I would ask you: do you understand how the code works? Are you adding reasonable features, or fixing user-visible bugs? Are you restricting your changes to items that will achieve the project's goals, and meet the required deadlines?
If you are not doing these things, your changes are doomed to fail. If you are creating huge changesets that require additional review [time which could be spent making meaningful changes] but do not add (or fix) functionality, you are wasting the senior's time. Worse, if your changesets have bugs, you are actively hurting the development effort.
So what do you do? Add comments to help you find your way around; perhaps make suggestions as to how you think the code should go. Focus on how you can make a positive difference, and earn the senior's trust to rewrite the sections that bother you the most.
Change for the sake of change -- or to meet some irrelevant book's standards -- does not make production code work any better. And that's the usual goal. Be very aware of it.
If tuition was paid, can't the lecture be considered work-for-hire, and thus the shared property of all tuition-paying students?
Furthermore, if the professor draws a paycheck from the university, how does he have the copyright rather than the university? Does he lack standing to legitimately file suit?
And finally, if he's conveying knowledge -- the knowledge cannot be copyrighted, can it? Only the exact expression of it can be, not any notes or works written therefrom. Otherwise every textbook writer out there would be... well, SOL.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I do read too much Groklaw.
Only the robotic aspect is new: check out Jamstix
on
The First Robotic Musician
·
· Score: 2, Informative
For a really nifty AI drummer, see Jamstix. It is a VST plugin that listens to what you play (either audio or MIDI input), and plays drums along with you.
It is incredible fun to play guitar with -- rock, jazz, blues stuff for me -- and the demos and songs that people have created with it are impressive. Rather than playing unlike a human, it has algorithms to mimic a human drummer's limb movements and such. The sounds and rhythms are all tweakable -- you can describe what you want, and leave the actual playing and variances to Jamstix.
Very cool stuff IMHO, and highly recommended for any musician out there.
There's nothing quite as awful as unconstitutional laws. The burdens of overturning one are immense, especially when you think "legal fees" for "burden." Politicians who write, vote for, or enforce such laws should be held accountable: make it a prosecutable offense, not just something to be corrected at the next election.
And it could be extended to appointed positions that have any say in introducing invalid regulations or other enforcement-style activities. Just to keep advisors in mind and not be completely disassociated from the story here...:)
(For those of you without a sense of humor: I'm not being entirely serious here, as "more lawsuits" is seldom an answer to an overabundance of suits &c. It's just a look at the flip side for anyone out there who hasn't programmed much...)
Here's a thought for you: presumably SCO source is a little harder to come by than Linux source.
Who's to say that any duplicated code wasn't Linux code misappropriated by SCO?
Or code (and according to recent stories, comments) from *BSD?
It would be a very twisted way to try to turn a GPL violation into a profit... and recent crud from SCO has certainly been twisted and warped in every other way possible.
I don't see why they can't mark it as a beta and put it out on their site for anonymous download. (Well, pseudo-anonymous, logfiles being what they are:-)
And as far as compiling XFree86 -- been there, done that. There's a reason I pay for distros, and having their maintenance, disk space, and compile time efforts would be a good summary...
I chose to avoid VESA by asking around in the community until I found someone who had the requisite via_drv.o file for xfree 4.2.99. Not perfect, as Xv/mplayer playback is flaky, but it's a whole lot better than VESA. It *should* come with my distro, though, and that's not going to happen until the source is available!
BTW, your posts on the ViaArena forum are generally pretty good & useful; thanks.
I own a VIA EPIA-M9000, and I can't say that
Linux is really supported worth beans.
I tried installing Mandrake (sorry, I don't remember which pre-release, but it was recent); SuSE 8.1 from DVD; and Red Hat (Phoebe 8.0.93 prerelease). The only one that had any luck was Phoebe. Mandrake wouldn't install due to crashes; SuSE wouldn't install from DVD -- some form of IDE-DVD data corruption. Got it to install using CD's, but got some random crashes later.
The M9000 uses the CLE266 chipset, which has a new video part. In all 3 distros, you're stuck with the VESA driver -- which meant no acceleration and a far-from-lovely 60Hz refresh rate.
Why did I use cutting-edge distros? Because the board has very 'new' hardware -- firewire ports, USB2, CLE266, audio, etc. The IDE, audio, and various ports worked fine with Phoebe, right down to the Epson C82 inkjet I connected via USB. But the VESA video is just plain awful.
