Other countries MUST care about the intellectual property of countries other than just their own because of several international agreements that have been signed by a large number those countries. There's the Berne Convention and TRIPS to name a two. These agreements require either national treatmnent (the same treatment for the citizens of signatory countries) or reciprocity (the treatment of the two countries must be equal). Violation of these treaties distrupts trade and leads to less than optimal earnings for both countries (and their people).
Anyone who thinks we're still working with separate national economies is largely fooling themselves. It's a world economy anymore and IP does provide significant fuel. There are still good ways to protect it (the EU's patent system seems to work better than our own) and bad ways (see RIAA and Sony tactics), but good or bad protection is still important.
I certainly don't like how it's being done (for the most part), but I see that's some system is necessary.
Sony's actions are actually a pretty classic price discrimination case, but certainly not a price-fixing cartel. That would necessitate evidence of other companies agreeing with them to do the same.
Seems like they made the mistake of assuming the converse here. Just because drug addicts are similar to game addicts does not mean game addicts are necessarily like drug addicts.
Drug addiction, being primarily metabolic, may have a more limited set of idenitifying characteristics. Game addiction, being primarily mental (or maybe even social) has more varying charactistics as psyches and social structures have a lot of built-in variance.
I'd have a much easier time buying the argument that drug addict behavior/characteristics fit in as a subset of the acceptable behaviors/characteristics of gaming culture.
It's not just a domestic issue anymore. Before CA filed or people began talking about the NY case, a consumer protection group from Italy filed suit.
The domestic issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Other countries that are not so impressed by the financial might of companies like Sony are going to nail anyone using such underhanded methods. Rootkits like this one most likely violates the Berne Convention, TRIPS, and possibly WIPO.
Wow, this logic has more holes than a pound of swiss cheese, where to begin...
First, you've somehow tricked yourself into believing we're in a two-party (two-evil?) system, M$ v. Google, not true. We have choices way beyond evil and lesser evil. I would rather no patent at all that was so vague or relating to a business practice/computer code at all, but I'll get to that in a sec. If someone must hold the patent, why couldn't we hope for someone in the open source community to grab it where it won't be secreted away or litigated to hell and back?
Which brings me to my second point, patents are no longer protection from the secret-keeping guild systems nor reasonable havens for inventors. They are weapons. If we're going to let this war go on, then the open source community needs to be just as snarky in grabbing up patents for everything under the sun, so they can fight back the big boys, or even better, release them to the public at large to take a little wind out of the money-chasers' sails.
Finally, even better, end the childish, counter-productive arms race all together, and take a page from the EU and no longer allow software nor business practice patents at all.
The fact is that choosing ANY file type narrows the field somewhat and whatever type is selected will give preference to someone. It makes the most sense to pick the type that does the least amount of "damage" in both fields.
Using an "open" format allows the docs to be read by users of pretty much any OS. Also, it gives preference to the open source community, not some corporation looking for nothing beyond profit. Finally, anyone that wants OpenOffice can get it, and for free. No other possiblity would be less narrow or preferential!
Topping out around 10 lbs., I would argue that certain models of Dell laptops could be considered not to be a "mobile" device at all. Maybe this is all a secret plot to get Dell an even larger share of the market! Oh yeah, and Dells come with some version of the Windows OS, so Bill Gates is probably behind this too. I'm starting to see all the angles now...
By the way, I know they obviously didn't mean to exclude laptops. I'm not a flippin idiot.
This is part misconception and part philosophical difference. I've exposure in both the American and Italian systems. This is what I have deduced from my experience:
First, the philsophical difference of having different school systems for students with different future goals would give at least the perception of less depth coming from a more generalized system. However, it's totally up to the student. It's easy to float through with a "general" education, but it's just as easy to get through your Calc BC by your senior year or take multivariable at a local community college.
Now the misconception, which I believe your shop comment plays into: Education is not just reading writing and arithmatic. Shop isn't just for the remedial students, either, as the other poster implied. I took shop and home ec, as was required by my school. I'm glad I did. It made me into a girl that rewired her own study in her first college apartment, painted and retiled the kitchen herself too, I change my own oil, and I cook fairly well. Of course, I also have no problem integrating an equation or recompiling my kernal. The American system aims to churn out well rounded, capable individuals. If the student wants to be, they will be.
This is hardly "forcing" Linux on anyone. It's someone taking a step many computer users would regard as scary and letting the general public know what happened.
