It seems impractical to buy hardware built for a single purpose when you can get software for the same purpose that runs on hardware you already own. Someone mentioned an HP emulator already, here are some more graphing calculators:
Another link allows you to send e-mail to friends so they can download a copy of the song playable for 10 days.
Hmm. This could be automated.
Some enterprising soul could make software that periodically scans the CD drive of anybody who wants to share a disk with the world. Whenever a CD (or a bunch of CDs if you have a jukebox) is available, it sends the play list to a central location. Anybody who wanted a 10 day copy would send a request to the central location which would send a request to the central site which would forward the requester's email address to the sharing software. The sharing software would then email a copy of the requested song.
The beauty of this is that it would all be done with the permission of the publisher, since they have already given tacit permission to share the song by implementing this feature.
In a press release SCO claims that HP's actions support SCO's position. I expect HP to shoot back a response to say HP's actions are to assure customers that SCO is full of it. Of course, that's all just more ink to keep SCO in the news and prop up their plummeting stock value.
Somebody finally did the math. Take the cost of defending companies against SCO's meritless lawsuits (A) and compare it to the amount of money to be gained from clueless PHBs who want some guarantees when they buy their Linux boxes (B). If A is greater than B, then indemnify your clients. Since it looks like nobody is paying the SCO license fee (except Sun and Microsoft), SCO's warchest for lawsuits will continue to dwindle, further reducing the cost of A.
Sure, their execs are making a bundle, but they're not going to use it to launch lawsuits that would force them to reveal what code they're claiming to own, especially since they know they wouldn't win.
One of the problems with the way that the industry works is that they want to make fewer songs and sell more copies of the same song. I, for one, am sick of Brittany/Christina and the rest of the generic bare-midriff clones with heavy backing and little talent.
The cure would be to encourage more artists to post their music for a small fee, removing the cost of distribution and promotion; letting the art speak for itself. There are some signs of this happening in the US as the RIAA's draconian tactics drive more people away from the album formats preferred by the big studios.
But if the Canadian system taxes all blank media and gives the money to the big studios, they're short-circuiting that evolutionary process. I doubt the small-time artists with a few songs on the web are going to get any money from the media tax no matter how often their works are copied.
As anyone who has read Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown knows, the "damages" in computer hacking cases can be absurdly inflated. The funny money corporations use internally to charge services back to departments don't translate into real damages and corporations can inflate the "damages" in order to make an example of the offender.
But this guy was using a Times account to order outside services from LexisNexis and those guys ain't cheap. I suspect the victims will also be able to quantify how much it took to repair their system. However, I hope they're not counting the cost of closing the security holes since Lamo only exploited the holes -- he didn't make them.
I've got more than a dozen books on my PDA (a Visor) and I read them pretty much whenever I want, although I haven't risked the tub yet. The PDA is backlit, so I can even read in the dark.
I get them from Peanut Press and the price is reasonable -- cheaper than the dead-tree edition. Check out Sherlock homes as an ebook versus hard cover. The only DRM is that my credit card number is the decryption key, so I can't go posting the thing all over the place, but I can back them all up to a CD and load or unload them as I please. I keep my screen set on large print, so I have to "turn the page" (i.e., touch the bottom of the screen) more often, but I think it's a good deal.
When is the business world gonna wake up and *SMACK* SCO so I can cover my short positions?
Perhaps when nobody ponies up the $699 per CPU. I'm amazed the farce has gone on this long. I've seen no credible theory that would get SCO any money out of their claims, and yet their stock price has continued to go up.
I guess this is another place where it is important not to underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
If you're interested in hydrogen you'll probably be interested in an article in Popular Science on how the first retail hydrogen station is opening in Iceland. Makes sense since the country has few cars and lots of geothermal electricity coming from the Reykjanes geothermal area where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
6. Even if Linux contains SCO code, you might not be infringing. If you run devices with Linux pre-installed, your system might not be using copies of the files that SCO says are infringing. Since nobody knows yet what portions of Linux are alleged to be infringing, it is too early to tell.
Nobody uses every feature in Linux. This seems to imply that a company that uses Linux can reply to SCO's blackmail letter with something like, "We don't use all of Linux, so please tell us what code is infringing so we can tell if we're using it." Since SCO is keeping that a secret, the letter still has not given you the information you need to determine if you're infringing, so you're clear until SCO reveals where the infringement is.
At that point, the infringing code will be written out and the problem goes away.
I think he misses a point when he asks if IBM is a customer of Caldera's Linux. IBM is an interested party with regard to Caldera Linux because IBM is a major Linux contributor, so if Caldera tries to sell Linux, they are selling property which IBM released under GPL. In other words, they're violating the contract which all Linux contributors have in common with all Linux distributors.
