News just in: Obama isn't G W Bush.

Obama's Nobel prize was a swipe in the face of the last 2 terms of US foreign policy. Obama's pledge to reduce the nuclear stock pile and kill Gitmo probably gave it some legitimacy.

I've got to hand it to the supreme court, because they've managed to do two things that are both legally good and bad at the same time (from 'our' /. perspective). First of all they've upheld what they know, that is, the assignability (assignation?) of a contract or licence. Admittedly contracts and licences are not the same from a legal perspective (the phenomena of agreement has a few more formal common law hurdles to cross), but the goal is simple: protect a very real asset.

What asset? In law there are a few types of contract. The most obvious is a standard A <-> B agreement, the next is a less standard A <-> B (personally), and the one a lot of people gloss over is A <-> X (where X is anyone). The latter is unilateral, where the formers are standard contracts where the ability to assign differs depending on terms of the agreement. The assignment of a promise is so core to IP, Property and Contract law that without it, our world would crumble (they figure on corporate balance sheets). Take for example, the case of a landlord renting a spacious flat with several rooms to a vetted tenant. If that tenant was given the ability to assign his lease to another tenant of lesser stature, what kind of protection would the landlord have? The worst case scenario is a poor tenant who creates several illegal sublets and uses the property as a crack den. The best case is a more an affluent/big earner type who pays their bills on time and gets on with all the neighbours.

For as long as contract has existed the ability to protect the intent of the contract has reigned supreme, therefore that means protecting the interests of people who set the terms and those who agree to the terms. Allowing landlords to block assignment protects a landlord and their interests in *their* property (sublets are legally problematic - more layers of enforcement to get rent, no privity etc - and crack dens reduce the value of property). Hence the ability to restrict the assignability is an asset to a landlord but a balance sheet liability to tenant (a buyer of a commercial tenant will have to purchase the remaining liability of any leases out-right because no seller would sell a business any retain property liability unless they got a massive capital gain).

So... legally speaking protecting a licensor's interests in a licence agreement, specifically the ability to assign, is a big ideal. However, what is happening in software is not an A B licence, because A purchases B's software from C's shelf. This, but definition, is a carbolic smoke ball: it is unilateral A X licence, where X is anyone in possession (I am glossing over the agency/distribution perspective massively). Unilateral contracts don't gel with the ability to restrict a licensee because there is no requirement of individual assent in a unilateral agreement (in other words because B, where A is the author of some software, didn't have to sign anything, why should B be liable on a personal basis when A made the offer to the class of B - iow, any potential buyer). What I believe we have is a limited personal licence: A <-- licences --&gt B (personally). Any by personally I mean the first purchaser bares the burden of the licence, nobody else. When they sell the copyrighted protect, ie: the program/code, the initial purchaser does not reassign the licence. Therefore a purchaser of B's copy is not restricted by the same terms as B was - this is the principle behind first sale (US)/exhaustion of rights (EU).

(nb: i've drunk far too much tonight for this to make any sense tomorrow)

Matt

Cedilla was baaaad!

A good point, except when small businesses try to extract the best value for money in an expensive IT purchase, counterfeit products can be very tempting - whether you know you're buying fake goods or not is irrelevent when the price is cheap. Cheap counterfeits are [arguabley] not traceable enough. Check out the Reg article on a recent Cisco raid

I remember reading another article on the Chinese fakes, where it was said that the only outward difference was the type of screw used. Scary to think that a specially crafted packet (or more likely, sequence of) could destroy the internet :)

Exactly!

This is good news and it goes to the heart of the treaty of Rome - that competition is a fundamental part of the EU, and the EU will move mountains to promote it. I suspect this will be in the form of a very long winded piece of guidance regulation that sits in parallel with Art 81. As someone who has read, reread and read again EU competition regulations and their directives from an academic point of view and professional one, it is mightily refreshing to finally see the EU do what I was told it did well... fight concerted practice and actively promote competition where the market fails.

