And yes, I know there are questions about the legality of the service. But so far it's stood up the legal challenges presented, and it's got to be "more" legal than filesharing, right?
Not necessarily. According to an IP trace, that site is based in Russia. They're selling songs for a fraction of the going rate here, and if they don't have an agreement with the labels, they probably aren't paying the labels anything for it. (I don't know that for a fact.)
*IF* these guys have stolen the music and are selling it illegally, then paying them is ethically worse than not paying at all - not only are the copyright owners screwed, but you feel justified in screwing them and are supporting their (unfair) competition.
Yeah, you can gripe about the price of music, but supply and demand says that if it's too expensive, you shouldn't buy it. Buy indie stuff for cheap, or listen to the radio, but don't think that as long as you pay someone for your Gorillaz mp3, it's ok.
And yes, as you can see by my sig, I do have a bias.:)
We seem to have very high standards for say auto manufactors whenever there exists a problem. Why shouldn't a company who is pushing a electric consumer product be under the same scrutinty.
Well, we don't hold them to the same scrutiny because when autos fail, they kill people. When entertainment devices fail, you're just frustrated.
If legal action is what it takes to get them to make good on the promises of their system, so be it. But in general, I think that the damages awarded for a lawsuit shouldn't be vindictive. In other words, if I'm suing about a bad Xbox, and it took me basically three work weeks to bring my case, they should pay me three weeks worth of my normal salary, replace my system, issue an apology and a recall, and go on with life. Nobody should become a millionaire.
Someone might say, "yeah, but if you don't make them pay big time, they won't reform." But in a sane world, a company that makes a truly bad product would pay big time in the form of lost sales - and that would make them reform faster than anything. There is no law that says you have to buy something, regardless of the hype.
One thing I really agree with in this article is the idea that newspapers should focus on local news. Obviously this won't do for all of them, but a small paper should just do what it does best.
For a year and a half, I was a reporter for a small Georgia paper that covered only local news, unless "outside" news had a local connection. Our paper reached nearly every household in the county. There were only three or four reporters, so there was no way in heck we could cover, say, the war in Iraq, but nobody could tell you what was going on in the community like we could.
I do think that a Slashdot-style feedback mechanism on a paper's web site would be useful, but Slashdot also benefits from many many moderators, who work for free. It takes a lot of time for a small staff just to keep up with letters to the editor - imagine if we had to moderate stuff as well. Yes, the public could do it, but until you reach a critical mass of participation, a few people can always dominate the discussion. We at least tried to be objective - readers frequently wrote things in submitted letters that would get us all sued if we printed them.
Even with lots of people, the most web-savvy will have the loudest voice. Not a problem on Slashdot, because all the readers are (theoretically) geeks. But in a small town, that might mean, for example, that those 40 and under control the discussion.
It's still a good idea, but thinking about it would cause me a lot of headaches if I were an editor.
I know this is irrelevant, but hearing the name "Fremont" makes me think happily of how Dave Barry rallied his readers to submit poems to poetry.com under the first name "Freemont," all on the theme of the dog eating mother's toes.
My friends and I were not typical teenagers. Once, having taken a break from making a home movie to consume large capppuccinos, we decided to cruise through downtown with some German polka-sounding folk music cranked up and the windows down. We got some weird looks from the slacker kids and laughed about it for weeks.
Does anybody else think this sounds exactly like a Far Side concept?
(Man in labcoat stands on front porch next to a goofy-looking contraption as a couple of slackers with cigarettes run away covering their ears) Responding to the outcry of the neighborhood, Dr. Norman Finkhouser worked by night for months to perfect his invention: the Teen-B-Gone 5000.
I doubt that anyone else is reading this anymore, but I know you'll see that I replied to you.
Based on your reply, I now suspect that "other people" most likely refers to the embryos in which stem cells originate. I apologize for responding to the wrong argument, but invite you to consider that many people who oppose embryonic stem cell research have greater qualms than the destruction of embryos.
