This is exactly the issue... it's not so much that the general public wants the software to be separated, but it's better for everyone (even the people that can't find the "any" key) if MS is not allowed to fall down that slippery slope they've demonstrated they will abuse.
If it has to be supported, it will be, and that will help prevent MS from exploiting their position again.
It has to do with an enabling tool, to allow others to exercise legal Fair Use.
The corporations cannot easily attack Fair Use -- that was established long ago, and is reasonably straightforward in law.
They are instead, attacking the tool that enables Fair Use, using new laws to make it easy. Just like the days of old when the VCR "time-shifting" was attacked, and probably by exactly the same folks. This tool would prevail in a hearing in the USA, from the old judgement of the Supremes, which allows recording tools that have "significant non-infringing uses." Building a personal movie library is non-infringing. But getting a case to be heard by a high court is not trivial, both in effort and expense.
The only defense is to attack their enabling tool: the DMCA (or whatever copycat puppet law the UK implemented). And it'll take more than 50 sterling to do that.
Of course, open anything goes pretty much against the grain for a totalitarian state like China. The fact that they are adopting Linux to the degree that they are is remarkable in that context, although I have my doubts as to whether "Red Linux" will remain a fully open operating system indefinitely.
In the case of open anything, that applies to things they wrote, not things they want to adopt/steal. Openness provides verifiability, and the rest of the world has all but caught up to american excellence in programming. In fact, russian and chinese programmers are thought to be able to do amazing feats with limited hardware.
I fully expect to hear of a closed Red Linux in the next 5 years, mandated for all government machines.
BTW, this whole thing has to do with only chinese firms selling to their government. This has nothing to do with selling software to the bilions and billions of people china -- only the government machines.
Thus, it will have approximately... NO effect on the worldwide economy.
Editing, moderating, censoring. A network censor removes content that they don't want or violates the rules (network or governmental). Those *bleep*ing actors are free to act elsewhere, but the censors are still considered "censors".
Likewise, MOG's works were removed, not just frozen (not even an editorial note placed at the top). That fits the definition of "censorship" quite well, and you can look it up in any dictionary. Removal of content considered politically, morally, or otherwise objectional. An editor decides collections, or changes text or format while retaining the basic article. These articles were REMOVED.
There was no confusion when I used that word. There are levels of censorship, and I'm not talking about suppressive governmental bodies, McCarthyism, the Iron Curtain, or black helicopters... I'm talking about the complete removal of someone's works by a site that was bullied into compliance to the "morals" of its visitors. Certainly it's a private site, and they can do what they want, but the removal of the material from the press (online or not), for the purpose of politics or morals, amounts to censorship by definition.
Now, instead of concentrating on a word that I did, in fact, use correctly, and instead of concentrating on the low-brow mudslinging journalist I appear to be supporting, and actually looking at it conceptually: Party 1 was censored - people went ballistic and decried censorship, later Party 2 was censored - people threw parties. The difference was that we perceived one case helped Party 1, and hurt Party 2, but we're celebrating censorship in this case.
Now do you see the irony I was getting at? We're consistently celebrating harm to a distasteful party. In the SCN case, many took an anti-censorship stance, but nobody dares take that here because it's not convenient, even though it's pro-censorship. As my original title said, this is a lesson in human behavior, and it's sad.
The works of Maureen were, essentially, public via the website (and only the website). That has been removed, available only through surrepticious mirrors or caches, and we are no longer free to view them. Yet somehow we're happy because she was vindictive to someone we like, and it's nice to be vindictive back.
The works of scientology were, essentially, NOT public and surrepticiously (and probably illegally) made public. Yet somehow we were happy because we're vindictive.
The court system is just a side-effect... the irony is the bias in people's views on what should be freely available to the casual surfer. Sometimes life simply doesn't change, no matter which side of the fence you yell/blog/post from.
This is fascinating. I love groklaw, and read it with enthusiasm for its insight and research and yadda yadda yadda.
But does anyone notice the irony here? You're happy and congratulating yourselves for censorship. When Scientology tried to get details of OT3 removed, there were about 500,000 postings of OT3 that popped up (including here on/. or don't you remember that?) All was in the claim of freedom this or expression that. When in the end, it was really just a big invasion of privacy.
These addresses shouldn't have been published, and the OT3 pages should've likewise been removed.
