photonic x86 CPU design

[Rob Stow]

Which is why I want to see them try to enforce one. I'm sure FF would
love to have a go at this too. OTOH, I don't even read them, so sue me. ;-)


I don't understand this one.

The EULA or contract /says/ it absolves the manufacturer of all
responsibility in the event of blah blah blah.

Event happens.

Gullible consumer /thinks/ the EULA or contract is valid and
hence does nothing to seek compensation from the manufacturer.

Manufacturer wins because a smarter consumer would have
challenged the technically worthless EULA/contract.

 

[Del Cecchi]

And would this sign be supported legally through to its logical
conclusion?
Would the land owner be charged with murder or not? Signs are
inexpensive.

He most likely would, unless the trespasser just disappeared. Whether he
would be convicted depends on a lot of things.

del

 

[Andy Glew]

Manufacturers are quite aware that those "contracts" and EULAs

Which is why I want to see them try to enforce one. I'm sure FF would
love to have a go at this too. OTOH, I don't even read them, so sue me. ;-)

Tax licenses; tax outright sales less.

I was consulted when a county in a US state realized that they had
such a license tax - and when they realized that all CD sales involved
a license, they tried to get Walmart and other stores that sell CDs to
pay up. Never went anywhere.

 

[Keith]

Tax licenses; tax outright sales less.

I don't like any tax, particularly as a tool for social engineering, but...

I was consulted when a county in a US state realized that they had
such a license tax - and when they realized that all CD sales involved
a license, they tried to get Walmart and other stores that sell CDs to
pay up. Never went anywhere.

I wonder why not? If the "license tax" is on the books and the seller
clearly is licensing content it seems they'd have nowhere to go.

 

[Sander Vesik]

I read a news article about this quite a while ago:

Manufacturers are quite aware that those "contracts" and EULAs
are often not enforceable - but they are very aware that they are
proven to reduce the number of lawsuits and complaints from
gullible consumers. Hence the manufacturer often has everything
to gain and nothing to lose by putting such drivel on their
packaging or in a EULA.

EULA as a whole or some parts of it being unenforcable hardly makes
no part of it unenforcable, something that people find out quite
regularily.

 

[Andrew Reilly]

I read a news article about this quite a while ago:

Manufacturers are quite aware that those "contracts" and EULAs
are often not enforceable - but they are very aware that they are
proven to reduce the number of lawsuits and complaints from
gullible consumers. Hence the manufacturer often has everything
to gain and nothing to lose by putting such drivel on their
packaging or in a EULA.

Not sure about other jurisdictions, but Australia has "Trade Practices"
laws that forbid "misleading and deceptive conduct". So it should be
illegal to include unenforceable terms in end-user contracts. I doubt
that anyone's argued that point in court, though, becuase such terms are
ubiquitous.

 

[George Macdonald]

What is it that you don't understand about "your question was totally
irrelevant"?

Sorry but I can't help you with your myopia - move along please.

 

[David Schwartz]

It didn't work in the middle-ages.

Lots of things didn't work in the middle-ages that would perfectly fine
today. To some extent, copyright is a legal solution to a problem that is
not inherently legal. DRM is one version of a technical solution to much the
same problem. The problem is, basically, if I think of or develop a creative
work, how can I let other people use it without losing control over it.

DS

 

[David Schwartz]

Here's a new angle on EULAs: http://stots.com/agree.htm. When you buy
this
company's tools you don't own them - you only have a license for personal
use and may not lend them or use them to make items for others. This has
gone beyond absurd.

Fortunately, courts seem to be adapting the duck theory of buy versus
license. That is, if in every possible way it resembles a purchase, it will
be treated as one. If you paid a fixed fee, obtained the software, and have
no further real obligations to the seller, it seems more like a purchase
than a license.

DS

 

[David Schwartz]

I was consulted when a county in a US state realized that they had
such a license tax - and when they realized that all CD sales involved
a license, they tried to get Walmart and other stores that sell CDs to
pay up. Never went anywhere.

*ALL* CD sales involve a license?! Where is a copy of this license and
how is agreement to it indicated?