Yes, that's who I was referring to; sorry if that was unclear. I'm glad we have come to a better understanding.:)
If there are other objections to stem cell research, I just haven't heard them. It's hard for me to see how anyone could be opposed to using, say, your own skin cells to treat your disease, unless they are opposed to all medicine. And if you take out the pro-life objection (which I personally can't), how are stem cells any different?
Of course, I won't expect you to answer that question for our hypothetical obstructionists.
New techniques will not end the controversies of medical science precisely because the sheer diversity of beliefs guarantees that there will always be opposition to medical science in general, and if not to these techniques in particular then to others.
You may be right, but I wonder this: how much opposition is there to adult stem cell research? It's basically the same thing without the embryo-destruction question, right? Again, people who are opposed to blood transfusions and aspirin are going to object, but it won't be a double-digit percentage of the population.
You asked how a small minority could be allowed to hold back progress; I think it's also worthwhile to ask whether a sizable group of people's objections should be ignored. Does our society have a collective conscience? Isn't it at least worth looking for more palatable alternatives? Or will the people with money and laboratories just say "the end justifies the means" and go ahead?
I applaud all efforts of medical compassion; I just think they should extend to the unborn.
Again, sorry to drag this out - feel free to have the last word if you like.:)
"It didn't work; I still think it's a crock. Well, here's your $500; I'm off to wax your car. See you tomorrow?"
Seriously though, my Psychology 1101 professor did research into hypnosis for pain control. She did an in-class demonstration showing (apparently) that a guy she'd been working with could endure having his hand in ice water for a longer time after hypnosis than before. She said the goal was to help people for whom pain medication isn't enough - like burn victims whose skin must be scraped over and over.
That's a really good point. If blogs have one great merit, it's that you don't need money to have one, so it's equal-opportunity. The amount of money spent on campaigns today really does shut out the little guy from most other routes of communication.
This seems to be saying that any two newspapers expending the resources necessary to adequately research a given issue or event will produce the same story; that is, except for the Op/Ed pages, I should expect the same content from the Washington Times as from the New York Times.
Not really. Obviously there are many ways to examine any story, and there are millions of things you could write about on any given day. What is important and interesting enough to cover is a subjective judgement that depends on the paper's staff. But ideally two papers wouldn't give contradictory facts - at least one of them, if not both, has to be wrong.
I think the people trying to "censor" blogs do have a legitimate point: you can bet that everyone who is campaigning for something will set up blogs, pretending to be independant, that sing their praises. That's harder to do with "real" publications because they cost money to set up and run, and their ownership is public record.
I guess this is just part of the price of free speech. I do wonder if there's a good interface for "moderating" blogs, so that, for example, if one is sponsored by Candidate X in a sneaky way, and someone finds out, it can appear beside the name of the blog.
I'd also like to point out a fundamental difference between bloggers and journalists. I have worked at a newspaper, and spent all day calling people, attending government meetings, doing research and asking more questions before I wrote something. Bloggers tend to link to the work of real reporters, then offer comments, or worse, just repeat rumors as fact. At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others.
Because a newspaper has advertisers and subscribers, it has to protect its reputation as being truthful. A blogger has nothing at stake. A newspaper also expects to get sued and tries to have a "truth defense" ready - to cover their butts by being accurate. They might not always succeed, but they have reason to try. I don't know whether any bloggers have been sued for libel yet, but I bet some will be. If you're going to "publish" something, you really do need to check your facts, and that usually takes more time than a hobbyist has.
Or have you not educated yourself on this matter before reaching your hasty conclusion?
Yes, I used the wrong term. My mistake.
Some believe that sickness is caused by evil spirits, and so doctors should be replaced with exorcists. Do you propose we make exceptions for every religious objection, just to make sure that these people aren't "trampled on" in some real or imaginary way?
I'm not trying to start a debate about abortion here - those are usually flamewars, and we're pretty far offtopic now. But I think it's unjust to compare misgivings about terminating what *may* be a human life with a total ignorance of the existence of germs.