It's not groklaw, or LBN, or/. directly, but the writers (and commenters) that should learn a sense of propriety. When that sense is lost, we have to deal with the bullshit fallout such as court cases and threats.... and we all lose. Yet, here we are on/. cheering the removal of the complete works of an (albeit annoying) journalist. Whether you agree with the journalist or even if she qualifies AS a journalist is akin to whether you believe SCN is a religion or not... who cares? Most here hate both, but cheer the removal of the works of one but not the other.
Go ahead... if you can't appreciate the irony (no matter what you think of $cientology and no matter what you think of MOG) add me to your foes list. But this is two-faced if you ask me, and frankly, I don't particularly like either of the above examples as a religion or journalist.
They stuff to which you refer (the non-water, non-wetting fire-extinguisher liquid which doesn't harm electronics) has a boiling point of around 45C, which would be too low for an effective coolant unless you use a compressor.
"usurps" is completely clear, understandable, and proper usage in the context it was being used for.
"usurps" is incorrect, and the original poster is correct.
Go Daddy did not take over Netsol. It took over Netsol's position in the market which is an important distinction. What if the title was Go Daddy Absorbs Netsol? That's just as ambiguous.
What the title was missing is an object. Go Daddy Usurps position of top registrar from Netsol would've been correct. Go Daddy Usurps Netsol's Stranglehold is also correct (and possibly more descriptive:-)
You can argue that it was implied and I'll accept that. You can even say that headlines are funny, because they are often intentionally skewed to be ambiguous. But basically the Ruski was right -- the headline was ambiguous and "usurps" was misused.
my dad taught me how to use them safely and said "whenever you'd like to shoot them, I'll go with you." Not quite the same thing with porn, but that's because I didn't ask.
Somehow... I'm relieved. I think I'd be scarred forever if my dad offered to join me when I felt like masturbating.
Was the goal to create a splashy movie that appealed to the general masses that have not read the books, or was the goal to create a movie that appealed to (or at least appeased) DNA fans, with in-jokes and plots only understandable with a-priori knowledge? Where do you want the final edit to fall on this axis, between those two endpoints?
Examples of many LotR and Dune attempts come to mind. The first Dune movie was doomed, for it made no sense without having read the book.
[i]stop jabbering like impassioned no-nothings[/i]
"no-nothings"? Are those the things a toddler isn't allowed to touch?:-)
I'm actually a bit concerned about this ruling. It prevents companies from harassing individuals (Mike Rowe Soft), but it also allows individuals to harass companies. Which is worse, and where's the line drawn?
Trademark law is there to prevent rival companies from making a competing product that depends on name/sight recognition or causes consumer confusion.
It sounds to me like taking the DNS name "FooCo.com" before FooCo can get to it, even to make an antagonistic site, encourages confusion. If they took FooCoSux.com, that's completely different, and that should indeed be allowed in the name of free speech. On the other hand, FooCo corporation should not be able to harass "Yoshi Fooco" into giving up his domain.
This ruling has the unusual effect of ambivalence. Most laws are either obviously good, or obviously bad. This one is.... uncertain.
It's only 2-D, unless you actually count the minute depth as a dimension (more on that below). Time is only a dimension for vinyl records if you stretch the single groove out into a single dimension, which uses time as one dimension (the length of the single groove), and amplitude of the sound as another. Hey, you can spin HDDs forwards and backwards, too, but that has nothing to do with how data is stacked.:-)
But this is 2D only in reference to the basic mono-record with amplitude as the 2nd dimension. Data stacking, like the 3-D stuff with the HDDs is like the left/right channel separation or even quadraphonic sound. So, although the density (and accuracy) is far higher on electronic media, they are doing something similar as was done with vinyl.
The thing I wanted to add relates to phone modems. Originally, they were 2-D just like the vinyl record groove (meaning they sent just a stream of bits, where amplitude gave it a high/low state). But higher density modems actually stacked the bits (similar to the discussed new HD medium) and moved the sound into a higher dimension, where the ANGLE of the sound (not just existence) decided the bit pattern. This effectively quadrupled+ the bitrate, and in essence, added another dimension.
For the average user, 15 years is overkill for digital backups. How badly do you miss your floppy disks?
Everyone here has lamented the loss of a crashed harddrive and that gziped email archive you had, but we're talking about archival stuff -- when was the last time you actually looked at your college notebook carefully stashed away in the garage, or that 10-yo gzipped email archive? When was the last time you cared what was on that 9-track tape other than wondering if anyone had a machine that could possibly read it?
My claim is that for the vast majority of computer users, if you haven't looked at the data in 15 years, the chances are extremely slim you care to retain it. I certainly believe that in the unlikely case you really believe you might want that information (like old business memos and things), there does need to be some medium out there that can store it longer. It's just that most people won't need such archives.