DS

 

[Bernd Paysan]

The problem is, basically, if I think of or develop a creative
work, how can I let other people use it without losing control over it.

As you state it, it sounds that DRM is a technical solution to a social
problem: those control freaks that don't want other to tinker with "their"
work (which they didn't create). Given the latest DRM stories from Sony
BMG, this perception seems to be absolutely real ;-).

Copyright originally was invented so that you *profit* from your creative
work. The control part is only a mean to an end, and for a particular
purpose: Copyright wasn't made to particularly protect the author, but to
protect the printer.

For authors, some simple enforced royalty contracts would have been
sufficient back when copyright was invented. However, the relation to
authors did work well at that time - authors were paid for books they were
about to write. The control over the contract and the content was perfectly
established: No money, no writing. The only problem was that another
printer could reprint the same thing afterwards - and he wouldn't have paid
something to the author, and cut into the sales of the primary printer.

 

[George Macdonald]

Fortunately, courts seem to be adapting the duck theory of buy versus
license. That is, if in every possible way it resembles a purchase, it will
be treated as one. If you paid a fixed fee, obtained the software, and have
no further real obligations to the seller, it seems more like a purchase
than a license.

Good to know but did you take a look at the URL above? "Tools" here is not
software - it's real hold-in-your-hand tools for use with jigsaws and
routers.

 

[Ken Hagan]

Here's a new angle on EULAs: http://stots.com/agree.htm. When you buy this
company's tools you don't own them - you only have a license for personal
use and may not lend them or use them to make items for others. This has
gone beyond absurd.

It's not new. I think I first encountered this concept in a computer mag
some years ago, in which context it was clearly a spoof. Hmm, I wonder
if Stots can be sued for breach of the original comedian's copyright.

 

[Del Cecchi]

Lots of things didn't work in the middle-ages that would perfectly fine
today. To some extent, copyright is a legal solution to a problem that is
not inherently legal. DRM is one version of a technical solution to much the
same problem. The problem is, basically, if I think of or develop a creative
work, how can I let other people use it without losing control over it.

DS

Lots of things work perfectly well in some places and not others. Some
folks have the notion of "what's mine is mine, what's yours is
negotiable". Copyrights are in this category, as is most anything whose
price is substantially above its cost of production such as software,
drugs, or entertainment products.

 

[Evgenij Barsukov]

Suppose hypothetically there were one specific case where it could be
demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that executing this one innocent person
would benefit society as a whole. Surely that's not impossible, is it? If
"individuals should not have any rights that are not beneficial to humanity"
and there is one specific case where killing a deliberately innocent person
is beneficial to humanity, then surely that person should be killed.

You are losing the second order connection here. Humanity is a simple
sum of individuals. For that simple reason any harm done to an
individual is a (-) to overal good of humanity. A great harm done to
individual (as in your above example) is a great harm to humanity. So I
do not think that there is a situation even hypotetical, that such an
event would have overal "positive" balance.

I personally find your principle disgusting and repugnant. Individuals
have rights because they are moral agents, not because there are other
people around them.

You are missing the point by excluding the person's good himself from
the good of humanity. It is not the "other people" who gives objective
evaluation to the "goodness" of every act of a person, it is a sum
own + other people + later generations good.
Of cause such complicated equation can not be simply evaluated, that
is why there shold not be one person or institution which decides it but
every individual by himself on case-by-case bases. Moral is an intuitive
guidance that helps to resolve this decistions individualy, that have
developed over many generations so it should definetely be used as a
tool, but it will not always have definitive answers.
My disussins above is not about "mandating" what people should or
should not do from above, it is about giving additional things to think
about when making their decisions what is good and what is not to
individual people. In this particular example, it gives aditional
thought about modifying the intellectual property laws so that they are
more beneficial for humanity by not punishing use of knowledge, and yet
supporting knowledge production.

Regards,
Evegenij

 

[David Schwartz]

Good to know but did you take a look at the URL above? "Tools" here is
not
software - it's real hold-in-your-hand tools for use with jigsaws and
routers.

