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User: DragonWriter

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  1. Re:SCOTUS is losing it. on First-Sale Doctrine Lost Overseas · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nothing illustrates the collective ridiculousness of the current Supreme Court than this decision.

    So now, foreign companies have vastly greater control of their products in your home than American companies do.

    Only those goods that were not only made but also purchased in a foreign country, and which were purchased subject to an agreement which, if the purchase was made in the US, would be unenforceable because the violate the doctrine of first sale.

    Essentially, this means certain commercial aspects of US copyright law don't apply to sales of goods where the copyright isn't a US copyright and the sale agreement isn't executed within the jurisdiction of the U.S.

    This probably doesn't affect any foreign-made products in most peoples homes; the issue really mostly affects goods bought abroad for resale.

  2. Re:So Almost Nothing? on First-Sale Doctrine Lost Overseas · · Score: 1

    Why pick a Swiss watch? Why not go with something like a Nike football. [...] Furthermore the article notes CostCo but what about Wal-Mart and Target.

    Because the case that the Court heard was between a Swiss watchmaker and Costco, not between Nike and Wal-Mart or Target.

  3. Re:"awesomely bad 80s graphics" on 'Tron: Legacy' Director Explains the Tron World · · Score: 1

    Try renting it. Try buying it. Go on, I'll wait.

    Last I checked (which was probably 2-3 weeks ago), Netflix had it currently available on DVD, but not for streaming.

  4. Re:I Don't Like Amazon's Decision, But: on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 1

    I don't like Amazon's decision, but it's their right. They are NOT the government.

    I didn't realize that it was not wrong for people (other than the government) to take your money for something, and then not deliver what they took your money for.

    I shop at Whole Foods Market. They refuse to sell any products that contain high fructose corn syrup; their business model involves looking, acting, and (hopefully) being healthier than the other grocery chains. Can I reasonably complain that they are attacking my freedom of choice by not selling products that contain HFCS?

    If they previously had a policy of selling foods containing HFCS, and had a program where they allowed you to store purchase foods at their stores and pick them up as you wanted to use them, and then adopted the no-HFCS sales policy and went through all the customer-purchased, on-site-stored food and discarded any items containing HFCS without notice or refunds, then, yeah, you could reasonably complain. Not about them attacking your "freedom", but about them attacking your property.

  5. Re:Causality on America's Cubicles Are Shrinking · · Score: 1

    And to me "they've learned to work at a kitchen table or wherever" is only a small step away from "they're all on call 24/7, because they can work wherever they happen to be."

    As far as I can remember (even before I was working, and observed my parents working) "they're all on call 24/7 if they are salaried, FLSA-exempt employees" has been the norm for employers. Since inexpensive pagers (much less cell phones) have been available, the excuse of unreachability has been largely negated. There's really nothing new here.

  6. Re:What's the open alternative? on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 1

    I was literally just looking at buying a Kindle for myself for Xmas...and then read this...

    I really really don't like the idea of Amazon being able to reach in to my library and burn my books.

    So what's the open alternative?

    The device is irrelevant--there power to burn your books comes from using their store for content. Plenty of DRM free -- both free-as-in-beer and for sale -- ebooks available you can read with any common reader device

  7. Re:And this is why e-books won't replace paper. on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 1

    Not until this kind of crap stops being possible. I don't just mean "Amazon stops pulling Kindle books that people have already purchased and promises not to do it again," I mean when they can't -- i.e. when e-books can actually be purchased, in a non-DRM, non-phone-home format that the people who buy them actually own.

    Ebooks can be purchased that way. Most of the major, non-publisher-run, online bookstores don't support that, and the only one I know of that does (Google's) makes it impossible to determine whether a book is DRM free before buying it.

    The problem will be solved when consumers refuse to buy books that aren't clearly DRM free.

  8. Re:Shakespeare? on Amazon Taking Down Erotica, Removing From Kindles · · Score: 1

    So you are saying that the book of jude clarifies what happened more than a thousand years earlier? Hard to believe that it's authoritative. Oh, wait, the bible is literally true. (Unless you're Jewish, then you don't need to read the second half.)

    Actually, lots of Christians aren't literalists either.

  9. Re:You'd better hope Win 7 for tablets does well on MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES — Again · · Score: 1

    That fact is also the reason why Android is chained to phones and will not make a strong move to unlocked tablets like iOS did.