SCO has to go to trial and they have to pretend that they really thought they had a case, whether they did or not. If they admit that it was a pump and dump scheme, they are going to be sued by every investor stuck with SCO stock when the balloon bursts.
And the plunge is on! As everyone on Slashdot knew, SCO's press releases were a pump and dump. And it looks like those who got in early (before March) look like they've made out big with a ten-fold gain in their initial investment. Some SCO execs have already done their dump and taken their gains, but time is running out. Looking at this week you can see that SCO's peak has been reached. The news that Red Hat was on the counter-attack sent the stock down early this week, but it partially recovered. But now it looks like the nosedive has begun in earnest. With Big Blue weighing in with a lawsuit any chance of a buyout has been snuffed out. SCO has yet to produce any evidence and the number of True Believers who think there might be something there is dwindling fast.
So the big question; who shorted the stock? What was the price point and when do you plan to cash in? C'mon, fess up. We're all rooting for you to make a killing from SCO's flameout as we get the pleasure of watching Darl's FUD machine go crashing into the sea.
Any developer who released code under the GPL can now sue SCO for selling that code in violation of the terms under which it was released. There were no grounds for a lawsuit until SCO started charging.
You can just get a regular disposable camera and send it to one of the places that offer digital images with developing (like Snapfish). About three bucks for a disposable camera and three for developing. And if you lose the camera (which is why I get disposables anyway) you're only out three bucks, not eleven.
Distributing copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is illegal. Nothing murky about it.
Not quite. There is a whole chunk of copyright law dealing matters like fair use. You're supposed to be able to do what's necessary to use material obtained legitimately (like copying a CD to tape or making backups) and resell material you bought (like secondhand books). Current law and practice has been running roughshod over these, expanding the rights of copyright holders and restricting those of the public.
Keep in mind that these works did not come from a vacuum, but are built from the preexisting intellectual wealth of the societies in which they were born. Disney didn't invent the plots in their own movies but raided works like the Brother's Grimm and traditional stories. While artists need to be rewarded for their contributions to public discourse, the current copyright laws attempt to dam the stream and not release those contributions for over a century.
When I was a kid in the 60s these were called "automats". I thought they were cool, but they never caught on. It turned out that people would rather deal with people and automats were eventually replaced by McDonalds.
Patents are still a load of crap, including Microsoft's, and they should all be scrapped. Until then, however, it's poetic justice to see Microsoft hoist on the patent petard for a change.
Every profession has jargon. It's just a verbal shorthand for those who need to communicate complex concepts related to a specific field. If my surgeon wants something "stat", I don't want him wasting time with a long-winded explanation of how important it is. If I need another three gig of disk for the database I don't want to refer to it as "three billion characters of disk storage."
The average consumer only needs a general idea of what most technical terms mean. For example, they need to be able to understand that 200 megahertz is twice as fast as 100 megahertz. It works in other fields; how many people who use "horsepower" to describe an engine know that it translates to 550 foot-pounds of work per second?
As for getting people to buy the latest gadget, the right answer is not to have the technical folk stop speaking in jargon, but to have marketing explain new technologies in terms the public understands.
I just wish someone would fight back legally at SCO.
IANAL, but that shouldn't be too hard. SCO (formerly Caldera) has been distributing Linux for years under the GPL. Since the GPL is a grant of rights from the various copyright holders, SCO will be in breach of contract if they are found to have been distributing the code for profit without intending to honor the GPL. While SCO may claim that they didn't know when their code was included in Linux, they continued to distribute it for some time even after launching their lawsuit.
After that, it's a matter of coordination to bring together all the Linux contributors, both private and corporate, who want to sue. Since the corporations and individuals both make money off Linux one way or another, they would be suing for damages to their businesses caused by SCO's willful contract infringement. The corporations could field their own lawyers and the individuals could agree to give up a portion of their part of the final settlement (if any) in exchange for the legal services provided.
Maybe now the folks swapping songs online will wake up to the legal options. Why pay RIAA's extortionist prices for the tiny handful of artists that they choose to promote when there are so many others out there posting their work on the 'Net for a fraction of the cost? I suspect that the RIAA is going to be surprised by the unintended results of this move.
Slashdot Mirror
- Imagimath
- MathU
- PowerOne
- And even a few freeware programs.
I haven't tried them -- I manage with the Calc+ that came with my old Visor -- but they're certainly worth considering if you own a Palm PDA.Some enterprising soul could make software that periodically scans the CD drive of anybody who wants to share a disk with the world. Whenever a CD (or a bunch of CDs if you have a jukebox) is available, it sends the play list to a central location. Anybody who wanted a 10 day copy would send a request to the central location which would send a request to the central site which would forward the requester's email address to the sharing software. The sharing software would then email a copy of the requested song.
