OK, how about if you wore the T-shirt to the local bank & the Secret Service pulled you into an office, detained you for a few hours, and told you "your right to free speach ended at the door."
That's closer to what happened than you going to the White House. The bank is a commercial property, open to the public, that occasionaly has Secret Service people around - it's not common, but the SS is in charge of currency. That is directly comparable to the airport which is operated as a commercial property, open to the public, irreguardless of weather it is a public or private airport, and the TSA is the govt organization charged with safeguarding the service it provides.
Doesn't apply. The 5th ammendment covers your right not to incriminate yourself by giving statements during the investigation or testifying during the trial. However, providing your harddrive for investigation is not testifying, it's producing evidence requested by the prosecution.
Actually, it's not quite as stupid as it sounds. What does a torrent do? It breaks a file into many - several thousand - small pieces, and mails them to different people at different times. The concept of de minimus applies. If I choose to E-mail each sequential word from the Websters New World Dictionary to different individuals, I have not violated copyright. Each E-mail is construed as a seperate communication, and each communication contains such a small portion of the parent work as to be negligable.
A torrent is the same, each packet is a seperate request containing a negligable amount of the whole. Also note that it is a factual argument. Copyright infringment can only occur for non-insignificant portions of a work. Is.01% of a work significant? A jury would have to decide that. Sure the second slob might get hit with 10,000 counts of infringement, but if each of those counts is.01% of a whole, each count by itself can be argued as a non-infringing use due to its insignificance in relationship to the whole.
As I said, I certainly wouldn't want to try and argue the case under that theory, but it stronger than the 'right-to-backup' theory that has been argued. I will also note that it's a lot weaker than the "it's not infringing because I already paid a liscensing fee when I bought the digital media". Both US & Canadians pay a fee on every piece of recordable digital media (DAT, CDs, & DVDs in the US. HDs also in CN IIRC) which goes to the RIAA/MPAA/related orgs to cover losses caused by piracy. If I have already paid to cover their loss, then they can claim no damages. Damage to the merchantability of the original product is one of the tests for fair use.
Interesting point, because you can use short segments of a copyritten work without the copyright owners permission. In other words I do not need to pay royalties to play the first 4 bars of some song. It's part of the fair use portion of copyright law. So in theory, since torrents never serve the whole thing, the technical mechanism of serving files via torrents may sidestep copyright rules. Of course I wouldn't want to be the person trying to get that past a jury.
The issue is that technically while GPLv2 code can be incorperated into GPLv3 code, the reverse is not nescisarily true.
Under GPLv2, I can write a security library that touches the TPM chip on a PC, verifies that the programs you are running are what they are reporting to be and reports back with the results. The obvious first step is that my library has to verify that it is itself uncompromised if my library can't verify it's integrity, no programmer can rely on the results of my library's responces.
If my library uses other GPLv2 libraries in the compile, I can verify & lock to specific versions I trust, that's fine. However, GPLv3 requires that I accept and allow any changes to the supporting libraries to be incorperated into my code - thus negating my ability to fully trust my own code.
I am aware that people have issues with trusted computing, DRM, etc. However they each have thier place in the world. I don't agree with Tivo's decision to incorperate a lockout into thier system, but given the position they are in between providing the features customers want and being sued by the owners of the content that the people want, I can understand it. I certainly think that trusted computing and DRM have places where they are important - medical, financial, and security environments come to mind immediately. The GPLv2 allows Linux and GNU software to be constructed & run in these environments. The GPLv3 does not.
RMS' take on this is 'tough, don't use our stuff if you're going to work in those environments', Linus' and these developers is "use the code, give us your improvements back, and we'll take it from there." Personnally I am in the camp with Linus, the overall codebase is what is important. As long as companies are developing applications and giving us back the improved code, the GNU/Linux project get's better - everyone wins in the long run. The individual embeded items don't matter. So Tivo created a device that you can't upgrade yourself. [shrug] You wouldn't have been able to if they put in a ROM instead of FLASH memory anyway. However, I can take that code they returned to the community, redirect the driver interfaces for it & make a DVR out of my PC, or even my Lynksys router if I package the videostream from a PC with a tuner card. The device Tivo made is almost irrelivant in the grand scheme of things, it'll sell for what 2 years? maybe 3? 50 years from now, I can take thier code and make it work.
Think about it this way, who do you want scrutenizing Linux for security flaws? My answer is everyone. My reality is that it's usually done by 2 camps - malware writers (both for real use & theoretical exploration) and corperate employees who are paid to do it. I know I hate reviewing code looking for tiny errors that don't normally effect it's operation. I would rather run off to a dozen new projects than spend a month looking for why the function foo() screws up when you pass it numbers that factor into a prime > 2^64 but not less than that. Most people are the same way. With that in mind, if I want security improvements, I want guys from a security company working on my code not on their proprietary code. If in order to get them to do that for me, I have to allow them to use my code in a proprietary device that only runs versions of my code that they have verified as meeting their standards, that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. I get code improvements I can use in this project and the next, they get to market their system as secure.
