Free speech is far more important. If your right to be left alone (a "right" that does not in any way exist by the way) superceeds free speach, then we are in a lot of trouble.
This is a good thing. It means the judge is looking at it, and is open to considering that free speech aspect. It doesn't mean the law will not happen. It just means that it is on pause until the issues can be definitively be decided. If the free speech aspect were completely discarded, that could be a bad precident. I expect that the spyware group will fail with this, but I would much rather the courts listen and give close consideration to every free speech issue rather then dismiss them out of hand.
Just read the article and have to point out a number of flaws in the methodology. First- it assumes that if the vulnerability is only known to a few then the number of intrustions will be low. Given the number of zombie computers out there, I do not think that is a safe assumption. Look at how the last few big viruses went around. I know those were exploiting known and patched vulnerabilities, but there is nothing to say that the same thing couldn't be done with a "day-zero" exploit.
Second- it doesn't address the level of the vulnerability. If it is an exploit that lets someone take over a machine, or format a drive, the cost of even those first, possibly limited, intrusions will be astronomical.
The harm is in they purchased a security device and then found out that it is intentionally not secure. I don't know the legalese to describe that- fraud maybe? - but if you buy something that is sold with the intent of doing something, and find out that it doesn't and the maker of it made it so it doesn't, that sounds actionable to me.
If it was addressed to you, and the envelope had your name on it, and it was delivered to your mail box, and it isn't until you open it up that you discover it was meant for your neighbor, then you have not broken any laws.
That is what opening a mis-addressed email is like.
The bill, as I've read in other articles is agaisnt any service retaining information about the contents of people's emails. They can still scan it realtime and give ads based on keywords, but they can't store it in a database or share that information with other people.
It is a good thing, in my opinion, because you know as soon as Google announced they were going to do it and let people know about it, hundreds of others figured it would be a good idea to do it and not say anything and then sell email information to advertisers.
And Google approved the legistation as well. It is *NOT* a Bad Thing.
Security issues- could anyone running the tools see the results? Or worse- change them? It would be a huge pain in the ass to review every image to make sure someone didn't throw in a one-frame wardrobe malfunction or the like
Copyright issues- if I own the machine that produces the frame do I have any copyright ownership of it? Even if I don't, how many lawsuits of people that want money would it take to eat up the savings from not getting the machines and doing it yourself?
Competitors- How easy would it be for a competitor to screw it up? Either running clients but not letting them send data or send bad, gibberish data instead? How much time and money would have to be spent to check for that?
Why would you do it? Donate your time, processing cycles, and bandwidth to a company that is going to make money off it and not even give you free tickets for your effort? Not to mention that legally, as I understand it, a for-profit company is not allowed to have unpaid volunteers. People working for a for-profit company have a legal obligation to treat them as employees. That bit AOL and Everquest a few years ago when they had unpaid communitee volunteers in charge of stuff, but don't anymore because of that.
Please send me the names and addresses of all the people you know who find math and science useless. My personal business needs more customers that can't understand the math on the bill I send them, and who will nod blindly to the scientific gobbledygook that I use to describe my products. I think I can sell a lot of stuff to people unaware of the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide. It's in the food you eat, you know.
Break the contract? What? Turn around and say "I know I just gave you money, but please sue me and my customers anyways"?
Sue SCO for what? Making public statements of them having reached an agreement?
You want him to compound a bad decision by invalidating it, not getting the money back, and then spending more money on lawsuits? You wouldn't happen to be a competitor of EV1, would you?
You don't know the automotive industry very well. Lawsuits are a fact of life there. I would not be surprised to see that they have more lawyers on staff then SCO has paid for. Add in that they are doing pretty well financially, and I don't think they need help with this.
I havne't seen the agreement, but every other license similar to this I've seen included a clause that said even if their license/patent/whatever was found to be not valid, the contract was still binding. So you would still be SOL. And outta the cash you paid them.
It is very likey an issue the college facilities people brought up. I ran a few different eventlike that used school space while in college and they always brought up every little point they can. I have no doubt that they are trying to cover their asses legally so no one comes back and sues them, but it is still a pain.
They market it as the solution for the customer, and no doubt do market studies that show exactly what the customer wants and what it will pay. and then they sell the minimum with the product and then offer all the things that make it useful and usable as extras.
It isn't bait and switch, but selling higher expectations then they know the product itself will fulfill isn't exactly a plus on the ethics column either.
I can understand the doctor wanting to pad the bill to the insurance company. I was reading just the other day that many insurance companies are not paying the bills doctors send them. If the doctor sends it a second time, they will pay half of it. If the doctor puts the time into bitching at them into paying it, they might eventually pay it all off, but that is months down the road.