The beauty of this is that it would all be done with the permission of the publisher, since they have already given tacit permission to share the song by implementing this feature.
In a press release SCO claims that HP's actions support SCO's position. I expect HP to shoot back a response to say HP's actions are to assure customers that SCO is full of it. Of course, that's all just more ink to keep SCO in the news and prop up their plummeting stock value.
Sure, their execs are making a bundle, but they're not going to use it to launch lawsuits that would force them to reveal what code they're claiming to own, especially since they know they wouldn't win.
The cure would be to encourage more artists to post their music for a small fee, removing the cost of distribution and promotion; letting the art speak for itself. There are some signs of this happening in the US as the RIAA's draconian tactics drive more people away from the album formats preferred by the big studios.
But if the Canadian system taxes all blank media and gives the money to the big studios, they're short-circuiting that evolutionary process. I doubt the small-time artists with a few songs on the web are going to get any money from the media tax no matter how often their works are copied.
But this guy was using a Times account to order outside services from LexisNexis and those guys ain't cheap. I suspect the victims will also be able to quantify how much it took to repair their system. However, I hope they're not counting the cost of closing the security holes since Lamo only exploited the holes -- he didn't make them.
I get them from Peanut Press and the price is reasonable -- cheaper than the dead-tree edition. Check out Sherlock homes as an ebook versus hard cover. The only DRM is that my credit card number is the decryption key, so I can't go posting the thing all over the place, but I can back them all up to a CD and load or unload them as I please. I keep my screen set on large print, so I have to "turn the page" (i.e., touch the bottom of the screen) more often, but I think it's a good deal.
I guess this is another place where it is important not to underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.
If you're interested in hydrogen you'll probably be interested in an article in Popular Science on how the first retail hydrogen station is opening in Iceland. Makes sense since the country has few cars and lots of geothermal electricity coming from the Reykjanes geothermal area where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
At that point, the infringing code will be written out and the problem goes away.
So when are they going to cross ninjas with turtles?
I think he misses a point when he asks if IBM is a customer of Caldera's Linux. IBM is an interested party with regard to Caldera Linux because IBM is a major Linux contributor, so if Caldera tries to sell Linux, they are selling property which IBM released under GPL. In other words, they're violating the contract which all Linux contributors have in common with all Linux distributors.
So the big question; who shorted the stock? What was the price point and when do you plan to cash in? C'mon, fess up. We're all rooting for you to make a killing from SCO's flameout as we get the pleasure of watching Darl's FUD machine go crashing into the sea.
Any developer who released code under the GPL can now sue SCO for selling that code in violation of the terms under which it was released. There were no grounds for a lawsuit until SCO started charging.
Programmers have been running on Jolt for years, now it can run their computers as well.
You can just get a regular disposable camera and send it to one of the places that offer digital images with developing (like Snapfish). About three bucks for a disposable camera and three for developing. And if you lose the camera (which is why I get disposables anyway) you're only out three bucks, not eleven.
Keep in mind that these works did not come from a vacuum, but are built from the preexisting intellectual wealth of the societies in which they were born. Disney didn't invent the plots in their own movies but raided works like the Brother's Grimm and traditional stories. While artists need to be rewarded for their contributions to public discourse, the current copyright laws attempt to dam the stream and not release those contributions for over a century.
When I was a kid in the 60s these were called "automats". I thought they were cool, but they never caught on. It turned out that people would rather deal with people and automats were eventually replaced by McDonalds.
The average consumer only needs a general idea of what most technical terms mean. For example, they need to be able to understand that 200 megahertz is twice as fast as 100 megahertz. It works in other fields; how many people who use "horsepower" to describe an engine know that it translates to 550 foot-pounds of work per second?
As for getting people to buy the latest gadget, the right answer is not to have the technical folk stop speaking in jargon, but to have marketing explain new technologies in terms the public understands.
After that, it's a matter of coordination to bring together all the Linux contributors, both private and corporate, who want to sue. Since the corporations and individuals both make money off Linux one way or another, they would be suing for damages to their businesses caused by SCO's willful contract infringement. The corporations could field their own lawyers and the individuals could agree to give up a portion of their part of the final settlement (if any) in exchange for the legal services provided.
Maybe now the folks swapping songs online will wake up to the legal options. Why pay RIAA's extortionist prices for the tiny handful of artists that they choose to promote when there are so many others out there posting their work on the 'Net for a fraction of the cost? I suspect that the RIAA is going to be surprised by the unintended results of this move.