Explain to me how any of this is the responsibility of the web hosting company. This is between the guy selling the goods being claimed as counterfeit and the guy claiming they are counterfeit. This just opens a big damned door for all manner of stupid liability for web hosting companies. The ONLY reason for this kind of bullshit excuse is to pick the pockets of those who you think have the most money and not who has the most responsibility.
I realize now that my example was incorrect. I would be expected to take down a site one of my servers hosted based on being informed by Cisco (not the authorities) that the site was selling counterfeit goods. So it is even more insane! So...if I don't like my competition, I call their web host and tell them if you don't take down the entire site right now then I will sue you for millions because I said they are doing something wrong. Brilliant!
What they can't pretend is that another company with a competitive interest in the site told them to shut it down because they claimed they were selling counterfeit goods. None of the companies involved have the responsibility of determining if it was illegal. The authorities should have been involved and it never should have involved the web host without a note from the authorities. Imagine...he takes the site down, the companies selling the goods somehow wrangle out of the problem, and then THEY sue him for millions for taking down their sites illegally...
So...if I sell Cisco gear, and it turns out that I wind up with counterfeit Cisco gear, they could argue that because I know what real Cisco gear looks like I should be able to identify any counterfeit Cisco gear. Then Cisco can come in and slap me for some unholy sum for "should have known". I wonder how much they lose in sales due to cheap counterfit equipment. I mean, arguably, someone buying a cheap counterfit is not likely to pay the full price for a real one, so it is pretty difficult to call all of it lost sales. So...now there is an active disincentive to protect your goods from counterfit. Instead of worrying about counterfit, they can just go sue the shit out of anyone selling counterfit to people who probably wouldn't have purchased an original anyways. Thus turning a bunch of non-sales into revenue. This is just fucking brilliant.
This guy gave Windows 7 the win on Control Panel vs the OS X configuration screen? Clearly he is in some drug induced hallucination. I refuse to work on people's Vista/Win7 problems because I can't just fix shit. I have to go through a maze of stupid Fisher Price interface bullshit and stupid questions just to get at the setting I want. In OS X I can pretty much get at any setting I need in a pretty intuitive fashion. The Vista/Win7 nonsense makes XP look like it has a fine tuned configuration interface with all of its hidden tabs and registry only configurable bits.
Big corporate also tends to have lawyers to fend of such nonsense from SCO claiming they are ready to go after Linux users again. If Fort Knox isn't worried about petty criminals breaking in then no on should worry about petty criminals breaking in? You wind up dealing with the RIAA type situation where it is easier and cheaper to just settle rather than fight the battle.
To be honest, I see no reason to be worried about SCO. I see reason to be worried about other players, money, and new judges to the case.
Hush you! Coming here with your "Facts" and "Science". Get on with your Apple hate as if they were the ones at the head of this mess! I mean really...not only are you not hating Apple for bending to what the industry has been doing for years, but you are even going to dare defend them and the industry for getting it correct?! A CS major supporting the use of Gibi instead of hijacking Giga is like a Republican that actually does support small government or a Democrat that actually does want to help the people!
It prevents their stupidity from killing again. That isn't vengence. It is the same reason you put down a dog with rabies. It is a danger to others. The fact that we subvert natural selection and allow such stupidity to exist is evidence of compassion. The fact that we would lock them up rather than simply execute them to remove them from the gene pool. If you REALLY want to get into equality...we should harvest their organs so they can save the life of another to make up for the ones their stupidity killed.
Now...while what you propose is certainly legitimate, it would only work if people were rational. The real piece here is that no one would support such harsh punishment for someone who didn't do any significant damage. So...you bring huge punishment to those who do cause damage and hope the others realize the risk. It is much easier to justify harsh punishment for the ones that actually caused the damage. At that point, it really isn't about punishing the idiot that caused the fatality. It is about making the idiot that caused the fatality an example for everyone else. The most good they can serve is to become the warning sign for any other idiot that may follow their path.
To be honest, I would prefer such stupidity punished harsher than even murder sentences. Malice has always existed within man, but natural selection once weeded out stupidity. Now we punish malice more than that of stupidity. Even in the cases where malice is rewarded in our bizarre society, stupidity is frequently rewarded more! In fact...we love to hate the malicious actor, but we frequently 'feel sorry' for the stupid ones.