For me it's interesting to note that RMS has said that there would have been no issues with TIVO if they had used ROM instead of FLASH to store the software. Because TIVO gave thier customers a means of updating their system without having to send it back to the factory, he feels it's a violation of the principles of the GPLv2. To me, that's where GPLv3 crosses the line from a software liscense into the realm of technical mandating.
The short answer is yes.
It's very different in that it's a visual repitition rather than auditory repitition, but the concept is understood. ASL, PSE, & SEE poetry usually isn't very good from an auditory standpoint, but visually it's usually nicely patterned with good flow.
90 days, most billing cycles are @ 30 day intervals with a 90 day objection policy. So they would need to keep records for 90 days in order to support their claims - assuming metered service of course.
When I was in school, my botany teacher had a grant from Asia somewhere - researching growing hemp with longer fibers - for better rope/fabric/whatever. She had 3 bankers boxes of documents, and an armed guard 24/7 at the greenhouse in order to do it. The physics/chemistry building across the way had radioactive tracer materials in a lead box in the storeroom, which was guarded by a workstudy & a flimsy door w/ a glass window.
Best part was, someone spilled their dimebag in the quad & they had it growing in the center of the campus.
IIRC, last time the records issue came up, they determined it would cost ~$400M a year to keep all the records they wanted. Their other determination was it would help prevent the abuse of about 300 - 400 children.
The FBI & several other policing agencies said "Just give us the money & we'll help a hell of a lot more people." I doubt very much that has changed in the last 3 years.
I think the magical part was that the newsreader coudln't tell before you downloaded it.
After all, cherry_pie.jpg from the alt.food.desert newsgroup isn't supposed to be a nudie shot.
I don't know if marketing is an honest task, but there are laws reguarding truth in advertising. There are just ethics guidelines for being a politician.
I know that my JVEC NIC (ne2000 clone circa 1998 - RJ 45 & BNC) worked under FC4 but couldn't be auto detected under FC5. However, insmod put the ne2000 driver in & it worked fine. So it's not so much the actual support as the reference tables appear to be getting pruned a bit.
It should the way the law is applied. If I do my taxes & sign that I have no additional income, when in fact I have an entire 2nd job, then I have:
Committed purjury - that line states under penalty of purjury.
Committed fraud - I knowingly made false claims with the intent of profiting from those claims.
That's 2 felonies.
IIRC - I have only worked on 1 - that last line on the patent also states that the statements given are true under penalty of perjury. Now if I write up a patent, sign that I know of no additional prior art - full well knowing that there is, I have committed the same 2 felonies. Given federal statutes that a person may not profit from the procedes of a crime - the patent cannot be enforced.
Life is simple, no new laws, just the application of the ones already on the books. Also even if it's not an issue of perjury, it's still fraud - and fraud ranging into millions of dollars falls into felony teritory.
RTFA - BASIC because it's what was in the textbooks at school.
There are tons of other languages that could have been used, but each one would have required translating the code in the textbook.
The artical wasn't about the lack of BASIC per se, but about the lack of support for learning the roots of the higher languages. Everyone says - oh, don't play with that crap - go for the higher languages - Object oriented blah blah blah. The point was that that's not how it should be done. Yeah you can learn the high order & then work your way down to assembly, but it effects how you think. When I write my own code, I write from a minimalist stance (no I don't write my own tcp/ip stacks etc), it might not be as portable or modifiable as code writen using standard libraries and structured as modules with blind objects. On the other hand, it's usualy clean, elegant, and faster than doing it with libraries.
To put it in perspective, I have worked with people who think that cobbling together widgets is real programming & can't understand how to do anything more than the simplest coding to make them work nice together. I honestly think trying to get them to build a double linked list might give them a heartattack. That's what David's artical was about. Programming, to him, isn't about objects & high level processes, it's about understanding the processes of logic and math that transform blocks of code into something entirely different - whether the magic of a moving ball on a screen, or seeing the difference in performance for a shuttle short vs an indexed sort vs tree sort - and then understanding why each creates the results it does.
But hey, I'm just a few years younger than him, so I'm still part of that old school approach - what do we know?
Proving they knew of something and signed the document attesting that to their knowledge there was no additional prior art proves a willful act of deception. Given the fraudulent nature of the filing, it should therefore be invalid. Of course this is big business & the law, so should doesn't really play a big role.
The FAQ on the article basically does not allow a person to distribute a creative commons work that has been modified with DRM. Microsoft is doing no such thing. While their software will DRM-ify the song, it is the end user who is using the Zune as the mechanism of distribution. Clearly the works are available without the DRM, as the original user got the song in the first place. This seems to me to be an issue of a transport layer. If you know Microsoft will always DRM, and you try to use this mechanism to distribute CC'd licensed works, then perhaps you are the one who is in violation of the license.
Grokster & Napster were not charged with copyright violations, they were charged with facilitating it. IE. by running a network that they knew was going to create massive copyright violations, they were responsible for its use in doing so. The comment to sue them is a - "good for the goose, good for the gander" argument that if the cartels can sue to limit distribution of their music over a network, indies can sue to make sure that distribution of their music is not limited. Both based on the same chunk of copyright law & exactly the same arguments of promoting infringement.
