Flash memory isn't a good storage solution for a mail server. If you've got any sort of traffic volume, you'll wear out the memory in a year or so.
It's a fine solution for storing the OS and getting the thing booted. You can use network-mounted storage for the rest, and still meet the goal of having a small, low-power server with no moving parts. You've got to have a server someplace with an actual disk, but I'm guessing the original poster owns a PC...
Not to belittle a heck of an achievement, but I was glad to see the author explain how even under such extreme conditions and with much improved equipment than was used they would be able to do as well as the Hubble only 10% of the time. Which (IMNSHO) again points out the need to keep the Hubble up there.
Nonsense. The only advantage Hubble has is that it can see more. Pretty important, but still.
How many observatories could be built there for the cost of a Hubble? I bet it's a great enough number that it would compensate for the fact that they perform as well as Hubble only 10% of the time, particularly in light of the fact that they could still be doing productive work the other 90% of the time.
Reducing the cost of spaceflight profoundly would probably change that equation somewhat.
Copyright infringement is not theft, it's not a form of theft (there are actually many forms of theft, normal theft is 'theft by taking'), it's not anywhere near close to theft.
I'm sure the semantics are a great comfort to those who have been convicted under software piracy laws.
To commit theft, you have to deprive someone of something else.
I'm not sure what the point of denying the existence of laws protecting against theft of intellectual property is, which is what you're doing here. I think the laws are often silly, but I at least acknowledge their existence. I mean, come on.
Yes, you could run Solaris x86 exclusively in a PII/III shop. But you wouldn't gain anything from doing so.
That's pretty common thinking but it's not quite true. The big, obvious gain is that you don't have to upgrade the OS version every year or two (at the least), as you do with most Linux distros. Security updates for Solaris releases go back over six years.
There are certainly a lot of security patches on any Solaris 2.6 machines out there, but there are environments where that situation beats updating the entire OS. The "enterprise" Linux versions are also striving for this level of longevity. Interestingly, a Solaris x86 license on a small system is quite a bit cheaper than an "enterprise linux" support contract.
Not an entirely fair comparison, since there aren't any White Box/CentOS/Scientific Linux-type clones for the Solaris x86 user, providing all the OS patches for no cost. But there are the free Solaris patch cluster downloads. Solaris x86 is at least a reasonable choice if you want to build a low-cost system to last years instead of months.
Well, I'd guess that Linux with the various SGI patches that run on the SGI 512 CPU systems aren't "some clever hack" either, for that matter if that's what you're trying to imply.
I imagine the above poster only meant to imply that there won't be any quickie code transplants from Solaris to Linux, regardless of the license. Your example is also an instance of this: you can be sure that SGI's Linux changes to run on 512 CPU machines aren't transplants of IRIX code. =Not only because it's a totally different system which does not lend itself to such transplants, which was the above poster's point, but also because SCO would (rightly or wrongly) be all over them for using System V code like that. They've already bitched about the XFS stuff in Linux.
If I sell you a machine with a copy of Windows 98 on it, and a week later MS knocks down my doors because I've been selling it without actually purchasing it, you get to keep your copy, I'm the one in trouble. See why people complain when it's called 'stealing'?
There's a "knowingly" part is important in this case. You're breaking the law if you know what you've obtained is stolen and you hang on to it, to my understanding.
Software is not stolen from the copyright owner and hence it isn't stolen property.
Thus far it seems like there's some kind of semantic distinction between "stealing software" and "stealing everything else" that isn't very clear. I'll certainly read up on this, but I have a feeling the law itself is kind of obfuscated in that regard. As a practical matter it's of course very easy to play dumb if you're ever called on it by the authorities. And convicting someone of anything that involves proving intent is pretty damn hard, even when there's an actual victim...
Copyright law doesn't have anything to do with property ownership law
It sure seems to be treated that way at times, even in court. Whether it ought to be, I'm not sure.
My offical policy with EULA is to walk away with them on the screen, and while I'm gone the magical EULA fairy comes by and hits 'enter'. At least, that's what I think happens, as I'm never there to see.
If I ever had to talk my way out of an EULA violation situation I'd probably just claim I didn't understand it. Not much of a stretch there, since you'd honestly need a lawyer to be sure what rights the EULA is asking you to give up.