Even taken to its most extreme, this could be considered little more than a challenge of, "Try it, it might not be as hard as you think. You might even like it." This perfectly embodies the spirit of open source. Linux being free allows one to truly try out and experiment with a new Windows-free environment without a financial investment. This could never legally be done with certain other OSes (you know who you are).
Also, the fact remains that a lot of people are still super intimidated by straying from the familiar. Seeing others do it (especially some student that was obviously pretty Windows dependant) even for 10 days, dispells some of the intimidation factor.
It's additionally fishy that they took their first action against a French site when so many American sites were doing the same thing. It's like they waited for the info to get out, wanted everyone talking about it, then made some sort of action against a foe far from the center of the limelight and in another country, which only steps up the difficulty in achieving success.
It's pretty clear that Apple, usually quick draw McGraw with the legal complaints, sat on this one because they saw the benefit of these copies getting out and getting people talking and excited about OS X.
Here's a challenge for all the companies (and individuals) out there who think it's perfectly acceptable to track and profit from every personal detail you can get your hands on of the people who interact with you. I'll let you track and profit from everything I do if you let me track and profit from everything you do. Complete discloser in both direction. Anything less is unacceptable.
I think there is an even better solution. The only reason I have a problem with the whole cookies thing is that what is being taken from me has a commercial value. If the people collecting my preferences can sell them to larger companies or profit by them by tailoring product lines and advertising, then money is being exchanged for my opinion.
If money is being exchanged or made from my opinion then the one individual that most deverves some or all of that financial gain is the original owner of the opinion/preference (me). However, through the cookies scheme, I'm the only one not getting paid.
If I own something that has value and someone else takes it and prevents me from profitting myself from it, that is theft, plain and simple. I don't want someone else's prefences in exchange for mine. I want the monetary value of my opinion.
From what I understand this is pretty much how it works:
They have a list of members and affiliates (the difference is that affiliates carry a banner on their sites). The members and affliates send them copies of their spam so that the senders can be added to a registry that is publically viewable. Spammers can get off the registry by forking over a certain amount of information, and they have to remove all affliates and members from their lists. The future ramifications have been hinted at in some posts here, like employers searching the registry and finding out about your bad behavior.
I probably missed something or other, but there you go.
I consider this pretty pointless and anal in general, but if you're going to be critical, you must also be correct.
While it is true that the possessive in the title is incorrect, according to MLA formatting as well as Strunk's Elements of Style, which is pretty much the authority on such matters, your suggestion is acceptable, but more correct is to add an apostrophe s. ex. Torvalds's. It's actually rule number one in Strunk's Elementary Rules of Usage.
Aside from all that clap-trap, I notice gramatical errors in numerous "professional" publications that don't have the additional challenges of slashdot all the time. (For example, speed is kind of important here, so maybe things don't get checked over by three or seven different editors). I know it matters. Of course it matters, but you sound pretty snarky in your reply, so it may bode well to ask yourself just how much it should matter.
Also, I am an engineer, not an English major, so my reply may indeed be replete with errors. I love it just the way it is, just like slashdot.
I can't help but wonder what will happen when someone uses one of these "mandated" security weak points to impair service from one of the larger providers, like Vonage. If the government was warned that it would be a likely outcome of their new law, are they liable for the damages?
Even worse, sniffable (tapable, whatever) by the government means sniffable by a lot of far more clever black-hats. Who is liable for the damages incurred by identity theft? Or are we just never supposed to order anything over the phone again?
I guess 18 months from now it's back to the cell phone only existance for me....
This is a tough one. My initial reaction is, "Egads, (yes, I talk like this), with the possibility for bugs, hang-time, etc., obvious NO!"
However, if in reality, the possibility of some glitch causing a bad decision is, say, 1 in 100, and the frequency of these pressurized teams making the obviously wrong decision is around 1 in 10, then I'd say go for it.
The point is, we need to know the rates/probablities of failure for both systems. Failure of some sort is inevitable, just how often and how badly are possible to control.
The EU doesn't allow for software nor business practices to be patented. Things like customer lists and such are still protected as trade secrets. They just have a heightened tangibility standard, as should we. It would probably clear half the "pending" load off the desks at the patent office if we did so.
Everyone knows that AMD's share would seriously change if Dell could be persuaded away from their holdout status.
The two main reasons generally cited for Dell's allegiance to Intel is the millions in advertising and marketting (hard for AMD to compete when they're sitting on a little over a billion and Intel is sitting on something like 11 billion) and early notification of new developments.
The second one I just don't get. I mean, Intel annouced the Itanium in 1994 which consumers didn't see until 2001, two years later than projected and seven after the announcement. Really, how much notice does Dell need? Wouldn't they rather a company that actually gets things out in reasonable time frames?
