I think I'll save you the nightmare of what has to go in front of a perl script in windows to make it execute from the command line without having to invoke perl yourself.
Basically, the windows equivalent of #!/usr/bin/perl
It's called Cygwin. It is one of the first things I install on any windows machine I have to develop on (and many that I don't). Off the top of my head it looks something like this:
find./ -name "*.c" -print | grep -v "\.svn" | xargs grep -in "the string im searching for"
With everything but the search string conveniently stored away in a script. I first pieced that together to gain familiarity with a ~200K line project and have used it ever since on much larger ones.
I used to work in a similar environment in a university. Tons of windows machines, that I didn't have admin access to. I just carried a usb with me with all sorts of tools that didn't require any more access than a user would have. Seriously borland made a grep for dos that was 7 k back in the 90's. It doesn't sound like you were very creative, but your story does illustrate why the lack of decent command line tools *by default* sucks.
I didn't even have physical access to the machines. We just RDPed into them, and I had to be logged into every machine at the same time.
While I had a DFS share that had some of my own tools in it, the problem with running GVim or such off of that is just one of convenience... there were already decent command-line tools available... findstr really does cover everything that I've ever tried to do with grep...
So, the effort of going out of my way to jury rig all this stuff together wasn't any better than just using the tools that were present.
We don't really NEED grep... We just need a tool that works LIKE grep.
Sysinternals has a great tool you can use to automate installs / run software on multiple machines at once, called psexec. Depends on whether you need to run them interactively, in which case you'd have to also script a login. In the future maybe that's a workable solution for you, especially if you have to use large numbers of computers running Windows. Without grep, head, tail, less, etc I'd feel a bit frustrated. Of course if you're discouraged from installing something that's another issue as well. If nothing else there's always group policy. YMMV.
Well, I've already left Microsoft anyways. But the worth of installing the software on the various computers just doesn't match up when I have all the functionality already there.
findstr for grep, head for head, tail for tail, and for less, most of the time I just redirected to a file so I could read it in notepad anyways (lots easier that way sometimes).
because wingrep has a gui that makes your life easier then crappy commandline findstr? command line under windows is fail at the best of times, i couldn't imagine having to work with it (oh wait i do now and it SUCKS)
... this fails the argument that I've been having because people are saying to use grep, which is a commandline as well.
GUI vs CLI is an entirely different matter on this issue, I did use WinDiff which is a GUI front-end to diff, mostly because it was already there... but it was also very convenient tool to use, and I liked it. I would appreciate anyone pointing me to an equivalent tool in *nix space.
Most of these machines require no more input than logging in and starting up a single app... thus no reason to install special software on them.
Then, something would break, and I would have to read logs, and/or code on the actual box that had the exact problem. Spending an hour installing apps to do my job would be an unacceptable use of my time, and delay the build unnecessarily.
"Then something would break" contradicts the earlier statement "no more input than logging in"
The fact that something is likely to break, and you will need to troubleshoot it, should be reason enough in itself to install some (small) convenient, unobtrusive troubleshooting tools, as standard practice, and as part of the standard initial installs for those servers, to make troubleshooting faster and not require software installations or elaborate practices when things do break.
You missed a part before the quote that you pulled out. "Most of the machines required no more input".
My statements remains consistent and not contradictory when only 2 machines typically need direct interfacing.
And small convenient, unobtrusive troubleshooting tools WERE installed as standard practice on the machines... I already said that there was dir/s/b, and findstr... do I have to have "find" and "grep" when I had tools with the same functionality?
When I started off, there was a big learning curve because of the new tools, but by the time I left, it was as second nature to me as was find and grep when I joined.
are you for real. google win grep, or are you going to tell me windows doesn't really have google either?
Well, they actually had an internal webpage that would do Google and MSN search (at the time) at the same time and allow you to rate how well MSN search did compared to Google.
But why install grep, when findstr has all the same functionality? Just because I'm familiar with it?
So Microsoft themselves hired you to work on Windows, although you were a Mac user and had absolutely no real experience with Windows?
Not only that, but you had to manually log in to hundreds of systems just to run a script? They didn't push for this to be automated, and you tossed back on the street where you belong? What the hell?
Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that your story is true. It's the sort of shit that we should expect from any large company, especially Microsoft. Please tell me you're an H1B, though. At least then it'd make some sense why they'd hire you. H1Bs typically aren't worth more than a batch file.