The contributory copyright violation in the grokster case was that they knew or expected that people would be using their technology to violate copyright and made a profit off of it. MS is in exactly the same boat. making three copies of a song for random people in a wireless net is almost certainly illegal copyright violation and MS is making money facilitating it. Take em to court RIAA!
That would depend on what kind of liscensing agreement MS made with the RIAA. Of course if an artist not part of the RIAA wanted to sue them that would be different. However, contributing to breach of copywrite under the CC liscensing agreement by 'requiring' that all music be wrapped in the same DRM may have more of a chance to be done. I believe some of the MSN community stuff is done under CC, so they can't claim ignorance of the liscense. Therefor they can be held to have known/should have known that sharing music covered under the CC would be done in violation of copywrite if wrapped in their DRM.
Oh the sweet irony, indies hitting MS with the exact same argument the RIAA used against Napster & Grokster.
"Your honor, the federal courts have upheld that despite the substantially non-infringing use of a system, a companies encouragement of people to trade music files makes them accountable for the infringement of their clients.(re Napster & Grokster) We understand that the defendant is claiming that their distibution method of wrapping files in DRM & time limiting usage makes the action fall under fair use, however we humbly direct the courts attention to the [insert number of CC songs available] songs liscensed for distribution under the Creative Commons liscense. The actions of the defendant place their users in direct violation of the terms of this liscense, and as such, MS, by encouriging the users of Zune products to violate the liscense - and thus copyright law as they no longer have a legal copy of the music, is a direct contributor to the copyright infringment of it's users. We feel that the damage done to our clients reaches into the $[asshat number with no relationship to reality] and so ask MS to pay them $[even higher number] to cover our clients losses, their emotional distress, and legal fees. We additionally request an injunction prohibiting MS from further enabling this gross violation of copyrite law."
The beauty of that is that the CCL makes it absolutely clear that you are making your own copy only by accepting the conditions of the CC liscense. If you violate the liscense, you have just surrendered your right to continue owning the music you already downloaded. This is unlike the music industry that plays the "it's a product - wait, no, it's a liscense game". Here you clearly make & own your own copy under a liscense. Violate the terms of the liscense & you void your right to own the copied work => destroy the work or be in violation of copyright. I don't see MS touting this fact while they run around promoting Zune.
I'm not sure you have to prove intent to decieve. All that needs to be proved is that they knew of a specific piece of prior art and failed to include it in the submission. There is a line you have to sign atesting that you have provided all known prior art. Failing to provide something you know about would be perjury and certainly grounds to invalidate the patent. (Perjury is a felony & there are laws on the books to prohibit profiting from felonious acts - they should apply here.)
When you file a patent, you are supposed to include all known prior art which directly applies to your patent, along with an explanation of why your patent in new & novel in light of the prior art. The patent examiner is supposed to just be looking for stuff you didn't find already, not do all the work.
It's already been pointed out by many people that for MS to be involved in anti - malware/spyware software development is a conflict of interest. GM cannot sell a car and then sell wheel retainers to keep the wheels from falling off if you hit a pothole. They have to make the wheels work right to begin with.
For MS to sell a product that fixes the faults in their principle product is a conflict of interest. They should be required to fix the original product, not allowed to double dip on the fix also.
IANAL -etc
Spamhaus didn't contest the jurisdiction. If you don't contest jurisdiction, the judge just moves forward with the case under the assumption that you don't object.
In this case Spamhaus didn't object because they didn't care at all. They are entirely a UK organization from what I can find, so US courts in general have no ability to do anything to them. Because the suit appears to be filed against spamhaus, and spamhaus isn't a legal entity in the US, I'm not sure how exactly the court even 'recognized' that e360 was suing anyone...
Wakeup call, every single XP Home user IS AN ADMINISTRATOR account. Imagine that.
I rest my case. Every single XP Home user is an administrator account. - How many of those accounts actually do any administration? - That's my point. I tell you that the people are not administrators, don't want to be administrators, and are best off not being administrators - you respond that they have all the access & potential for damage of administrators because Windows makes them that way by default.
A 2 fer:
The point isn't activeX specifically. Rather prorietary software that IS supported. For example flash IS supported in OSX as well as many plugins. How many cheap devices DONT SAY works with windows? So how can you tell one way or the other? How many devices say work with Linux?
From these lines, I again get that Windows is the only OS that's suitable for the desktop because it's everywhere.
As if linux distro's don't give updates. Go to any linuxforum or mailing list and read how an updates broke something. Xorg update broke the nvidia driver and your back to runlevel 3. Or selinux policy stops every single browser plugin. Or kernel update stops all wireless traffic. I guess all linux users are comfortable with that solution?
There is a difference between updating/patching a problem, and continually using 20% of my processor to run filters and whatnot to protect my system. Is the updating system perfect?, no, but neither is the Windows one. I have had several peices of hardware/software fail/re-initialize after Windows updates. It's not a unique phenominon.
E-mail - until someone emails you an attachment that wont load - please be specific. I have never been unable to open a picture, spreadsheet, movie - not in WM format, word document, pdf, etc that was sent from a standards compliant mail client.