We all agree (I think) that, for example, a one-year-old can't be arbitrarily killed. And I think we all agree that a sperm or an egg needs no moral consideration. We do not all agree where the line is crossed. I think reasonable people can disagree about this without comparing each other to savages who prefer exorcism to immunization.
I also think that any intelligent debate on abortion, stem cell research, etc etc should start with this question: When do we qualify as human, and why?
The stem cell worriers aren't really worried about stem cells or their source, they're worried about how close we're getting to a comfortable understanding of cellular mechanics. That takes the mystery out of a lot things, and devalues mystical explanations (and those social institutions that rely upon them for clout).
I can't speak for everyone, but I have a problem with using fetuses for stem cell research, and none whatsoever with this. Medical science can do wonderful things for people (I look forward to when they sythesize blood and eliminate shortages); I just don't want other people to be trampled on in the process.
As for taking the mystery out of things, I think it's just the opposite. The more you understand the universe, the more wonderful it seems. I don't see how knowing the mechanics of cells creates an argument for atheism, as you seem to imply.
This kind of stuff makes me a little uneasy. On a practical level, the more complicated something is, the more ways it can mess up. Think about how often you have to fix your computer versus your refrigerator.
It also makes me think about how we can use products and gadgets to define ourselves. Your room will "match your lifestyle," it says. How much thought do we really need to perfecting our environments and making everything around us customized for our tastes? Everything from the color of your iPod to the way you drink your coffee is supposed to express your personality, and the world is supposed to be exactly the way you like it.
I mean, this is neat in theory, but you're going to pay a lot for the service, I'm sure. (I don't know which rooms have it, but the first reservations their site showed me were between $600 and $700 a night.) The question is, are you paying for the convenience, or how important it makes you feel?
I have no concept of electrical quantities. What I see here is "tiny windmills make electricity."
So, for someone with more of a clue: does this sound like something that could be scaled up? Like, could you put them all over your roof and generate green power, or would there not be enough juice?
That's a really interesting idea - bypass the senses and go directly to the meaning portions of the brain. I wonder if you'd be able to tell your own conclusions from what was being fed to you?
This kind of stuff both excites and scares me. Whenever I hear about electronics/brain interaction (like the story about monkeys moving robotic arms using their brains), I think of the cyborg possibilities. The most interesting one to me is the ability to supplement your own faulty memory with a hard drive and your own thinking power with a processor. You'd take a little snapshot of every person you met and file it away with their name, never to be forgotten. If you needed to calculate something, you'd just run it through your stored equations.
Think about what school would do for you! If I could remember all the science, history and literature I've been taught and forgotten, I'd be a much more educated guy than I am now.
And of course you could add senses that humans don't have - more visual spectra, a magnetic sense or "location" sense based on GPS, etc.
What makes all this less exciting - besides welcoming our new cyborg overlords - is remembering how unreliable technology is. After seeing my roommate organize his life with PalmPilots, which invariably broke, I decided to stick with writing things down in a little notepad. It never crashes. Given the headaches we've all experienced with computer problems, imagine how you'd feel if a whole section of your brain quit working.
That's a really interesting idea. By seeming to compete for the buy, they could also drive up the price. Like bidding at an auction, then withdrawing near the end.
I'm not surprised. To me, that says that AOL thinks that buying AOL is going to hurt your stock. If it were a good move, they'd want a piece of the buying company's stock, which would rise after having made such a great acquisition.
Of course, that's not my professional opinion - I Am Not A Stock Broker.
Another thing - whatever your software does, the law has to consider what precedent this kind of thing sets. What might other companies try if you succeed? The more I think about this, the more it upsets me.
Can a housecleaning service write a contract clause that says you agree not to check whether your maid is stealing from you? Can a building contractor put in a clause that says you agree not to have your electrical wiring inspected? Or, weirder but more parallel, not to look behind the walls for the hidden cameras they installed? Can a chainsaw maker write a clause that, by opening the saw's packaging, you agree that if it malfunctions and maims you, you won't sue?
It's amazing the ridiculous things that software companies think they can get away with. We would never put up with this in the real world. But EULAs are so common now, and so frequently ridiculous, that we just accept them as the price of using a computer.