Yeah, it took me about a month before I understood that my entire group would be replaced by a few scripts in the Open Source world.
The primary problem was that because the source code was not a "product", the build code was so full of holes and edge-cases and hacks, that it broke almost constantly, and required someone to babysit it for the whole 14-some hours that it takes to compile.
Actually, in my orientation class, we went over patents, copyright, and trademark, and I knew it all, and the teacher asked me how I knew so much, and I told her that I owned a registered copyright on some GPL code, and she was like, "and your managers hired you knowing that?" And I was like, know about it? It's the only reason I got hired by Microsoft... be damn sure I didn't submit a resumé.
Why are you divulging Microsoft's proprietary secrets? What is your employee ID?
\\shindex\search isn't really a Microsoft proprietary secret... it's more just corporate culture... like talking about Blue Badges vs. Orange Badges. Outside of Microsofties, you're likely to get a bunch of "Huh?" But it doesn't divulge anything about Microsoft business practices.
As for me divulging information about MS, I haven#t worked there in about two years, and I don't think that there is any duty of care to ensure that I don't share any trade secrets... any of them that I have are old, and most likely outside of the "trade secret" protections.
If you're here, then you should know that \\shindex\search has a fully indexed codebase for all branches.
Oh, I knew about shindex... there was also an internal webpage that one could use to search all the codebases as well.
I however didn't have to deal with all the codebases, I had to deal with one and only one at a time in general, and typically the code was checked in last night, because if it were checked in the night before, it would have broken the build that previous night.
Actually, Product Studio provided tons of information (better than any code indexing service that was available) about what just changed, and helped out enormously.
I don't argue that had I been in a different group, that I would have had different tools at my finger tips, and many of them could have worked better... but I was stuck with what I had.
No, but to explain this, I need to give you some background.
When I joined Microsoft, I hadn't used any version of Windows at all for any reason other than playing games. After joining Microsoft, I never used Windows at home for any purpose other than logging into the VPN to work from home... and since I did not even have an x86 machine, this required using Virtual PC on my Mac OSX box.
Now, I know of all of these tools, and I even could install GVim on the machine as well. However, I was working in a Build Group. This required me to occasionally log into 100 different machines at once in order to start the build process for WinXP/Server 2003. Most of these machines require no more input than logging in and starting up a single app... thus no reason to install special software on them.
Then, something would break, and I would have to read logs, and/or code on the actual box that had the exact problem. Spending an hour installing apps to do my job would be an unacceptable use of my time, and delay the build unnecessarily.
I learned to use the tools that were available with the environment that I was in. Thus, I did almost all of my programming at Microsoft in notepad.exe, and I'm not kidding you.
Were I in a different group? The results could have been different... but having 100 different machines, most of which I didn't have admin rights to, meant that even just installing Notepad++ or something like that would have been a waste of time.
I like the third option. It seems in general more equitable. I also like the idea that if someone were able to prove sufficiently in court that they were able to make the same invention without dependence or knowledge of the other's patent that they get a free license. Kind of like, saying to bats that it's ok if you're flying, because you didn't "steal" flight from the other.
Naturally, there would be some minor yet distinct differences between the two (bats and birds fly through similar mechanisms, but bats have a more flexible "aerofoil" than birds, allowing them to perform complex and complicated flight maneuvers, like slow flight, and near-hovering flight, which in birds requires a different approach, such as flapping faster, faster and faster.)
The idea here would be if someone invented independently a similar invention that someone has a patent on, those minor differences would be locked in, so that the two cannot use the distinct features of the other's invention, but they share the common grounds of the patent.
Of course, this would require proof that one independently invented their variation.
A good example would be that Microsoft owns a patent on tabbing through hyperlinks on a webpage.
I'm not actually a lawyer, I'm just THAT pedantic.
Well I am actually a lawyer, and knowledgeable on the matters I have discussed. Neither your pedantry nor that of your colleague is supported by the law, as demonstrated by your lack of authority for your positions.
Your title implies that you're a country lawyer, which means that you have not attended law school. However, my colleague is currently in law school, and no doubt he has discussed these issues in classes with not just lawyers, but law professors.
I on the other hand, COULD be a country lawyer, if I were simply able to take the bar exam. I'm confident that I would pass, were I able to take it. I got a 90th percentile on the practice LSATs while drunk, taking the test from 10pm to midnight, and while my fiancé-at-the-time and his mom were arguing in the other room.