Web Browsing - until you reach a website that cant play or open something - again - only Windows is ready for the desktop because IE is the only browser that supports activeX &.NET - any other browser on any other system just isn't ready for the web. If the site is designed correctly - note I do not concider most sites correct, nor does the ADA, W3, etc - then there should be minimal problems.
Office type document - until the file you had at school/work loads with the wrong formatting (95% correct in OOo is still not correct) - 95% correct in OOo is about 75% better than the wrong version of MS Office.
Riping & playing music - until you want to buy some music online, to play with your fancy mp3 player (which is often missing Ogg support) - You're right, proprietary DRM needs to be open sourced so that we can do that. Otherwise, check out the many other places that aren't Itunes & whatever it is MS is using.
Note I skipped the IM issue, I've never tried to connect to someones webcam over an IM client, but then again, I guess ICQ & IRC are old school now - damn them fully developed stable standards.
The mere reason people suggest windows, again, is ubiquity and support (the latter being more important).
Perhaps our conflict is in how we define ready for the desktop.
To me ubiquity in no way implies 'ready for the desktop' - a belief I can support by pointing to WinME and Win95
Nor does the presence of a multi billion dollar industry, built around the failures of an OS, inspire confidence that that OS is 'desktop ready'.
Desktop ready to me implies that after being taken out of the box & put on a desk, the system will turn on, be stable*, and require a minimum of intervention on my part, and the part of the person using it. I find that for the 'average user'** Linux fulfills this role adequately. To me that makes it as desktop ready as Windows & OSX.
* - Stable in the sense of not having performance degridation due to spyway/malware/etc taking up clock cycles. Crash stability does not seem to be an issue for any of the major OS's currently.
** - average user as defined in a previous post.
"my town of 6K people" -- so your generalizations based on 6 computers in your town somehow explain how valid the entire "desktop linux" argument is? Your sample data seems somewhat limited.
You seem to have forgotten the rest of my sentance - "My town of 6K people supports 2 computer repair shops that are busy and looking for help" - It's not a generalization based on 6 computers, it's based on the fact that 6000 people can support 12+ people with their PC related problems - not including all the people still under warentees from Dell/HP/etc.
HD Restore - why do you assume I meant the user would do a restore. They would take it to someone else, obviously. So in your scenario everyone would need a specialized linux person, any fix it shop won't do. This type of support does not currently exist.
Why? because that's the question you asked : "What happens when they plug in a new $25 usb device from bestbuy/fry's? Or purchase a $5 video game? Or upgrade the harddrive and do a "system restore"?" While I don't usually get picky on sentance structure or spelling - you did create an abysmal compound sentance wherein they was the subject. As for not being able to do it at the local shop - every one in my area has at least one person on staff that can install & configure Linux. From my experiance, unless you're doing a system with proprietary hardware (laptops and some integrated soundcards), there aren't many things that don't work off the shelf except wintel modems. Also anyone who can't figure out how to configure Evolution instead of OE, probably shouldn't be working in a PC shop.
Flash and Java plugins have crashed FF, Seamonkey and Opera many times.
Perhaps, but any more often than bad activeX has trashed a system? Personally I have never had FF crash from Flash, Java yes, but not Flash.
Sharing files can even be sharing simple windows executables (nothing to do with viruses) or downloads. Many files (even if registered) do not load properly double clicking in either Konqueror or Nautilus.
Use Wine? I thought this was so easy? I don't even need to explain the problems with wine.
Hmm, easy yes, try getting a 'simple' windows executable to run on a mac. Oh are we talking Documents - like Excel, Powerpoint, etc - you know the ones that won't open right unless you have the right version of MS Office, or know what version they were saved in so you can import them properly? Most of the 'oh check this out it's soooo cool' Windows exe files I deal with have spyware built into them, I still fail to see the problem with them not running.
About macs, yes people know that everything is Windows or Non-Windows (ie. a mac). I am not saying that people use windows just for the $5 dollar software (as you imply). Rather, they will be at a loss finding out that all those simple applications that may have run before, won't. And the argument that there's a better oss app is silly. Names are obscure (if they even exist) and they have to be downloaded.
It's not my implication, I direct your attention to your quote "What happens when they plug in a new $25 usb device from bestbuy/fry's? Or purchase a $5 video game?" Your statement was that people shouldn't run Linux because the cheap $5 bargin bin software won't run. I was pointing out it won't run on a Mac either. For you present comment, I am at a loss as to which simple applications won't run? Solitare - whoot 30+ versions built in along with Mah-Jong, minesweeper, etc. Any time people change OS, they are going to find some applications they could run before but now can't. Is your statement that everyone should use Windows so we don't have to change? As for names, etc of OSS products, I direct your attention to Tucows they have a nice selection to download. Is that so much harder than going out to the store to buy it on cd
Hmm $25 usb - worked for cameras, memory sticks, mice/keyboards, printers, mp3 players and an external CD burner.