If the original movie is no longer under copyright but the derivative still is, could I write my own Star Wars story using Luke, Leia, etc... or would they (the characters) be protected still by the derivative work?
Actually, those characters might be protected by trademark, which can last longer than copyright. I think this is why you can't use Mickey Mouse in anything, although I'm not an expert on the subject.
It's not illegal to use a illegal copy of a program, it's illegal to distribute it.
That hasn't been true for a really, really long time, even if you're drawing the distinction between civil and criminal cases. There has been, at the least, civil liability for stealing software (or "unauthorized duplication," or whatever suits your politics) since I've been alive. Over the years the government has made it easier and easier to bring such a civil suit. And now, thanks to the DMCA, it's ridiculously easy to bring federal felony charges. Most of the time a company won't bother, but still.
Not that I'm trying to stop you from doing anything - I really don't care. But some of the quasi-legal rationalizations here are pretty bizarre.
If you give me an illegal copy, it is you who will have to pay for it, and I can, quite happily, keep using it.
Now that's just silly. Skipping over the finer points of whether it was truly an "illegal" copy, which you've apparently conceded for the sake of argument, remember that there is such a charge as "receiving stolen property." Which is sort of unlikely to be used in the context of software or intellectual property, now that they have much bigger clubs to wield than misdemeanor charges, but your rationalization in this case is particularly weak.
It's not some mysterious hard-to-find statue, it's clearly spelt out in your state's legal code, and computer crackers are charged with it all the time.
Could be, I really don't know. I definitely wouldn't have any problem with it being illegal. As I've said before, though: good luck finding a prosecutor willing to go to court to fight for warez kiddies and businesses running unlicensed software. Maybe that's unjust, but it's probably the reality.
Copyright violation for private use is relatively minor anyway
There aren't a lot of convictions, but the laws are really (absurdly) stiff. The don't go after individuals when they'd rather go after the distributors of warez and the producers of counterfeit CDs, of course, which is why there are so few convictions of individuals.
Now, if someone were dumb enough to come forward and say "this software I stole did something nasty to my computer," they might very well make an exception...
Extortion ring any bells?
It's certainly not a common case of extortion, although that could maybe stick. The problem is, under that logic Microsoft's activation schemes would probably also be extortion, and they certainly haven't had any legal challenges along those lines yet.
As for software piracy being more "serious" than the malicious destruction of data, I must ask: are you kidding?
I meant: the legal consequences of software piracy are more serious than the destruction of data. I agree that it's pretty silly.
Not to mention that the copyright violation would certainly fall into the civil category, not the criminal.
No, there are pretty strict criminal piracy statutes. Big hairy federal ones. And that's why things are weighted so heavily in the hypothetical confrontation between software pirate/data loss victim and the software's author.
Are you sure that simply typing in an unauthorized serial code is "piracy?"
I suspect proving "piracy" under a criminal statute would involve showing that the person who, mysteriously, happened upon this serial number and, accidentally, entered it into the software had intent to "steal" the software, however that is defined by the statute.
In a civil suit it would probably be easier: you were using the software without permission. Guilty. Happens to businesses audited by the BSA a lot.
OTOH, what this author did is something like a criminal misuse of computer resources with nameable damages. Thus, the case against the author could be prosecuted without a plaintiff, but in order for the author to sue the pirates he would need a lawyer. That would be difficult, considering he'd be in a jail cell.
Too much wrong there to respond concisely. I'll just say that I think it'd be awfully hard to find a prosecutor willing to take the software thief's side in trial, a statute that clearly defines the software author's actions as destruction of property, and a jury willing to convict. Among other things.
Re:This is not right...
on
Beatles vs Apple
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If Apple Records gets anything out of this it would be a major breach of commonsense and basic morality.
Whereas Apple Computer's violation of an existing contract was the height of morality.
This is likely to be only slightly less illegal than deleting someone's files.
Effectivly you'd be holding someone's data to ransom.
The laws against software piracy are pretty strong. There certainly aren't a lot of convictions for "holding someone's data to ransom," and if the author of the software is smart he'll cover his butt by putting a warning in the license terms (which nobody reads, but still have some legal force). In a legal confrontation, the software's author will almost certainly win.
Although the idea of hordes of morally outraged software thieves getting together for a class-action lawsuit is strangely appealing. I guess anything can happen in America.
