes and no. Public school fails largely because they only teach ...
>kids to pass just this one test
The tragedy is that some of them could be taught to pass just one test and have that test be the GRE, the LSAT, or the MCAT. But the system in most places tends to *marginalize* those same kids, and they are not given the special opportunities they could make use of. Often, abuse of these same kids is encouraged.
And then they wonder why the smartest kids also sometimes are the most rebellious.
I read your post. You are wrong. There is no prior restraint on free speech, not even in an elementary school classroom. There may be social consequences or contracts at work in some specific cases, but you are completely wrong as to whether any law makes it illegal to "teach" (speak on) any given topic even in a public school classroom, except in the same narrowly constrained circumstances where "time, place, and manner" restrictions apply to everyone else.
Outright discrimination on the basis of race or gender is of course on that narrowly defined list. It's against the law everywhere, so it is also against the law in the classroom.
Organized prayer is another one. It's been held that organized prayer in a public accommodation is a form of discrimination.
You can't do something that you have a reasonable apprehension will start a riot or engender an act of violence.
etc., etc. The history of Free Speech in this country goes on and on.
Good luck with your Congressional hearing. Maybe "there oughta be a law" that says teachers can't lie to your kids in school. But there isn't one. Contract law helps you here. Make your teachers sign binding contracts for the consideration of employment by your district. When they violate those terms, apply the full force of contract law. It's much easier to get a county hearing on a contract enforcement than to get an appeals case to the Supreme court... or a Congressional investigation of something that goes on in your town...
For many -- perhaps for millions of users -- wireless networking was *THE* development that made personal computers interesting to them.
The fact of the matter is that with vanishingly rare exceptions, you cannot make a specification-based order for either desktop or laptop devices and have a reasonable apprehension of acquiring a working system. if the operating system happens to be Linux.
This may be the fault of the manufacturers of the Broadcom or Atheros chips, it may be the fault of the OEM's who are known to change chipsets without even changing the product codes on the packaging, and it may be the fault of the NDISWrapper folks who took the half-a-loaf opportunity and provided something that relieved some of the pressure of this, in my opinion, the most serious compatibility problem in the history of Linux.
It amazes me that, even to this day, I cannot reference a compatibility list for wireless devices in such a way that allows me to actually acquire a working device!
I think this was a huge enough problem that somebody like IBM and/or RedHat should have bought out the wi-fi chipset manufacturers for no other purpose than to force disclosure of their specs.
This wireless driver problem is the whip that has driven me to choose Macs for my last 3 portable computers. I wonder if we can even measure the impact of the lack of wireless support?
As an experiment try this: You are tasked with obtaining 255 Linux desktop computers. They must all have the same 802.11/g PCI card. It need not be "officially" supported by any company, but you do need to personally assure that it works after testing one unit. The remaining units will be deployed around the world based on your spec. Pre-assembled or in-house assembly is acceptable. What PCI card do you choose?
Try the same experiment with laptops. What wireless laptop do you order for Linux compatibility?
You can probably do both of these simply buy buying one of the few really expensive cards and/or laptops. Scale the experiment back down to the individual though, and the cost of special hardware combined with the difficulty of tracking down a compatible piece of hardware combined with the frustration that comes from buying a piece of hardware that was ON THE LIST, only to find it DOES NOT work... (Does anybody want a drawer full of Linksys USB radios that are supposed to be Prism2/Intersil according to the part number???)
This problem goes much further than any argument of whether the authors of NDISWrapper should be allowed to paste the GPL header at the top of their code. On that subject: Anybody who holds a legitimate copyright may use the GPL, or NO ONE may use it. It's copyright that allows the use of the license, and nothing else. You want your "tested in court" failure of the GPL? Assert that Linus or anyone else has some authority over your right to use the license for your work. Unfortunately, prevailing in this assertion will tend to weaken the license, since you've just made it revocable by some third party without consideration.
This theory that a piece of software cannot be released under GPL if the software loads non-GPL objects, falls flat on its face. There's simply no mechanism for a third party to constrain distribution based on that argument.
>How can evidence be considered valid if the source of how it is
>obtained is not disclosed?
Some evidence stands "on its face" regardless of its source or the motivation for its introduction. The evidence itself can be tested. The legality of its acquisition (valid discovery in a civil case) can be addressed, and that is the nature of the complaint being reported and discussed by the amateurs at Slashdot.
A criminal case in Florida is a different beast from a copyright case in a Federal District Court. About the only thing they have in common is the basic fact that these cases fall under rules of more-or-less the same government.
If a jury can be convinced that the evidence is reasonably correct and was reasonably required, that's all that is needed. IF Lindor can collect this other evidence in the petition, that's their discovery, considered separately.
That's how civil cases go. Sometimes literally with a truckload of file boxes involved.
Discovery is a game of getting as big a pile of paper on YOUR table as THEY have on THEIR table.
Free speech doctrine actually allows all of this to begin with, no need for any affirmative right. The question is whether the employer (school district) is constrained in its choice of whether to retain the employee.
This law eliminates causes for termination, more than anything, because it does not actually grant any rights the teacher (or anyone else) already has.
>How are any of these better than using TrueCrypt in traveller mode?
:-)
There is a possibility that the average IT decision maker will have heard of one of them. The de-facto media embargo against Free software does not help.
What product available through your wholesale office supply dealer uses TrueCrypt? As an independent person you know better than to base a security decision on a Computerworld article, but what if your professional hands are tied? (My answer to this is "get promoted to a level where you have the authority to untie them").
Few who complain about IT management ever seem willing to listen to my solution
>Why do people think Diebold is primarily election systems-based?
The position of control over a whole country's election system is
far more valuable than the revenue of the business. Why do you think
that the voting machine business being less valuable on the bottom line
makes it a less important part of the company's portfolio?
>Congress will be forced to give IP rights holders increased power to police infringement.
Then all copyright holders would have the same authority under Equal Protection, which means individuals would have more power against media corporations.