VIA offers binary-only video drivers for older distributions, and has been promising (but not delivering) source for ages -- but only for 2D video functions. They've cited "legal issues" on any support for the hardware MPEG decoder and 3D.
(Pay attention: useful links coming up:-)
The drivers they've released thus far have been for older distributions, mainstream only. Just try Gentoo or something. There are many frustrated users out there right now.
For the curious, here's what I'm using: EPIA-M9000 ($150) in a $28 generic mini-ATX (not ITX) case w/250W power supply; 512MB PC2100 RAM; 120GB Maxtor hard drive; LG combo DVD-ROM/CD-R (16X DVD, 32x10x40x CDR); Intel eepro100 ethernet; external modem and other peripherals. Yes, it currently does firewalling amongst its other duties.
Bottom line: consider this some bleeding-edge, undersupported hardware and proceed accordingly.
Let's see... people had been accustomed to send email to the account to contact the legitimate account holder.
Now, with no notice, they can still send email to the account, but the only ones able to read it are the employees of the ISP (who may or may not have done so; that's irrelevant). By insisting upon a fee (whether truly owed or not), they assert ownership over the messages as if they were the legitimate recipient.
Thus -- is the ISP in effect impersonating the account holder by not providing notice that they, not the intended/expected recipient, are the only ones receiving the email?
I should've typed "Really Bad Art Posters." Your posting was actually interesting, even though I disagree with you. Only your spelling was bad:-)
Funny how the sender of a digital message and a print of a photo/painting wind up with similar terminology. In this case, any pun was (for once) unintentional.
Not so. Say I set up a site called "dumbass spelling mistakes" and put a link to your post in it.:-) Or, more akin to your analogy, "Really Bad Posters."
I am then expressing an opinion about the linked work, and an opinion that probably isn't found on the site providing the image. Any clueful surfer can figure out the linked-to site and visit it if he/she so desires.
The ultimate example would be to strip all court records of references to copyrighted work, or to summaries thereof -- since someone might use that information to go look up the work in a form that the copyright holder didn't approve of, and/or in a context that the holder didn't approve.
Do that, and the judge will notice that the decision is just plain, flat-out wrong -- just like the time judges finally awoke to privacy issues when monitoring software was installed on *their* computers. (No link provided here... am I being lazy, or legally sensible? Jeez, think there might be a negative impact on free speech from this decision?:)
If that's the case, then, what is it exactly that you're paying for when you buy a movie on DVD? What, given any ads for the DVD, do you expect to be buying?
And I'll have to send a note to the Norwegian goverment asking if I can write myself some nice Norwegian law to guarantee myself some extra income, while I'm at it:-) I think I'd like to produce chairs from which movies can be watched, and make some bucks not only from the chairs, but from those who wanted to use or build their own.
I suspect someone's going to have a field day talking about the word "authorized" in that law.
Obviously access is authorized, otherwise no one could play the movie on *anything*.
And who gets to "authorize" the access? Does Norway permit companies to write their own little bits of legislation defining "authorization"? And to "authorize" helping themselves to more money by creating more middleware (pay for the disc with the movie, pay for the decoder, pay for the displayer, pay for a chair to park your ass in while you watch it)? Is building your own furniture now illegal, too?:)
Alternatively, are those who write versions of "login" equally culpable under this misbegotten law? After all, it permits access to systems and data, and might conceivably be misused to gain "unauthorized" access.
Hopefully Afterposten will continue with English translations on this story...
I suspect that there are plenty of possibilities to show negligence here, but if he didn't convince the judge, well, you're right.
I don't think that your soapbox analogy is correct -- but if the speaker were to take a pen and write his speech on the arms of passers-by, it'd be a lot closer:-)
A better analogy might be junk mail. The recipient has to dispose of the junk, frequently incurring costs (trash pickup, for example). But at least in that instance, postal fees provide some incentive to more accurately target recipients. A big, whopping fine might do the same here.
That's nice. I actually use a Win98 box for gaming, and have in the past used CP/M, DOS, MVS, TOPS-20, AT&T SysV, Amigas, OS/2, Macs, VMS, BeOS, Ultrix, Solaris, Tru64, and other stuff. Even NT.