Upgrade the HD & do a system restore.... what planet are you from? Do you really think the 'average user' is going to do a HD upgrade? If the HD dies, then they either come back to me/go to someone else to do it, or they go buy a new system. The 'average user' doesn't do hardware, that's why my town of 6K people has 2 computer repair shops busy & looking for help.
Lock up on a website with activeX or flash.... hmm, do you use firefox? have you used firefox? I have never seen it 'lock up' on either. It either shows the Flash - the module isn't hard to install 2 mouse clicks did it for me - or it doesn't show the activeX or the newest flash version stuff w/ a message that it needs a module to play some content.
Hmm share files from an unknown source - never had a problem there. If it's a virus or trojan - there are a few out there for linux, but I've never seen one on a system, it generally won't run - oh too bad, so sad. What type of files were you discussing - TIFF, JPG,GIF, PNG,.wav,.dat,.mp3? They all work. If you don't want to go to the hassle of doing the MP3 install (ooohh activating a repository & doing yum install - tough), get one of the distro's that offers it in the box.
Purchases a $5 video game - how quaint. If it's for Win98 it'll probably run under wine, if not oh well. By the way, do you tell people not to buy Macs because they can't run the $5 software they can pick up at the local bargain bin?
Ubiquity has it's value, and you the lone installer for 6 PC's are not enough to say that "install ubuntu and forget" is adequate for the millions other out there.
OK, how about I have only had to do an install/configure for the Ubuntu computers. For every Windows machine I have worked on, I see it about every 6 months to clean it out so it runs passibly again. From that perspective you tell me which is the better system for the 'average user'.
Obviously Ubuntu is not going to work for a gamer - but gamers aren't the 'average user' either. Most systems are purchased to do email, web browsing, and/or office work. For those 3 things, Ubuntu and Fedora (the 2 distro's I use) are better than WinXP. They are more stable - not strictly in terms of crashes, but in terms of long term stability & maintenance of function.
Linux file systems don't fragment files like NTFS does (95% file fragmentation on a 9 month old system), mystery processes don't spawn randomly & repeatedly eating 90% of the processor (MS & AOL malware killing each other off). I see those things daily at my corperate job and in private work.
End result for me - systems I build with Linux I don't see again until there's a hardware failure. Windows systems are at my door every 6 months for a tuneup. To me that says that Linux systems are better for the 'average user', Windows just seems to be better for my wallet.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, how about if you wore the T-shirt to the local bank & the Secret Service pulled you into an office, detained you for a few hours, and told you "your right to free speach ended at the door."
That's closer to what happened than you going to the White House. The bank is a commercial property, open to the public, that occasionaly has Secret Service people around - it's not common, but the SS is in charge of currency. That is directly comparable to the airport which is operated as a commercial property, open to the public, irreguardless of weather it is a public or private airport, and the TSA is the govt organization charged with safeguarding the service it provides.
Doesn't apply. The 5th ammendment covers your right not to incriminate yourself by giving statements during the investigation or testifying during the trial. However, providing your harddrive for investigation is not testifying, it's producing evidence requested by the prosecution.
Actually, it's not quite as stupid as it sounds. What does a torrent do? It breaks a file into many - several thousand - small pieces, and mails them to different people at different times. The concept of de minimus applies. If I choose to E-mail each sequential word from the Websters New World Dictionary to different individuals, I have not violated copyright. Each E-mail is construed as a seperate communication, and each communication contains such a small portion of the parent work as to be negligable.
A torrent is the same, each packet is a seperate request containing a negligable amount of the whole. Also note that it is a factual argument. Copyright infringment can only occur for non-insignificant portions of a work. Is .01% of a work significant? A jury would have to decide that. Sure the second slob might get hit with 10,000 counts of infringement, but if each of those counts is .01% of a whole, each count by itself can be argued as a non-infringing use due to its insignificance in relationship to the whole.
As I said, I certainly wouldn't want to try and argue the case under that theory, but it stronger than the 'right-to-backup' theory that has been argued. I will also note that it's a lot weaker than the "it's not infringing because I already paid a liscensing fee when I bought the digital media". Both US & Canadians pay a fee on every piece of recordable digital media (DAT, CDs, & DVDs in the US. HDs also in CN IIRC) which goes to the RIAA/MPAA/related orgs to cover losses caused by piracy. If I have already paid to cover their loss, then they can claim no damages. Damage to the merchantability of the original product is one of the tests for fair use.
Interesting point, because you can use short segments of a copyritten work without the copyright owners permission. In other words I do not need to pay royalties to play the first 4 bars of some song. It's part of the fair use portion of copyright law. So in theory, since torrents never serve the whole thing, the technical mechanism of serving files via torrents may sidestep copyright rules. Of course I wouldn't want to be the person trying to get that past a jury.
The issue is that technically while GPLv2 code can be incorperated into GPLv3 code, the reverse is not nescisarily true.
Under GPLv2, I can write a security library that touches the TPM chip on a PC, verifies that the programs you are running are what they are reporting to be and reports back with the results. The obvious first step is that my library has to verify that it is itself uncompromised if my library can't verify it's integrity, no programmer can rely on the results of my library's responces.
