It wasn't just Oracle's announcement. It was the market press trumpeting the relatively insignificant entry of Oracle, coupled with MSFT's announcement of Hyper-V (and 28$ pricing), causing investors to realize that the share price of VMW had been hyperinflated based upon poor understanding of the virtualization market and presumption that their current market-share dominance was largely unassailable despite competition from every other industry player, both software (MSFT, IBM, RHAT, CTXS) and hardware (DELL, IBM, HP). It recovered today once investors calmed down a bit, and realized that while there is strong competition, VMW has a very strong position.
Full disclosure: I purchased VMW after hours on the 9th, (due to to recent decline in the price, and personal involvement in using virtualization to fully leverage my investment in a dedicated server for my small businesses), was subsequently dismayed at the 12.5% decline, learned a valuable lesson on not fully researching a stock before investing based upon industry knowledge, and gladly took a chance to get out today at a 2.5% profit. Additionally, I am currently holding DELL, CTXS, IBM, RHAT for related reasons.
Did I ever mention the courts? No, I posed some interesting questions, which I fully recognize are considered and answered by humans.
I am fully aware that the courts and the legal system are not machines, but complex systems involving humans. However, I, and others, are also aware that they (coursts, legal system, humans) have been increasingly unable to keep up well with the rapid changes that technology has brought about.
Thus, I posed some questions which illustrate shades of gray that technology enables, and that complicate matters in applying the human legal system.
I never said that modifying the protocols would "fool the courts", I was briefly illustrating the consequences of both answers to the questions I raised. I never stated a conclusion, or resolution, as I would not presume that others could not consider it themselves and reach a different opinion.
You made statements to/about me, seemingly presuming that I didn't know how it worked, did not remember, acted from groundless bases, or needed your 'rule of thumb'.
Luckily, I've been lurking for long enough to know that by starting to post on occasion I might have to read replies like this.;)
You forgot to multiply by the fraction of each file each person got from her.
This raises an interesting question: Does a random block of an mp3 file of a copyrighted work contain enough information to be considered a significant portion of the work? If it does, does that mean by copyrighting a song, any transfer of any block of any encoding of my work (i.e. any string of data) is infringing?
If it doesn't, there is another interesting question: How many random blocks of the mp3 file do not contain enough information to be considered a significant portion of the work?
If this is non-trivial, protocols could be modified to ensure that peers only transfer a subset of the blocks (say 1 of every N) to any one peer (requiring there to be N peers for the peers to obtain all blocks)
Or, even further, send linear combinations of the blocks, as in http://research.microsoft.com/camsys/avalanche/, so the actual blocks of the file are never transfered at all.
When the policy is written down and the lawyers get involved, they fence in a square mile in order to protect an acre. This is done because they don't think anyone will notice and there doesn't seem to be any real cost involved, so it's just prudent to include a fat safety margin around the "real" policy.
A better analogy (IMO) would be to fence in a acre (protection for a greater area) to protect a square mile.
Also, I'm assuming you meant a square-shaped acre not a square acre, as a square acre would be a 4 dimentional space, and though lawyers might try, I don't think they would succeed.;)
It's true that Management doesn't know what code looks like, and most programmers are unqualified to comment on code aesthetics.
However, Management knows that since it can't recognize good code, and since an awful lot of the IT department is apathetic to good code, the company certainly doesn't have good code, so they must have bad code, and hence they are embarrassed.
One aspect of the virtual property rights issue is often confused in these discussions (and seems to be confused in the court ruling):
Ownership of the intellectual property related to content developed in a virtual environment is not the same as ownership of the virtual items.
Linden's TOS recognizes creators rights to the content created within SecondLife http://secondlife.com/whatis/ip_rights.php but that does not extend to ownership of the virtual items:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/12/25/AR2006122500635_2.html
In Second Life, Linden Lab executives wanted to avoid this confusion, believing that users needed clear ownership for economic activity to thrive, recounted Cory Ondrejka, chief technical officer. Otherwise, users would have little incentive to invest.
But he stressed that this ownership did not extend to full property rights -- creators have intellectual property rights to the software patterns used in making virtual objects but no rights to the objects themselves. Under this formulation, Brown owns her designs but not the individual dresses and pieces of underwear. Nor do her customers "own" the apparel they purchase and hang in their virtual closets. Virtual environments that encourage investment and allow currency exchange should ensure that users have rights to protect their investments, which may need to include degrees of ownership of the virtual items. Recognition of intellectual property rights is a start, but should not be viewed as anything close to granting ownership of virtual items.