I can't recommend using any Microsoft product, though, and that comes from having used 'em -- as well as from reading about all the widespread exploits. BTW, care to explain why IIS has more exploits than Apache, even though Apache is more widely used? Admittedly, it's not an email client, but it is an interesting contrast that seems to illustrate Microsoft's security expertise. And you're quite right that nobody likes exploits!:-)
As far as "monopolyware" goes, hey, I'm from NH. Have a peek at the state constitution for a good attitude towards illegal monopolists. And remember that Microsoft is indeed one. Attempting to force the choice of egregiously insecure, buggy software upon the world will tend to earn you some wrath -- even if it's kept down to urging others to use cheaper, more secure alternatives whenever possible. And condensing long rants into a single word such as "monopolyware."
It'd be nice to have a small, inexpensive household server running FreeBSD on non-x86 hardware to handle (by proxy) all email clients and browsing activities, and use whatever desktop turns you on. The trick is interoperability and low cost, and neither is there yet.
And as far as 'stupidity' goes -- well, yeah, I have a gaming box that runs Win98. I don't use it for surfing or email (or any work, for that matter), and I keep it pretty strictly firewalled. To do otherwise, I'd have to give myself a kick for stupidity (and I give myself enough of those every time I find a bug in my code:) That box, by the way, dual boots into Linux for software testing; I can't afford a zillion boxes, either.
For comfy desktops, incidentally, I haven't found anything recent that beats Linux -- at least for me. I can have icons and GUIs and such, good browsers, Win4Lin if I need MSOffice (haven't launched it in ages), and most important for my tastes, I get a great command line and networked windowing system. Multitasking, multiuser, and security are not afterthoughts kludged on to an inadequate start (such as DOS). And the source is all there if and when I need it. (Yes, I have made a few changes when the urge has struck.)
So use what you like, but if the urge should ever strike, please refrain from Win-virus-of-the-moment complaints, or gripes with Microsoft's licensing or closed-source policies:-) May you never have to reinstall!
If you are in the business of spamvertising, you have a legal duty to do it right -- the same way a contractor is obliged to follow building code.
Shouldn't that be obvious?
The court said, "Section 17538.4 does not itself impose a duty of care on respondents." Their statement does not convince me in the face of the passages that Ferguson cites.
If you're a business that advertises, you can't spraypaint your ads anywhere you like (even if they wash off; cf IBM's Linux ads on sidewalks). Spam is the electronic equivalent.
As time permits, I do try to check as much of this stuff as possible -- but from what I've seen, they missed the boat on the negligence issue.
BTW, what's the rest of your post? You end with "Other than"....
I'll recommend what I please, thank you, and state that recommendation as strongly as I like. You're free to indulge in stupidity, of course.
Note that "exploits" refers to the numerous email-borne viruses that Outlook enables. Unpatched systems with low security (such as Win98) can be wiped out with a single message. Monopolyware such as XP can be infected simply by connecting to the 'net. Any html-aware reader can be discombobulated if javascript popups are enabled, no matter the OS. Now, how easy is it to recover from that situation in any given OS, or (better still) to disable the misfeature?
This is why I have used Pine for ages: text is just text, and I can choose what I view and how.
However, I could also use a GUI email client such as Balsa -- there are many, many other choices, some of which provide you with a nice red 'X' to delete spam.
Now, maybe a poor windoze user has discovered something like Eudora (which likely has its own problems; hey, pine occasionally has one). That'd be nice, but how many just use whatever was on their system?
At least with Linux and *BSD, you get multiple choices on your system, and any mistakes are likely to affect only a single user's account.
Now, go out and try another system for once. You might find you like something else better.
Many reasonable allegations against the spammer were dismissed in a way that suggests that the Court does not understand the issues involved.
Perhaps someone should suggest that spam is to a computer what random placement of raw eggs is to a judge's chamber: an annoyance and potential mess to clean up.
Think of poor windoze users reading html spam with cookies or javascript popups enabled, for example. Or any of the email exploits that monopolyware has enabled. (Yeah, they should be using Linux or *BSD. Doesn't help with the annoyance of spam, just makes it less messy.)
Perhaps when more e-clueful judges take the bench, the details in this sort of decision can be handled more appropriately.
Evidently Mr. Gephardt & Mr. Wyder do not understand the internet.
