I asked this question the first time this case came up and got no replies. I'll ask it again.
Under what theory does the DMCA apply to eBay sellers? Unlike YouTube, eBay hosts no copyrighted materials. (For simplicity's sake, let's leave aside trivial objections like when a seller's advertisement includes a photograph of a copyrighted work.) Is the claim based on some extension of the Grokster decision, arguing that eBay somehow constitutes a "contributory infringer" if it hosts an auction for copyrighted materials? That seems to run squarely up against the first-sale doctrine. If I buy a book, there's no reason why I can't resell it on eBay.
I realize that the Autodesk case is more complicated since it brings into play issues of licensing vs. ownership, the enforceability of EULAs and the like. The only way I could see eBay being charged with contributory infringement is if they knowingly encourage the sale of illicit copies of copyrighted works. Even then, I think it's a hard case to make. In Grokster, the Court's argument rested largely on the fact that Grokster explicitly encouraged infringement by distributing its software application and hosting advertising on its website. How does that apply to eBay?
OK, let Microsoft challenge the GPL in court then. They haven't dared to try it, even though all indications are that they really, really hate it.
I'm not convinced that Microsoft "hates" the GPL. It would certainly hate for the GPL to be applied to some component of a Microsoft product, but overall continued uncertainty about the legal status of the GPL benefits Microsoft.
Most of Microsoft's anti-GPL rhetoric is really aimed at enterprise customers considering migrating servers from Windows to Linux. The whole campaign is much more of a "FUD" operation than real opposition to the GPL or the principles it embodies. Microsoft benefits when corporate decision-makers choose not to implement GPL-licensed solutions for fear that somewhere down the road a program like the Linux kernel will be adjudged to infringe somneone's patent or copyright. Then, suddenly, all those supposedly "free" servers are subject to royalty payments of some form or another or, worse, have to be entirely rebuilt with compliant software. The uncertainty engendered by SCO's rather ridiculous claims of infringement against IBM and Linux is a good example of this process at work.
People don't advance to positions of power in corporate establishments by being risk-acceptant. So long as a GPL sword hangs over the heads of CIOs, they often going to choose the reliable, commercial solution (read "Windows") rather than worry about who owns the rights to every little piece of GPL-licensed software. (Yes, of course, Windows itself probably infringes some patents somewhere, but that's a much smaller risk than Linux presents. Even if Microsoft is found to be an infringer, as in the Eolas case, it has the resources to protect its end-users from any potential risks or losses.)
No; it's actually a *very bad idea*. It would be a good idea, if they would install a *free* anti-virus. But an anti-virus that stops working after 60 days is a very, very bad idea. And it is a burden to deinstall it and to install a free anti-virus (running two antivirus programs at the same time spells trouble).
If you mean a "free as in beer" anti-virus with no subscription revenues, then the anti-virus manufacturer wouldn't have any incentive to offer a free trial version and pay the manufacturer to bundle it. The whole business model is to subsidize the manufacturer to include the trial version in hopes of getting continuing subscription revenues for years to come.
You don't like this stuff; many ordinary people do. If you don't want stuff like this pre-installed, buy business-oriented hardware since it usually doesn't include any trialware and costs more as a result. (Direct comparisons are tough because the hardware itself is often different between the consumer and business lines.)
I'd like to see someone like Dell sell machines with Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice pre-installed, but again, there's no financial incentive to do so, and in the case of office products, the incentive is to bundle MS Office from which the manufacturer can earn a small profit.
Manufacturers build computers to make money from ordinary consumers and businesses. I'm sure they're pretty savvy about how to package things to maximize their profits in these markets.
Because it subsidizes the cost of the computer. Computers without this stuff would probably retail for another $50-100 or so. The market for PCs is all driven by price nowadays. If the HP costs $75 less than a model with similar hardware from another manufacturer with less "crapware," people are going to buy the HP because it's cheaper.
And, just because you don't want to have Norton antivirus (or McAfee, etc.) installed doesn't mean that it's not a good idea for many other purchasers. Or, would you rather see another order of magnitude increase in the volume of spam?
Want to change the dominance of MS? Make it so every kid who graduates from high school is familiar with OSX, Vista, Linux, and any other OS.
The problem with Slashdot readers is that too many of them think that, if only some mysterious force (like the EU) could reduce Microsoft's dominance on the desktop, then some kind of OS-neutral nirvana would suddenly arise. That's just nonsense.
The only way people will become aware of the variety of operating systems available, and the costs and benefits associated with each of them, is by education. Like the parent, I also believe that teaching kids about the variety of options available to them is the only way desktop computing will change. I don't think we need to include "any other OS," though; Windows, OS X and a good Linux distro should suffice.