    No, its the reason that Android already is on a much wider variety of non-phone devices than iOS is, and that that will variety will continue to grow faster for Android than iOS.

    A decent non-contract/unlocked tablet with wifi (possibly video) VOIP is a telco's nightmare.

    Not really. Wireless companies are perfectly happy if unlocked devices exist as long as they can subsidize them in exchange for service contract commitments that are expected to bring in far more profit than the cost of the subsidy.

    OTOH, the software, online services companies, and hardware companies in the OHA all benefit from having unlocked devices available to meet consumer demand.

  10. Re:What does this really mean? on Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail · · Score: 2

    So much for the doctrine that an unconstitutional law is null and void from its inception, as is everything done under its sole authority.

    The good-faith reliance exception to the exclusionary rule, which IIRC is nearly as old as the rule itself, has always been outside the scope of that doctrine (its not seen as contrary to it, since the exclusionary rule itself is simply a remedy to a Constitutional violation, not an independent Constitutional mandate, and the good-faith reliance exception is viewed as essential to the purpose of the remedy, which is to deter unconstitutional actions by law enforcement, which purpose -- the Courts have repeatedly held -- excluding evidence seized under provisions of statute that officers reasonably believed were constitutional does not serve.)

  11. Re:Sensible? on Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail · · Score: 1

    Why do I have a sneaking feeling that this judge has stock in the company that's going to be supplying all the rubber stamps these warrants will receive?

    Which of the three judges on the panel are you referring to?

  12. Re:What does this really mean? on Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail · · Score: 1

    They can't legally compel them, but they can "request convincingly", I imagine. Does this mean that if the police ask my ISP for my email and my ISP hands the records over without a warrant, any evidence gotten that way is inadmissible?

    Essentially, yes (it means that it is just as inadmissible as any other evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but there are circumstances where such evidence is not excluded -- including, particularly, the case at hand, in which Sixth Circuit found that the evidence need not be excluded because of the Government's good-faith reliance on a statute that, while the Court did find it unconstitutional, was not so clearly unconstitutional that reasonable law enforcement officers could not believe that it allowed what they used it to do.)

    In a physical search, anyone living in a house can consent to a search of the property. Can Comcast voluntarily consent to a search of their customers' email?

    While this decision doesn't speak specifically to that issue, in the same way that a landlord cannot usually legally consent to a search of a residence occupied by a tenant for Fourth Amendment purposes, it would appear unlikely that, under the decision here, an ISP could "voluntarily consent" and thus render meaningless the account owner's Fourth Amendment rights. If it was (as is unusual) a "shared" account, any account holder could consent, just as any resident in a home can consent to a search.

  13. Re:ISPs only on Fourth Amendment Protects Hosted E-mail · · Score: 2

    Notice they said an Internet Service Provider's servers, not a small business, or a large enterprise, or a non-profit, or government of any kind. How many people do you know that still use the Email service that comes with their ISP?

    Courts rule on the circumstances presented in the case, which was an ISP. However, there is nothing in the reasoning applied in the decision that is particular to the ISP-customer relationship. It probably wouldn't apply to the business email of an employee where the seizure was with the consent of the business, since those records would be property of the business not the individual user, but the reasoning presented would seem to apply with equal force to third-party personal email accounts (e.g., Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) as to ISP-based email accounts.

  14. Re:You'd better hope Win 7 for tablets does well on MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES — Again · · Score: 2

    It's increasingly looking like Android is fast cornering the vast majority of the tablet market (and by tablet, I mean regular tablet, e-book readers and anything that doesn't have a keyboard and mouse, or an intel CPU).

    Frankly, I prefer an old, well-known, slowly dying monopoly like Microsoft than the fast, aggressive, secretive, personal-data-hungry and quite frankly worrying Google monopoly.

    Android is owned by the Open Handset Alliance, not Google. Google only owned it long enough to get people signed up to the OHA and transfer ownership to them.

    (The fact that wireless carriers, hardware manufacturers, software and online services firms all have a stake in Android is probably part of the reason for its success.)

  15. Re:UI Upgrade? on MS Hypes Win7 Tablets For CES — Again · · Score: 1

    There are tablets out there right now that run W7. W7 is a horrible UI for a tablet as can be seen with the current stuff that is out.