Perhaps the proper way to educate them is for non-constituents to call them collect with their opinions on the matter. Alternatively, fax
them an opinion if that's legal in your area (fax spamming doesn't enjoy first amendment protection, either).
I can't think of a more appropriate analogy for what they propose to let spammers do to my internet service.
There are very good reasons why permits are required for certain demonstrations, and why there are laws against inappropriate dumping of waste.
Spammers have the first amendment right to put up an internet site with their free speech. They have no rights to use any service for which I have paid without paying me a big, whopping fee first.
And the unsolicited money must precede the unsolicited spam.
Anyone distributing the binary is required to make the source available themselves, not to rely on a third party. They are required to make a written offer for the source, and to make the source available to third parties.
Furthermore, do you really think that they used a vanilla kernel? They must also distribute their modifications.
How about all the other components they used to make up the distribution? Any of those which are covered by the GPL must also be provided in source form.
If you don't comprehend this, you're cordially invited to use Redmond products until you expire.
If they don't comprehend this, they'll have fun in court -- and be left with only buggy Windows and a reputation in tatters.
Has the copyright been registered with the US Copyright Office? See the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress site and their excellent FAQ for details.
If the copyright has been registered, it substantially increases the chances of successful litigation, and allows treble damages.
Speaking of suits, is the copyright held by someone who has the will and the means to litigate this? If not, has it (or will it) be1919igned properly to such an entity?
Why do posts like this come around only when I'm NOT a moderator?
Why, that's a subject for a poll:-)
Not every story is thought-provoking.
One can't read everything on/. and get useful work done. (Now, about those who comment on a high percentage of stories...:-)
Murphy's Law applies to everything, itself included.
The person(s) best suited to comment on a post will be traveling for the duration of the story's run.
Fates, Furies, Destiny, and Reeboks, all wrapped by the worm Ourobourous.
[Fill in random/. staff's nick here] [optionally fill in a random activity or possession].
BTW, if you can use a quote to further (or further discuss) the idea, go for it!
The "War on Drugs" is really a war on the american people.
Sort of. I don't have a problem keeping highly addictive stuff off the streets; but adding legal troubles to addiction problems is like kicking a bleeding man. It also perpetuates a nasty cycle. The urge to abuse any substance, whether alcohol, illegal drugs, MP3's, or firearms, is yet another social ill... they're all tools and should be used wisely. Getting worked up about the tool isn't the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
I would ask you: do you understand how the code works? Are you adding reasonable features, or fixing user-visible bugs? Are you restricting your changes to items that will achieve the project's goals, and meet the required deadlines?
If you are not doing these things, your changes are doomed to fail. If you are creating huge changesets that require additional review [time which could be spent making meaningful changes] but do not add (or fix) functionality, you are wasting the senior's time. Worse, if your changesets have bugs, you are actively hurting the development effort.
So what do you do? Add comments to help you find your way around; perhaps make suggestions as to how you think the code should go. Focus on how you can make a positive difference, and earn the senior's trust to rewrite the sections that bother you the most.
Change for the sake of change -- or to meet some irrelevant book's standards -- does not make production code work any better. And that's the usual goal. Be very aware of it.
If tuition was paid, can't the lecture be considered work-for-hire, and thus the shared property of all tuition-paying students?
Furthermore, if the professor draws a paycheck from the university, how does he have the copyright rather than the university? Does he lack standing to legitimately file suit?
And finally, if he's conveying knowledge -- the knowledge cannot be copyrighted, can it? Only the exact expression of it can be, not any notes or works written therefrom. Otherwise every textbook writer out there would be... well, SOL.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I do read too much Groklaw.
For a really nifty AI drummer, see Jamstix. It is a VST plugin that listens to what you play (either audio or MIDI input), and plays drums along with you.
It is incredible fun to play guitar with -- rock, jazz, blues stuff for me -- and the demos and songs that people have created with it are impressive. Rather than playing unlike a human, it has algorithms to mimic a human drummer's limb movements and such. The sounds and rhythms are all tweakable -- you can describe what you want, and leave the actual playing and variances to Jamstix.
Very cool stuff IMHO, and highly recommended for any musician out there.
There's nothing quite as awful as unconstitutional laws. The burdens of overturning one are immense, especially when you think "legal fees" for "burden." Politicians who write, vote for, or enforce such laws should be held accountable: make it a prosecutable offense, not just something to be corrected at the next election.