What's even more important than exposure to alternative operating systems, though, is exposure to alternative applications. Too many schools teach people how to use a specific piece of MS Office software in the "click here to do that" mode. If kids were taught about how to format a paragraph in terms of functions (go to a menu, find format, find paragraph, etc.), and then put in front of Word and Writer (or even AbiWord or KWord), it would go a long way toward changing the mindset that writing an essay means using Microsoft Word. I also think kids should be taught that there are many totally-free alternatives for computing applications because, let's face it, kids don't have money. I'd rather they learn how to use the GIMP, on Windows if they prefer, rather than pirating a copy of Photoshop.
Reducing the dominance of Microsoft on the desktop is a process that will probably take decades.
I'm curious why you can't just maintain a bunch of hard disk images rather than installing the OS, etc., from scratch each time. Isn't that how most OEMs sell systems? Does it have to do with licensing and activation in the case of Windows? I would have thought MS made it easy to roll out hundreds of identical computers with unique license keys? I'm pretty sure Dell doesn't install Windows from scratch on every machine they sell, and they offer custom configurations. (I'm not arguing against your current business practice, BTW, just asking out of lack of knowledge.)
That said, I think mandating OS-free systems would be a big mistake. Most ordinary buyers would choose Windows anyway. I'd much rather see regulations that prohibit Microsoft from requiring that systems ship with an OS, and a solid investigation into whether MS bullies/bribes OEMs into only shipping Windows. The right solution is to prohibit anti-competitive practices if they exist, not sell unknowing consumers computers that won't work when they take them home.
Not to mention the needless and infuriating comparison to political conservatives and liberals, which suggests conservatives are purists and liberals are shills.
What so wrong with continuing along the path of development that Linux has trod these past fifteen years or so? Looks like it's been pretty successful to me.
Oh, and so now one article by Walt Mossberg has stopped Ubuntu dead in its tracks? Right. Perhaps the kind of people who give credence to trash like this article might be deterred, but if so, who cares? Let them eat Vista.
Well we can't really ban them outright after all, that would be against the consitution
I don't think so. First, the courts have consistently ruled that commercial speech is not entitled to the same level of constitutional protection as other forms of speech, particularly political speech. Second, just because you might be entitled to speak doesn't impose any requirement on me to listen. I don't see any reason why an opt-in system would be unconstitutional; it would just require that you speak only to people who have indicated that they're willing to listen to you.
I might agree with you if the alternative to do-not-call were a flat ban on telemarketing, but that's a false dichotomy.
While this seems to be a fair perspective, it starts from the premise that telemarketing is fundamentally acceptable unless I say otherwise. Unfortunately our legislators are unwilling to step up to the plate and say the only acceptable model is "opt-in" rather than "opt-out." The default situation should be no one calls me to sell me anything unless I agree in advance to let them do so.
The CAN-SPAM act suffers from the same wrongheaded presumption. That's one (though hardly the only one) of the reasons why it's such a failure.
I taught at the Institute for about a decade, and kids wore stuff like this all the time. She could have easily put it on to wear to class then drove out to the airport to pick up her friend.
I'm not saying she shouldn't have been more cooperative, but perhaps having guns pointed at her for probably the first time in her life might have made her a bit tongue-tied.
From TFA: Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device and was arraigned today East Boston Municipal Court. She was held on $750 cash bail and ordered to return to court Oct. 29.
Just what exactly is a "hoax device," and how would I know if I were carrying one? And why is carrying one illegal?
If I wanted to blow up an airport terminal I'd put the bomb in an attache case like all those businesspeople are carrying, not wear it on the front of my body. Real bombers don't wear signs that say, "Look at me, I'm a bomber!"
I used to like living in the Boston area, but after this case, and the "management" of protestors to the 2004 Democratic Convention, and the Aqua Teen idiocy, I'm beginning to wonder. All of this is the result of the 9/11 planes having flown from Logan Airport.
Let me just add one other anecdote. Just before the 2004 election, parents at one of the elementary schools in my Boston-area suburb caused an enormous ruckus over whether the city was doing enough to protect their children in case someone was going to blow up their school on election day. (This was around the time of the Chechen school takeover.) I live in (the less wealthy part of) a rather upper-middle-class community where nearly everyone is at least college-educated if not more so. Yet here we had a bunch of parents forcing the school committee, the Board of Alderman, and the Mayor to spell out how they were going to protect elementary schools against supposed terrorist bombers. Out of the millions of potential targets in America that might can any intelligent person really think terrorists would single out an elementary school in some Boston suburb?