I believe one of the popular Windows CD recording packages would burn garbage CDs if you entered the wrong serial number, or entered one of the popular serial numbers found on google.
1. That was Nero 2. That has nothing to do with the serial number...:)
I think the software author did something unethical, obviously. It might also be illegal but the notion the author could actually be convicted seems pretty far fetched.
This author should be arrested.
Of course, all the witnesses involved in a conviction would be providing evidence against themselves for a more serious crime, software piracy, would make for a pretty entertaining process.
The fact that the user was attempting to use the program without a valid serial number is immaterial.
Not to whichever witnesses testify to having their data harmed by this thing. They'd be providing evidence to the fact that they committed software piracy. Evidence which could be used, in turn, by the author of the software they stole. (worse, perhaps also by the BSA, to go in and audit their systems, if they work in the states)
And you really need those witnesses, too, to prosecute. Without them you can't show that the author's actions caused any damages. Those damage figures appear to be a pretty important part of all hacking or malware convictions. Otherwise the jury just says "what's the problem here?"
So no, no prosecutor is likely to file charges. A bunch of people coming forward with sworn statements to the effect that the software they stole did bad things to their computer could change that, I suppose...
1) Cut a deal similar to the 1994 Carter deal that the North Koreans violated (fool me once...)
Yes because: "fool me once......shame on......shame... on you. Fool me twice... shame... can't get fooled again!"
We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.
Who are you going to believe? John Kerry and his two-dozen-odd decorated veterans?
Or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth folks with their dozen-dozen decorated veterans? Including a Navy Admiral?
Someone mod this up as insightful. We should always use the number of people participating on either side of an argument as a determinant of objective truth! BRILLIANT!
So if you give Wikipedia just a few more years until there are articles about every major topic and the current topics are just edited again and again, the accuracy of Wikipedia will be comparable with Britannica.
Why?
The problem is that the less mainstream topics, and the little details, aren't being fact checked. The user base can grow astronomically and this problem won't go away.
I suppose it might, arguably, get worse as the potential number of vandals increases. That's not the sort of problem that interests me most when we talk about accuracy. It's the little things that even the educated among us might not remember, little dates in history and minutia, that are likely to be slightly off.
I think this is might be a largely solvable problem by employing volunteer fact checkers - something that could be a really fun job. But it's never going to be 100%, since you're trying to hit a moving target.
The problem is that teachers lie to little kids and brainwash them in thinking that an encyclopedia is an unquestionable source of all truth, when really nothing could be further from the case.
Where did you go to school??!?!? My teacher taught me that:
one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia
why would you keep it surprising? it's a website everyone can submit to, you should treat it like websites you don't trust.
I just have to point out that this argument in defense of Wikipedia, which is extremely common here, is completely tautological. You're just repeating the complaint, which was that Wikipedia can't be trusted.
that doesn't mean they're not good for finding information however, you just have to check it from somewhere else as well(which is easier if you know what you should check too).
Which brings up an interesting point. If I wanted to color a Wikipedia article a certain way, I probably wouldn't tweak the text of the article, which is awfully easy for someone to detect, object to, and change. I'd include links at the end of the article to websites with a less objective take on the matter discussed in the article.
At least it doesn't have a political stance like a news source does, by endorsing a point of view, or a candidate. That worries me more than some prankster inserting bad data.
On the contrary, a professional pol and a prankster both have an equal opportunity to influence a Wikipedia article. That's "equality" but it's not necessarily an improvement...
But it boggles the mind that anyone could possibly be so insanely paranoid as to buy Superjhemp's last paragraph, and at least 3 people are.
Which part of his "insanely paranoid" paragraph can you not find historical precedent for? I don't think it is happening here, but it's foolish to say it never could.
I know several people in the military, who were absolutely enraged with the last election because their absentee ballots were'nt counted.
How outraged were they about some soldiers' absentee ballots being used fraudulently? I suppose the people in the military outraged about that would be a different group of people... sad, isn't it?
As it is this contest appears not to be either compensation or "alleviation", but rather a splashy offer in order to grab a lot of free headline space.
Which is all a big million-dollar contest is ever likely to be, when you think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a fine solution for storing the OS and getting the thing booted. You can use network-mounted storage for the rest, and still meet the goal of having a small, low-power server with no moving parts. You've got to have a server someplace with an actual disk, but I'm guessing the original poster owns a PC...