I'd even claim that just 5 years would be enough for the majority of computer users, although the number of people satisfied by 5-yo guaranteed media will be significantly lower than 15-yo guaranteed media. It doesn't sound good on paper, but in reality, I seriously doubt that over half the/. subscribers have pulled out any backups over 5 years old.
When someone tells you something they believe is true (BT is illegal) which you know is false, you cannot use logic. Simply don't argue with them or demand proof, since they can't produce any evidence that it's illegal. Besides that, the person that sent you the mail was probably not the person that made the policy, but is responsible for enforcing it.
The only real recourse you have is to go to the dean which controls the networking group, and get a Decree From Above.
It might've been he who implemented the policy at the behest of the networking dept, but since you're the victim, it's up to you to set him straight. Go prepared with many examples of legitimate uses of not only BT, but of other p2p applications, and even similar ones such as FTP. Show the obvious falsehoods of calling it illegal, and demonstrate the slippery slope.
If this is a state school, the decree from above can actually come from a legislator. Write a (paper) letter and you'll probably get a response.
Same place that filed criminal charges against the owner of yahoo (IIRC) because the american site could be reached from france, and could contain nazi material, and levied fines on them. The french site didn't have such material, either.
... just like the CAN-SPAM act got rid of anonymous and deceptive spam.
Legislation is one thing, enforcement is another. It's good when new legislation doesn't attempt to duplicate existing legislation.
But when dealing with criminals (and there's pretty much no other use for phishing), the sheer number of extra laws broken doesn't matter once that number is at least 1.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly the issue... it's not so much that the general public wants the software to be separated, but it's better for everyone (even the people that can't find the "any" key) if MS is not allowed to fall down that slippery slope they've demonstrated they will abuse.
If it has to be supported, it will be, and that will help prevent MS from exploiting their position again.
This is only tangental to Fair Use.
It has to do with an enabling tool, to allow others to exercise legal Fair Use.
The corporations cannot easily attack Fair Use -- that was established long ago, and is reasonably straightforward in law.
They are instead, attacking the tool that enables Fair Use, using new laws to make it easy. Just like the days of old when the VCR "time-shifting" was attacked, and probably by exactly the same folks. This tool would prevail in a hearing in the USA, from the old judgement of the Supremes, which allows recording tools that have "significant non-infringing uses." Building a personal movie library is non-infringing. But getting a case to be heard by a high court is not trivial, both in effort and expense.
The only defense is to attack their enabling tool: the DMCA (or whatever copycat puppet law the UK implemented). And it'll take more than 50 sterling to do that.
Of course, open anything goes pretty much against the grain for a totalitarian state like China. The fact that they are adopting Linux to the degree that they are is remarkable in that context, although I have my doubts as to whether "Red Linux" will remain a fully open operating system indefinitely.
... NO effect on the worldwide economy.
In the case of open anything, that applies to things they wrote, not things they want to adopt/steal. Openness provides verifiability, and the rest of the world has all but caught up to american excellence in programming. In fact, russian and chinese programmers are thought to be able to do amazing feats with limited hardware.
I fully expect to hear of a closed Red Linux in the next 5 years, mandated for all government machines.
BTW, this whole thing has to do with only chinese firms selling to their government. This has nothing to do with selling software to the bilions and billions of people china -- only the government machines.
Thus, it will have approximately
This is exactly what the US does do.
Many US government agencies do not use Checkpoint firewalls, solely because it's made by a company in Isreal.
China has a much more paranoid outlook. Good for them.
Editing, moderating, censoring. A network censor removes content that they don't want or violates the rules (network or governmental). Those *bleep*ing actors are free to act elsewhere, but the censors are still considered "censors".
... I'm talking about the complete removal of someone's works by a site that was bullied into compliance to the "morals" of its visitors. Certainly it's a private site, and they can do what they want, but the removal of the material from the press (online or not), for the purpose of politics or morals, amounts to censorship by definition.
Likewise, MOG's works were removed, not just frozen (not even an editorial note placed at the top). That fits the definition of "censorship" quite well, and you can look it up in any dictionary. Removal of content considered politically, morally, or otherwise objectional. An editor decides collections, or changes text or format while retaining the basic article. These articles were REMOVED.