Regardless of his technical abilities, aren't journalists supposed to dig into a story before publishing it? Reading his "apology" tells me he wasn't a very good journalist. It almost sounds as if, after three years or so of covering this story, he didn't speak to anyone that didn't take him to lunch. You don't need to read source or program in C to know that, if the plaintiff says its copyrights were infringed but refuses to display publicly even one example of the supposedly purloined code, maybe the plaintiff's claims aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Not only does his work display bad technical journalism, it displays bad journalism, period. What would have happened if Woodward and Bernstein believed the government's story about the Watergate burglars?
Even if Forbes readers are "more willing to believe that corporate lawyers rarely go wrong compared to loners," how come those folks didn't suspect something might be amiss when the mighty IBM was so willing to pursue this case to the bitter end?
Regardless of how influential PJ and Groklaw might have been, it was still SCO vs. IBM, not SCO vs. PJ. Lyons supposed mea culpa rather ignores that Big Blue monster sitting over there in the corner. Instead it's all about him versus the nerds.
If Lyons thinks this piece will make us think he is a good journalist that happened to make a mistake, he needs to read it again. What I see him saying is that "Darl told me SCO would win, and it sounded good to me." Really, it doesn't take much thought to see how little journalistic savvy this represents. How Lyons could think anyone would take him seriously in the future is beyond me. If I were among the senior editors at Forbes, I'd be wondering how anyone could take Forbes seriously after this.
I'm also not quite getting the basis of the lawsuit.
I'm glad to see someone else ask this question. The AP story on Yahoo says only that the suit alleges collusion and antitrust violations. Frankly, I don't see what kind of collusion is involved in Disney saying you have to carry ToonDisney if you want to carry ESPN.
Antitrust cases are notoriously hard to prosecute, and most economists will tell you it's hard to determine whether oligopoly or monopoly power exists in most markets. (Notice we didn't prosecute the "big-3" auto makers when collectively they controlled well over 90% of the auto market in the 50's and 60's.) Also, the plaintiffs will need to show some real "harm" here. I don't think that's going to be easy to demonstrate either.
IANAL, but I don't give this suit much of a chance in the courts.
"To comprehend the dimension of our task, let's look at the numbers. We collect information from approximately 25,000 metered households starting at about 3 a.m. each day, process approximately 10 million viewing minutes a day, and make more than 4,000 gigabytes of data available for customer access the next day. In addition, we collect and process data from 1.6 million handwritten paper diaries from households across the country during sweep periods."
Now they're probably counting both the national universe sample and their individual market samples to reach that 25,000 figure, but even so we're talking thousands of homes in any of these sampling frames.
And, what evidence do you have for your claim that their method has "clear flaws that favor certain channels over others?" Do you really think the billions of dollars worth of decisions made throughout the television industry would be based for long on a system that displayed favoritism so blatant that you, an untrained Slashdot reader, could detect it?
There's a reason why Nielsen Media Research has been the gold standard for television decision-makers; it's because they're really good at what they do, and everyone in the media research departments throughout the industry knows that.
There are lots of substantive issues about audience measurement methods and technologies, but sample size is not one of them.
I thought about that issue, too. I can see the argument in this case, but I thought most enterprises just built a standard disk image and rolled it out across the workstations. There's also a well-known program (BootCamp, perhaps?) that restores the system to its initial state upon reboot. Putting the two of these together seems like a simpler solution for enforcing software consistency in an enterprise than maintaining a whitelist, or worse, letting Symantec maintain a whitelist for you.
I think they just resuscitated the Symphony name. The word processor looks a lot like OpenOffice Writer in terms of menu choices. Also it comes with a bundled JRE (why couldn't it have just found and used my Sun JRE?). I'm pretty sure Java didn't even exist when Symphony was first released by Lotus many years ago.
I did try installing that NFL Game Tracker in my Windows XP virtual machine with Kaspersky installed. Kaspersky didn't identify the trojan itself, but it quarantined it anyway because the program tried to update tcpip.sys. Leaving aside the stupidity that I, as an ordinary user, should be able to alter tcpip.sys at all, at least the virus scanner knows that I shouldn't be doing that. Using whitelists as a security solution wouldn't protect me in this case if I chose to add the trojan to my whitelist.
There's only a finite number of good programs, whereas bad ones spring up every 5 minutes.
And how many of those good programs are at Sourceforge? What happens when a program at version 2.5.11 goes to version 2.5.12? Will Symantec and company suddenly rush to create the hashes needed to keep up with open-source development?
Implmenting a policy like this can only benefit the large, established developers who'll be publishing software well-known to the whitelisters.