Retrocoder Limited as the copyright holder, has the right to say who may or may not have its program. If someone has its program without permission, are they not guilty of a criminal offence?
The problem is that you are specifically denying access to people who will keep you accountable. This monitoring software can clearly be used for malicious purposes. Imagine if your computer repair guy installed it on your computer, then started keeping track of what you do. Under this clause, you'd never have a tool to know that it was there.
I write songs. As a copyright holder, I do have the right to say, "nobody can record my songs and make money off them without permission." I do NOT have the right to say, "parents are not allowed to listen to my songs to see whether they are appropriate for their children to hear. By buying this album, you agree that you are a teenager and won't allow your parents to hear it, or I'll sue you."
If people want to monitor what their employees, spouses, or children are doing on the computer, fine. But I think the person being monitored should know about it. And in some cases, it might be dangerous if they don't. Do you want to be responsible for enabling stalkers? What kind of world are you helping to create?
I'm not sure how Sony arrived at the decision to take over people's computers, but I can't see the morality of it. "People are stealing from us, so let's damage their property."
In meatspace, this would be called "vigilante justice," but I'm not sure that large corporations qualify for that label.
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, baking researchers have found a new way to create bread segments that requires fewer steps than traditional slicing.
Thank the gods for cdbaby.com :)
:)
Now THAT we can agree on.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/nathanlong
And yes, I know there are questions about the legality of the service. But so far it's stood up the legal challenges presented, and it's got to be "more" legal than filesharing, right?
:)
Not necessarily. According to an IP trace, that site is based in Russia. They're selling songs for a fraction of the going rate here, and if they don't have an agreement with the labels, they probably aren't paying the labels anything for it. (I don't know that for a fact.)
*IF* these guys have stolen the music and are selling it illegally, then paying them is ethically worse than not paying at all - not only are the copyright owners screwed, but you feel justified in screwing them and are supporting their (unfair) competition.
Yeah, you can gripe about the price of music, but supply and demand says that if it's too expensive, you shouldn't buy it. Buy indie stuff for cheap, or listen to the radio, but don't think that as long as you pay someone for your Gorillaz mp3, it's ok.
And yes, as you can see by my sig, I do have a bias.
We seem to have very high standards for say auto manufactors whenever there exists a problem. Why shouldn't a company who is pushing a electric consumer product be under the same scrutinty.
Well, we don't hold them to the same scrutiny because when autos fail, they kill people. When entertainment devices fail, you're just frustrated.
If legal action is what it takes to get them to make good on the promises of their system, so be it. But in general, I think that the damages awarded for a lawsuit shouldn't be vindictive. In other words, if I'm suing about a bad Xbox, and it took me basically three work weeks to bring my case, they should pay me three weeks worth of my normal salary, replace my system, issue an apology and a recall, and go on with life. Nobody should become a millionaire.
Someone might say, "yeah, but if you don't make them pay big time, they won't reform." But in a sane world, a company that makes a truly bad product would pay big time in the form of lost sales - and that would make them reform faster than anything. There is no law that says you have to buy something, regardless of the hype.
One thing I really agree with in this article is the idea that newspapers should focus on local news. Obviously this won't do for all of them, but a small paper should just do what it does best.
For a year and a half, I was a reporter for a small Georgia paper that covered only local news, unless "outside" news had a local connection. Our paper reached nearly every household in the county. There were only three or four reporters, so there was no way in heck we could cover, say, the war in Iraq, but nobody could tell you what was going on in the community like we could.
I do think that a Slashdot-style feedback mechanism on a paper's web site would be useful, but Slashdot also benefits from many many moderators, who work for free. It takes a lot of time for a small staff just to keep up with letters to the editor - imagine if we had to moderate stuff as well. Yes, the public could do it, but until you reach a critical mass of participation, a few people can always dominate the discussion. We at least tried to be objective - readers frequently wrote things in submitted letters that would get us all sued if we printed them.