Hey, I've spent a Friday night or two at LAN parties. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. My comment was really just a joke, but a lot of people seemed to take it quite seriously.
As for the male readers having it so bad, I don't think the reality is anything like the myth. Most of my male friends would easily fall into the "nerd" category, yet most everyone I know is either seeing someone or has some serious prospects. Maybe it's harder to find someone ethusiastic about the same things they like, but hardly impossible.
Additionally, that difficulty exists regardless of gender. I've had boyfriends ban my comic book collection from our shared apartment; I was once dumped because I talk about math too much; another guy (A sys-admin mind you) told me he'd like to keep seeing me, but I'd have to accept that I'm more of a Primer girl while he's a National Treasure guy. I'm not complaining, as I consider each of these situations a bullet dodged. I'm just letting you know that girl nerds meet a good bit difficulty when it comes to dating too.
I feel like I'm watching one of those videos they play in highschool bio classes where one of the big ameobas get close to one of the smaller ameobas so it can consume it for the cellular energy it has inside...
Except the Leonard Nemoy-sounding commentator is calling it "getting friendly" instead of "attempting to consume for it's own increase in power and strength."
I agree that disclosure, in general, is clearly in the public interest, but this cannot always be the case.
We simply do not have enough details here to declare this disclosure "good" or "bad." Although Cisco is claiming the information was on vulnerabilities that have been fixed, that could be a PR move to stave off a stock plummet or put a stop to proliferation of the information to those that may want to use the vulnerability to bad ends.
We also can't be sure of what "fixed" truly means. How tested are these fixes? Are they complete fixes or do some variations on the vulnerabilities revealed still exist? The questions go on and on.
I'm all for protecting Whistleblowers, but only if they have done all they could to ensure that they are not causing more damage by revealing information that can still be used against current users. I'm not saying that this is clearly not the case here, only that we need more time before we declare this guy our champion.
Slashdot Mirror
Why was Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, wearing a bunny suit?
Please don't pelt me with small rocks for asking.
ACOther countries MUST care about the intellectual property of countries other than just their own because of several international agreements that have been signed by a large number those countries. There's the Berne Convention and TRIPS to name a two. These agreements require either national treatmnent (the same treatment for the citizens of signatory countries) or reciprocity (the treatment of the two countries must be equal). Violation of these treaties distrupts trade and leads to less than optimal earnings for both countries (and their people).
Anyone who thinks we're still working with separate national economies is largely fooling themselves. It's a world economy anymore and IP does provide significant fuel. There are still good ways to protect it (the EU's patent system seems to work better than our own) and bad ways (see RIAA and Sony tactics), but good or bad protection is still important.
I certainly don't like how it's being done (for the most part), but I see that's some system is necessary.
ACSony's actions are actually a pretty classic price discrimination case, but certainly not a price-fixing cartel. That would necessitate evidence of other companies agreeing with them to do the same.
AC
Seems like they made the mistake of assuming the converse here. Just because drug addicts are similar to game addicts does not mean game addicts are necessarily like drug addicts.
Drug addiction, being primarily metabolic, may have a more limited set of idenitifying characteristics. Game addiction, being primarily mental (or maybe even social) has more varying charactistics as psyches and social structures have a lot of built-in variance.
I'd have a much easier time buying the argument that drug addict behavior/characteristics fit in as a subset of the acceptable behaviors/characteristics of gaming culture.
ACIt's not just a domestic issue anymore. Before CA filed or people began talking about the NY case, a consumer protection group from Italy filed suit.
The domestic issues are just the tip of the iceberg. Other countries that are not so impressed by the financial might of companies like Sony are going to nail anyone using such underhanded methods. Rootkits like this one most likely violates the Berne Convention, TRIPS, and possibly WIPO.
ACWow, this logic has more holes than a pound of swiss cheese, where to begin...
First, you've somehow tricked yourself into believing we're in a two-party (two-evil?) system, M$ v. Google, not true. We have choices way beyond evil and lesser evil. I would rather no patent at all that was so vague or relating to a business practice/computer code at all, but I'll get to that in a sec. If someone must hold the patent, why couldn't we hope for someone in the open source community to grab it where it won't be secreted away or litigated to hell and back?
Which brings me to my second point, patents are no longer protection from the secret-keeping guild systems nor reasonable havens for inventors. They are weapons. If we're going to let this war go on, then the open source community needs to be just as snarky in grabbing up patents for everything under the sun, so they can fight back the big boys, or even better, release them to the public at large to take a little wind out of the money-chasers' sails.