What about programs that run on, say, Java? Will every version of Azureus need to be whitelisted, or just the JVM software that talks directly to the operating system? What about programs that update themselves online? Will the new version still be whitelisted, or will the program stop working until McAfee updates its hash database?
I suppose you could let users add unknown programs to their whitelist, but given that we know many users will click OK in response to any dialog box, that seems to undermine the entire system. If someone's gone to a bogus website to download that "NFL Game Tracker" that was advertised in recent spams, do you think they'll then refuse to add it to their whitelist if given the chance? I think they'll click the OK button and install the Storm trojan.
As other posters have said, there are other, better ways to solve these problems than whitelisting.
I've read the original Gutmann piece when it appeared last December and read Bott's piece today.
My problem with Bott's response is that it lacks forensic power. Didn't anyone else find it strange that, after telling us how Gutmann's article was trash, Bott's first point concerned a specific Samsung product? (Conspiracy theorists can weigh in here if they like.) I was certainly expecting a higher level of argumentation where Bott tells us something more fundamental than whether a particular monitor can support particular types of signals. I'd agree with Bott that Gutmann's writing style is also rather scatter-shot and relies too often on anecdotal evidence, but his reply suffers from these same problems.
At times reading Bott's piece suggested that he took the approach of scattering some fifteen little points across a bunch of pages solely because Ziff-Davis's editors require that style to maximize advertising exposure. After reading parts one and two I thought there was probably some validity to Bott's arguments, but they lacked the overarching perspective that would make them more convincing.
Personally, I don't really care about much of this. DRM was imposed on Microsoft by the content providers; that's the world we live in today. Right now I have an NTSC TV and a regular DVD player. When the time comes that we decide to watch HD content, I'm not going to be streaming them from a computer; I'll probably have purchased a PS3, a multi-format player, or an HD PVR. As for my computers, they'll be running Linux until something else comes along that is superior and equally free.
I doubt most people will encounter these issues because, like me, they won't be watching HD content streamed from a computer. People want appliances for things like this; configuring a computer to handle this stuff is far outside the ken and interest of most people who don't spend their time reading Slashdot.
I thought Zimbra had a lot to offer, but I didn't like how the component software was frozen in place. You ended up with their copies of Postfix, Cyrus, etc., which stood outside the package management system that handles the rest of the machine. I'd have preferred that they built their customizations on top of stock versions of the components that you could update with yum or apt along with everything else in the machine.
Perhaps this situation has changed? I haven't looked into it recently.
Also the earlier versions were just plain slow on even a two or three year old server with any reasonable load. Too much Java was my sense.
Many businesspeople don't schedule their own meetings, handle their messages, etc. A messaging system that doesn't include support for agents is a non-starter in many businesses.
According to mp3licensing.com, the rates are assessed per copy of the codec and decoder. It looks like it would cost about $3-4 per copy. The OS doesn't factor into it.
dvdcca.org is not so forthcoming about the cost of their licenses, though the FAQ on that page specifically discusses Linux: "The DVD Copy Control Association would welcomes [sic] applications for the legal use of CSS from all manufacturers. In fact, Sigma Designs (www.sigmadesigns.com) is now marketing a DVD player for Linux under its license to manufacture products using CSS." I glanced quickly at the sigmadesigns page, but all I saw was hardware.
The fees for Windows Media aren't very high, especially in comparison to MP3. They look to run about $0.25 per copy.
Even if we're talking about another $25 per computer for licensing fees, I'd be happy to pay that to have legal software. Unlike some other people here, I wouldn't be buying an OEM Linux computer to avoid the so-called "Microsoft tax." Once you factor in the fact that the OEM won't be collecting additional fees for including trialware, and you add in some money for licensing, my guess is you'll end up with a price not that different from a machine that comes with Window. My interest is in having OEMs provide machines with pre-installed Linux that works flawlessly when they arrive and for which support is available on the same terms as Windows machines. Despite my initial hopes that Dell would be providing that experience with its Ubuntu machines, that doesn't appear to be the reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I asked this question the first time this case came up and got no replies. I'll ask it again.
Under what theory does the DMCA apply to eBay sellers? Unlike YouTube, eBay hosts no copyrighted materials. (For simplicity's sake, let's leave aside trivial objections like when a seller's advertisement includes a photograph of a copyrighted work.) Is the claim based on some extension of the Grokster decision, arguing that eBay somehow constitutes a "contributory infringer" if it hosts an auction for copyrighted materials? That seems to run squarely up against the first-sale doctrine. If I buy a book, there's no reason why I can't resell it on eBay.