    Judging from the articles I've seen, what MS is showing isn't a traditional tablet, its a new twist on the "tablet convertible" style of notebook computer, or, looked at differently, a scaled-up slider phone. Its primarily designed for keyboard (plus, presumably, some kind of pointing device) use, with a new "layered interface" (whatever that means) mode that is used when the keyboard is retracted.

    Given that they are saying similar size (but thicker) than an iPad, I think the slider idea is pretty horrible, but that's what they seem to be going with.

  16. Re:Yes they do Impress on Why Special Effects No Longer Impress · · Score: 1

    Clearly those people hadn't watched Wing Commander, which did the rotating perspective thing earlier that year without getting lost up its own ass about it.

    The Matrix opened March 31, 1999 and grossed about two-and-a-half times as much in its opening weekend than Wing Commander, which opened only 19 days earlier, grossed in its entire run, so, yeah, its fair to say that most people who were impressed by the effects in the Matrix hadn't seen Wing Commander.

  17. Re:Outdated concerns on Stallman Worried About Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    Stallman should be more concerned about the trend that caused this one: the drastically decreasing numbers of people who actually create stuff on a computer.

    Well, except the numbers are increasing, even though its possible (though dubious) that the percentage of computers users doing creation is decreasing, and its somewhat more plausible that the percentage of user-hours devoted to creation is decreasing.

  18. Running modified versions of cloud apps on Stallman Worried About Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    Because, implicit in the definition, is the fact that the end user can run a modified version of the program. Even if you have the source code, this is not the case with most 'cloud' apps.

    The only cases where you can't run a modified version of a cloud app are:
    1) Where you don't have the source code for the app, or
    2) Where you have the source code for the app, but don't have an implementation of the infrastructure it is designed to run on.

    For apps relying on Amazon's cloud technologies, there are open source implementations of EC2, SQS, S3, and related technologies.

    For apps relying on Google App Engine, there is an open source implementation of most of that released as a development tool by Google, and there open source third-party implementation of many of the features that aren't included in the dev server from Google. (There are even third-party hosts.)

    And while some cloud technologies use special APIs, etc., that are particular to the cloud infrastructure, many "cloud" platforms abstract away the implementation entirely, simply running code that is completely unaware of the cloud. I can run something that is a "cloud app" when run on Heroku on any machine that will run Ruby on Rails.

    The whole 'tivoisation' issue was that users could modify the code, but couldn't then run the modified version on their hardware. Cloud services are the same.

    No, they aren't. If you are running open-source cloud software on your own hardware (and assuming that that hardware isn't tivoized) you can certainly run modified versions of the software on your hardware.

    Of course, you may not in some cases be allowed to run modified versions of some apps on a remote cloud hosts hardware, even if the original version is open source and you have the software. But that's not because your freedom with regard to the software is impaired, its because you've chosen to rent someone else's hardware -- hardware that you share with other users -- rather than buy your own hardware.

  19. Re:News Flash! Water is wet! on Stallman Worried About Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    Most of the world thought he was silly when he predicted the rise of "Tivoization" where most of us would be running free software but not have the ability to modify it because of hardware controls...

    I don't recall anyone, much less "most of the word", saying that prediction was silly.

    I recall lots of people responding with ideas like:
    1) In many cases, businesses wanted the kind of controls on devices that is suggested by "Tivoization" (a response which led to the explicit exception of business-targetted products from the anti-Tivoization provisions of GPLv3), and
    2) For most users, "Tivoized" products using open-source software could meet their needs well, and that whether or not hardware was open was largely an orthogonal concern to free software,
    3) That the particular methods proposed in GPLv3 drafts (and eventually adopted in the final GPLv3) wasn't the best way of addressing "Tivoization", and in fact contradicted Free software principles by place use-based restrictions.

    Hm, I don't know about you but that seems awfully close to the current state of Android right now, with phones being made to prevent people from adding/removing programs or operating systems on it.

    Of course, there are phones marketed with Android that don't have those restrictions, and -- aside from the fact that it may be more difficult or impossible to get a carrier to subsidize the up-front cost in exchange for a contract -- there isn't even a cost premium associated with those more-open phones. Sure, there is less selection, but they exist. How is anyone hurt by the existence of less-free options?