Finally, even better, end the childish, counter-productive arms race all together, and take a page from the EU and no longer allow software nor business practice patents at all.
Wow, what a shining example of the very knee-jerk, laundry list approach of one-size-fits-all security this book tries to warn against!
Thanks for the illustration.
ACI guess encourage now means the same thing as force...
The fact is that choosing ANY file type narrows the field somewhat and whatever type is selected will give preference to someone. It makes the most sense to pick the type that does the least amount of "damage" in both fields.
Using an "open" format allows the docs to be read by users of pretty much any OS. Also, it gives preference to the open source community, not some corporation looking for nothing beyond profit. Finally, anyone that wants OpenOffice can get it, and for free. No other possiblity would be less narrow or preferential!
Topping out around 10 lbs., I would argue that certain models of Dell laptops could be considered not to be a "mobile" device at all. Maybe this is all a secret plot to get Dell an even larger share of the market! Oh yeah, and Dells come with some version of the Windows OS, so Bill Gates is probably behind this too. I'm starting to see all the angles now...
By the way, I know they obviously didn't mean to exclude laptops. I'm not a flippin idiot.
This is part misconception and part philosophical difference. I've exposure in both the American and Italian systems. This is what I have deduced from my experience:
First, the philsophical difference of having different school systems for students with different future goals would give at least the perception of less depth coming from a more generalized system. However, it's totally up to the student. It's easy to float through with a "general" education, but it's just as easy to get through your Calc BC by your senior year or take multivariable at a local community college.
Now the misconception, which I believe your shop comment plays into: Education is not just reading writing and arithmatic. Shop isn't just for the remedial students, either, as the other poster implied. I took shop and home ec, as was required by my school. I'm glad I did. It made me into a girl that rewired her own study in her first college apartment, painted and retiled the kitchen herself too, I change my own oil, and I cook fairly well. Of course, I also have no problem integrating an equation or recompiling my kernal. The American system aims to churn out well rounded, capable individuals. If the student wants to be, they will be.
Many apologies. I was temporarily insane from consuming an entire kilo of gelato.
By the by, I didn't think I sounded that ranty at all.
ACThis is hardly "forcing" Linux on anyone. It's someone taking a step many computer users would regard as scary and letting the general public know what happened.
Even taken to its most extreme, this could be considered little more than a challenge of, "Try it, it might not be as hard as you think. You might even like it." This perfectly embodies the spirit of open source. Linux being free allows one to truly try out and experiment with a new Windows-free environment without a financial investment. This could never legally be done with certain other OSes (you know who you are).
Also, the fact remains that a lot of people are still super intimidated by straying from the familiar. Seeing others do it (especially some student that was obviously pretty Windows dependant) even for 10 days, dispells some of the intimidation factor.
It's additionally fishy that they took their first action against a French site when so many American sites were doing the same thing. It's like they waited for the info to get out, wanted everyone talking about it, then made some sort of action against a foe far from the center of the limelight and in another country, which only steps up the difficulty in achieving success.
It's pretty clear that Apple, usually quick draw McGraw with the legal complaints, sat on this one because they saw the benefit of these copies getting out and getting people talking and excited about OS X.
Here's a challenge for all the companies (and individuals) out there who think it's perfectly acceptable to track and profit from every personal detail you can get your hands on of the people who interact with you. I'll let you track and profit from everything I do if you let me track and profit from everything you do. Complete discloser in both direction. Anything less is unacceptable.
I think there is an even better solution. The only reason I have a problem with the whole cookies thing is that what is being taken from me has a commercial value. If the people collecting my preferences can sell them to larger companies or profit by them by tailoring product lines and advertising, then money is being exchanged for my opinion.
If money is being exchanged or made from my opinion then the one individual that most deverves some or all of that financial gain is the original owner of the opinion/preference (me). However, through the cookies scheme, I'm the only one not getting paid.
If I own something that has value and someone else takes it and prevents me from profitting myself from it, that is theft, plain and simple. I don't want someone else's prefences in exchange for mine. I want the monetary value of my opinion.
From what I understand this is pretty much how it works:
They have a list of members and affiliates (the difference is that affiliates carry a banner on their sites). The members and affliates send them copies of their spam so that the senders can be added to a registry that is publically viewable. Spammers can get off the registry by forking over a certain amount of information, and they have to remove all affliates and members from their lists. The future ramifications have been hinted at in some posts here, like employers searching the registry and finding out about your bad behavior.
I probably missed something or other, but there you go.