I realize that the Autodesk case is more complicated since it brings into play issues of licensing vs. ownership, the enforceability of EULAs and the like. The only way I could see eBay being charged with contributory infringement is if they knowingly encourage the sale of illicit copies of copyrighted works. Even then, I think it's a hard case to make. In Grokster, the Court's argument rested largely on the fact that Grokster explicitly encouraged infringement by distributing its software application and hosting advertising on its website. How does that apply to eBay?
OK, let Microsoft challenge the GPL in court then. They haven't dared to try it, even though all indications are that they really, really hate it.
I'm not convinced that Microsoft "hates" the GPL. It would certainly hate for the GPL to be applied to some component of a Microsoft product, but overall continued uncertainty about the legal status of the GPL benefits Microsoft.
Most of Microsoft's anti-GPL rhetoric is really aimed at enterprise customers considering migrating servers from Windows to Linux. The whole campaign is much more of a "FUD" operation than real opposition to the GPL or the principles it embodies. Microsoft benefits when corporate decision-makers choose not to implement GPL-licensed solutions for fear that somewhere down the road a program like the Linux kernel will be adjudged to infringe somneone's patent or copyright. Then, suddenly, all those supposedly "free" servers are subject to royalty payments of some form or another or, worse, have to be entirely rebuilt with compliant software. The uncertainty engendered by SCO's rather ridiculous claims of infringement against IBM and Linux is a good example of this process at work.
People don't advance to positions of power in corporate establishments by being risk-acceptant. So long as a GPL sword hangs over the heads of CIOs, they often going to choose the reliable, commercial solution (read "Windows") rather than worry about who owns the rights to every little piece of GPL-licensed software. (Yes, of course, Windows itself probably infringes some patents somewhere, but that's a much smaller risk than Linux presents. Even if Microsoft is found to be an infringer, as in the Eolas case, it has the resources to protect its end-users from any potential risks or losses.)
Seriously: I doubt that HP gets $75 per machine, maybe $10 -- but this is not enough to install that crap.
No one knows what HP gets paid for trialware, but when the subject came up over the summer in discussions about the pricing of Ubuntu laptops from Dell, estimates were around $50 and increasing.
No; it's actually a *very bad idea*. It would be a good idea, if they would install a *free* anti-virus. But an anti-virus that stops working after 60 days is a very, very bad idea. And it is a burden to deinstall it and to install a free anti-virus (running two antivirus programs at the same time spells trouble).
If you mean a "free as in beer" anti-virus with no subscription revenues, then the anti-virus manufacturer wouldn't have any incentive to offer a free trial version and pay the manufacturer to bundle it. The whole business model is to subsidize the manufacturer to include the trial version in hopes of getting continuing subscription revenues for years to come.
You don't like this stuff; many ordinary people do. If you don't want stuff like this pre-installed, buy business-oriented hardware since it usually doesn't include any trialware and costs more as a result. (Direct comparisons are tough because the hardware itself is often different between the consumer and business lines.)
I'd like to see someone like Dell sell machines with Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice pre-installed, but again, there's no financial incentive to do so, and in the case of office products, the incentive is to bundle MS Office from which the manufacturer can earn a small profit.
Manufacturers build computers to make money from ordinary consumers and businesses. I'm sure they're pretty savvy about how to package things to maximize their profits in these markets.
Why the hell is all that crapware on the HP?
Because it subsidizes the cost of the computer. Computers without this stuff would probably retail for another $50-100 or so. The market for PCs is all driven by price nowadays. If the HP costs $75 less than a model with similar hardware from another manufacturer with less "crapware," people are going to buy the HP because it's cheaper.
And, just because you don't want to have Norton antivirus (or McAfee, etc.) installed doesn't mean that it's not a good idea for many other purchasers. Or, would you rather see another order of magnitude increase in the volume of spam?
Want to change the dominance of MS? Make it so every kid who graduates from high school is familiar with OSX, Vista, Linux, and any other OS.
The problem with Slashdot readers is that too many of them think that, if only some mysterious force (like the EU) could reduce Microsoft's dominance on the desktop, then some kind of OS-neutral nirvana would suddenly arise. That's just nonsense.
The only way people will become aware of the variety of operating systems available, and the costs and benefits associated with each of them, is by education. Like the parent, I also believe that teaching kids about the variety of options available to them is the only way desktop computing will change. I don't think we need to include "any other OS," though; Windows, OS X and a good Linux distro should suffice.