If my library uses other GPLv2 libraries in the compile, I can verify & lock to specific versions I trust, that's fine. However, GPLv3 requires that I accept and allow any changes to the supporting libraries to be incorperated into my code - thus negating my ability to fully trust my own code.
I am aware that people have issues with trusted computing, DRM, etc. However they each have thier place in the world. I don't agree with Tivo's decision to incorperate a lockout into thier system, but given the position they are in between providing the features customers want and being sued by the owners of the content that the people want, I can understand it. I certainly think that trusted computing and DRM have places where they are important - medical, financial, and security environments come to mind immediately. The GPLv2 allows Linux and GNU software to be constructed & run in these environments. The GPLv3 does not.
RMS' take on this is 'tough, don't use our stuff if you're going to work in those environments', Linus' and these developers is "use the code, give us your improvements back, and we'll take it from there." Personnally I am in the camp with Linus, the overall codebase is what is important. As long as companies are developing applications and giving us back the improved code, the GNU/Linux project get's better - everyone wins in the long run. The individual embeded items don't matter. So Tivo created a device that you can't upgrade yourself. [shrug] You wouldn't have been able to if they put in a ROM instead of FLASH memory anyway. However, I can take that code they returned to the community, redirect the driver interfaces for it & make a DVR out of my PC, or even my Lynksys router if I package the videostream from a PC with a tuner card. The device Tivo made is almost irrelivant in the grand scheme of things, it'll sell for what 2 years? maybe 3? 50 years from now, I can take thier code and make it work.
Think about it this way, who do you want scrutenizing Linux for security flaws? My answer is everyone. My reality is that it's usually done by 2 camps - malware writers (both for real use & theoretical exploration) and corperate employees who are paid to do it. I know I hate reviewing code looking for tiny errors that don't normally effect it's operation. I would rather run off to a dozen new projects than spend a month looking for why the function foo() screws up when you pass it numbers that factor into a prime > 2^64 but not less than that. Most people are the same way. With that in mind, if I want security improvements, I want guys from a security company working on my code not on their proprietary code. If in order to get them to do that for me, I have to allow them to use my code in a proprietary device that only runs versions of my code that they have verified as meeting their standards, that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. I get code improvements I can use in this project and the next, they get to market their system as secure.
For me it's interesting to note that RMS has said that there would have been no issues with TIVO if they had used ROM instead of FLASH to store the software. Because TIVO gave thier customers a means of updating their system without having to send it back to the factory, he feels it's a violation of the principles of the GPLv2. To me, that's where GPLv3 crosses the line from a software liscense into the realm of technical mandating.
The short answer is yes.
It's very different in that it's a visual repitition rather than auditory repitition, but the concept is understood. ASL, PSE, & SEE poetry usually isn't very good from an auditory standpoint, but visually it's usually nicely patterned with good flow.
It's a sharp cinnimon [sp?] gum. Likely to be US only, the plenty pack is 20 sticks IIRC.
90 days, most billing cycles are @ 30 day intervals with a 90 day objection policy. So they would need to keep records for 90 days in order to support their claims - assuming metered service of course.
When I was in school, my botany teacher had a grant from Asia somewhere - researching growing hemp with longer fibers - for better rope/fabric/whatever. She had 3 bankers boxes of documents, and an armed guard 24/7 at the greenhouse in order to do it. The physics/chemistry building across the way had radioactive tracer materials in a lead box in the storeroom, which was guarded by a workstudy & a flimsy door w/ a glass window.
Best part was, someone spilled their dimebag in the quad & they had it growing in the center of the campus.
IIRC, last time the records issue came up, they determined it would cost ~$400M a year to keep all the records they wanted. Their other determination was it would help prevent the abuse of about 300 - 400 children.
The FBI & several other policing agencies said "Just give us the money & we'll help a hell of a lot more people." I doubt very much that has changed in the last 3 years.
I think the magical part was that the newsreader coudln't tell before you downloaded it.
After all, cherry_pie.jpg from the alt.food.desert newsgroup isn't supposed to be a nudie shot.
I don't know if marketing is an honest task, but there are laws reguarding truth in advertising. There are just ethics guidelines for being a politician.
I know that my JVEC NIC (ne2000 clone circa 1998 - RJ 45 & BNC) worked under FC4 but couldn't be auto detected under FC5. However, insmod put the ne2000 driver in & it worked fine. So it's not so much the actual support as the reference tables appear to be getting pruned a bit.
I've actually had drivers twitch twords me as they pass. You can see them laughing as they drive away.
- Committed purjury - that line states under penalty of purjury.
- Committed fraud - I knowingly made false claims with the intent of profiting from those claims.
That's 2 felonies. IIRC - I have only worked on 1 - that last line on the patent also states that the statements given are true under penalty of perjury. Now if I write up a patent, sign that I know of no additional prior art - full well knowing that there is, I have committed the same 2 felonies. Given federal statutes that a person may not profit from the procedes of a crime - the patent cannot be enforced.Life is simple, no new laws, just the application of the ones already on the books. Also even if it's not an issue of perjury, it's still fraud - and fraud ranging into millions of dollars falls into felony teritory.
RTFA - BASIC because it's what was in the textbooks at school.