There is no such thing as an unconstitutional Law. A law is a law until the court rules it unconstitutional, at which point, it fails to be a law. Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionality
The legal encyclopedia American Jurisprudence says the following in regard to constitutionality:
The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void and ineffective for any purpose since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it; an unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed... An unconstitutional law is void. (16 Am. Jur. 2d, Sec. 178)
Any law created by congress trumps state law.
Congress has the right to pass laws according to the Constitution. Those laws that Congress and the Constitution do not forbid are granted to the states.
An unconstitutional Law passed by Congress does not trump a State Law, and Congress is certainly capable of passing unconstitutional Laws. (Choose your own favorite example.)
The Supreme Court has Jurisdiction over Controversies between the United States and a State; it would ultimately determine whether the Federal Law was constitutional and thus trump the State Law, or whether it was unconstitutional and thus completely invalid.
In very rare circumstances I have seen a company that outsources their desktop break/fix group, but never the entire IT department (or anywhere close to it). University of Pennsylvania Health System outsourced its entire IT department (other than Web Application Development) to FCG (First Consulting Group) which futher outsourced divisions of ACS.
IMHO, it made a bad situation worse.
Slashdot Mirror
It wasn't just Oracle's announcement. It was the market press trumpeting the relatively insignificant entry of Oracle, coupled with MSFT's announcement of Hyper-V (and 28$ pricing), causing investors to realize that the share price of VMW had been hyperinflated based upon poor understanding of the virtualization market and presumption that their current market-share dominance was largely unassailable despite competition from every other industry player, both software (MSFT, IBM, RHAT, CTXS) and hardware (DELL, IBM, HP). It recovered today once investors calmed down a bit, and realized that while there is strong competition, VMW has a very strong position.
Full disclosure: I purchased VMW after hours on the 9th, (due to to recent decline in the price, and personal involvement in using virtualization to fully leverage my investment in a dedicated server for my small businesses), was subsequently dismayed at the 12.5% decline, learned a valuable lesson on not fully researching a stock before investing based upon industry knowledge, and gladly took a chance to get out today at a 2.5% profit. Additionally, I am currently holding DELL, CTXS, IBM, RHAT for related reasons.
Did I ever mention the courts? No, I posed some interesting questions, which I fully recognize are considered and answered by humans.
I am fully aware that the courts and the legal system are not machines, but complex systems involving humans. However, I, and others, are also aware that they (coursts, legal system, humans) have been increasingly unable to keep up well with the rapid changes that technology has brought about.
Thus, I posed some questions which illustrate shades of gray that technology enables, and that complicate matters in applying the human legal system.
I never said that modifying the protocols would "fool the courts", I was briefly illustrating the consequences of both answers to the questions I raised. I never stated a conclusion, or resolution, as I would not presume that others could not consider it themselves and reach a different opinion.
You made statements to/about me, seemingly presuming that I didn't know how it worked, did not remember, acted from groundless bases, or needed your 'rule of thumb'.
Luckily, I've been lurking for long enough to know that by starting to post on occasion I might have to read replies like this.Also, I'm assuming you meant a square-shaped acre not a square acre, as a square acre would be a 4 dimentional space, and though lawyers might try, I don't think they would succeed.
It's true that Management doesn't know what code looks like, and most programmers are unqualified to comment on code aesthetics.
However, Management knows that since it can't recognize good code, and since an awful lot of the IT department is apathetic to good code, the company certainly doesn't have good code, so they must have bad code, and hence they are embarrassed.
One aspect of the virtual property rights issue is often confused in these discussions (and seems to be confused in the court ruling):
Ownership of the intellectual property related to content developed in a virtual environment is not the same as ownership of the virtual items.
Linden's TOS recognizes creators rights to the content created within SecondLife http://secondlife.com/whatis/ip_rights.php but that does not extend to ownership of the virtual items:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artiAn unconstitutional Law passed by Congress does not trump a State Law, and Congress is certainly capable of passing unconstitutional Laws. (Choose your own favorite example.)
The Supreme Court has Jurisdiction over Controversies between the United States and a State; it would ultimately determine whether the Federal Law was constitutional and thus trump the State Law, or whether it was unconstitutional and thus completely invalid.