What's even more important than exposure to alternative operating systems, though, is exposure to alternative applications. Too many schools teach people how to use a specific piece of MS Office software in the "click here to do that" mode. If kids were taught about how to format a paragraph in terms of functions (go to a menu, find format, find paragraph, etc.), and then put in front of Word and Writer (or even AbiWord or KWord), it would go a long way toward changing the mindset that writing an essay means using Microsoft Word. I also think kids should be taught that there are many totally-free alternatives for computing applications because, let's face it, kids don't have money. I'd rather they learn how to use the GIMP, on Windows if they prefer, rather than pirating a copy of Photoshop.
Reducing the dominance of Microsoft on the desktop is a process that will probably take decades.
I'm curious why you can't just maintain a bunch of hard disk images rather than installing the OS, etc., from scratch each time. Isn't that how most OEMs sell systems? Does it have to do with licensing and activation in the case of Windows? I would have thought MS made it easy to roll out hundreds of identical computers with unique license keys? I'm pretty sure Dell doesn't install Windows from scratch on every machine they sell, and they offer custom configurations. (I'm not arguing against your current business practice, BTW, just asking out of lack of knowledge.)
That said, I think mandating OS-free systems would be a big mistake. Most ordinary buyers would choose Windows anyway. I'd much rather see regulations that prohibit Microsoft from requiring that systems ship with an OS, and a solid investigation into whether MS bullies/bribes OEMs into only shipping Windows. The right solution is to prohibit anti-competitive practices if they exist, not sell unknowing consumers computers that won't work when they take them home.
Not to mention the needless and infuriating comparison to political conservatives and liberals, which suggests conservatives are purists and liberals are shills.
What so wrong with continuing along the path of development that Linux has trod these past fifteen years or so? Looks like it's been pretty successful to me.
Oh, and so now one article by Walt Mossberg has stopped Ubuntu dead in its tracks? Right. Perhaps the kind of people who give credence to trash like this article might be deterred, but if so, who cares? Let them eat Vista.
Well we can't really ban them outright after all, that would be against the consitution
I don't think so. First, the courts have consistently ruled that commercial speech is not entitled to the same level of constitutional protection as other forms of speech, particularly political speech. Second, just because you might be entitled to speak doesn't impose any requirement on me to listen. I don't see any reason why an opt-in system would be unconstitutional; it would just require that you speak only to people who have indicated that they're willing to listen to you.
I might agree with you if the alternative to do-not-call were a flat ban on telemarketing, but that's a false dichotomy.
While this seems to be a fair perspective, it starts from the premise that telemarketing is fundamentally acceptable unless I say otherwise. Unfortunately our legislators are unwilling to step up to the plate and say the only acceptable model is "opt-in" rather than "opt-out." The default situation should be no one calls me to sell me anything unless I agree in advance to let them do so.
The CAN-SPAM act suffers from the same wrongheaded presumption. That's one (though hardly the only one) of the reasons why it's such a failure.
I taught at the Institute for about a decade, and kids wore stuff like this all the time. She could have easily put it on to wear to class then drove out to the airport to pick up her friend.
I'm not saying she shouldn't have been more cooperative, but perhaps having guns pointed at her for probably the first time in her life might have made her a bit tongue-tied.
From TFA:
Simpson was charged with possessing a hoax device and was arraigned today East Boston Municipal Court. She was held on $750 cash bail and ordered to return to court Oct. 29.
Just what exactly is a "hoax device," and how would I know if I were carrying one? And why is carrying one illegal?
If I wanted to blow up an airport terminal I'd put the bomb in an attache case like all those businesspeople are carrying, not wear it on the front of my body. Real bombers don't wear signs that say, "Look at me, I'm a bomber!"
I used to like living in the Boston area, but after this case, and the "management" of protestors to the 2004 Democratic Convention, and the Aqua Teen idiocy, I'm beginning to wonder. All of this is the result of the 9/11 planes having flown from Logan Airport.
Let me just add one other anecdote. Just before the 2004 election, parents at one of the elementary schools in my Boston-area suburb caused an enormous ruckus over whether the city was doing enough to protect their children in case someone was going to blow up their school on election day. (This was around the time of the Chechen school takeover.) I live in (the less wealthy part of) a rather upper-middle-class community where nearly everyone is at least college-educated if not more so. Yet here we had a bunch of parents forcing the school committee, the Board of Alderman, and the Mayor to spell out how they were going to protect elementary schools against supposed terrorist bombers. Out of the millions of potential targets in America that might can any intelligent person really think terrorists would single out an elementary school in some Boston suburb?