Not quite the same as large scale government pressure. I wouldn't call the KKK showing up being idiots government pressure either. I call it local nuts being local nuts. I also consider them far less civilized.
By the way, the monkey will cost less to feed and throws less shit against the wall to see what sticks. I wouldn't let my kids stay in the same house as a Congressman. Look at Foley! You can also be reasonably certain that the monkey will stay out of your wallet, where the opposite is true with the congressmen. I would take a monkey hands down.
Clearly we are more civilized now. They don't have to stand around intimidating anyone. That is what the Help America Vote Act was for. Now they can push a button and the voting machines will spit out the answer they wanted. Intimidation is only needed when subversion doesn't work.
That said...there were a great many reports of people being harassed by local police for trying to vote in areas that were considered Democrat strongholds in a state controlled by our "Deciders" Republican brother. As well as reports of a great many other types of shenanagins. So while the original claim by the GP is a large generalization, it doesn't make it inaccurate in meaning.
The REAL threat is in the populist nonsense. Once these clowns come into power, their ability to get the masses chanting in their support while they enact horrendous change is frightening.
By all means, explain this to all the PHBs and investors that drove up SCO stock prices through the roof when this crap kicked off. It doesn't matter that they don't have a snowballs chance in hell (according to logic). They DO have a snowballs chance in hell when you factor in payoffs, politics, and other such nonsense. MS pumped them full of money to keep these idiotic proceedings going for that very reason. All it matters is that it looks like there is a chance. I honestly don't really expect them to win, but that would be an even worse scenario. Judge Kimball is gone too, a new guy is hearing this mess.
My point is they suggested that it was Apple's fault that Palm had their device do goofball shit to work with iTunes and it was ultimately fixed. So when it is a bug (and every bug is a potential security problem) that lets you abuse things its A-OK, but when it is a bug that lets someone else abuse you it isn't ok? I think that is patently insane and is strictly related to the anti-Apple emotional baggage that people carry around here.
Now...from the economic perspective, I absolutely believe that a monopoly gained and maintained through competition is fine. Illegal use of monopoly powers (see MS) is not. Apple uses iTunes to sell iThings...why in the hell would they allow someone else to use iTunes to sell their own hardware instead of an iThing? Apple is not a software company. Palm was trying to take advantage of Apples success to fuel their own. Now...if you REALLY want to talk about competition and whatnot then Palm should be building their own iTunes competitor. That would make them better. However, even in your case here about Apple being too big, Palm was helping them keep that position by supporting iTunes, so in fact they are NOT doing the better thing as you claim by your own logic that Apple is doing the bad thing. Now finally...Apple is not a monopoly and to insist they are is a failure of economic thinking. Coke is not a monopoly because they are the only ones who sell Coca Cola. Ford is not a monopoly because they are the only ones that sell Ford vehicles. Apple is not a monopoly because they sell devices that work with their own software. The barrier that Apple puts up in terms of their software is trivial to get around, it isn't a lock in, they just make it a pain in the ass to work outside of their products. Being successful is not the same thing as a monopoly by any stretch. It seems to me that Palm has been in the handheld market much longer than Apple...why should we be giving them a free pass and handouts for obviously missing the boat?
In the meantime everyone who uses or sells Linux stuff that isn't a giant like Novell is stuck in the crosshairs. The damage has been done already...the one thing that served to mitigate continued damage has been removed. Terribly damned convenient timing to have Linux called into question right before Windows 7 is coming to try and save MS from their Vista failures... My organization has been discussing the potential of a Linux desktop shift because of the draconian licensing involved with Vista/Win7...I suspect this news may cause problems. There is NO WAY that this will be resolved before the Win7 release unless MS pushes it back a long ways. What a mess...
Actually...I think you can get Oregon Trail on the iPhone/iTouch...
However, there is a disturbing thought in regards to Windows. I mean...really...how many of these kids remember a time before Windows? "Computers have always blue screened while performing trivial tasks" that comes to mind...