If I was a doctor and I was getting jerked around that much, I would be padding the bill too, so that I would get paid the amount I was due originally.
It is a sad state of affairs all around that these stupid financial games are becoming standard practice, making people spend so much time on paperwork rather then actually gettign things done.
"It seems the act of cataloguing and offering them for sale, then packaging and shipping them would be onerous"
Cataloging? Onerous? For a library? Have you been in a libray? Cataloging and tracking the books is done. That is their day job. Sure the shipping and that might take some time, but probably not as much time as organizing and promoting a book sale, and then staffing it, and then carting all the unsold books where ever it is they go.
Don't understand how the thing you're using works? Don't care to learn? that would make you an idiot. (not the poster I'm replying to, but rather Al the AOL user)
So you understand everything you use each day? From your car, to the credit card transactions, to the politics in your city, state and country, your tv, how the music you listen to is produced, how your food is harvested and prepared, the medicine you take, and everything else? Impressive!
Just because someone is ignorant of your speciality does not mean they are stupid. It just means they don't care to learn it. Just possibly they have mor ethings to do with they life then become an expert in every aspect of the they use for work. As much as I enjoy working with computers, that is all they are. A tool. Expecting everyone to care about them as much as you do is very narrowminded. And unfortunately common among people who consider themselves "experts".
If you keep an eye on their patent portfolio, you'll find that while they haven't used it, they have a lot in there. If their market share starts goign down significantly, do you expect them to not use it? A while ago there were articles about how they patented the Windows authentication process pretty much specifically so they could go after Samba if they need/want to.
One solution I came up with for a few games that had a menu I couldn't read easily was to take the red lense from a pair of cardboard 3D glasses and use it as a monocle. That let me differentiate the colors enough to play the game. It isn't an ideal solution, but it is a simple one.
You don't need to reinstall. The instructions for the color-blind patch reccommend making a back up of the original image files so you can just copy yhem back if you want.
I believe the shareholders are responsible. They are the ones that own the company and profit from it. And if they are not responsible, then I belive the board of directors are in actionable positions. I'm also NAL, but I listen closely at the corporate water cooler.
If I read it correctly, there were a number of stock option exersized. So even if they sell off all their stock, when the next round of stock options go out, they will all be able to make more money again.
They found two ways to get free money- Linux licenses and making threats to bump up their stock price. This is not going away any time soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Free speech is far more important. If your right to be left alone (a "right" that does not in any way exist by the way) superceeds free speach, then we are in a lot of trouble.
This is a good thing. It means the judge is looking at it, and is open to considering that free speech aspect. It doesn't mean the law will not happen. It just means that it is on pause until the issues can be definitively be decided. If the free speech aspect were completely discarded, that could be a bad precident. I expect that the spyware group will fail with this, but I would much rather the courts listen and give close consideration to every free speech issue rather then dismiss them out of hand.
Just read the article and have to point out a number of flaws in the methodology. First- it assumes that if the vulnerability is only known to a few then the number of intrustions will be low. Given the number of zombie computers out there, I do not think that is a safe assumption. Look at how the last few big viruses went around. I know those were exploiting known and patched vulnerabilities, but there is nothing to say that the same thing couldn't be done with a "day-zero" exploit.
Second- it doesn't address the level of the vulnerability. If it is an exploit that lets someone take over a machine, or format a drive, the cost of even those first, possibly limited, intrusions will be astronomical.
'Cause trusting the manufacturer to make their product secure has shown to be such a good solution in the past.
The alternative is to not look and leave that to the people who will fix it or the people that will exploit it. Are you really comfortable with that?
The harm is in they purchased a security device and then found out that it is intentionally not secure. I don't know the legalese to describe that- fraud maybe? - but if you buy something that is sold with the intent of doing something, and find out that it doesn't and the maker of it made it so it doesn't, that sounds actionable to me.
I can't believe Slahsdot "Lone Gunmened" the ending of something AGAIN!
Maybe all the streets around him are one way?
I hate stretching analogies like that.
If it was addressed to you, and the envelope had your name on it, and it was delivered to your mail box, and it isn't until you open it up that you discover it was meant for your neighbor, then you have not broken any laws.
That is what opening a mis-addressed email is like.
The bill, as I've read in other articles is agaisnt any service retaining information about the contents of people's emails. They can still scan it realtime and give ads based on keywords, but they can't store it in a database or share that information with other people.
