I've long enjoyed this essay. I find some irony in the linked version, which gives us a teaser paragraph and then:
Download the rest of the article here. Mac stuffit or PC Zip
Considering that the essay is largely about the superiority of Unix, and the blindness of the prevailing PC/Mac culture to the existence of Unix, the PC/Mac dichotomy presented here seems oddly appropriate.
Of course this notion of "downloading" a compressed version is dumb. Harper Collins just needs to add mod_gz to their web server, so they can transparently compress for most modern browsers.
Well put. But corporations are just tools for capital. Maybe the bank in your example will no longer have any employees or branches in America. The corporations can thrive while America dies.
At that point why not just license someone else's code?
The decision to develop a product with your own money or to license an existing product is based on risk. If you develop with your own money (doesn't matter where the developers are) you get to keep all of the upside, if there is an upside. But if the project fails, you pay all of the costs.
If you license an existing, working product you take no risk. However, the licensing fees are an ongoing cost that can eventually be much greater than the cost of developing the product.
Therefore if you have confidence in a product, and are willing to invest, and think that your dollars will go further in India, it makes sense to hire Indian programmers to develop the product.
I think it's pretty clear that SCO has overridden their lawyers on this topic. It seems that SCO wants to make public statements to increase demand for their stock, even if the statements harm them in court.
Well, this is the typical tactic of an enemy of humor. He tries to juxtapose something ugly and horrifying to wipe the smile from everyone's face and shame the jokers. But it's pretty obvious that his real beef is that the movie mocked him. Has he really been sticking his nose into Iraq as he suggets in his "memo"? Maybe he should go back there and get captured by Zarqawi. Then he can appear in a video and lay a huge guilt trip on Parker and Stone before being decapitated. Just a thought.
It's no different from taking the picture yourself, or no different than seeing it take place and doing nothing to stop it -- in all cases you're an accomplice (IMO, IANAL, etc.)
I've watched one of the beheading videos put out by islamic terrorists in Iraq. Does that make me an accomplice to the murder?
A lawyer is an officer of the court. But this idea isn't usually invoked to give a lawyer the authority of a court. Rather it is invoked to restrain lawyers from becoming mercenary warriors who fight so zealously for the client that they harm the public interest. Here's a link.
Furthermore, would this book list all the UPC codes carried by US supermarkets? What would such a book cost? The lab testing of thousands of products would have to be amortized over the relatively small number who would buy the book. You'd have to carry the book to the grocery store and constantly flip through it to find whether this particular brand of baked beans is chock full of sugar. Is that efficient or logical?
And how much will the publisher stand behind his numbers? I bet this book would have a massive disclaimer in the beginning. I'd rather have numbers that are backed up by penalties.
Since the trans-fat number is not yet on the labels, isn't it a perfect test case for the alleged ability of the free market to provide this info through books or other means? Why aren't all the manufacturers rushing to publish this number to preserve their precious reputations? And where is the book or website where I can look up a UPC code and read the trans-fat content, compiled by a third party?
As for the companies waiting till the last minute, I don't regard that as "deceptive" or "corrupt" as grandparent put it. Since they obviously feel that disclosing the truth about their products is not in their interests, isn't it fair for them to hold back until mandated, so that no company is penalized in the market for telling the truth "early"?
They do the bare minimum that is required of them by the regulations.
That doesn't sound deceptive and corrupt to me. It sounds honest and law-abiding. It's also an excellent argument for having those regulations, because it proves that market forces do not impel these companies to tell the truth.
Of course, this ignores the most likely real reason for the labelling requirements, an excuse in court once more of these "fat law suits" hit the courts. It's the same way Philip Morris wants FDA regulation. Regulation means the companies can do whatever they want within the letter of the law and not worry about liability. It shifts responsibility from the producer and the consumer, to the government, and ultimately, the taxpayer.
Regulation means the lines of correct behavior are clearly drawn, rather than the fuzzy lines discovered by trial lawyers and uneducated juries. I think the food part of the FDA is one of the best uses of government money. When you leave it up to the courts, as in the McDonald's coffee lawsuit (regardless of who was right) it's not exactly cheap either. And that ripples through to "us" as customers and stockholders.
I don't want anyone filing "fat lawsuits". I'd rather have conspicuous nutritional labels that let them (and me) plan a healthy diet.
I lean libertarian, but I think mandatory labelling of goods is government intervention at its best. It encourages a market based on facts, rather than lies. It leaves people free to buy the "bad stuff" if they want, which could be especially important if the government's theory of what's "bad" is wrong.