Regardless of his technical abilities, aren't journalists supposed to dig into a story before publishing it? Reading his "apology" tells me he wasn't a very good journalist. It almost sounds as if, after three years or so of covering this story, he didn't speak to anyone that didn't take him to lunch. You don't need to read source or program in C to know that, if the plaintiff says its copyrights were infringed but refuses to display publicly even one example of the supposedly purloined code, maybe the plaintiff's claims aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Not only does his work display bad technical journalism, it displays bad journalism, period. What would have happened if Woodward and Bernstein believed the government's story about the Watergate burglars?
Isn't journalism at lot about footwork?
Even if Forbes readers are "more willing to believe that corporate lawyers rarely go wrong compared to loners," how come those folks didn't suspect something might be amiss when the mighty IBM was so willing to pursue this case to the bitter end?
Regardless of how influential PJ and Groklaw might have been, it was still SCO vs. IBM, not SCO vs. PJ. Lyons supposed mea culpa rather ignores that Big Blue monster sitting over there in the corner. Instead it's all about him versus the nerds.
If Lyons thinks this piece will make us think he is a good journalist that happened to make a mistake, he needs to read it again. What I see him saying is that "Darl told me SCO would win, and it sounded good to me." Really, it doesn't take much thought to see how little journalistic savvy this represents. How Lyons could think anyone would take him seriously in the future is beyond me. If I were among the senior editors at Forbes, I'd be wondering how anyone could take Forbes seriously after this.
I'm also not quite getting the basis of the lawsuit.
I'm glad to see someone else ask this question. The AP story on Yahoo says only that the suit alleges collusion and antitrust violations. Frankly, I don't see what kind of collusion is involved in Disney saying you have to carry ToonDisney if you want to carry ESPN.
Antitrust cases are notoriously hard to prosecute, and most economists will tell you it's hard to determine whether oligopoly or monopoly power exists in most markets. (Notice we didn't prosecute the "big-3" auto makers when collectively they controlled well over 90% of the auto market in the 50's and 60's.) Also, the plaintiffs will need to show some real "harm" here. I don't think that's going to be easy to demonstrate either.
IANAL, but I don't give this suit much of a chance in the courts.
Have you ever taken a statistics class? Nielsen's sample is hardly "ridiculously small" by any definition of sampling methodologies. From: http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.55dc65b4a7d5adff3f65936147a062a0/?vgnextoid=4f5247f8b5264010VgnVCM100000880a260aRCRD
"To comprehend the dimension of our task, let's look at the numbers. We collect information from approximately 25,000 metered households starting at about 3 a.m. each day, process approximately 10 million viewing minutes a day, and make more than 4,000 gigabytes of data available for customer access the next day. In addition, we collect and process data from 1.6 million handwritten paper diaries from households across the country during sweep periods."
Now they're probably counting both the national universe sample and their individual market samples to reach that 25,000 figure, but even so we're talking thousands of homes in any of these sampling frames.
And, what evidence do you have for your claim that their method has "clear flaws that favor certain channels over others?" Do you really think the billions of dollars worth of decisions made throughout the television industry would be based for long on a system that displayed favoritism so blatant that you, an untrained Slashdot reader, could detect it?
There's a reason why Nielsen Media Research has been the gold standard for television decision-makers; it's because they're really good at what they do, and everyone in the media research departments throughout the industry knows that.
There are lots of substantive issues about audience measurement methods and technologies, but sample size is not one of them.
I thought about that issue, too. I can see the argument in this case, but I thought most enterprises just built a standard disk image and rolled it out across the workstations. There's also a well-known program (BootCamp, perhaps?) that restores the system to its initial state upon reboot. Putting the two of these together seems like a simpler solution for enforcing software consistency in an enterprise than maintaining a whitelist, or worse, letting Symantec maintain a whitelist for you.
I think they just resuscitated the Symphony name. The word processor looks a lot like OpenOffice Writer in terms of menu choices. Also it comes with a bundled JRE (why couldn't it have just found and used my Sun JRE?). I'm pretty sure Java didn't even exist when Symphony was first released by Lotus many years ago.
Maybe you missed this announcement from IBM this week about its new, free Lotus Symphony product:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/18/1155252
The beta is available for download here: https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/swerplotus/LotusSymphonyPick.html
You'll need to register to get a copy, however.
Just one other comment.
I did try installing that NFL Game Tracker in my Windows XP virtual machine with Kaspersky installed. Kaspersky didn't identify the trojan itself, but it quarantined it anyway because the program tried to update tcpip.sys. Leaving aside the stupidity that I, as an ordinary user, should be able to alter tcpip.sys at all, at least the virus scanner knows that I shouldn't be doing that. Using whitelists as a security solution wouldn't protect me in this case if I chose to add the trojan to my whitelist.