Even with lots of people, the most web-savvy will have the loudest voice. Not a problem on Slashdot, because all the readers are (theoretically) geeks. But in a small town, that might mean, for example, that those 40 and under control the discussion.
It's still a good idea, but thinking about it would cause me a lot of headaches if I were an editor.
I know this is irrelevant, but hearing the name "Fremont" makes me think happily of how Dave Barry rallied his readers to submit poems to poetry.com under the first name "Freemont," all on the theme of the dog eating mother's toes.
http://www.poetry.com/freemont/freemont.html
My submission was this:
"Rhymes with Toes"
by Freemont J. Uuvula
Her method, surely, could be slow
enumeration's limits low
we count upon the things we know
for Mother: fingers and her toes
Such tragic fate: she, hobbled, goes
her grimaced face discomfort shows
recalling errant dog's repose
who calmly chewed whilst Mother dozed
In humid breezes softly grows
a mournful, solitary rose
where Fido often sits and goes
alas; the dog ate Mother's toes
My friends and I were not typical teenagers. Once, having taken a break from making a home movie to consume large capppuccinos, we decided to cruise through downtown with some German polka-sounding folk music cranked up and the windows down. We got some weird looks from the slacker kids and laughed about it for weeks.
Does anybody else think this sounds exactly like a Far Side concept?
(Man in labcoat stands on front porch next to a goofy-looking contraption as a couple of slackers with cigarettes run away covering their ears) Responding to the outcry of the neighborhood, Dr. Norman Finkhouser worked by night for months to perfect his invention: the Teen-B-Gone 5000.
I doubt that anyone else is reading this anymore, but I know you'll see that I replied to you.
:)
:)
Based on your reply, I now suspect that "other people" most likely refers to the embryos in which stem cells originate. I apologize for responding to the wrong argument, but invite you to consider that many people who oppose embryonic stem cell research have greater qualms than the destruction of embryos.
Yes, that's who I was referring to; sorry if that was unclear. I'm glad we have come to a better understanding.
If there are other objections to stem cell research, I just haven't heard them. It's hard for me to see how anyone could be opposed to using, say, your own skin cells to treat your disease, unless they are opposed to all medicine. And if you take out the pro-life objection (which I personally can't), how are stem cells any different?
Of course, I won't expect you to answer that question for our hypothetical obstructionists.
New techniques will not end the controversies of medical science precisely because the sheer diversity of beliefs guarantees that there will always be opposition to medical science in general, and if not to these techniques in particular then to others.
You may be right, but I wonder this: how much opposition is there to adult stem cell research? It's basically the same thing without the embryo-destruction question, right? Again, people who are opposed to blood transfusions and aspirin are going to object, but it won't be a double-digit percentage of the population.
You asked how a small minority could be allowed to hold back progress; I think it's also worthwhile to ask whether a sizable group of people's objections should be ignored. Does our society have a collective conscience? Isn't it at least worth looking for more palatable alternatives? Or will the people with money and laboratories just say "the end justifies the means" and go ahead?
I applaud all efforts of medical compassion; I just think they should extend to the unborn.
Again, sorry to drag this out - feel free to have the last word if you like.
OR:
"It didn't work; I still think it's a crock. Well, here's your $500; I'm off to wax your car. See you tomorrow?"
Seriously though, my Psychology 1101 professor did research into hypnosis for pain control. She did an in-class demonstration showing (apparently) that a guy she'd been working with could endure having his hand in ice water for a longer time after hypnosis than before. She said the goal was to help people for whom pain medication isn't enough - like burn victims whose skin must be scraped over and over.
That's a really good point. If blogs have one great merit, it's that you don't need money to have one, so it's equal-opportunity. The amount of money spent on campaigns today really does shut out the little guy from most other routes of communication.
This seems to be saying that any two newspapers expending the resources necessary to adequately research a given issue or event will produce the same story; that is, except for the Op/Ed pages, I should expect the same content from the Washington Times as from the New York Times.