There are tons of other languages that could have been used, but each one would have required translating the code in the textbook.
The artical wasn't about the lack of BASIC per se, but about the lack of support for learning the roots of the higher languages. Everyone says - oh, don't play with that crap - go for the higher languages - Object oriented blah blah blah. The point was that that's not how it should be done. Yeah you can learn the high order & then work your way down to assembly, but it effects how you think. When I write my own code, I write from a minimalist stance (no I don't write my own tcp/ip stacks etc), it might not be as portable or modifiable as code writen using standard libraries and structured as modules with blind objects. On the other hand, it's usualy clean, elegant, and faster than doing it with libraries.
To put it in perspective, I have worked with people who think that cobbling together widgets is real programming & can't understand how to do anything more than the simplest coding to make them work nice together. I honestly think trying to get them to build a double linked list might give them a heartattack. That's what David's artical was about. Programming, to him, isn't about objects & high level processes, it's about understanding the processes of logic and math that transform blocks of code into something entirely different - whether the magic of a moving ball on a screen, or seeing the difference in performance for a shuttle short vs an indexed sort vs tree sort - and then understanding why each creates the results it does.
But hey, I'm just a few years younger than him, so I'm still part of that old school approach - what do we know?
Proving they knew of something and signed the document attesting that to their knowledge there was no additional prior art proves a willful act of deception. Given the fraudulent nature of the filing, it should therefore be invalid. Of course this is big business & the law, so should doesn't really play a big role.
Oh the sweet irony, indies hitting MS with the exact same argument the RIAA used against Napster & Grokster.
"Your honor, the federal courts have upheld that despite the substantially non-infringing use of a system, a companies encouragement of people to trade music files makes them accountable for the infringement of their clients.(re Napster & Grokster) We understand that the defendant is claiming that their distibution method of wrapping files in DRM & time limiting usage makes the action fall under fair use, however we humbly direct the courts attention to the [insert number of CC songs available] songs liscensed for distribution under the Creative Commons liscense. The actions of the defendant place their users in direct violation of the terms of this liscense, and as such, MS, by encouriging the users of Zune products to violate the liscense - and thus copyright law as they no longer have a legal copy of the music, is a direct contributor to the copyright infringment of it's users. We feel that the damage done to our clients reaches into the $[asshat number with no relationship to reality] and so ask MS to pay them $[even higher number] to cover our clients losses, their emotional distress, and legal fees. We additionally request an injunction prohibiting MS from further enabling this gross violation of copyrite law."
The beauty of that is that the CCL makes it absolutely clear that you are making your own copy only by accepting the conditions of the CC liscense. If you violate the liscense, you have just surrendered your right to continue owning the music you already downloaded. This is unlike the music industry that plays the "it's a product - wait, no, it's a liscense game". Here you clearly make & own your own copy under a liscense. Violate the terms of the liscense & you void your right to own the copied work => destroy the work or be in violation of copyright. I don't see MS touting this fact while they run around promoting Zune.
I'm not sure you have to prove intent to decieve. All that needs to be proved is that they knew of a specific piece of prior art and failed to include it in the submission. There is a line you have to sign atesting that you have provided all known prior art. Failing to provide something you know about would be perjury and certainly grounds to invalidate the patent. (Perjury is a felony & there are laws on the books to prohibit profiting from felonious acts - they should apply here.)
When you file a patent, you are supposed to include all known prior art which directly applies to your patent, along with an explanation of why your patent in new & novel in light of the prior art. The patent examiner is supposed to just be looking for stuff you didn't find already, not do all the work.
It's already been pointed out by many people that for MS to be involved in anti - malware/spyware software development is a conflict of interest. GM cannot sell a car and then sell wheel retainers to keep the wheels from falling off if you hit a pothole. They have to make the wheels work right to begin with.
For MS to sell a product that fixes the faults in their principle product is a conflict of interest. They should be required to fix the original product, not allowed to double dip on the fix also.
IANAL -etc ...
Spamhaus didn't contest the jurisdiction. If you don't contest jurisdiction, the judge just moves forward with the case under the assumption that you don't object.
In this case Spamhaus didn't object because they didn't care at all. They are entirely a UK organization from what I can find, so US courts in general have no ability to do anything to them. Because the suit appears to be filed against spamhaus, and spamhaus isn't a legal entity in the US, I'm not sure how exactly the court even 'recognized' that e360 was suing anyone
A 2 fer: From these lines, I again get that Windows is the only OS that's suitable for the desktop because it's everywhere.
There is a difference between updating/patching a problem, and continually using 20% of my processor to run filters and whatnot to protect my system. Is the updating system perfect?, no, but neither is the Windows one. I have had several peices of hardware/software fail/re-initialize after Windows updates. It's not a unique phenominon.
- E-mail - until someone emails you an attachment that wont load - please be specific. I have never been unable to open a picture, spreadsheet, movie - not in WM format, word document, pdf, etc that was sent from a standards compliant mail client.
- Web Browsing - until you reach a website that cant play or open something - again - only Windows is ready for the desktop because IE is the only browser that supports activeX &
.NET - any other browser on any other system just isn't ready for the web. If the site is designed correctly - note I do not concider most sites correct, nor does the ADA, W3, etc - then there should be minimal problems.