I didn't realize that. It makes my comments even more appropriate,
actually.

DS

 

[Bill Davidsen]

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:39:04 GMT, Bill Davidsen



Placing the presumption of responsibility for theft on the victim is in
fact fairly common, especially with the police (unofficially of course) -
ever had anything stolen and called the cops? I do not see why there
should be a presumption that unless "locked up" a valuable item is free for
all to use. In some jurisdictions "stealing by finding" is a felony - no
new law is particularly needed.

The difference is that while there are not people giving away wallets,
cars, etc, there are businesses, communities, and even non-profit
organizations which DO allow free use of WiFi points. Some airports sell
access, some give it away. I don't think it's "blame the victim" to
suggest that any commercial service offered in a place where free
service might also be offered should be required to take some action to
allow identification of restricted access, such as WEP or other technology.

If you park in my driveway to use my AP, there is no way to argue that
you expected free access in that location. If you are in a food court or
a business district which offers free access as an inducement, any
adjacent commercial offering needs to be identified if innocent use is
going to be prevented. That's the difference between stealing anything
which isn't locked up and entrapment.

Note: if a laptop is configured to "use the strongest signal," much like
a cell phone, it's easy to get the wrong connect. And people working in
buildings with APs in offices, conference rooms, etc, do use that setting.

Makes sense and all it would take is one mfr brave enough to test the
users' competence.

Hopefully it can be made as easy as having a hardwire connect and a
router which can pop-up a box showing the MAC and asking for a "deny,
allow until reset, allow" choice. That would even allow your
brother-in-law to drop in and use his laptop. ;-)

 

[Bill Davidsen]

Yeah well I think the situation in Germany is not too different from the
rest of the developed world - the framers of laws are usually (low-grade)
lawyers. Self-regard and incompetence is a potent combination.

I'd be interested to know if the jurisdictions where "stealing by finding"
is a felony -- notably UK & Australia (dunno about New England states) --
are applying that law to cover this situation.




I'm no expert but to me the 2.4GHz ISM band hardly seems appropriate or
sufficient for such an anarchic err, enterprise. Are the people who want
to pay for a piece of hopefully useable bandwidth to be drowned out in the
RF cacophony? There are already enough horror stories, e.g. from what I
hear, if you live within a coupla blocks of a hospital, you can't get a
useable channel... signal strength limits be damned.

You may have noticed that in the U.S. the telephone companies created from
the big break-up have incestuously collapsed back into only two significant
operations -- apparently to loud applause and encouragement from those
charged with regulating the system -- who just happen to own a big piece of
the Internet backbone. They're going to get us one way or the other.

What U.S. is that? When AT&T was broken up landline telephone was the
only game in town. Period. Now you have four multi-state landline
companies, (at least) three major wireless companies, three or more
cable companies offering net access and dozens of companies offering net
phone. I'm not sure what "they" are going to get you, but you sure have
choices you didn't. Oh, net access; cable, DSL, dial, WiFi, WiMax,
Verizon wireless, sounds as if there are some serious choices there as well.

 

[Evgenij Barsukov]

I don't like the Simpsons and I spent time watching advertisements for
studies in advertising. So the advertisers should now punish me (and
other students) for non-using the knowledge they sponsor e.g.
Simpsons???

No, you misundersood this one. By watching advertizements, you punish
yourself. This is the beatuty of this model, it does not require any
centralized enforcement.

Regards,
Evgenij

 

[Evgenij Barsukov]

It didn't work in the middle-ages. A composer was commissioned for the
work and that was it. I wonder what it would cost to commission Windows?
Somehow I don't think Evgenij has enough cash for his OS of choice.

To follow your logic, it would not be only me to commission Windows, but
an association of all users (e.g. severla billion people). I suspect I
could easily afford my share in this deal.

Note that I am not agains converting certain common practices, and
common contractual relationships into laws, just for symplifying the
logistics. But such laws have certain life-time, and should be discarded
as the contractual relationships they were based on became unpractical
and obsolete.

Regards,
Evgenij