Not really. Obviously there are many ways to examine any story, and there are millions of things you could write about on any given day. What is important and interesting enough to cover is a subjective judgement that depends on the paper's staff. But ideally two papers wouldn't give contradictory facts - at least one of them, if not both, has to be wrong.
I think the people trying to "censor" blogs do have a legitimate point: you can bet that everyone who is campaigning for something will set up blogs, pretending to be independant, that sing their praises. That's harder to do with "real" publications because they cost money to set up and run, and their ownership is public record.
I guess this is just part of the price of free speech. I do wonder if there's a good interface for "moderating" blogs, so that, for example, if one is sponsored by Candidate X in a sneaky way, and someone finds out, it can appear beside the name of the blog.
I'd also like to point out a fundamental difference between bloggers and journalists. I have worked at a newspaper, and spent all day calling people, attending government meetings, doing research and asking more questions before I wrote something. Bloggers tend to link to the work of real reporters, then offer comments, or worse, just repeat rumors as fact. At best, they are information scavengers, feeding on the facts hunted down by others.
Because a newspaper has advertisers and subscribers, it has to protect its reputation as being truthful. A blogger has nothing at stake. A newspaper also expects to get sued and tries to have a "truth defense" ready - to cover their butts by being accurate. They might not always succeed, but they have reason to try. I don't know whether any bloggers have been sued for libel yet, but I bet some will be. If you're going to "publish" something, you really do need to check your facts, and that usually takes more time than a hobbyist has.
Or have you not educated yourself on this matter before reaching your hasty conclusion?
Yes, I used the wrong term. My mistake.
Some believe that sickness is caused by evil spirits, and so doctors should be replaced with exorcists. Do you propose we make exceptions for every religious objection, just to make sure that these people aren't "trampled on" in some real or imaginary way?
I'm not trying to start a debate about abortion here - those are usually flamewars, and we're pretty far offtopic now. But I think it's unjust to compare misgivings about terminating what *may* be a human life with a total ignorance of the existence of germs.
We all agree (I think) that, for example, a one-year-old can't be arbitrarily killed. And I think we all agree that a sperm or an egg needs no moral consideration. We do not all agree where the line is crossed. I think reasonable people can disagree about this without comparing each other to savages who prefer exorcism to immunization.
I also think that any intelligent debate on abortion, stem cell research, etc etc should start with this question: When do we qualify as human, and why?
Legos are from Denmark??? I thought all my childhood toys came from the good ol' U.S. of A.
What's next, action figures made in Tiawan?
The stem cell worriers aren't really worried about stem cells or their source, they're worried about how close we're getting to a comfortable understanding of cellular mechanics. That takes the mystery out of a lot things, and devalues mystical explanations (and those social institutions that rely upon them for clout).
I can't speak for everyone, but I have a problem with using fetuses for stem cell research, and none whatsoever with this. Medical science can do wonderful things for people (I look forward to when they sythesize blood and eliminate shortages); I just don't want other people to be trampled on in the process.
As for taking the mystery out of things, I think it's just the opposite. The more you understand the universe, the more wonderful it seems. I don't see how knowing the mechanics of cells creates an argument for atheism, as you seem to imply.
This kind of stuff makes me a little uneasy. On a practical level, the more complicated something is, the more ways it can mess up. Think about how often you have to fix your computer versus your refrigerator.
It also makes me think about how we can use products and gadgets to define ourselves. Your room will "match your lifestyle," it says. How much thought do we really need to perfecting our environments and making everything around us customized for our tastes? Everything from the color of your iPod to the way you drink your coffee is supposed to express your personality, and the world is supposed to be exactly the way you like it.
I mean, this is neat in theory, but you're going to pay a lot for the service, I'm sure. (I don't know which rooms have it, but the first reservations their site showed me were between $600 and $700 a night.) The question is, are you paying for the convenience, or how important it makes you feel?
I have no concept of electrical quantities. What I see here is "tiny windmills make electricity."
So, for someone with more of a clue: does this sound like something that could be scaled up? Like, could you put them all over your roof and generate green power, or would there not be enough juice?
Clearly, you have not seen "Star Wars: The Musical".