There was no confusion when I used that word. There are levels of censorship, and I'm not talking about suppressive governmental bodies, McCarthyism, the Iron Curtain, or black helicopters
Now, instead of concentrating on a word that I did, in fact, use correctly, and instead of concentrating on the low-brow mudslinging journalist I appear to be supporting, and actually looking at it conceptually: Party 1 was censored - people went ballistic and decried censorship, later Party 2 was censored - people threw parties. The difference was that we perceived one case helped Party 1, and hurt Party 2, but we're celebrating censorship in this case.
Now do you see the irony I was getting at? We're consistently celebrating harm to a distasteful party. In the SCN case, many took an anti-censorship stance, but nobody dares take that here because it's not convenient, even though it's pro-censorship. As my original title said, this is a lesson in human behavior, and it's sad.
The works of Maureen were, essentially, public via the website (and only the website). That has been removed, available only through surrepticious mirrors or caches, and we are no longer free to view them. Yet somehow we're happy because she was vindictive to someone we like, and it's nice to be vindictive back.
The works of scientology were, essentially, NOT public and surrepticiously (and probably illegally) made public. Yet somehow we were happy because we're vindictive.
The court system is just a side-effect... the irony is the bias in people's views on what should be freely available to the casual surfer. Sometimes life simply doesn't change, no matter which side of the fence you yell/blog/post from.
This is fascinating. I love groklaw, and read it with enthusiasm for its insight and research and yadda yadda yadda.
/. or don't you remember that?) All was in the claim of freedom this or expression that. When in the end, it was really just a big invasion of privacy.
/. directly, but the writers (and commenters) that should learn a sense of propriety. When that sense is lost, we have to deal with the bullshit fallout such as court cases and threats.... and we all lose. Yet, here we are on /. cheering the removal of the complete works of an (albeit annoying) journalist. Whether you agree with the journalist or even if she qualifies AS a journalist is akin to whether you believe SCN is a religion or not... who cares? Most here hate both, but cheer the removal of the works of one but not the other.
But does anyone notice the irony here? You're happy and congratulating yourselves for censorship. When Scientology tried to get details of OT3 removed, there were about 500,000 postings of OT3 that popped up (including here on
These addresses shouldn't have been published, and the OT3 pages should've likewise been removed.
It's not groklaw, or LBN, or
Go ahead... if you can't appreciate the irony (no matter what you think of $cientology and no matter what you think of MOG) add me to your foes list. But this is two-faced if you ask me, and frankly, I don't particularly like either of the above examples as a religion or journalist.
Ah, thank you. I thought he was referring to Novec 1230 (couldn't find it on preliminary search until I entered "halon alternative").
I had investigated this as a coolant since it's non-wetting, thus leaks wouldn't damage components.
In other news....
Ford's Pinto division is working with NASA towards shuttles that don't explode.
They stuff to which you refer (the non-water, non-wetting fire-extinguisher liquid which doesn't harm electronics) has a boiling point of around 45C, which would be too low for an effective coolant unless you use a compressor.
Very unlikely. Besides the poisonous aspects of mercury, mercury tends to dissolve all metals in contact with it.
If you force mercury over a copper block, that block will be dissolved in a few months.
Got some mercury? Drop a dime into it and watch what happens after a week or so.
I just entered my old email address and received 45 backdated emails.
Karma whore! :-)
"usurps" is completely clear, understandable, and proper usage in the context it was being used for.
:-)
"usurps" is incorrect, and the original poster is correct.
Go Daddy did not take over Netsol. It took over Netsol's position in the market which is an important distinction. What if the title was Go Daddy Absorbs Netsol? That's just as ambiguous.
What the title was missing is an object. Go Daddy Usurps position of top registrar from Netsol would've been correct. Go Daddy Usurps Netsol's Stranglehold is also correct (and possibly more descriptive
You can argue that it was implied and I'll accept that. You can even say that headlines are funny, because they are often intentionally skewed to be ambiguous. But basically the Ruski was right -- the headline was ambiguous and "usurps" was misused.
my dad taught me how to use them safely and said "whenever you'd like to shoot them, I'll go with you." Not quite the same thing with porn, but that's because I didn't ask.
Somehow... I'm relieved. I think I'd be scarred forever if my dad offered to join me when I felt like masturbating.
Høly møly, this was almost exactly what I was about to post!
(The people responsible for the webserver have been sacked.)
I'd extend that question:
Was the goal to create a splashy movie that appealed to the general masses that have not read the books, or was the goal to create a movie that appealed to (or at least appeased) DNA fans, with in-jokes and plots only understandable with a-priori knowledge?