If you're going to use the title "Country Lawyer" then do not discount the ability of a non-lawyer to read the law and understand it.
Now, since this is not an actual court of law, and the bar is not required to discuss these law issues, please address my points rather than just dismiss them because I am not a member of the bar.
Ha, ha! Just 4 months ago I joined a project with a code base of about 500k lines. I would call that (the 500k lines one) intermediate in size. There are code bases with many millions of lines. I now feel pretty comfortable finding things in it. And I mostly use find and grep.
At my job at Microsoft, we were in the support end of the core os group. That meant that core os wrote WinXP, Server 2003, Vista, etc, and then it got completely moved over to us to maintain.
Unfortunately, Windows doesn't really have find and grep, but it does have "dir/s/b [pattern]" and "findstr/sipc:"[pattern]"" Once I learned those, that's a lot of what I used to find the code that I needed to fix.
All I can say is that it takes time, and effort to become familiar... and you're just stuck with it.
There are no constitutional protections from the information on your tax returns being used against you in a non-tax related criminal trial.
Please cite case law... otherwise I stand that if such an action were made, that the court system would find it to be unconstitutional.
Since I'm actually going to go ahead and look through all of this now:
From IRS Publ. 17, under the heading: "Other Income":
Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity."
Oddly as well, in "Commissioner v. Tellier", it was established that I can deduct legal fees from protecting myself against prosecution for a crime, if that crime was committed in my business.
Looking over Schedule C (Form 1040), there is no requirement to report what business the business is actually engaged in. There's a "business name" asked for, but if you're doing business in your own name, no business name is actually required.
In fact, there appears to be nothing in the Schedule C that were I to declare illegal income as a business, that it would even appear at face value as if it were illegal.
Good rational points about the award value. Which is likely why the judge threw the award out and decreased it. It seems clearly untenable to argue that the defendants maliciously went out of their way to do all of this. Wasn't the typical up-front settlement for only a few thousand? That seems fairly reasonable for me now...
Well, some of the problem with patent law is when two people invent the same thing... even if it's clear that one person invented it after the other person did. If the person inventing it had no knowledge of the invention before inventing it, then I can't really see how good an argument for infringing on it is (this is an analysis based on merit, not on law).
For instance, that Indian guy, who discovered calculus all on his own. Sure, we'd already done it before, but holy cow, he didn't even know about it, and came up with it himself. I think he deserves a lot of credit for that.
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Defendant materially violated (1) by reproducing the work in copies. While one can argue Fair Use in making backup copies, if I were to make a copy of a song, and put it on a flash disk and hand it to a friend, that would materially be a violation of (1).
Defendant likely did not materially violate (2).
Defendant materially violated (3) by distributing said copies from material violation of (1) through a transfer of ownership. We wouldn't argue this point of violation, if defendant had handed a flash drive to a friend... why should we question it if transfer of ownership occurs through an ephemeral medium with the same consequence as through a physical medium?
Defendant likely did not materially violate (4).
Defendant could likely be held to be violating (5) simply by "making available" for others to come and duplicate.
Defendant likely did not materially violate (6).
All of this is held by Tenenbaum's open statement of infringement.
I was in a court case with my fiancé, against a person who was harassing us, for which we were seeking a restraining order. The respondent to the case was going to submit voice recordings as evidence. The state of Washington requires all-party consent to recordings of communication being legal (a first step in it being admissible). I immediately objected, but when it became clear that the recordings were made from voice mail, I simply turned to my fiancé and said, "well, you consented to it... let's here what you said." Due to the content of the messages, the harassment claim seemed unlikely, and it looked like we were abusing process, and so our petitions were thrown out.
Look, I understand you're being a good lawyer and arguing a point until it's dead, and flailed, and nothing but giblets and bone splinters... but come on... don't call a disagreeing party names over it.
I applaud your reasoning. And while it might not be popular here to say, I think you're absolutely right. In so far as the law works at this time, distributing new copies of a work of art fundamentally infringes the rights of the rights-holder.
The rights-holder is out a lot more than just the price of the single distribution. The market might well bear $5/song if it were enforceable, and there were not free alternatives available due to theft. Thus, the rights holders have had to lower their prices to about $1/song to compete with ALL the rights violators... not just these specific ones that they have brought action against.
The purpose of statutory damages is for someone to use it as deterrence to keep others from violating the same rights... I think that $2 million dollars does so.