That is a tough one, especially in the field he is discussing. I would routinely gripe about the cost of books and the instructors would simply throw their hands up and say "nothing we can do". However, in my technology classes it was different. I got one of my books used for $5. I figured that couldn't possibly be correct so I called the instructor to make sure this was the right book. He explained that he read through the new version, didn't find anything significantly different, and decided to go with the old version to save the students some money. I repeat....he deliberately chose the previous version that was being sold at toilet paper prices so we could avoid the whole new book extortion scheme. It has been my tech instructors that have been much more apt to try and keep students out of the text book racket. Even if it makes it more difficult to sell the books at the end of the semester the money saved over buying new or even "current" used is worth it. Personally, I keep all my books anyways, I refuse to rent college books for that much...if I have to pay I am going to keep them for reference material. Even if the book is so bad that I can't use it for reference I keep it to show others "look at the shit these idiots wrote".
I suspect it will be in the more new/tech areas that are going to lead the way on changing how this model of business works.
I see this problem as backwards. People are scrambling to fight this nonsense uphill battle. The cat is out of the bag. Pandora's box has been opened. It is WAY too late to get all of this stuff back. The only way forward is for SSNs to become worthless as identifiers. This personal information is quickly becoming trivial to obtain, fighting the trend is only going to continue to make it a problem for identity theft.
The real answer is to hold businesses to the fire for exposing/trading/selling it and accepting it so readily to open new accounts. If businesses were more security minded in defending the information it would be less of an issue. If businesses were more security minded in verification it wouldn't be an issue. However, this continued nonsense about trying to protect your SSN is only allowing businesses to continue to put the risk and responsibility on the individual for their own greed driven fuckups.
Young teachers can usually do it too. I remember the first day of one of my high school science classes and the teacher left the room very dim. He pulled out what looked like a small candle and held it up for everyone and walked around to show it off. It was a white candle with a wick, but he held it just out of reach for everyone to see well and the room was dark. Then he lit the candle and walked around again...everyone still insisted that it was a candle. Then he took a bite out of it and everyone winced. He turned the light on and you could see it was actually a piece of potato carved up to look like a candle with a almond sliver as a wick. He then made a speech about the importance of careful observation.
I think he may have actually done a few other trick items the same way, but the potato one was the one I remember the best.
This same teacher graded tests on a type of curve so if the high score was 47 out of 50 then that person got 100% and all other scores were X out of 47. He would also remind everyone at the beginning of the test that if no one answers any questions everyone would get 100%, but if even one person answers one question correctly everyone would get 0s on the test except that person. Watching him put the entire class into a prisoner's dilemma was pretty amusing.
From Wikipedia regarding Fair Use
The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107
Fair Use has been law for quite a bit longer than the DMCA has been law.
The real danger is that people believe paper ballots can be easily subject to problems and that electronic voting is somehow impervious to these problems.
I can't even begin to tell you how hilarious I find your surprise at that statement given your sig. You are quoting 19 year old girl that was burned at the stake for heresy... How can you even begin to act surprised that those types are frequently scum?
Pretty much every Theory is taught the same way, so why is Evolution being singled out? It is ONLY being singled out because creationist fundamentalists demand that we should be teaching their dogma in science class. I agree that science should be open, and it is, you act like the theory of evolution has not changed and is not changing. This is again more of that tired old crap repeated by creationists.
To even begin to call Intelligent Design and Creationism as "another possibility" is pure ignorance. Their hocus pocus claims have been soundly defeated. Crying how science is dogmatic and refuses to accept alternate explanations because they won't accept crackpot theories is crap. Most of the various flat earth ideas were scrubbed long ago as well for the same reasons, and only the crackpots are left crying about it....the difference is they don't tend to be religious fundamentalists taught to not challenge anyone in a position of religious authority so it is harder to rally the masses. Further, evolution is just the easy target for these clowns, because ultimately their entire magical creation crap undermines geology as well. Now...a great deal of our understanding of geology comes from physics. So it ultimately undermines physics. They target evolution because it is the easiest to get fundamentalists up in a tizzy with stupid lines like "we ain't monkeys".
Slashdot Mirror
Politician, Politician, Politician, Politician, Politician, Politician, Republican
Why did you add a Republican? You are aware that they are Politicians too right?
