If they contributed to your project under Ms-PL and then sued you over patents for that code, then they have no legal standing because by contributing under that license, they made a patent grant already. A problem is there only if your own part of code (not the code they contributed) infringes on their patent. In which case, yes, it works the way you describe.

In practice, the first scenario is far more important, since this is the usual tactics of hijacking GPLv2 projects by "patent poisoning" them. The second scenario is much less common, and it's not clear why a license should give you blanket protection against any kind of patent in the first place (if you want that, lobby your legislators to repeal patent law).
 

Here is one other thoughtI had.

I have sometimes thought about putting a fake label on my computer, that would suggest to computers that this is an obsolete computer, not worth stealing. I would like to get a sticker that says something like "386 SX with Windows ME inside." I could use that instead of the "Linux inside" nameplate, which my computer currently has.

With my computer's heavy steel case, lifting my computer is about like lifting a bag of cement. But perhaps I should make it even heavier and harder to steal, buy having a few hundred pounds of very thick steel plates welded onto the inside and/or outside of the case.

No, really, it's not okay. Once you establish the precedent that it's okay to break the law as long as someone in the executive branch told you to, you have handed an insane amount of power to the government. The correct response to this kind of request from the executive branch is to request confirmation from the judiciary and the precedent that you want to set is that not requiring this confirmation is dangerous to your future wellbeing.

No, but it was real. Fortunately I'd moved, and didn't end up with him for a client.

They brought her to the scene, and he said, "Yeah, that's her; she's the one I robbed."

This was a couple of years before the lineup of mugging victims or whatever they were in that spoof movie (Hot Shots?).

Yes, criminals are capital-S STUPID!

If they, as a group, had what we think of as "ordinary intelligence," we'd be in *BIG* trouble . .
hawk, esq.

Same as they have now for abstinence-only sex education and evolution-hostile science. None.

But the parents aren't powerless. My mom, when I was young, made sure I knew a few things before going to school. One thing was that teachers are humans. Humans make mistakes. Humans do things that they think is the right thing but isn't. And some humans are just genuinely bad.

It served me well in school, through my mandatory religion (Catholicism) classes*, my broken science classes**, and my incredibly incompetent sex ed classes***. Still serves me well.

( * In a public school, no less.)

( ** Several memorable stories about that. One teacher didn't like the science book so never used it, just went off what she thought she remembered, because obviously her brain was perfect. Guess what? She didn't remember Newton's Laws of Motion correctly. Another prefixed the chapter on empirical knowledge and scientific method with a speech that could be summed up as "The scientific method is good, unless it finds something against God. Then God wins." The test for the chapter had a high-value question about the speech, of course.)

( *** The teacher had three kids, I was a teenage virgin. I was convinced I knew more about sex than she did. In fact, a decade or so along, I still think I knew more about sex than she did.)

The part that could really get them hurt is that in several cultures tobacco is used for religious purposes.

6. have a tradition of single-user systems and a blazing stream of past bad security decisions that lots of legitimate apps take advantage of, so they can't do security right without breaking a lot of malformed but useful apps 7. can't really stop somebody from installing software 8. work in a culture of running with maximum privileges, resulting in many apps being written by developers with elevated privileges and tested as such 9. work in a culture where people typically have access to one account, rather than a lower-privilege one to see if what they write will work without high privileges

Basically, Microsoft is in a very bad place between security and backwards compatibility. Granted that a lot of the problems are hangovers from bad decisions Microsoft made, it still hinders MS in developing a secure OS. Similarly, the extreme delay in even trying to close some of the traditional holes.

I see nothing coming out of Redmond that's inconsistent with security consciousness. They're just going to have a lot of trouble digging out from various holes, and the fact that they dug many of them themselves doesn't matter for their future actions.

Not all results would have to be saved... only the good ones. (just guessing)

Our 8-core database server has been marching along happily under a heavy load for many months now.

[Huh? what a little comment box!]

Burglary was defined at Common Law to be a forced entry into the dwelling of another at night with the intent of committing a felony.

Modern statutory versions have dropped many of the requirements, such as being a dwelling, or at night, and some have probably even dropped the felonious intent requirement.

Under the classic definition, if you only intended to commit a misdemeanor, it wasn't burglary. Note that it's *intent* at the time of entry, not whether or not the crime occurs.