And it could be extended to appointed positions that have any say in introducing invalid regulations or other enforcement-style activities. Just to keep advisors in mind and not be completely disassociated from the story here... :)
(For those of you without a sense of humor: I'm not being entirely serious here, as "more lawsuits" is seldom an answer to an overabundance of suits &c. It's just a look at the flip side for anyone out there who hasn't programmed much...)
It's really troublesome how much money is squandered on expensive executives... but it looks like there's a grand solution out there:
OffshoreExecutive
Here's a thought for you: presumably SCO source is a little harder to come by than Linux source.
Who's to say that any duplicated code wasn't Linux code misappropriated by SCO?
Or code (and according to recent stories, comments) from *BSD?
It would be a very twisted way to try to turn a GPL violation into a profit... and recent crud from SCO has certainly been twisted and warped in every other way possible.
"Release early, release often." Not VIA, alas.
:-)
I don't see why they can't mark it as a beta and put it out on their site for anonymous download. (Well, pseudo-anonymous, logfiles being what they are
And as far as compiling XFree86 -- been there, done that. There's a reason I pay for distros, and having their maintenance, disk space, and compile time efforts would be a good summary...
I chose to avoid VESA by asking around in the community until I found someone who had the requisite via_drv.o file for xfree 4.2.99. Not perfect, as Xv/mplayer playback is flaky, but it's a whole lot better than VESA. It *should* come with my distro, though, and that's not going to happen until the source is available!
BTW, your posts on the ViaArena forum are generally pretty good & useful; thanks.
I tried installing Mandrake (sorry, I don't remember which pre-release, but it was recent); SuSE 8.1 from DVD; and Red Hat (Phoebe 8.0.93 prerelease). The only one that had any luck was Phoebe. Mandrake wouldn't install due to crashes; SuSE wouldn't install from DVD -- some form of IDE-DVD data corruption. Got it to install using CD's, but got some random crashes later.
The M9000 uses the CLE266 chipset, which has a new video part. In all 3 distros, you're stuck with the VESA driver -- which meant no acceleration and a far-from-lovely 60Hz refresh rate.
Why did I use cutting-edge distros? Because the board has very 'new' hardware -- firewire ports, USB2, CLE266, audio, etc. The IDE, audio, and various ports worked fine with Phoebe, right down to the Epson C82 inkjet I connected via USB. But the VESA video is just plain awful.
VIA offers binary-only video drivers for older distributions, and has been promising (but not delivering) source for ages -- but only for 2D video functions. They've cited "legal issues" on any support for the hardware MPEG decoder and 3D.
(Pay attention: useful links coming up :-)
The drivers they've released thus far have been for older distributions, mainstream only. Just try Gentoo or something. There are many frustrated users out there right now.
For the curious, here's what I'm using: EPIA-M9000 ($150) in a $28 generic mini-ATX (not ITX) case w/250W power supply; 512MB PC2100 RAM; 120GB Maxtor hard drive; LG combo DVD-ROM/CD-R (16X DVD, 32x10x40x CDR); Intel eepro100 ethernet; external modem and other peripherals. Yes, it currently does firewalling amongst its other duties.
Bottom line: consider this some bleeding-edge, undersupported hardware and proceed accordingly.
Now, with no notice, they can still send email to the account, but the only ones able to read it are the employees of the ISP (who may or may not have done so; that's irrelevant). By insisting upon a fee (whether truly owed or not), they assert ownership over the messages as if they were the legitimate recipient.
Thus -- is the ISP in effect impersonating the account holder by not providing notice that they, not the intended/expected recipient, are the only ones receiving the email?
I should've typed "Really Bad Art Posters." Your posting was actually interesting, even though I disagree with you. Only your spelling was bad
Funny how the sender of a digital message and a print of a photo/painting wind up with similar terminology. In this case, any pun was (for once) unintentional.
Not so. Say I set up a site called "dumbass spelling mistakes" and put a link to your post in it.
I am then expressing an opinion about the linked work, and an opinion that probably isn't found on the site providing the image. Any clueful surfer can figure out the linked-to site and visit it if he/she so desires.
The ultimate example would be to strip all court records of references to copyrighted work, or to summaries thereof -- since someone might use that information to go look up the work in a form that the copyright holder didn't approve of, and/or in a context that the holder didn't approve.