Surely people are missing the next step? Apple want's to bring the SoC design in-house. It's currently a very fragile all-in-one unit provider. You pay for nothing revolutionary in an Apple product, instead you pay for a unique design/interface and the Apple goodwill 'mark-up'. The latter of which is a license the print money. So really Apple need to hit the semi-conductor market to maintain market dominance through R&D. In-house developments don't run the risk of being licenced to your competitor, and give you a technology lead that is hard and expensive to beat.

But did we all forget about the possible purchase of ARM? I don't think it'll happen soon (ARM's stock is higher than 2002). I don't really want it to happen either. ARM licences to far too many companies, therefore there will be monopoly considerations and any deal will be scuppered by a race to it by anyone with £5bln cash: Nokia, Motorola... even IBM or MS. The loss of ARM will actually hurt the "open" fabrication platform they've developed (think of all the individual ARM fabers that are out there... no are licence, no work) and we use benefit from (ARM chip competition has driven down price).

And what about the PowerVR licensing from Imagination Technologies - Apple increased it's shareholding this. I predict that apple will buy ImgTec by the end of the year. Possibly over the summer. They've got an good back catalogue of products, and despite the fact they didn't hire me, I think they're a brilliant acquisition for Apple: real chip fabricating people. A lot of their new stuff is low power which apple lacks experience with. Relying on an ARM development time-table means competitors can get to market relatively quickly, with similar specs. ImgTec are a good fit.

Matt

Clauses are a bitch eh?

The best trick is to word clauses so they're terms of the agreement. Word them backwards, in the double negative, refer to external documents, obscure precedents and maxims etc. In B2B transactions you can pretty much get away with adding whatever you want, and care about litigating to enforce it at a later date - with a little lucky unenforceable clauses might become enforceable through statute or precedent! This doesn't mean a cunning clause is any more enforceable thatn it sound, it just rewards ambiguity and makes it disproportionately expensive to assert or rebut clauses that are more powerful that you first imagined. Often the mere threat of litigation will make a party baulk. Many of these clauses find their way into consumer contracts... like this.

It goes without saying that reserving a right to change the fundamental terms of a contract without enumerating the basis of a change, and the range and frequency of such a change etc, falls foul of good consumer law. Remember that you have no agreement without consent, and there is no consent without the reasonable notification of the ability to obtain and review the conditions - therefore onerous changes require reincorporation by way of signature... the more onerous, the more attention should be made to the clause. Mere silence is not assent. But common law rarely prevails because it costs too much to enforce for such little gain. The end result is a plethora of heavily loaded consumer contracts, everywhere.

If consumer policy dictates, the most offensive types of clause and their effect can be made deliberately dangerous to the drafter if, by inclusion, an entire agreement void where the agreement contains or purports to contain a 'hardcore restriction' that consumers shouldn't burdened based on of their inherent inability to bargain (bargaining positions are never equal in a B2C transaction... ever. When was the last time you bartered for your shopping?). Contrast with individuality severable clauses which a court will strike out but not punish the drafter for including them. What kind of consumer protection legislation actually strikes out entire agreements or puts heavy fines on the evilly minded drafter? None. Absolutely none (to my knowledge). In Europe it's the preserve of the competition articles (ie Art81(3)) - they are the only ones that dare strike out an entire agreement because someone drafted in an evil clause. Imagine if you got a free iPhone simply because Apple drafted an unfair contract? That'd stop them!

So... because you can get away with it, people try. Now we need N bits of consumer protection for every K unfair clauses J number of lawyers contrive.

Software was defined as "goods" long before this under the SGA. Nothing has come of it it except this (only Australia wants to differ), which is a good precent if you understand reasonableness. In a B2B transaction you can contract out the implied terms and warranties/representations of sale and defer to a sale contract. This protects the consumer. It's the sellers fault for promising the world and not giving it - if only they had an Entire Contract Clause and dis-applied the SGA

i paid almost double that :( we're all mugs here :/

Perl is very simple to learn (check out "Robert's Perl Tutorial"). Perl allows the programmer to do what he wants - regardless of the style. There's even English.pm. Perl has many upsides ie: it's a powerful parser and indispensable toolkit... and highly embeddable. If there was ever a seed language to learn, it's Perl.

There's also the fact that Perl programmers are real unix men - and let's face it, you'd rather have real unix graduates than Ruby fannies?