There's only a finite number of good programs, whereas bad ones spring up every 5 minutes.
And how many of those good programs are at Sourceforge? What happens when a program at version 2.5.11 goes to version 2.5.12? Will Symantec and company suddenly rush to create the hashes needed to keep up with open-source development?
Implmenting a policy like this can only benefit the large, established developers who'll be publishing software well-known to the whitelisters.
What about programs that run on, say, Java? Will every version of Azureus need to be whitelisted, or just the JVM software that talks directly to the operating system? What about programs that update themselves online? Will the new version still be whitelisted, or will the program stop working until McAfee updates its hash database?
I suppose you could let users add unknown programs to their whitelist, but given that we know many users will click OK in response to any dialog box, that seems to undermine the entire system. If someone's gone to a bogus website to download that "NFL Game Tracker" that was advertised in recent spams, do you think they'll then refuse to add it to their whitelist if given the chance? I think they'll click the OK button and install the Storm trojan.
As other posters have said, there are other, better ways to solve these problems than whitelisting.
I've read the original Gutmann piece when it appeared last December and read Bott's piece today.
My problem with Bott's response is that it lacks forensic power. Didn't anyone else find it strange that, after telling us how Gutmann's article was trash, Bott's first point concerned a specific Samsung product? (Conspiracy theorists can weigh in here if they like.) I was certainly expecting a higher level of argumentation where Bott tells us something more fundamental than whether a particular monitor can support particular types of signals. I'd agree with Bott that Gutmann's writing style is also rather scatter-shot and relies too often on anecdotal evidence, but his reply suffers from these same problems.
At times reading Bott's piece suggested that he took the approach of scattering some fifteen little points across a bunch of pages solely because Ziff-Davis's editors require that style to maximize advertising exposure. After reading parts one and two I thought there was probably some validity to Bott's arguments, but they lacked the overarching perspective that would make them more convincing.
Personally, I don't really care about much of this. DRM was imposed on Microsoft by the content providers; that's the world we live in today. Right now I have an NTSC TV and a regular DVD player. When the time comes that we decide to watch HD content, I'm not going to be streaming them from a computer; I'll probably have purchased a PS3, a multi-format player, or an HD PVR. As for my computers, they'll be running Linux until something else comes along that is superior and equally free.
I doubt most people will encounter these issues because, like me, they won't be watching HD content streamed from a computer. People want appliances for things like this; configuring a computer to handle this stuff is far outside the ken and interest of most people who don't spend their time reading Slashdot.
I thought Zimbra had a lot to offer, but I didn't like how the component software was frozen in place. You ended up with their copies of Postfix, Cyrus, etc., which stood outside the package management system that handles the rest of the machine. I'd have preferred that they built their customizations on top of stock versions of the components that you could update with yum or apt along with everything else in the machine.
Perhaps this situation has changed? I haven't looked into it recently.
Also the earlier versions were just plain slow on even a two or three year old server with any reasonable load. Too much Java was my sense.
Principal/agent support
Many businesspeople don't schedule their own meetings, handle their messages, etc. A messaging system that doesn't include support for agents is a non-starter in many businesses.
"Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to bundle Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice on those Windows machines you sell either, Mr. Dell."
Try reading the post first. There's no box to check on a Windows PC from Dell to download these items unless you know something I don't.
According to mp3licensing.com, the rates are assessed per copy of the codec and decoder. It looks like it would cost about $3-4 per copy. The OS doesn't factor into it.
dvdcca.org is not so forthcoming about the cost of their licenses, though the FAQ on that page specifically discusses Linux: "The DVD Copy Control Association would welcomes [sic] applications for the legal use of CSS from all manufacturers. In fact, Sigma Designs (www.sigmadesigns.com) is now marketing a DVD player for Linux under its license to manufacture products using CSS." I glanced quickly at the sigmadesigns page, but all I saw was hardware.
The fees for Windows Media aren't very high, especially in comparison to MP3. They look to run about $0.25 per copy.
Even if we're talking about another $25 per computer for licensing fees, I'd be happy to pay that to have legal software. Unlike some other people here, I wouldn't be buying an OEM Linux computer to avoid the so-called "Microsoft tax." Once you factor in the fact that the OEM won't be collecting additional fees for including trialware, and you add in some money for licensing, my guess is you'll end up with a price not that different from a machine that comes with Window. My interest is in having OEMs provide machines with pre-installed Linux that works flawlessly when they arrive and for which support is available on the same terms as Windows machines. Despite my initial hopes that Dell would be providing that experience with its Ubuntu machines, that doesn't appear to be the reality.