Explain to me how any of this is the responsibility of the web hosting company. This is between the guy selling the goods being claimed as counterfeit and the guy claiming they are counterfeit. This just opens a big damned door for all manner of stupid liability for web hosting companies. The ONLY reason for this kind of bullshit excuse is to pick the pockets of those who you think have the most money and not who has the most responsibility.
I realize now that my example was incorrect. I would be expected to take down a site one of my servers hosted based on being informed by Cisco (not the authorities) that the site was selling counterfeit goods. So it is even more insane! So...if I don't like my competition, I call their web host and tell them if you don't take down the entire site right now then I will sue you for millions because I said they are doing something wrong. Brilliant!
What they can't pretend is that another company with a competitive interest in the site told them to shut it down because they claimed they were selling counterfeit goods. None of the companies involved have the responsibility of determining if it was illegal. The authorities should have been involved and it never should have involved the web host without a note from the authorities. Imagine...he takes the site down, the companies selling the goods somehow wrangle out of the problem, and then THEY sue him for millions for taking down their sites illegally...
So...if I sell Cisco gear, and it turns out that I wind up with counterfeit Cisco gear, they could argue that because I know what real Cisco gear looks like I should be able to identify any counterfeit Cisco gear. Then Cisco can come in and slap me for some unholy sum for "should have known". I wonder how much they lose in sales due to cheap counterfit equipment. I mean, arguably, someone buying a cheap counterfit is not likely to pay the full price for a real one, so it is pretty difficult to call all of it lost sales. So...now there is an active disincentive to protect your goods from counterfit. Instead of worrying about counterfit, they can just go sue the shit out of anyone selling counterfit to people who probably wouldn't have purchased an original anyways. Thus turning a bunch of non-sales into revenue. This is just fucking brilliant.
This guy gave Windows 7 the win on Control Panel vs the OS X configuration screen? Clearly he is in some drug induced hallucination. I refuse to work on people's Vista/Win7 problems because I can't just fix shit. I have to go through a maze of stupid Fisher Price interface bullshit and stupid questions just to get at the setting I want. In OS X I can pretty much get at any setting I need in a pretty intuitive fashion. The Vista/Win7 nonsense makes XP look like it has a fine tuned configuration interface with all of its hidden tabs and registry only configurable bits.
Big corporate also tends to have lawyers to fend of such nonsense from SCO claiming they are ready to go after Linux users again. If Fort Knox isn't worried about petty criminals breaking in then no on should worry about petty criminals breaking in? You wind up dealing with the RIAA type situation where it is easier and cheaper to just settle rather than fight the battle.
To be honest, I see no reason to be worried about SCO. I see reason to be worried about other players, money, and new judges to the case.
Hush you! Coming here with your "Facts" and "Science". Get on with your Apple hate as if they were the ones at the head of this mess! I mean really...not only are you not hating Apple for bending to what the industry has been doing for years, but you are even going to dare defend them and the industry for getting it correct?! A CS major supporting the use of Gibi instead of hijacking Giga is like a Republican that actually does support small government or a Democrat that actually does want to help the people!
It prevents their stupidity from killing again. That isn't vengence. It is the same reason you put down a dog with rabies. It is a danger to others. The fact that we subvert natural selection and allow such stupidity to exist is evidence of compassion. The fact that we would lock them up rather than simply execute them to remove them from the gene pool. If you REALLY want to get into equality...we should harvest their organs so they can save the life of another to make up for the ones their stupidity killed.
Now...while what you propose is certainly legitimate, it would only work if people were rational. The real piece here is that no one would support such harsh punishment for someone who didn't do any significant damage. So...you bring huge punishment to those who do cause damage and hope the others realize the risk. It is much easier to justify harsh punishment for the ones that actually caused the damage. At that point, it really isn't about punishing the idiot that caused the fatality. It is about making the idiot that caused the fatality an example for everyone else. The most good they can serve is to become the warning sign for any other idiot that may follow their path.
To be honest, I would prefer such stupidity punished harsher than even murder sentences. Malice has always existed within man, but natural selection once weeded out stupidity. Now we punish malice more than that of stupidity. Even in the cases where malice is rewarded in our bizarre society, stupidity is frequently rewarded more! In fact...we love to hate the malicious actor, but we frequently 'feel sorry' for the stupid ones.