I consider this pretty pointless and anal in general, but if you're going to be critical, you must also be correct.
While it is true that the possessive in the title is incorrect, according to MLA formatting as well as Strunk's Elements of Style, which is pretty much the authority on such matters, your suggestion is acceptable, but more correct is to add an apostrophe s. ex. Torvalds's. It's actually rule number one in Strunk's Elementary Rules of Usage.
Aside from all that clap-trap, I notice gramatical errors in numerous "professional" publications that don't have the additional challenges of slashdot all the time. (For example, speed is kind of important here, so maybe things don't get checked over by three or seven different editors). I know it matters. Of course it matters, but you sound pretty snarky in your reply, so it may bode well to ask yourself just how much it should matter.
Also, I am an engineer, not an English major, so my reply may indeed be replete with errors. I love it just the way it is, just like slashdot.
I can't help but wonder what will happen when someone uses one of these "mandated" security weak points to impair service from one of the larger providers, like Vonage. If the government was warned that it would be a likely outcome of their new law, are they liable for the damages?
Even worse, sniffable (tapable, whatever) by the government means sniffable by a lot of far more clever black-hats. Who is liable for the damages incurred by identity theft? Or are we just never supposed to order anything over the phone again?
I guess 18 months from now it's back to the cell phone only existance for me....
This is a tough one. My initial reaction is, "Egads, (yes, I talk like this), with the possibility for bugs, hang-time, etc., obvious NO!"
However, if in reality, the possibility of some glitch causing a bad decision is, say, 1 in 100, and the frequency of these pressurized teams making the obviously wrong decision is around 1 in 10, then I'd say go for it.
The point is, we need to know the rates/probablities of failure for both systems. Failure of some sort is inevitable, just how often and how badly are possible to control.
The EU doesn't allow for software nor business practices to be patented. Things like customer lists and such are still protected as trade secrets. They just have a heightened tangibility standard, as should we. It would probably clear half the "pending" load off the desks at the patent office if we did so.
Everyone knows that AMD's share would seriously change if Dell could be persuaded away from their holdout status.
The two main reasons generally cited for Dell's allegiance to Intel is the millions in advertising and marketting (hard for AMD to compete when they're sitting on a little over a billion and Intel is sitting on something like 11 billion) and early notification of new developments.
The second one I just don't get. I mean, Intel annouced the Itanium in 1994 which consumers didn't see until 2001, two years later than projected and seven after the announcement. Really, how much notice does Dell need? Wouldn't they rather a company that actually gets things out in reasonable time frames?
Hey, I've spent a Friday night or two at LAN parties. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. My comment was really just a joke, but a lot of people seemed to take it quite seriously.
As for the male readers having it so bad, I don't think the reality is anything like the myth. Most of my male friends would easily fall into the "nerd" category, yet most everyone I know is either seeing someone or has some serious prospects. Maybe it's harder to find someone ethusiastic about the same things they like, but hardly impossible.
Additionally, that difficulty exists regardless of gender. I've had boyfriends ban my comic book collection from our shared apartment; I was once dumped because I talk about math too much; another guy (A sys-admin mind you) told me he'd like to keep seeing me, but I'd have to accept that I'm more of a Primer girl while he's a National Treasure guy. I'm not complaining, as I consider each of these situations a bullet dodged. I'm just letting you know that girl nerds meet a good bit difficulty when it comes to dating too.
I feel like I'm watching one of those videos they play in highschool bio classes where one of the big ameobas get close to one of the smaller ameobas so it can consume it for the cellular energy it has inside...
Except the Leonard Nemoy-sounding commentator is calling it "getting friendly" instead of "attempting to consume for it's own increase in power and strength."
Pardon me while I shiver in creeped-out-ed-nessI agree that disclosure, in general, is clearly in the public interest, but this cannot always be the case.
We simply do not have enough details here to declare this disclosure "good" or "bad." Although Cisco is claiming the information was on vulnerabilities that have been fixed, that could be a PR move to stave off a stock plummet or put a stop to proliferation of the information to those that may want to use the vulnerability to bad ends.
We also can't be sure of what "fixed" truly means. How tested are these fixes? Are they complete fixes or do some variations on the vulnerabilities revealed still exist? The questions go on and on.
I'm all for protecting Whistleblowers, but only if they have done all they could to ensure that they are not causing more damage by revealing information that can still be used against current users. I'm not saying that this is clearly not the case here, only that we need more time before we declare this guy our champion.
I, admittedly, had the overwhelming urge to make a "hardware compatibility" joke or two...
and I'm a girl.