Now, I don't think that songs should cost $5/song, and about $1/song is still a little too much in some cases (way better than some downloadable TV Shows on XBox Live though... since I'm more likely to watch those once and rarely return to watch it again.). But that's a marketing option, and I would be one of the people willing to go without my $5/song songs because they are now an unaffordable luxury.
But really... if an artist wants to make a song and charge $50/song to get your hands on it, that's really his right...
Apple is *notorious* about controlling your experience with their hardware and software yet their OS updates have no restrictions, no serial numbers, no registration. It's the honor system that you don't share the DVD with all your friends.
That's because Apple is a hardware company; they don't care if you copy the OS since you need a nice shiny MacBook to run it on and they are the only ones who sell them.
This is so true in fact, that if you look online for Server 2003 Itanium product codes, one will find that there is one and only one. Same for Vista/Longhorn, and likely for Win7 as well.
It surprised me to find this out, but if I hadn't managed to grab up a decommissioned Itanium from our lab, then it's likely that I ever would have any reason or call to actually use Server 2003 Itanium.
Come to think of it, even now, entry-level Itanium systems are close to $3000 for mobo and processor... if you're spending $3k on hardware, there really is no reason to make sure that you paid the $200 for the OS.
And none of this information that you handed over to the IRS could be used against you.
In fact, I seriously doubt that the IRS could prove sufficiently that you under-declared illegal income.
All this of course is moot, because it's not reported in a field marked: "Illegal Income"... it's lumped into a field marked: "Income from Other Sources:"
Being a member of the Socialist Party USA, I read about a lot of stories about the founders of the party that were thrown in jail because they advocated for pacifism and refusal to join the draft.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I'll save you the nightmare of what has to go in front of a perl script in windows to make it execute from the command line without having to invoke perl yourself.
Basically, the windows equivalent of #!/usr/bin/perl
It's called Cygwin. It is one of the first things I install on any windows machine I have to develop on (and many that I don't). Off the top of my head it looks something like this:
find ./ -name "*.c" -print | grep -v "\.svn" | xargs grep -in "the string im searching for"
With everything but the search string conveniently stored away in a script. I first pieced that together to gain familiarity with a ~200K line project and have used it ever since on much larger ones.
Off the top of my head...
findstr /sipc:"the string I'm searching for" `dir /s /b *.c`
Mine is shorter...
grep and find aren't the only tools out there...
I used to work in a similar environment in a university. Tons of windows machines, that I didn't have admin access to. I just carried a usb with me with all sorts of tools that didn't require any more access than a user would have. Seriously borland made a grep for dos that was 7 k back in the 90's. It doesn't sound like you were very creative, but your story does illustrate why the lack of decent command line tools *by default* sucks.
I didn't even have physical access to the machines. We just RDPed into them, and I had to be logged into every machine at the same time.
While I had a DFS share that had some of my own tools in it, the problem with running GVim or such off of that is just one of convenience... there were already decent command-line tools available... findstr really does cover everything that I've ever tried to do with grep...
So, the effort of going out of my way to jury rig all this stuff together wasn't any better than just using the tools that were present.
We don't really NEED grep... We just need a tool that works LIKE grep.
so like... perl?
More percisely 30-40,000 lines of code is 29,999-39,999 times more lines than one needs to write shitty code...
Sysinternals has a great tool you can use to automate installs / run software on multiple machines at once, called psexec. Depends on whether you need to run them interactively, in which case you'd have to also script a login. In the future maybe that's a workable solution for you, especially if you have to use large numbers of computers running Windows. Without grep, head, tail, less, etc I'd feel a bit frustrated. Of course if you're discouraged from installing something that's another issue as well. If nothing else there's always group policy. YMMV.
Well, I've already left Microsoft anyways. But the worth of installing the software on the various computers just doesn't match up when I have all the functionality already there.
findstr for grep, head for head, tail for tail, and for less, most of the time I just redirected to a file so I could read it in notepad anyways (lots easier that way sometimes).
because wingrep has a gui that makes your life easier then crappy commandline findstr? command line under windows is fail at the best of times, i couldn't imagine having to work with it (oh wait i do now and it SUCKS)
... this fails the argument that I've been having because people are saying to use grep, which is a commandline as well.
GUI vs CLI is an entirely different matter on this issue, I did use WinDiff which is a GUI front-end to diff, mostly because it was already there... but it was also very convenient tool to use, and I liked it. I would appreciate anyone pointing me to an equivalent tool in *nix space.