Do that, and the judge will notice that the decision is just plain, flat-out wrong -- just like the time judges finally awoke to privacy issues when monitoring software was installed on *their* computers. (No link provided here... am I being lazy, or legally sensible? Jeez, think there might be a negative impact on free speech from this decision?
If that's the case, then, what is it exactly that you're paying for when you buy a movie on DVD? What, given any ads for the DVD, do you expect to be buying?
:-) I think I'd like to produce chairs from which movies can be watched, and make some bucks not only from the chairs, but from those who wanted to use or build their own.
And I'll have to send a note to the Norwegian goverment asking if I can write myself some nice Norwegian law to guarantee myself some extra income, while I'm at it
I suspect someone's going to have a field day talking about the word "authorized" in that law.
Obviously access is authorized, otherwise no one could play the movie on *anything*.
And who gets to "authorize" the access? Does Norway permit companies to write their own little bits of legislation defining "authorization"? And to "authorize" helping themselves to more money by creating more middleware (pay for the disc with the movie, pay for the decoder, pay for the displayer, pay for a chair to park your ass in while you watch it)? Is building your own furniture now illegal, too?
Alternatively, are those who write versions of "login" equally culpable under this misbegotten law? After all, it permits access to systems and data, and might conceivably be misused to gain "unauthorized" access.
Hopefully Afterposten will continue with English translations on this story...
Thanks for the clarification.
I suspect that there are plenty of possibilities to show negligence here, but if he didn't convince the judge, well, you're right.
I don't think that your soapbox analogy is correct -- but if the speaker were to take a pen and write his speech on the arms of passers-by, it'd be a lot closer :-)
A better analogy might be junk mail. The recipient has to dispose of the junk, frequently incurring costs (trash pickup, for example). But at least in that instance, postal fees provide some incentive to more accurately target recipients. A big, whopping fine might do the same here.
mv /bin/offending_name /bin/to_hell_with_gravenreuth
alias offending_name=to_hell_with_gravenreuth
Of course, you should feel free to use classic four-letter Anglo-Saxon words in your implementation, should that better fit your mood. :-)
That's nice. I actually use a Win98 box for gaming, and have in the past used CP/M, DOS, MVS, TOPS-20, AT&T SysV, Amigas, OS/2, Macs, VMS, BeOS, Ultrix, Solaris, Tru64, and other stuff. Even NT.
I can't recommend using any Microsoft product, though, and that comes from having used 'em -- as well as from reading about all the widespread exploits. BTW, care to explain why IIS has more exploits than Apache, even though Apache is more widely used? Admittedly, it's not an email client, but it is an interesting contrast that seems to illustrate Microsoft's security expertise. And you're quite right that nobody likes exploits! :-)
As far as "monopolyware" goes, hey, I'm from NH. Have a peek at the state constitution for a good attitude towards illegal monopolists. And remember that Microsoft is indeed one. Attempting to force the choice of egregiously insecure, buggy software upon the world will tend to earn you some wrath -- even if it's kept down to urging others to use cheaper, more secure alternatives whenever possible. And condensing long rants into a single word such as "monopolyware."
It'd be nice to have a small, inexpensive household server running FreeBSD on non-x86 hardware to handle (by proxy) all email clients and browsing activities, and use whatever desktop turns you on. The trick is interoperability and low cost, and neither is there yet.
And as far as 'stupidity' goes -- well, yeah, I have a gaming box that runs Win98. I don't use it for surfing or email (or any work, for that matter), and I keep it pretty strictly firewalled. To do otherwise, I'd have to give myself a kick for stupidity (and I give myself enough of those every time I find a bug in my code :) That box, by the way, dual boots into Linux for software testing; I can't afford a zillion boxes, either.
For comfy desktops, incidentally, I haven't found anything recent that beats Linux -- at least for me. I can have icons and GUIs and such, good browsers, Win4Lin if I need MSOffice (haven't launched it in ages), and most important for my tastes, I get a great command line and networked windowing system. Multitasking, multiuser, and security are not afterthoughts kludged on to an inadequate start (such as DOS). And the source is all there if and when I need it. (Yes, I have made a few changes when the urge has struck.)
So use what you like, but if the urge should ever strike, please refrain from Win-virus-of-the-moment complaints, or gripes with Microsoft's licensing or closed-source policies :-) May you never have to reinstall!