- Office type document - until the file you had at school/work loads with the wrong formatting (95% correct in OOo is still not correct) - 95% correct in OOo is about 75% better than the wrong version of MS Office.
- Riping & playing music - until you want to buy some music online, to play with your fancy mp3 player (which is often missing Ogg support) - You're right, proprietary DRM needs to be open sourced so that we can do that. Otherwise, check out the many other places that aren't Itunes & whatever it is MS is using.
Note I skipped the IM issue, I've never tried to connect to someones webcam over an IM client, but then again, I guess ICQ & IRC are old school now - damn them fully developed stable standards.Perhaps our conflict is in how we define ready for the desktop.
To me ubiquity in no way implies 'ready for the desktop' - a belief I can support by pointing to WinME and Win95
Nor does the presence of a multi billion dollar industry, built around the failures of an OS, inspire confidence that that OS is 'desktop ready'.
Desktop ready to me implies that after being taken out of the box & put on a desk, the system will turn on, be stable*, and require a minimum of intervention on my part, and the part of the person using it. I find that for the 'average user'** Linux fulfills this role adequately. To me that makes it as desktop ready as Windows & OSX.
* - Stable in the sense of not having performance degridation due to spyway/malware/etc taking up clock cycles. Crash stability does not seem to be an issue for any of the major OS's currently. ** - average user as defined in a previous post.
You seem to have forgotten the rest of my sentance - "My town of 6K people supports 2 computer repair shops that are busy and looking for help" - It's not a generalization based on 6 computers, it's based on the fact that 6000 people can support 12+ people with their PC related problems - not including all the people still under warentees from Dell/HP/etc.
Why? because that's the question you asked : "What happens when they plug in a new $25 usb device from bestbuy/fry's? Or purchase a $5 video game? Or upgrade the harddrive and do a "system restore"?" While I don't usually get picky on sentance structure or spelling - you did create an abysmal compound sentance wherein they was the subject. As for not being able to do it at the local shop - every one in my area has at least one person on staff that can install & configure Linux. From my experiance, unless you're doing a system with proprietary hardware (laptops and some integrated soundcards), there aren't many things that don't work off the shelf except wintel modems. Also anyone who can't figure out how to configure Evolution instead of OE, probably shouldn't be working in a PC shop.
Perhaps, but any more often than bad activeX has trashed a system? Personally I have never had FF crash from Flash, Java yes, but not Flash.
Hmm, easy yes, try getting a 'simple' windows executable to run on a mac. Oh are we talking Documents - like Excel, Powerpoint, etc - you know the ones that won't open right unless you have the right version of MS Office, or know what version they were saved in so you can import them properly? Most of the 'oh check this out it's soooo cool' Windows exe files I deal with have spyware built into them, I still fail to see the problem with them not running.
It's not my implication, I direct your attention to your quote "What happens when they plug in a new $25 usb device from bestbuy/fry's? Or purchase a $5 video game?" Your statement was that people shouldn't run Linux because the cheap $5 bargin bin software won't run. I was pointing out it won't run on a Mac either. For you present comment, I am at a loss as to which simple applications won't run? Solitare - whoot 30+ versions built in along with Mah-Jong, minesweeper, etc. Any time people change OS, they are going to find some applications they could run before but now can't. Is your statement that everyone should use Windows so we don't have to change? As for names, etc of OSS products, I direct your attention to Tucows they have a nice selection to download. Is that so much harder than going out to the store to buy it on cd
Upgrade the HD & do a system restore
Lock up on a website with activeX or flash
Hmm share files from an unknown source - never had a problem there. If it's a virus or trojan - there are a few out there for linux, but I've never seen one on a system, it generally won't run - oh too bad, so sad. What type of files were you discussing - TIFF, JPG,GIF, PNG,
Purchases a $5 video game - how quaint. If it's for Win98 it'll probably run under wine, if not oh well. By the way, do you tell people not to buy Macs because they can't run the $5 software they can pick up at the local bargain bin?
OK, how about I have only had to do an install/configure for the Ubuntu computers. For every Windows machine I have worked on, I see it about every 6 months to clean it out so it runs passibly again. From that perspective you tell me which is the better system for the 'average user'.
Obviously Ubuntu is not going to work for a gamer - but gamers aren't the 'average user' either. Most systems are purchased to do email, web browsing, and/or office work. For those 3 things, Ubuntu and Fedora (the 2 distro's I use) are better than WinXP. They are more stable - not strictly in terms of crashes, but in terms of long term stability & maintenance of function.
Linux file systems don't fragment files like NTFS does (95% file fragmentation on a 9 month old system), mystery processes don't spawn randomly & repeatedly eating 90% of the processor (MS & AOL malware killing each other off). I see those things daily at my corperate job and in private work.
End result for me - systems I build with Linux I don't see again until there's a hardware failure. Windows systems are at my door every 6 months for a tuneup. To me that says that Linux systems are better for the 'average user', Windows just seems to be better for my wallet.