"Then something would break" contradicts the earlier statement "no more input than logging in"
The fact that something is likely to break, and you will need to troubleshoot it, should be reason enough in itself to install some (small) convenient, unobtrusive troubleshooting tools, as standard practice, and as part of the standard initial installs for those servers, to make troubleshooting faster and not require software installations or elaborate practices when things do break.
You missed a part before the quote that you pulled out. "Most of the machines required no more input".
My statements remains consistent and not contradictory when only 2 machines typically need direct interfacing.
And small convenient, unobtrusive troubleshooting tools WERE installed as standard practice on the machines... I already said that there was dir /s /b, and findstr... do I have to have "find" and "grep" when I had tools with the same functionality?
When I started off, there was a big learning curve because of the new tools, but by the time I left, it was as second nature to me as was find and grep when I joined.
gnutools has a windows bin install- one of the first things i install and put in my path-- diff & grep!
They had windiff, which displayed the diff as color-coated lines where changes were at. (Perhaps xdiff does the same?)
We wrote all our scripts in Perl... that open source enough for you?
MS didn't not have these *nix tools because they weren't good, it's because they had their own tools.
And installing them on 100s of computers that I didn't have admin access to? Kind of unreasonable...
are you for real. google win grep, or are you going to tell me windows doesn't really have google either?
Well, they actually had an internal webpage that would do Google and MSN search (at the time) at the same time and allow you to rate how well MSN search did compared to Google.
But why install grep, when findstr has all the same functionality? Just because I'm familiar with it?
What the hell? Are you serious?
So Microsoft themselves hired you to work on Windows, although you were a Mac user and had absolutely no real experience with Windows?
Not only that, but you had to manually log in to hundreds of systems just to run a script? They didn't push for this to be automated, and you tossed back on the street where you belong? What the hell?
Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that your story is true. It's the sort of shit that we should expect from any large company, especially Microsoft. Please tell me you're an H1B, though. At least then it'd make some sense why they'd hire you. H1Bs typically aren't worth more than a batch file.
Yeah, it took me about a month before I understood that my entire group would be replaced by a few scripts in the Open Source world.
The primary problem was that because the source code was not a "product", the build code was so full of holes and edge-cases and hacks, that it broke almost constantly, and required someone to babysit it for the whole 14-some hours that it takes to compile.
Actually, in my orientation class, we went over patents, copyright, and trademark, and I knew it all, and the teacher asked me how I knew so much, and I told her that I owned a registered copyright on some GPL code, and she was like, "and your managers hired you knowing that?" And I was like, know about it? It's the only reason I got hired by Microsoft... be damn sure I didn't submit a resumé.
Why are you divulging Microsoft's proprietary secrets? What is your employee ID?
\\shindex\search isn't really a Microsoft proprietary secret... it's more just corporate culture... like talking about Blue Badges vs. Orange Badges. Outside of Microsofties, you're likely to get a bunch of "Huh?" But it doesn't divulge anything about Microsoft business practices.
As for me divulging information about MS, I haven#t worked there in about two years, and I don't think that there is any duty of care to ensure that I don't share any trade secrets... any of them that I have are old, and most likely outside of the "trade secret" protections.
If you're here, then you should know that \\shindex\search has a fully indexed codebase for all branches.
Oh, I knew about shindex... there was also an internal webpage that one could use to search all the codebases as well.
I however didn't have to deal with all the codebases, I had to deal with one and only one at a time in general, and typically the code was checked in last night, because if it were checked in the night before, it would have broken the build that previous night.
Actually, Product Studio provided tons of information (better than any code indexing service that was available) about what just changed, and helped out enormously.
I don't argue that had I been in a different group, that I would have had different tools at my finger tips, and many of them could have worked better... but I was stuck with what I had.
> Windows doesn't really have find and grep
Um... cygwin?
Ok, again, this time with special emphasis for the retarded... WINDOWS ITSELF does not have find and grep.
Any GNU OS will, GNU/Linux and GNU/Hurd included, as does any BSD OS.
Are you Microsofties really so stupid and ignorant that you're not aware of the ports of GNU utilities to Windows or Cygwin or even your own company's Interix and Services for UNIX products?
No, but to explain this, I need to give you some background.