We already have welfare reform - Clinton instituted it in 1996, and pushed 24% of recipients off welfare.
Immigration - I think we should move more towards merit-based immigration. We should aggressively recruit the brightest young adults in all countries and offer them financial assistance in moving to the US to become citizens. We should similarly recruit successful entrepreneurs. These are the people that will help America the most.
There is actually a possible answer. If Kryptonite adopted a core that met the UL 437 standard, we'd know they were reasonably resistant to picking, impressioning and forced entry. Medeco is the best known maker of such cylinders, and Medeco offers a huge array of OEM cylinders for such applications. But they are more expensive.
This bill excludes programs used by the FBI or spy agencies, though.
Now I can expect popups saying, "Have you considered a carreer in Homeland Security?" And that familiar "Winners don't use drugs" screen from 80's arcade games.
Are you sure he calls for a military draft? He does seem to want to enslave high school students in some community-service scheme. Which paragraph contained the military draft?
I liked the Service Captains
complimenting but not supplanting the work done by police, fire fighters, and other first defenders
"Officer Jones, you did a wonderful job of tackling that shoplifter."
"Thanks for the compliment, Service Captain Bligh. I hope you aren't planning to supplant my work."
"Indeed not, Officer Jones. That would violate the Kerry Code, which I am sworn to uphold."
Care to cite an example? Give me the numbers of two patents that patent the same process. And identify which claim of the second patent reads on a process described in the first.
How is it that certain patent-protected large-drug-company-controlled mood-altering drugs have been made legal, and non-patentable non-profitable mood-altering drugs are illegal?
Pursuing FDA approval is hard. As I understand it, nobody would pursue this approval without some assurance of exclusivity to make back the costs. This doesn't support the idea that corporations have more rights than individuals. Is an individual barred from seeking FDA approval for a drug of his own invention? Since our democratic leaders in their infinite wisdom have made the approval process very arduous, one would expect the majority of approvals to go to corporations, which are our society's way of pooling resources to meet a goal.
Is this the prototype of all the "extra corporate rights" arguments? Are you simply saying that some things are expensive and corporations have more money; therefore they can buy the expensive things, therefore they have more rights? Or have you got important examples of government recognizing rights in corporations that it does not recognize in individuals?
The trouble is, every country has some restrictions on expression, such as defamation, intellectual property infringement, nazism and material support for terrorism. Because Google offers cached pages, it is especially subject to these restrictions. Where could one draw a bright line between acceptable censorship and unacceptable censorship? Some ideas:
Any censorship not also practiced by the US is unacceptable. A fairly good rough rule, but it means no ban on nazism, which could get Google banned in Germany.
Any censorship practiced by an undemocratic government is unacceptable. A bit tricky since undemocratic governments usually claim to be democratic. Can a search engine audit the voting systems of the world's nations?
Censorship of primary expression is always OK, but censorship of information about the censorship is unacceptable. This seems like the fairest idea yet. Any legitimate censorship can be publicly discussed without harming the interest the censorship protects.
Not to any significant degree. In your two examples, you misrepresent legal distinctions between kinds of actions as legal distinctions between kinds of actors.
... if I write a program that takes over your computer and spies on you -- I'm a hacker/terrorist. A company does it -- its legit (spyware/adware).
If you obtain the user's informed consent, it's legit. Whether you are a corporation or individual is irrelevant. I also note that you are using the words corporation and company interchangeably. A company may be a sole proprietorship. In other words, an individual.
And what is your basis for claiming that malware authors are charged as terrorists?
Have you seen on TV advertisements for drug companies now selling drugs whose purpose is to "Provide positive energy?" another drugs actual slogan is "It takes the edge off" Yet if I want to do the same thing with marijuana I'm the criminal?
The important distinction here is not who is selling the drug; it's what drug is being sold. The company is selling an FDA-approved drug. If the company tries to sell marijuana under the current law, it will be in violation of the law just as an individual would. If you can develop a drug and obtain FDA approval for it, you can legally sell it.
Note that I am taking no position on either the ban on marijuana or the FDA's approval of these mood-altering drugs. I am merely pointing out that your thesis is incorrect; the corporate or individual nature of the seller has no bearing on the legality of the drug sale.
If that's the case - a purely userland decision to store a time value in an int32 - I still say that Microsoft and those who applied Microsoft to this situation are at fault. Why? Because in Unix we have gettimeofday(2) which stores its result in a struct timeval. In other words, we have a well-established way of storing millisecond-resolution timestamps, and a cultural expectation that timestamps will be relative to the Epoch, not to the start of the program.