Nonsense. The only advantage Hubble has is that it can see more. Pretty important, but still.
How many observatories could be built there for the cost of a Hubble? I bet it's a great enough number that it would compensate for the fact that they perform as well as Hubble only 10% of the time, particularly in light of the fact that they could still be doing productive work the other 90% of the time.
Reducing the cost of spaceflight profoundly would probably change that equation somewhat.
I'm sure the semantics are a great comfort to those who have been convicted under software piracy laws.
I'm not sure what the point of denying the existence of laws protecting against theft of intellectual property is, which is what you're doing here. I think the laws are often silly, but I at least acknowledge their existence. I mean, come on.
That's pretty common thinking but it's not quite true. The big, obvious gain is that you don't have to upgrade the OS version every year or two (at the least), as you do with most Linux distros. Security updates for Solaris releases go back over six years.
There are certainly a lot of security patches on any Solaris 2.6 machines out there, but there are environments where that situation beats updating the entire OS. The "enterprise" Linux versions are also striving for this level of longevity. Interestingly, a Solaris x86 license on a small system is quite a bit cheaper than an "enterprise linux" support contract.
Not an entirely fair comparison, since there aren't any White Box/CentOS/Scientific Linux-type clones for the Solaris x86 user, providing all the OS patches for no cost. But there are the free Solaris patch cluster downloads. Solaris x86 is at least a reasonable choice if you want to build a low-cost system to last years instead of months.
I imagine the above poster only meant to imply that there won't be any quickie code transplants from Solaris to Linux, regardless of the license. Your example is also an instance of this: you can be sure that SGI's Linux changes to run on 512 CPU machines aren't transplants of IRIX code. =Not only because it's a totally different system which does not lend itself to such transplants, which was the above poster's point, but also because SCO would (rightly or wrongly) be all over them for using System V code like that. They've already bitched about the XFS stuff in Linux.
There's a "knowingly" part is important in this case. You're breaking the law if you know what you've obtained is stolen and you hang on to it, to my understanding.
Thus far it seems like there's some kind of semantic distinction between "stealing software" and "stealing everything else" that isn't very clear. I'll certainly read up on this, but I have a feeling the law itself is kind of obfuscated in that regard.
As a practical matter it's of course very easy to play dumb if you're ever called on it by the authorities. And convicting someone of anything that involves proving intent is pretty damn hard, even when there's an actual victim...
It sure seems to be treated that way at times, even in court. Whether it ought to be, I'm not sure.
If I ever had to talk my way out of an EULA violation situation I'd probably just claim I didn't understand it. Not much of a stretch there, since you'd honestly need a lawyer to be sure what rights the EULA is asking you to give up.
Actually, those characters might be protected by trademark, which can last longer than copyright. I think this is why you can't use Mickey Mouse in anything, although I'm not an expert on the subject.
That hasn't been true for a really, really long time, even if you're drawing the distinction between civil and criminal cases. There has been, at the least, civil liability for stealing software (or "unauthorized duplication," or whatever suits your politics) since I've been alive. Over the years the government has made it easier and easier to bring such a civil suit. And now, thanks to the DMCA, it's ridiculously easy to bring federal felony charges. Most of the time a company won't bother, but still.
Not that I'm trying to stop you from doing anything - I really don't care. But some of the quasi-legal rationalizations here are pretty bizarre.
Now that's just silly. Skipping over the finer points of whether it was truly an "illegal" copy, which you've apparently conceded for the sake of argument, remember that there is such a charge as "receiving stolen property." Which is sort of unlikely to be used in the context of software or intellectual property, now that they have much bigger clubs to wield than misdemeanor charges, but your rationalization in this case is particularly weak.
Could be, I really don't know. I definitely wouldn't have any problem with it being illegal. As I've said before, though: good luck finding a prosecutor willing to go to court to fight for warez kiddies and businesses running unlicensed software. Maybe that's unjust, but it's probably the reality.
There aren't a lot of convictions, but the laws are really (absurdly) stiff. The don't go after individuals when they'd rather go after the distributors of warez and the producers of counterfeit CDs, of course, which is why there are so few convictions of individuals.
Now, if someone were dumb enough to come forward and say "this software I stole did something nasty to my computer," they might very well make an exception...