It is a good thing, in my opinion, because you know as soon as Google announced they were going to do it and let people know about it, hundreds of others figured it would be a good idea to do it and not say anything and then sell email information to advertisers.
And Google approved the legistation as well. It is *NOT* a Bad Thing.
Please send me the names and addresses of all the people you know who find math and science useless. My personal business needs more customers that can't understand the math on the bill I send them, and who will nod blindly to the scientific gobbledygook that I use to describe my products. I think I can sell a lot of stuff to people unaware of the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide. It's in the food you eat, you know.
Yes, because bears are well known for their strategic thinking and willingness to accept a siege mentality... ;)
What, like the back of a Volkswagen?
Break the contract? What? Turn around and say "I know I just gave you money, but please sue me and my customers anyways"?
Sue SCO for what? Making public statements of them having reached an agreement?
You want him to compound a bad decision by invalidating it, not getting the money back, and then spending more money on lawsuits? You wouldn't happen to be a competitor of EV1, would you?
You don't know the automotive industry very well. Lawsuits are a fact of life there. I would not be surprised to see that they have more lawyers on staff then SCO has paid for. Add in that they are doing pretty well financially, and I don't think they need help with this.
I havne't seen the agreement, but every other license similar to this I've seen included a clause that said even if their license/patent/whatever was found to be not valid, the contract was still binding. So you would still be SOL. And outta the cash you paid them.
It is very likey an issue the college facilities people brought up. I ran a few different eventlike that used school space while in college and they always brought up every little point they can. I have no doubt that they are trying to cover their asses legally so no one comes back and sues them, but it is still a pain.
Not really the company's fault? Riiiiiiight...
They market it as the solution for the customer, and no doubt do market studies that show exactly what the customer wants and what it will pay. and then they sell the minimum with the product and then offer all the things that make it useful and usable as extras.
It isn't bait and switch, but selling higher expectations then they know the product itself will fulfill isn't exactly a plus on the ethics column either.
I can understand the doctor wanting to pad the bill to the insurance company. I was reading just the other day that many insurance companies are not paying the bills doctors send them. If the doctor sends it a second time, they will pay half of it. If the doctor puts the time into bitching at them into paying it, they might eventually pay it all off, but that is months down the road.
If I was a doctor and I was getting jerked around that much, I would be padding the bill too, so that I would get paid the amount I was due originally.
It is a sad state of affairs all around that these stupid financial games are becoming standard practice, making people spend so much time on paperwork rather then actually gettign things done.
"It seems the act of cataloguing and offering them for sale, then packaging and shipping them would be onerous"
Cataloging? Onerous? For a library? Have you been in a libray? Cataloging and tracking the books is done. That is their day job. Sure the shipping and that might take some time, but probably not as much time as organizing and promoting a book sale, and then staffing it, and then carting all the unsold books where ever it is they go.
Don't understand how the thing you're using works? Don't care to learn? that would make you an idiot. (not the poster I'm replying to, but rather Al the AOL user)
So you understand everything you use each day? From your car, to the credit card transactions, to the politics in your city, state and country, your tv, how the music you listen to is produced, how your food is harvested and prepared, the medicine you take, and everything else? Impressive!
Just because someone is ignorant of your speciality does not mean they are stupid. It just means they don't care to learn it. Just possibly they have mor ethings to do with they life then become an expert in every aspect of the they use for work. As much as I enjoy working with computers, that is all they are. A tool. Expecting everyone to care about them as much as you do is very narrowminded. And unfortunately common among people who consider themselves "experts".
If you keep an eye on their patent portfolio, you'll find that while they haven't used it, they have a lot in there. If their market share starts goign down significantly, do you expect them to not use it? A while ago there were articles about how they patented the Windows authentication process pretty much specifically so they could go after Samba if they need/want to.
One solution I came up with for a few games that had a menu I couldn't read easily was to take the red lense from a pair of cardboard 3D glasses and use it as a monocle. That let me differentiate the colors enough to play the game. It isn't an ideal solution, but it is a simple one.
You don't need to reinstall. The instructions for the color-blind patch reccommend making a back up of the original image files so you can just copy yhem back if you want.
I believe the shareholders are responsible. They are the ones that own the company and profit from it. And if they are not responsible, then I belive the board of directors are in actionable positions. I'm also NAL, but I listen closely at the corporate water cooler.
If I read it correctly, there were a number of stock option exersized. So even if they sell off all their stock, when the next round of stock options go out, they will all be able to make more money again.
They found two ways to get free money- Linux licenses and making threats to bump up their stock price. This is not going away any time soon.