Not quite the same as large scale government pressure. I wouldn't call the KKK showing up being idiots government pressure either. I call it local nuts being local nuts. I also consider them far less civilized.
By the way, the monkey will cost less to feed and throws less shit against the wall to see what sticks. I wouldn't let my kids stay in the same house as a Congressman. Look at Foley! You can also be reasonably certain that the monkey will stay out of your wallet, where the opposite is true with the congressmen. I would take a monkey hands down.
Clearly we are more civilized now. They don't have to stand around intimidating anyone. That is what the Help America Vote Act was for. Now they can push a button and the voting machines will spit out the answer they wanted. Intimidation is only needed when subversion doesn't work.
That said...there were a great many reports of people being harassed by local police for trying to vote in areas that were considered Democrat strongholds in a state controlled by our "Deciders" Republican brother. As well as reports of a great many other types of shenanagins. So while the original claim by the GP is a large generalization, it doesn't make it inaccurate in meaning.
The REAL threat is in the populist nonsense. Once these clowns come into power, their ability to get the masses chanting in their support while they enact horrendous change is frightening.
Both. They had the whole Baystar fiasco, as well as the fact that MS shelled out tons of money for meaningless licenses.
By all means, explain this to all the PHBs and investors that drove up SCO stock prices through the roof when this crap kicked off. It doesn't matter that they don't have a snowballs chance in hell (according to logic). They DO have a snowballs chance in hell when you factor in payoffs, politics, and other such nonsense. MS pumped them full of money to keep these idiotic proceedings going for that very reason. All it matters is that it looks like there is a chance. I honestly don't really expect them to win, but that would be an even worse scenario. Judge Kimball is gone too, a new guy is hearing this mess.
My point is they suggested that it was Apple's fault that Palm had their device do goofball shit to work with iTunes and it was ultimately fixed. So when it is a bug (and every bug is a potential security problem) that lets you abuse things its A-OK, but when it is a bug that lets someone else abuse you it isn't ok? I think that is patently insane and is strictly related to the anti-Apple emotional baggage that people carry around here.
Now...from the economic perspective, I absolutely believe that a monopoly gained and maintained through competition is fine. Illegal use of monopoly powers (see MS) is not. Apple uses iTunes to sell iThings...why in the hell would they allow someone else to use iTunes to sell their own hardware instead of an iThing? Apple is not a software company. Palm was trying to take advantage of Apples success to fuel their own. Now...if you REALLY want to talk about competition and whatnot then Palm should be building their own iTunes competitor. That would make them better. However, even in your case here about Apple being too big, Palm was helping them keep that position by supporting iTunes, so in fact they are NOT doing the better thing as you claim by your own logic that Apple is doing the bad thing. Now finally...Apple is not a monopoly and to insist they are is a failure of economic thinking. Coke is not a monopoly because they are the only ones who sell Coca Cola. Ford is not a monopoly because they are the only ones that sell Ford vehicles. Apple is not a monopoly because they sell devices that work with their own software. The barrier that Apple puts up in terms of their software is trivial to get around, it isn't a lock in, they just make it a pain in the ass to work outside of their products. Being successful is not the same thing as a monopoly by any stretch. It seems to me that Palm has been in the handheld market much longer than Apple...why should we be giving them a free pass and handouts for obviously missing the boat?
In the meantime everyone who uses or sells Linux stuff that isn't a giant like Novell is stuck in the crosshairs. The damage has been done already...the one thing that served to mitigate continued damage has been removed. Terribly damned convenient timing to have Linux called into question right before Windows 7 is coming to try and save MS from their Vista failures... My organization has been discussing the potential of a Linux desktop shift because of the draconian licensing involved with Vista/Win7...I suspect this news may cause problems. There is NO WAY that this will be resolved before the Win7 release unless MS pushes it back a long ways. What a mess...
Personally, I am hoping for "Pussy Cat" just for the marketing.
"Buy a new Mac today and get Pussy for free!"
I will be going after slashdot to reveal your identity for public endangerment. Reading those two lines increases your risk of an aneurysm 10 fold!
Actually...I think you can get Oregon Trail on the iPhone/iTouch...
However, there is a disturbing thought in regards to Windows. I mean...really...how many of these kids remember a time before Windows? "Computers have always blue screened while performing trivial tasks" that comes to mind...