It's certainly not a common case of extortion, although that could maybe stick. The problem is, under that logic Microsoft's activation schemes would probably also be extortion, and they certainly haven't had any legal challenges along those lines yet.
I meant: the legal consequences of software piracy are more serious than the destruction of data. I agree that it's pretty silly.
No, there are pretty strict criminal piracy statutes. Big hairy federal ones. And that's why things are weighted so heavily in the hypothetical confrontation between software pirate/data loss victim and the software's author.
I suspect proving "piracy" under a criminal statute would involve showing that the person who, mysteriously, happened upon this serial number and, accidentally, entered it into the software had intent to "steal" the software, however that is defined by the statute.
In a civil suit it would probably be easier: you were using the software without permission. Guilty. Happens to businesses audited by the BSA a lot.
Too much wrong there to respond concisely. I'll just say that I think it'd be awfully hard to find a prosecutor willing to take the software thief's side in trial, a statute that clearly defines the software author's actions as destruction of property, and a jury willing to convict. Among other things.
Whereas Apple Computer's violation of an existing contract was the height of morality.
The laws against software piracy are pretty strong. There certainly aren't a lot of convictions for "holding someone's data to ransom," and if the author of the software is smart he'll cover his butt by putting a warning in the license terms (which nobody reads, but still have some legal force). In a legal confrontation, the software's author will almost certainly win.
Although the idea of hordes of morally outraged software thieves getting together for a class-action lawsuit is strangely appealing. I guess anything can happen in America.
1. That was Nero
2. That has nothing to do with the serial number...
Of course, all the witnesses involved in a conviction would be providing evidence against themselves for a more serious crime, software piracy, would make for a pretty entertaining process.
Not to whichever witnesses testify to having their data harmed by this thing. They'd be providing evidence to the fact that they committed software piracy. Evidence which could be used, in turn, by the author of the software they stole. (worse, perhaps also by the BSA, to go in and audit their systems, if they work in the states)
And you really need those witnesses, too, to prosecute. Without them you can't show that the author's actions caused any damages. Those damage figures appear to be a pretty important part of all hacking or malware convictions. Otherwise the jury just says "what's the problem here?"
So no, no prosecutor is likely to file charges. A bunch of people coming forward with sworn statements to the effect that the software they stole did bad things to their computer could change that, I suppose...
We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.
Right. That never happens simply because the managers are losers who don't understand what they're doing.
Stuff like that would probably form rings around the planet eventually. I imagine if our planet lent itself to that scenario, it would have rings.
Someone mod this up as insightful. We should always use the number of people participating on either side of an argument as a determinant of objective truth! BRILLIANT!
Why?
The problem is that the less mainstream topics, and the little details, aren't being fact checked. The user base can grow astronomically and this problem won't go away.
I suppose it might, arguably, get worse as the potential number of vandals increases. That's not the sort of problem that interests me most when we talk about accuracy. It's the little things that even the educated among us might not remember, little dates in history and minutia, that are likely to be slightly off.
I think this is might be a largely solvable problem by employing volunteer fact checkers - something that could be a really fun job. But it's never going to be 100%, since you're trying to hit a moving target.
Where did you go to school??!?!? My teacher taught me that:
one should never cite sources in a paper from an encyclopedia
Who taught you this, if not a teacher?
I just have to point out that this argument in defense of Wikipedia, which is extremely common here, is completely tautological. You're just repeating the complaint, which was that Wikipedia can't be trusted.
Which brings up an interesting point. If I wanted to color a Wikipedia article a certain way, I probably wouldn't tweak the text of the article, which is awfully easy for someone to detect, object to, and change. I'd include links at the end of the article to websites with a less objective take on the matter discussed in the article.
On the contrary, a professional pol and a prankster both have an equal opportunity to influence a Wikipedia article. That's "equality" but it's not necessarily an improvement...
6.5 isn't "nothing" anywhere. And there are still parts of the SF Bay Bridge that will probably fall off if you look at them funny...
Which part of his "insanely paranoid" paragraph can you not find historical precedent for? I don't think it is happening here, but it's foolish to say it never could.
How outraged were they about some soldiers' absentee ballots being used fraudulently? I suppose the people in the military outraged about that would be a different group of people... sad, isn't it?
Which is all a big million-dollar contest is ever likely to be, when you think about it.