When I joined Microsoft, I hadn't used any version of Windows at all for any reason other than playing games. After joining Microsoft, I never used Windows at home for any purpose other than logging into the VPN to work from home... and since I did not even have an x86 machine, this required using Virtual PC on my Mac OSX box.
Now, I know of all of these tools, and I even could install GVim on the machine as well. However, I was working in a Build Group. This required me to occasionally log into 100 different machines at once in order to start the build process for WinXP/Server 2003. Most of these machines require no more input than logging in and starting up a single app... thus no reason to install special software on them.
Then, something would break, and I would have to read logs, and/or code on the actual box that had the exact problem. Spending an hour installing apps to do my job would be an unacceptable use of my time, and delay the build unnecessarily.
I learned to use the tools that were available with the environment that I was in. Thus, I did almost all of my programming at Microsoft in notepad.exe, and I'm not kidding you.
Were I in a different group? The results could have been different... but having 100 different machines, most of which I didn't have admin rights to, meant that even just installing Notepad++ or something like that would have been a waste of time.
I like the third option. It seems in general more equitable. I also like the idea that if someone were able to prove sufficiently in court that they were able to make the same invention without dependence or knowledge of the other's patent that they get a free license. Kind of like, saying to bats that it's ok if you're flying, because you didn't "steal" flight from the other.
Naturally, there would be some minor yet distinct differences between the two (bats and birds fly through similar mechanisms, but bats have a more flexible "aerofoil" than birds, allowing them to perform complex and complicated flight maneuvers, like slow flight, and near-hovering flight, which in birds requires a different approach, such as flapping faster, faster and faster.)
The idea here would be if someone invented independently a similar invention that someone has a patent on, those minor differences would be locked in, so that the two cannot use the distinct features of the other's invention, but they share the common grounds of the patent.
Of course, this would require proof that one independently invented their variation.
A good example would be that Microsoft owns a patent on tabbing through hyperlinks on a webpage.
I noted your signature with amusement:
I'm not actually a lawyer, I'm just THAT pedantic.
Well I am actually a lawyer, and knowledgeable on the matters I have discussed. Neither your pedantry nor that of your colleague is supported by the law, as demonstrated by your lack of authority for your positions.
Your title implies that you're a country lawyer, which means that you have not attended law school. However, my colleague is currently in law school, and no doubt he has discussed these issues in classes with not just lawyers, but law professors.
I on the other hand, COULD be a country lawyer, if I were simply able to take the bar exam. I'm confident that I would pass, were I able to take it. I got a 90th percentile on the practice LSATs while drunk, taking the test from 10pm to midnight, and while my fiancé-at-the-time and his mom were arguing in the other room.
If you're going to use the title "Country Lawyer" then do not discount the ability of a non-lawyer to read the law and understand it.
Now, since this is not an actual court of law, and the bar is not required to discuss these law issues, please address my points rather than just dismiss them because I am not a member of the bar.
Ha, ha! Just 4 months ago I joined a project with a code base of about 500k lines. I would call that (the 500k lines one) intermediate in size. There are code bases with many millions of lines. I now feel pretty comfortable finding things in it. And I mostly use find and grep.
At my job at Microsoft, we were in the support end of the core os group. That meant that core os wrote WinXP, Server 2003, Vista, etc, and then it got completely moved over to us to maintain.
Unfortunately, Windows doesn't really have find and grep, but it does have "dir /s /b [pattern]" and "findstr /sipc:"[pattern]"" Once I learned those, that's a lot of what I used to find the code that I needed to fix.
All I can say is that it takes time, and effort to become familiar... and you're just stuck with it.
There are no constitutional protections from the information on your tax returns being used against you in a non-tax related criminal trial.
Please cite case law... otherwise I stand that if such an action were made, that the court system would find it to be unconstitutional.
Since I'm actually going to go ahead and look through all of this now:
From IRS Publ. 17, under the heading: "Other Income":
Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21, or on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity."
Oddly as well, in "Commissioner v. Tellier", it was established that I can deduct legal fees from protecting myself against prosecution for a crime, if that crime was committed in my business.
Looking over Schedule C (Form 1040), there is no requirement to report what business the business is actually engaged in. There's a "business name" asked for, but if you're doing business in your own name, no business name is actually required.
In fact, there appears to be nothing in the Schedule C that were I to declare illegal income as a business, that it would even appear at face value as if it were illegal.