Can it organise my porn?

lol american.

We've already for gotten Re Anderson! This is historic and something quite relevent to our "constitution".

( facts : http://www.justice.org.uk/images/pdfs/11inter.PDF )

Re Anderson is an ex parte case involving one of the Jamie Bulger killers. The death of this toddler was horrific beyond many people's imagination (I've purposefully kept ignorant of exactly what the killers did because the little i've heard sickens me enough!). The case set a precent however. It involves the HRA - Human Rights Act... A "bit of law" (a fantastic peice of legislation that DOES work - and actually protects your civil rights - see Re MB). The HRA enacts the ECHR - the European Charter on Human Rights - which essentially requires the "law" or officer of the judicary (a distinct and separate entity to the government) to pass judgements on people. Ex p Anderson makes descretionary tariff setting (by a politician or government appointee) illegal. The principle is simple: they are not a fair judge. Anderson proved that the then Home Sec was unfair in giving the individual life (all of it, not a sentence) imprisonment without parol. McKinnon is a prime example of where ee have another case of no judicial oversight into a judicial matter - the whim of a politician is massaged in exactly the same way as Ex p Anderson!

Yadda yadda

Matt

I'm pleased with Windows 7... So in order the counter the FUD i'll explain. Also, don't read this to merely complain I'm spewing crap: I know I am.

I'm an 'old school' zipslack 3.4 user. I not-so-recently installed ubuntu on an away-from-home PC that sits at my parents, and admin a decrepit centos-4 virtual machine. I've come a long way on RH machines.

I'd like to think I know what I talk about when I talk about the desktop: I've tried QNX ("things work"), BeOS (50Mb of "everything works all at once, weee"), and various Linux GDMs - fvwm95 being "good enough" for me. I'm a part-time KDE fanboy too. I'm a Vista-hater, although I do put up with it on my laptop because I have to (came pre-installed/don't want a Linux laptop)

Prior to Windows 7 I ran XP64. I didn't upgrade to XP32 until after Win 98 was largely depreciated and support began to stop (for the first time), as Win 98 was "perfect" for me (so was Communicator 4.72, but that's another story). SP2 was out shortly after I upgraded to XP, so I didn't feel any of the pain people consistently remind me XP had. I upgraded to x64 a few months after it came out, (again missing pre XP SP1 problems since XP64 is Win 2003 + SP1) even though I couldn't use any wireless adaptors, I praised the Win 2003 'core' stability.

So... with all that: I like Windows 7... *BUT* I have a brand new 4-core, 6Gb, dual ATI beast to enjoy it with. My initial reason for buying it outright on preorder (£140!), and not going the student edition upgrade route (£38) was that I wanted the "Pro" edition for gaming, and another licence not an upgrade in situ copy (I've plenty of working license via my MSDNAA membership, but this year I don't have access to Windows because I've switched away from the Computing dept).

I also wanted to experience a newer OS that had multiple cores in mind. As an LWN reader and Con Kolivas fanboy, I knew I wasn't ready to move to a full Linux desktop: I don't want to configure my graphics card to work, and the new open source ATI drivers won't power my games like they do under Windows (I spent money on my graphics card, and I want to make use of it!).

I usually theme to Windows classic without exception, and did the same with Windows 7 until I decided I wanted a transparent taskbar - so although I've small icons, quick launch and zoomed out on my desktop for smaller icons (CTRL-mouse wheel everyone), I'm happy with the Windows 7 UK theme. The new Win-key short-cuts are pretty useful!

It's the little things I'm pleased with. The console defrag has a parallel option, and works great out of the box - I can defrag a HD and watch videos without *any* stuttering. The native h.264 codecs work well (although I haven't tested them much they were the 3rd thing I upgraded b/c of a TV Versity transcoding limitation - ie: upgraded to recent codecs/and TVV needs to be a "user" service etc).

I'm pleasantly surprised with the instantly available/stripped down Media Player: under Windows 7 it's x2 as fast to start as Media Player Classic - the only annoyance I have with it is how small the track bar is, and that I can't use space to pause or my mouse wheel for volume.

oooh time to go to the pub!