Where do you want the final edit to fall on this axis, between those two endpoints?
Examples of many LotR and Dune attempts come to mind. The first Dune movie was doomed, for it made no sense without having read the book.
[i]stop jabbering like impassioned no-nothings[/i]
:-)
"no-nothings"? Are those the things a toddler isn't allowed to touch?
I'm actually a bit concerned about this ruling. It prevents companies from harassing individuals (Mike Rowe Soft), but it also allows individuals to harass companies. Which is worse, and where's the line drawn?
Trademark law is there to prevent rival companies from making a competing product that depends on name/sight recognition or causes consumer confusion.
It sounds to me like taking the DNS name "FooCo.com" before FooCo can get to it, even to make an antagonistic site, encourages confusion. If they took FooCoSux.com, that's completely different, and that should indeed be allowed in the name of free speech. On the other hand, FooCo corporation should not be able to harass "Yoshi Fooco" into giving up his domain.
This ruling has the unusual effect of ambivalence. Most laws are either obviously good, or obviously bad. This one is.... uncertain.
It's only 2-D, unless you actually count the minute depth as a dimension (more on that below). Time is only a dimension for vinyl records if you stretch the single groove out into a single dimension, which uses time as one dimension (the length of the single groove), and amplitude of the sound as another. Hey, you can spin HDDs forwards and backwards, too, but that has nothing to do with how data is stacked. :-)
But this is 2D only in reference to the basic mono-record with amplitude as the 2nd dimension. Data stacking, like the 3-D stuff with the HDDs is like the left/right channel separation or even quadraphonic sound. So, although the density (and accuracy) is far higher on electronic media, they are doing something similar as was done with vinyl.
The thing I wanted to add relates to phone modems. Originally, they were 2-D just like the vinyl record groove (meaning they sent just a stream of bits, where amplitude gave it a high/low state). But higher density modems actually stacked the bits (similar to the discussed new HD medium) and moved the sound into a higher dimension, where the ANGLE of the sound (not just existence) decided the bit pattern. This effectively quadrupled+ the bitrate, and in essence, added another dimension.
For the average user, 15 years is overkill for digital backups. How badly do you miss your floppy disks?
/. subscribers have pulled out any backups over 5 years old.
Everyone here has lamented the loss of a crashed harddrive and that gziped email archive you had, but we're talking about archival stuff -- when was the last time you actually looked at your college notebook carefully stashed away in the garage, or that 10-yo gzipped email archive? When was the last time you cared what was on that 9-track tape other than wondering if anyone had a machine that could possibly read it?
My claim is that for the vast majority of computer users, if you haven't looked at the data in 15 years, the chances are extremely slim you care to retain it. I certainly believe that in the unlikely case you really believe you might want that information (like old business memos and things), there does need to be some medium out there that can store it longer. It's just that most people won't need such archives.
I'd even claim that just 5 years would be enough for the majority of computer users, although the number of people satisfied by 5-yo guaranteed media will be significantly lower than 15-yo guaranteed media. It doesn't sound good on paper, but in reality, I seriously doubt that over half the
Yep. Is there an www.orrinhatchwatch.com where we can see the action? I'll bet he already received the bill's first draft from RIAA.
When someone tells you something they believe is true (BT is illegal) which you know is false, you cannot use logic. Simply don't argue with them or demand proof, since they can't produce any evidence that it's illegal. Besides that, the person that sent you the mail was probably not the person that made the policy, but is responsible for enforcing it.
The only real recourse you have is to go to the dean which controls the networking group, and get a Decree From Above.
It might've been he who implemented the policy at the behest of the networking dept, but since you're the victim, it's up to you to set him straight. Go prepared with many examples of legitimate uses of not only BT, but of other p2p applications, and even similar ones such as FTP. Show the obvious falsehoods of calling it illegal, and demonstrate the slippery slope.
If this is a state school, the decree from above can actually come from a legislator. Write a (paper) letter and you'll probably get a response.
Same place that filed criminal charges against the owner of yahoo (IIRC) because the american site could be reached from france, and could contain nazi material, and levied fines on them. The french site didn't have such material, either.
In Other News...
Huffy has announced its intention of releasing sports cars.
... just like the CAN-SPAM act got rid of anonymous and deceptive spam.
Legislation is one thing, enforcement is another. It's good when new legislation doesn't attempt to duplicate existing legislation.
But when dealing with criminals (and there's pretty much no other use for phishing), the sheer number of extra laws broken doesn't matter once that number is at least 1.