    The problem is, on almost every prediction RMS has made, he has been spot on.

    Usually, the basic market predictions RMS makes are uncontroversial. Its the judgements about the moral correctness and/or the practical impact to the average user if the predict events come to pass that are usually the source of disagreement.

    The integrity of the "cloud" is questionable when you realize who is running the cloud, companies with a large amount of money in advertising.

    Anyone can run a cloud (using completely Free software on commodity hardware.) Some could offerings are from advertising-driven companies. Some are from companies whose main business is hosting. And some clouds are run directly by the firm (or, I suspect in some cases, individual) making use of them. While cloud computing can be used for remote content and application hosting, the technology can also be used internally.

  20. Re:Prior Art? on Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button · · Score: 1

    Wait, hasn't emacs and unix's "man" pages been doing this forever?

    No, emacs and unix's man pages have not been doing what is claimed in this patent forever, which relates to browser based tools that coordinate with a remote search engine to both execute a search and highlight the terms from that search in results documents. (The function is somewhat similar to what a variety of simple local tools have done for quite some time, but the invention claimed is essentially a specific method for implementing that in a non-local system with a search engine back-end and a web-browser front-end.)

  21. Re:Google?! I'm appalled... on Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button · · Score: 1

    Securing a patent is not evil.

    The use of the protection afforded by the patent may or may not be evil.

  22. Filed in the past few weeks? on Google Patents Browser Highlight All Button · · Score: 1

    I'm seeing more and more dumb patents being filed in the past few weeks.

    FTFPatent: "Filed: October 18, 2004"

    That would only fit a rather expansive definition of "the past few weeks."

  23. Re:Anyone ever security audited Emacs? on Stallman Worried About Chrome OS · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, Stallman brings up worthwhile points. You may lose certain legal rights -- in the USA, for example, you may lose your 4th amendment rights. You do not have control over web applications

    Unless they are your web applications.

    the provider can change things, yank out features or add new features you do not want, and you have no recourse

    Unless you have a contractual arrangement which prevents that. Sure, that may not be typically offered on gratis services, but then you have to judge for yourself whether the lack of recourse is worth the lack of up-front $ cost.

    For many people, for many applications, the risk may be worthwhile.

  24. Re:Proprietary Software on Stallman Worried About Chrome OS · · Score: 2

    Anyone who reads and understands the free software definition can see that web applications and "cloud computing" fail to meet the definition.

    Plenty of web applications and "cloud computing" technologies (both infrastructure and applications) meet the free software definition.

    Its, of course, possible to create web-based and/or "cloud" applications that don't, or to implement cloud infrastructure with closed software, just as its possible to create desktop applications that are closed.

    There is nothing inherently non-Free about web-based or cloud computing.

    Its certainly true that Chrome OS relies on an infrastructure that is currently implemented with some non-Free components, though the client OS itself is Free, and most of the infrastructure technology needed to support its use is based on specifications that are open and for which Free implementations, where the primary implementations are not Free, are quite possible.

  25. Re:Slavery and Rights on Judge Declares Federal Healthcare Plan (Partly) Unconstitutional · · Score: 1

    Finally, someone with a decent argument! Though hardly compelling, I think; poll workers are generally not federal employees.

    Neither are healthcare workers in many nations where healthcare is viewed as a right.

    I am failing to see how this is relevant to the argument that viewing healthcare as a right somehow makes healthcare workers into slaves.

    Article I Section 8 is not relevant here, I'm not talking about a requirement that all militia members buy a gun every year. I believe the unorganized militia is currently defined as all able bodied men between the ages of 17 and 45.

    The current statutory definition of "unorganized militia" has no impact on the definition of the militia applicable to the Constitution; that statutory definition just defines the part of the Constitutional -- and universal -- militia with respect to which Congress has elected to exercise some part of its militia powers in a particular manner.

    Perhaps I should have asked, do you think it would be reasonable for the government to force you to buy a new car every year?

    Again, reasonable? Almost certainly not. Constitutional? Perhaps. Both the purpose for which Congress sought to compel the purchase of autos and the mechanisms by which they did so would be relevant here.

    Your repeated questioning of whether an act would be reasonable when you seem to really want to argue Constitutionality indicates a serious confusion. Not everything that is unreasonable and bad policy is, therefore, prohibited by the Constitution.