It pays for Unix programmers to learn the API, because the API is well thought out, and is not constantly churning due to marketing pressure. Unix is a more stable, mature platform. This leads to more reliable apps.
No, because only a court can grant an injunction. See here.
Now, aside from this narrow point about the DMCA, a lot of slashdotters miss the idea of litigation privilege. Roughly speaking, when someone sends you a communication as part of a legal proceeding, you can't sue him for that. This is why the recipient of a DMCA letter will probably never find a valid reason to sue the sender.
DirecTV sent out letters to purchasers of smartcard equipment demanding money on the grounds that they were signal pirates. They sued DirecTV, who used litigation privilege as a defense. I think the case is still in the courts.
The part you quoted refers to injunctive relief. That means, if the accuser lies and the court grants an injunction against the accused then the accuser is liable for damages.
That does not extend to all cases of someone damaging your business with false accusations. It does not extend to this case, as no injunction has been sought or granted.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that the essay is largely about the superiority of Unix, and the blindness of the prevailing PC/Mac culture to the existence of Unix, the PC/Mac dichotomy presented here seems oddly appropriate.
Of course this notion of "downloading" a compressed version is dumb. Harper Collins just needs to add mod_gz to their web server, so they can transparently compress for most modern browsers.
Well put. But corporations are just tools for capital. Maybe the bank in your example will no longer have any employees or branches in America. The corporations can thrive while America dies.
The decision to develop a product with your own money or to license an existing product is based on risk. If you develop with your own money (doesn't matter where the developers are) you get to keep all of the upside, if there is an upside. But if the project fails, you pay all of the costs.
If you license an existing, working product you take no risk. However, the licensing fees are an ongoing cost that can eventually be much greater than the cost of developing the product.
Therefore if you have confidence in a product, and are willing to invest, and think that your dollars will go further in India, it makes sense to hire Indian programmers to develop the product.
I think it's pretty clear that SCO has overridden their lawyers on this topic. It seems that SCO wants to make public statements to increase demand for their stock, even if the statements harm them in court.
Well, this is the typical tactic of an enemy of humor. He tries to juxtapose something ugly and horrifying to wipe the smile from everyone's face and shame the jokers. But it's pretty obvious that his real beef is that the movie mocked him.
Has he really been sticking his nose into Iraq as he suggets in his "memo"? Maybe he should go back there and get captured by Zarqawi. Then he can appear in a video and lay a huge guilt trip on Parker and Stone before being decapitated. Just a thought.
That is, "You exist to harsh on him" or "You live to criticize him".
I've watched one of the beheading videos put out by islamic terrorists in Iraq. Does that make me an accomplice to the murder?
A lawyer is an officer of the court. But this idea isn't usually invoked to give a lawyer the authority of a court. Rather it is invoked to restrain lawyers from becoming mercenary warriors who fight so zealously for the client that they harm the public interest.
Here's a link.
Furthermore, would this book list all the UPC codes carried by US supermarkets? What would such a book cost? The lab testing of thousands of products would have to be amortized over the relatively small number who would buy the book. You'd have to carry the book to the grocery store and constantly flip through it to find whether this particular brand of baked beans is chock full of sugar. Is that efficient or logical?
And how much will the publisher stand behind his numbers? I bet this book would have a massive disclaimer in the beginning. I'd rather have numbers that are backed up by penalties.
Since the trans-fat number is not yet on the labels, isn't it a perfect test case for the alleged ability of the free market to provide this info through books or other means? Why aren't all the manufacturers rushing to publish this number to preserve their precious reputations? And where is the book or website where I can look up a UPC code and read the trans-fat content, compiled by a third party?
As for the companies waiting till the last minute, I don't regard that as "deceptive" or "corrupt" as grandparent put it. Since they obviously feel that disclosing the truth about their products is not in their interests, isn't it fair for them to hold back until mandated, so that no company is penalized in the market for telling the truth "early"?
That doesn't sound deceptive and corrupt to me. It sounds honest and law-abiding. It's also an excellent argument for having those regulations, because it proves that market forces do not impel these companies to tell the truth.
Regulation means the lines of correct behavior are clearly drawn, rather than the fuzzy lines discovered by trial lawyers and uneducated juries. I think the food part of the FDA is one of the best uses of government money. When you leave it up to the courts, as in the McDonald's coffee lawsuit (regardless of who was right) it's not exactly cheap either. And that ripples through to "us" as customers and stockholders.
I don't want anyone filing "fat lawsuits". I'd rather have conspicuous nutritional labels that let them (and me) plan a healthy diet.