(Actually, neither have I, but I can imagine. [shudder])
Actual lyrics follow.
STORM TROOPER:
Darth Vader - dark Darth Vader -
dark lord of the Sith.
Darth Vader - dark Darth Vader -
this guy isn't a myth.
VADER:
Tear this ship apart until you've found those plans!
Bring me the passengers - every child woman and man!
(And from another scene...)
Uncle Ben:
Do you speak Bocce?
C3PO: I do -
not Splocce, not Blocce,
not Crocce.
Oh I speak Bocce.
UNCLE BEN:
What I need is a droid who understands my machines.
But what I need, most of all, is someone who understands me.
That's a really interesting idea - bypass the senses and go directly to the meaning portions of the brain. I wonder if you'd be able to tell your own conclusions from what was being fed to you?
This kind of stuff both excites and scares me. Whenever I hear about electronics/brain interaction (like the story about monkeys moving robotic arms using their brains), I think of the cyborg possibilities. The most interesting one to me is the ability to supplement your own faulty memory with a hard drive and your own thinking power with a processor. You'd take a little snapshot of every person you met and file it away with their name, never to be forgotten. If you needed to calculate something, you'd just run it through your stored equations.
Think about what school would do for you! If I could remember all the science, history and literature I've been taught and forgotten, I'd be a much more educated guy than I am now.
And of course you could add senses that humans don't have - more visual spectra, a magnetic sense or "location" sense based on GPS, etc.
What makes all this less exciting - besides welcoming our new cyborg overlords - is remembering how unreliable technology is. After seeing my roommate organize his life with PalmPilots, which invariably broke, I decided to stick with writing things down in a little notepad. It never crashes. Given the headaches we've all experienced with computer problems, imagine how you'd feel if a whole section of your brain quit working.
That's a really interesting idea. By seeming to compete for the buy, they could also drive up the price. Like bidding at an auction, then withdrawing near the end.
I'm not surprised. To me, that says that AOL thinks that buying AOL is going to hurt your stock. If it were a good move, they'd want a piece of the buying company's stock, which would rise after having made such a great acquisition.
Of course, that's not my professional opinion - I Am Not A Stock Broker.
Another thing - whatever your software does, the law has to consider what precedent this kind of thing sets. What might other companies try if you succeed? The more I think about this, the more it upsets me.
Can a housecleaning service write a contract clause that says you agree not to check whether your maid is stealing from you? Can a building contractor put in a clause that says you agree not to have your electrical wiring inspected? Or, weirder but more parallel, not to look behind the walls for the hidden cameras they installed? Can a chainsaw maker write a clause that, by opening the saw's packaging, you agree that if it malfunctions and maims you, you won't sue?
It's amazing the ridiculous things that software companies think they can get away with. We would never put up with this in the real world. But EULAs are so common now, and so frequently ridiculous, that we just accept them as the price of using a computer.
Retrocoder Limited as the copyright holder, has the right to say who may or may not have its program. If someone has its program without permission, are they not guilty of a criminal offence?
The problem is that you are specifically denying access to people who will keep you accountable. This monitoring software can clearly be used for malicious purposes. Imagine if your computer repair guy installed it on your computer, then started keeping track of what you do. Under this clause, you'd never have a tool to know that it was there.
I write songs. As a copyright holder, I do have the right to say, "nobody can record my songs and make money off them without permission." I do NOT have the right to say, "parents are not allowed to listen to my songs to see whether they are appropriate for their children to hear. By buying this album, you agree that you are a teenager and won't allow your parents to hear it, or I'll sue you."
If people want to monitor what their employees, spouses, or children are doing on the computer, fine. But I think the person being monitored should know about it. And in some cases, it might be dangerous if they don't. Do you want to be responsible for enabling stalkers? What kind of world are you helping to create?
I'm not sure how Sony arrived at the decision to take over people's computers, but I can't see the morality of it. "People are stealing from us, so let's damage their property."
In meatspace, this would be called "vigilante justice," but I'm not sure that large corporations qualify for that label.