bdowling

Not a country, but the City of Santa Monica, California, keeps a registry of rents for all rent-controlled units. Landlords are required to report an initial tenancy, which sets the starting rent. Each year after that, the City tells the landlord what the "Maximum Allowed Rent" is. All the documents relating to each property are publicly available and the city publishes an annual report.

Not all cities with rent control keep such a registry. (e.g., Los Angeles doesn't keep a registry, but does tell landlords the maximum they can raise the rent each year.)

You've convinced me. If I'm ever in the market for one of these, I'll buy from him to support his work.

> He has added significant value over the original Mac ROM and that's what he's charging for.

Has he though? It sounds like it’s all based on Apple’s work decades ago plus an open source compression algorithm that someone else wrote.

> … trying to wield them against your community in another is extra ridiculous.

Also, ineffective. What’s he going to do if the copycats don’t stop, sue them?

Why can't an attacker just link a new getenv() that pretends that LD_PRELOAD and other variables aren't set?

The API signatures were arguably the only part that was copyrightable.

Code that is purely utilitarian (see “useful articles doctrine”) isn’t a work of human expression that is copyrightable.

Those kind of functions are arguably not even eligible for copyright protection because they contain no human expression of the kind that is usually protectable (e.g., creative writings, artistic works).

Until someone files a lawsuit and a judge and jury decide the infringement question, it’s all speculative.

Some cases are pretty obvious, but even literal copying isn’t always copyright infringement (e.g., if the material is arguably not eligible for copyright protection).

If the code is wrapped in

   if (updateDlg.DoModal() == IDOK) { … }

then doesn’t that mean it only runs that code if the user clicks “OK” on the update dialog?

(Edit: I think I understand now. It’s not the code, it’s the update URL that’s the problem, because it’s controlled by NK. So if you run this and blindly click “OK”, then it will download an executable that will infect your PC.)

(Edit 2: Or the issue is not in the source at all, but is in the prebuilt binary.)

Robbery and burglary are both considered inherently dangerous crimes for which the felony murder rule can be applied. That means that if someone dies (victim, perpetrator or bystander) during a burglary or robbery, then the perpetrators can be charged with murder.

Also, I’d add that robbery can be done by trick instead of threat of violence. E.g., a robber tricks victim into handing over their wallet or purse, then distracts them while they remove valuables. The victim may not even know they’ve been robbed until later. If the victim, later noticing she has been robbed, then has a heart attack and dies, however, then the robber could potentially be charged with felony murder.

It's a balance between encouraging people to stand up for their rights on one hand and discouraging filing of frivolous lawsuits on the other. The American system is "everyone pays their own legal fees", which encourages injured parties to file. The U.K. on the other hand is a "loser pays both parties' legal fees" (generally), which discourages a lot of plaintiffs from filing, even when they have been significantly harmed.

Who exactly is forcing them to?

There are tons of non-Apple repair shops they can go to.

Personally, I do not want anymore cheap Chinese knockoff parts anymore. I don’t want screens that have off colors, batteries that last 1/3 of their rated power, toner cartridges that last half as long as the OEM ones, etc.

I really am willing to pay 4X the price for something that’s twice as good. Half as good isn’t good enough for me anymore.

They mean OEM part.

> “If you want to use images produced by Human Generator in commercial projects, contact us.”

If there is no copyright in AI-generated images, then how can they possibly enforce this?

Usually journalists don't actually understand what they are reporting on.

Usually that's fine because most readers don't actually understand what they're reading.

> Noticing and responding to emergency sounds/signals in the road…

How do deaf drivers respond to sirens from emergency vehicles?

＞ A computer program is not about expressing an idea; it’s about doing a thing.

A computer program expresses the idea that a computer will do the thing described in the way described.

If the claims are non-novel or obvious, then the examiners, who are familiar with the state of the art in the field, will reject them. Maybe the applicant will amend the claims to claim something narrower, or maybe not.

If the examiner and patent office screw up and allow a claim that shouldn’t have been allowed, then the claim can be challenged later and revoked. Yes, that costs money and is inefficient sometimes.

> But could you even get a trademark for X, a single character?

Yes. In fact there are at least a few registrations in the TESS database of X for various goods and services. They don’t conflict with each other unless the goods and services are the same.

There’s always someone who doesn’t get the joke. Even today, there are people who, at least at first, are fooled into thinking that Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was a serious proposal.

I invoked Poe’s law sarcastically. I’m surprised you didn’t realize that, given how over-invoked it is here. I guess there’s always someone who doesn’t get the joke. /s. <—- shouldn’t be necessary, but is, obviously. /s <—- not sure if necessary here.

Haven't you heard of Poe's Law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law.

> American labor laws encode this expectation

The law does not require customers to tip, it requires employers to pay employees at least minimum wage if employees do not receive enough tips to meet the minimum wage requirements.

> implied service contract

There is no implied service contract when it comes to tipping.

An implied service contract is a legally-enforceable contract. For example, if you went to a barber shop and sat in the chair and the barber gave you a haircut, then it is implied that you will pay for the haircut. Theoretically, the barber could take you to court if you refused to pay, and the barber would win.

A tip, on the other hand, is gratuitous. The server performs their service in the hope that the customer will give a tip, but there is no obligation for the customer to do so. If a server tried to take a restaurant patron to court for not leaving a tip, he would lose.

> That is illegal.

Given that this is an IRS rule, it’s probably only illegal if the business reports the income as tip income to its employees, as opposed to a service fee charged by the business.

If cars had been as popular as guns when the U.S. Bill of Rights was written, then such a right might have been included.

Hypothetically, "Motorized transportation, being necessary to the mobility of a free State, the right of the people to keep and drive automobiles shall not be infringed."

Imagine the vehicles we would have. For one thing, the impossible-to-meet CAFE standards, which make it economically infeasible to sell compact pickup trucks in the U.S., would probably have been declared unconstitutional. On the other hand, laws requiring seatbelts and airbags probably would have also been unconstitutional.

If an AI came up with that headline, then it's using more natural English than GP would advocate.

Somehow this is even more interesting after reading that OP is a Site Reliability Engineer for Google. http://www.brutman.com/Michael_Brutman_resume.pdf

> * Max 128K RAM

IBM sold a 128K memory expansion sidecar to bring it to 256K. There is also apparently a way to swap in denser RAM chips to make it 512K (640K total).