I lean libertarian, but I think mandatory labelling of goods is government intervention at its best. It encourages a market based on facts, rather than lies. It leaves people free to buy the "bad stuff" if they want, which could be especially important if the government's theory of what's "bad" is wrong.
Just a couple of comments:
We already have welfare reform - Clinton instituted it in 1996, and pushed 24% of recipients off welfare.
Immigration - I think we should move more towards merit-based immigration. We should aggressively recruit the brightest young adults in all countries and offer them financial assistance in moving to the US to become citizens. We should similarly recruit successful entrepreneurs. These are the people that will help America the most.
Maybe CNN should have a special keyboard with a button for each news cliche. That would avoid such errors. You could have:
- denied the allegations
- suspected terrorist safehouse
- protect the environment
- protestors gathered
- a court ruled
- violated the pact
- under the terms of the settlement
etc.There is actually a possible answer. If Kryptonite adopted a core that met the UL 437 standard, we'd know they were reasonably resistant to picking, impressioning and forced entry. Medeco is the best known maker of such cylinders, and Medeco offers a huge array of OEM cylinders for such applications. But they are more expensive.
Now I can expect popups saying, "Have you considered a carreer in Homeland Security?" And that familiar "Winners don't use drugs" screen from 80's arcade games.
I liked the Service Captains
"Officer Jones, you did a wonderful job of tackling that shoplifter."
"Thanks for the compliment, Service Captain Bligh. I hope you aren't planning to supplant my work."
"Indeed not, Officer Jones. That would violate the Kerry Code, which I am sworn to uphold."
Care to cite an example? Give me the numbers of two patents that patent the same process. And identify which claim of the second patent reads on a process described in the first.
Pursuing FDA approval is hard. As I understand it, nobody would pursue this approval without some assurance of exclusivity to make back the costs. This doesn't support the idea that corporations have more rights than individuals. Is an individual barred from seeking FDA approval for a drug of his own invention? Since our democratic leaders in their infinite wisdom have made the approval process very arduous, one would expect the majority of approvals to go to corporations, which are our society's way of pooling resources to meet a goal.
Is this the prototype of all the "extra corporate rights" arguments? Are you simply saying that some things are expensive and corporations have more money; therefore they can buy the expensive things, therefore they have more rights? Or have you got important examples of government recognizing rights in corporations that it does not recognize in individuals?
Not to any significant degree. In your two examples, you misrepresent legal distinctions between kinds of actions as legal distinctions between kinds of actors.
If you obtain the user's informed consent, it's legit. Whether you are a corporation or individual is irrelevant. I also note that you are using the words corporation and company interchangeably. A company may be a sole proprietorship. In other words, an individual.
And what is your basis for claiming that malware authors are charged as terrorists?
The important distinction here is not who is selling the drug; it's what drug is being sold. The company is selling an FDA-approved drug. If the company tries to sell marijuana under the current law, it will be in violation of the law just as an individual would. If you can develop a drug and obtain FDA approval for it, you can legally sell it.
Note that I am taking no position on either the ban on marijuana or the FDA's approval of these mood-altering drugs. I am merely pointing out that your thesis is incorrect; the corporate or individual nature of the seller has no bearing on the legality of the drug sale.
I'm the Rescue Rat.
I will found out where he's at.
I'm sniffing.
He had to grasp the nettle, though it made his hands bleed.
If that's the case - a purely userland decision to store a time value in an int32 - I still say that Microsoft and those who applied Microsoft to this situation are at fault. Why? Because in Unix we have gettimeofday(2) which stores its result in a struct timeval. In other words, we have a well-established way of storing millisecond-resolution timestamps, and a cultural expectation that timestamps will be relative to the Epoch, not to the start of the program.
It pays for Unix programmers to learn the API, because the API is well thought out, and is not constantly churning due to marketing pressure. Unix is a more stable, mature platform. This leads to more reliable apps.
No, because only a court can grant an injunction. See here.
Now, aside from this narrow point about the DMCA, a lot of slashdotters miss the idea of litigation privilege. Roughly speaking, when someone sends you a communication as part of a legal proceeding, you can't sue him for that. This is why the recipient of a DMCA letter will probably never find a valid reason to sue the sender.
DirecTV sent out letters to purchasers of smartcard equipment demanding money on the grounds that they were signal pirates. They sued DirecTV, who used litigation privilege as a defense. I think the case is still in the courts.
I'm not a lawyer either.
The part you quoted refers to injunctive relief. That means, if the accuser lies and the court grants an injunction against the accused then the accuser is liable for damages.
That does not extend to all cases of someone damaging your business with false accusations. It does not extend to this case, as no injunction has been sought or granted.