Or if you break in to steal a sandwich, and are inspired to steal the jewels you find in the icebox (a felony), it still isn't burglay.

In many states, the newer statute may label itself as something like "daytime burglary" in order to make it distinguishable.

hawk, esq.

I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...

Dear Sir or Madam,

It was with great interest that I perused the materials on the Music Rules website. (On a side note, it doesn't work properly with Firefox 3.0.) I agree that piracy of music is a problem, and some reform of copyright law is needed. However, I believe that your educational materials are misleading and sometimes directly contradict actions of the RIAA in the past.

In the teacher's guide, on page 4, the answer to question #2 (left column) is given:

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

This however contradicts earlier cases where the RIAA has pursued music pirates for doing this exact same thing. A Washington Post article from 2007:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The teacher's guide also ignores the term, "fair use." While fair use is quite limited in U.S. law, generally being restricted to purposes of research and parody, if the RIAA wants to teach third-graders the term, "DMCA notice," why not "fair use?"

Coverage of alternative forms of copyright appears to be non-existent as well, such as the Creative Commons licenses, which allow the creator to turn over specific rights to others, such as the right to modify, or distribute. Public domain coverage is missing as well. Old recordings from before 1923 (such as Edison's early record player) on the Library of Congress site thus would be public domain, and free to download. The materials would scare kids into thinking that everything is copyrighted, and thus illegal.

The materials also should recommend sites where music can be legally downloaded for free. One example is Musopen.com, which contains recordings of public domain works, but also contemporary works where the composer has expressed willingness for his music to be shared. . Warnings should be balanced with alternatives. Also, you could recommend the students to whenever possible purchase music directly from the artist, so that the artist is paid a fair amount.

U.S. federal government training materials ignore this distinction, preferring the "all downloaded music is illegal" mantra. For example, see this training website (it's screen 27 of 48). I can disprove this by visiting this Wikipedia link, where I can download a copy of the W.W.S.S. Wind Ensemble with Dennis Smith playing Arthur Pryor's arrangement of "Blue Bells of Scotland," released under the EFF's Open Audio License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Pryor_-_Blue_Bells_of_Scotland,_for_Trombone_and_Band.ogg). Similarly, recordings by U.S. military bands, being created by the U.S. government, are generally also public domain.

Copyright reform does need to be effected in the United States. The clause in the Constitution governing copyright is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts," by securing for a limited time. Today's environment, where it is for the lifetime+70 stifles creativity. Two economists wrote a paper for Harvard Business School (a subsidiary of Harvard University) discussing how weak copyright actually benefits culture (HBS article).

I hope that the educational materials can be refined, so that students get all the facts regarding music piracy, so they can properly decide whether it is legal for them to download song X. Reducing FUD on the RIAA's part will improve their standing in the technology community, and consumers will benefit by using a variety of resources to get music: legal purchases, and legal downloads of free music.

Thank you,

[REDACTED]

Just watch. Now I'm going to get investigated by the RIAA. :-)

Let us examine your post:

You do not address my argument that there is no fair use involved in "sharing" songs on the internet. Instead you try to change the subject.
You personally attack me rather than making any argument
You make unsupported claims about the RIAA, it's members, and corporations in general
You state that I am harming myself but provide no proof of same
You advocate destroying those you disagree with, but put forth no argument or evidence supporting such action
You claim that I am on the "wrong" side of the argumen

So, you post is a red herring, an ad hominem attack, a straw man combined with an appeal to fear and ridicule, a false dilemma combined with an appeal to consequences of a belief, begging the question, and two wrongs making a right.

Your entire post is one fallacy after another. You apparently have no concept of how to argue. And, judging from the style of the post, I bet you are under the age of 23.

Take an E-Book and drop it on the flor from a height of 1 meter/3 feet and it will be damaged. Do the same with a paper book. No big damage. Paper could be folded, cut in pieces, etc. and it still works.

I agree its an issue, but something as trivial as copyrights should not be part of the very foundation of our country. Its not THAT critical.

Somewhere, there are a group of very bright researches, clutching a very sophisticated new model for calculating optimum gravitational assists, wondering how in Hell's name a year of work got summed up by the Internet as "you fall along these tubes".