That is a tough one, especially in the field he is discussing. I would routinely gripe about the cost of books and the instructors would simply throw their hands up and say "nothing we can do". However, in my technology classes it was different. I got one of my books used for $5. I figured that couldn't possibly be correct so I called the instructor to make sure this was the right book. He explained that he read through the new version, didn't find anything significantly different, and decided to go with the old version to save the students some money. I repeat....he deliberately chose the previous version that was being sold at toilet paper prices so we could avoid the whole new book extortion scheme. It has been my tech instructors that have been much more apt to try and keep students out of the text book racket. Even if it makes it more difficult to sell the books at the end of the semester the money saved over buying new or even "current" used is worth it. Personally, I keep all my books anyways, I refuse to rent college books for that much...if I have to pay I am going to keep them for reference material. Even if the book is so bad that I can't use it for reference I keep it to show others "look at the shit these idiots wrote".
I suspect it will be in the more new/tech areas that are going to lead the way on changing how this model of business works.
I see this problem as backwards. People are scrambling to fight this nonsense uphill battle. The cat is out of the bag. Pandora's box has been opened. It is WAY too late to get all of this stuff back. The only way forward is for SSNs to become worthless as identifiers. This personal information is quickly becoming trivial to obtain, fighting the trend is only going to continue to make it a problem for identity theft.
The real answer is to hold businesses to the fire for exposing/trading/selling it and accepting it so readily to open new accounts. If businesses were more security minded in defending the information it would be less of an issue. If businesses were more security minded in verification it wouldn't be an issue. However, this continued nonsense about trying to protect your SSN is only allowing businesses to continue to put the risk and responsibility on the individual for their own greed driven fuckups.
Young teachers can usually do it too. I remember the first day of one of my high school science classes and the teacher left the room very dim. He pulled out what looked like a small candle and held it up for everyone and walked around to show it off. It was a white candle with a wick, but he held it just out of reach for everyone to see well and the room was dark. Then he lit the candle and walked around again...everyone still insisted that it was a candle. Then he took a bite out of it and everyone winced. He turned the light on and you could see it was actually a piece of potato carved up to look like a candle with a almond sliver as a wick. He then made a speech about the importance of careful observation.
I think he may have actually done a few other trick items the same way, but the potato one was the one I remember the best.
This same teacher graded tests on a type of curve so if the high score was 47 out of 50 then that person got 100% and all other scores were X out of 47. He would also remind everyone at the beginning of the test that if no one answers any questions everyone would get 100%, but if even one person answers one question correctly everyone would get 0s on the test except that person. Watching him put the entire class into a prisoner's dilemma was pretty amusing.
In the spirit of blaming Apple for Palm's misbehavior with their iTunes stunt please respond here with how this is also Apples fault.
From Wikipedia regarding Fair Use
The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107
Fair Use has been law for quite a bit longer than the DMCA has been law.
The real danger is that people believe paper ballots can be easily subject to problems and that electronic voting is somehow impervious to these problems.
I can't even begin to tell you how hilarious I find your surprise at that statement given your sig. You are quoting 19 year old girl that was burned at the stake for heresy... How can you even begin to act surprised that those types are frequently scum?
Pretty much every Theory is taught the same way, so why is Evolution being singled out? It is ONLY being singled out because creationist fundamentalists demand that we should be teaching their dogma in science class. I agree that science should be open, and it is, you act like the theory of evolution has not changed and is not changing. This is again more of that tired old crap repeated by creationists.
To even begin to call Intelligent Design and Creationism as "another possibility" is pure ignorance. Their hocus pocus claims have been soundly defeated. Crying how science is dogmatic and refuses to accept alternate explanations because they won't accept crackpot theories is crap. Most of the various flat earth ideas were scrubbed long ago as well for the same reasons, and only the crackpots are left crying about it....the difference is they don't tend to be religious fundamentalists taught to not challenge anyone in a position of religious authority so it is harder to rally the masses. Further, evolution is just the easy target for these clowns, because ultimately their entire magical creation crap undermines geology as well. Now...a great deal of our understanding of geology comes from physics. So it ultimately undermines physics. They target evolution because it is the easiest to get fundamentalists up in a tizzy with stupid lines like "we ain't monkeys".