If you are in the business of spamvertising, you have a legal duty to do it right -- the same way a contractor is obliged to follow building code.
Shouldn't that be obvious?
The court said, "Section 17538.4 does not itself impose a duty of care on respondents." Their statement does not convince me in the face of the passages that Ferguson cites.
If you're a business that advertises, you can't spraypaint your ads anywhere you like (even if they wash off; cf IBM's Linux ads on sidewalks). Spam is the electronic equivalent.
As time permits, I do try to check as much of this stuff as possible -- but from what I've seen, they missed the boat on the negligence issue.
BTW, what's the rest of your post? You end with "Other than"....
I'll recommend what I please, thank you, and state that recommendation as strongly as I like. You're free to indulge in stupidity, of course.
Note that "exploits" refers to the numerous email-borne viruses that Outlook enables. Unpatched systems with low security (such as Win98) can be wiped out with a single message. Monopolyware such as XP can be infected simply by connecting to the 'net. Any html-aware reader can be discombobulated if javascript popups are enabled, no matter the OS. Now, how easy is it to recover from that situation in any given OS, or (better still) to disable the misfeature?
This is why I have used Pine for ages: text is just text, and I can choose what I view and how.
However, I could also use a GUI email client such as Balsa -- there are many, many other choices, some of which provide you with a nice red 'X' to delete spam.
Now, maybe a poor windoze user has discovered something like Eudora (which likely has its own problems; hey, pine occasionally has one). That'd be nice, but how many just use whatever was on their system?
At least with Linux and *BSD, you get multiple choices on your system, and any mistakes are likely to affect only a single user's account.
Now, go out and try another system for once. You might find you like something else better.
I often say "show me the code."
Do you say "show me the spam?" Unless someone asks for it, why should they have to look at it?
Do you understand the similarity between a spamologist and a proctologist? :-)
Many reasonable allegations against the spammer were dismissed in a way that suggests that the Court does not understand the issues involved.
Perhaps someone should suggest that spam is to a computer what random placement of raw eggs is to a judge's chamber: an annoyance and potential mess to clean up.
Think of poor windoze users reading html spam with cookies or javascript popups enabled, for example. Or any of the email exploits that monopolyware has enabled. (Yeah, they should be using Linux or *BSD. Doesn't help with the annoyance of spam, just makes it less messy.)
Perhaps when more e-clueful judges take the bench, the details in this sort of decision can be handled more appropriately.
Perhaps the proper way to educate them is for non-constituents to call them collect with their opinions on the matter. Alternatively, fax them an opinion if that's legal in your area (fax spamming doesn't enjoy first amendment protection, either).
I can't think of a more appropriate analogy for what they propose to let spammers do to my internet service.
There are very good reasons why permits are required for certain demonstrations, and why there are laws against inappropriate dumping of waste.
Spammers have the first amendment right to put up an internet site with their free speech. They have no rights to use any service for which I have paid without paying me a big, whopping fee first. And the unsolicited money must precede the unsolicited spam.
Anyone distributing the binary is required to make the source available themselves, not to rely on a third party. They are required to make a written offer for the source, and to make the source available to third parties.
Furthermore, do you really think that they used a vanilla kernel? They must also distribute their modifications.
How about all the other components they used to make up the distribution? Any of those which are covered by the GPL must also be provided in source form.
If you don't comprehend this, you're cordially invited to use Redmond products until you expire.
If they don't comprehend this, they'll have fun in court -- and be left with only buggy Windows and a reputation in tatters.
Where's their source code? I didn't notice it on their site.
Has the copyright been registered with the US Copyright Office? See the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress site and their excellent FAQ for details.
If the copyright has been registered, it substantially increases the chances of successful litigation, and allows treble damages.
Speaking of suits, is the copyright held by someone who has the will and the means to litigate this? If not, has it (or will it) be1919igned properly to such an entity?
BTW, if you can use a quote to further (or further discuss) the idea, go for it!
Sort of. I don't have a problem keeping highly addictive stuff off the streets; but adding legal troubles to addiction problems is like kicking a bleeding man. It also perpetuates a nasty cycle. The urge to abuse any substance, whether alcohol, illegal drugs, MP3's, or firearms, is yet another social ill... they're all tools and should be used wisely. Getting worked up about the tool isn't the way to go.