Good rational points about the award value. Which is likely why the judge threw the award out and decreased it. It seems clearly untenable to argue that the defendants maliciously went out of their way to do all of this. Wasn't the typical up-front settlement for only a few thousand? That seems fairly reasonable for me now...
Well, some of the problem with patent law is when two people invent the same thing... even if it's clear that one person invented it after the other person did. If the person inventing it had no knowledge of the invention before inventing it, then I can't really see how good an argument for infringing on it is (this is an analysis based on merit, not on law).
For instance, that Indian guy, who discovered calculus all on his own. Sure, we'd already done it before, but holy cow, he didn't even know about it, and came up with it himself. I think he deserves a lot of credit for that.
...delay release of electronic versions hoping people will buy the hard-copy first and the ebook 6 months later...
You mean, ebooks are the new paperback?
I'll pick up from Theatetus here...
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Defendant materially violated (1) by reproducing the work in copies. While one can argue Fair Use in making backup copies, if I were to make a copy of a song, and put it on a flash disk and hand it to a friend, that would materially be a violation of (1).
Defendant likely did not materially violate (2).
Defendant materially violated (3) by distributing said copies from material violation of (1) through a transfer of ownership. We wouldn't argue this point of violation, if defendant had handed a flash drive to a friend... why should we question it if transfer of ownership occurs through an ephemeral medium with the same consequence as through a physical medium?
Defendant likely did not materially violate (4).
Defendant could likely be held to be violating (5) simply by "making available" for others to come and duplicate.
Defendant likely did not materially violate (6).
All of this is held by Tenenbaum's open statement of infringement.
I was in a court case with my fiancé, against a person who was harassing us, for which we were seeking a restraining order. The respondent to the case was going to submit voice recordings as evidence. The state of Washington requires all-party consent to recordings of communication being legal (a first step in it being admissible). I immediately objected, but when it became clear that the recordings were made from voice mail, I simply turned to my fiancé and said, "well, you consented to it... let's here what you said." Due to the content of the messages, the harassment claim seemed unlikely, and it looked like we were abusing process, and so our petitions were thrown out.
Look, I understand you're being a good lawyer and arguing a point until it's dead, and flailed, and nothing but giblets and bone splinters... but come on... don't call a disagreeing party names over it.
I applaud your reasoning. And while it might not be popular here to say, I think you're absolutely right. In so far as the law works at this time, distributing new copies of a work of art fundamentally infringes the rights of the rights-holder.
The rights-holder is out a lot more than just the price of the single distribution. The market might well bear $5/song if it were enforceable, and there were not free alternatives available due to theft. Thus, the rights holders have had to lower their prices to about $1/song to compete with ALL the rights violators... not just these specific ones that they have brought action against.
The purpose of statutory damages is for someone to use it as deterrence to keep others from violating the same rights... I think that $2 million dollars does so.
Now, I don't think that songs should cost $5/song, and about $1/song is still a little too much in some cases (way better than some downloadable TV Shows on XBox Live though... since I'm more likely to watch those once and rarely return to watch it again.). But that's a marketing option, and I would be one of the people willing to go without my $5/song songs because they are now an unaffordable luxury.
But really... if an artist wants to make a song and charge $50/song to get your hands on it, that's really his right...
Apple is *notorious* about controlling your experience with their hardware and software yet their OS updates have no restrictions, no serial numbers, no registration. It's the honor system that you don't share the DVD with all your friends.
That's because Apple is a hardware company; they don't care if you copy the OS since you need a nice shiny MacBook to run it on and they are the only ones who sell them.
This is so true in fact, that if you look online for Server 2003 Itanium product codes, one will find that there is one and only one. Same for Vista/Longhorn, and likely for Win7 as well.
It surprised me to find this out, but if I hadn't managed to grab up a decommissioned Itanium from our lab, then it's likely that I ever would have any reason or call to actually use Server 2003 Itanium.
Come to think of it, even now, entry-level Itanium systems are close to $3000 for mobo and processor... if you're spending $3k on hardware, there really is no reason to make sure that you paid the $200 for the OS.
And none of this information that you handed over to the IRS could be used against you.
In fact, I seriously doubt that the IRS could prove sufficiently that you under-declared illegal income.
All this of course is moot, because it's not reported in a field marked: "Illegal Income"... it's lumped into a field marked: "Income from Other Sources:"
Being a member of the Socialist Party USA, I read about a lot of stories about the founders of the party that were thrown in jail because they advocated for pacifism and refusal to join the draft.