Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Sex, Freiheit, Differentiation
Shouldn't this be one of those fields marked "required" on e-mail? Tjisana M. Lewis wrote: "Just one minor issue though in case we meet again - I (Product Manager with titles ad nauseaum) am male." (I had written -- with the famous line about 'what happens when you assume' nowhere in mind -- that "she sent the following response ..." regarding the new HP printserver which as of now does not support printing from Linux clients.) With apologies and thanks for the correction, I await the beating with wet noodles. declan points out another goof for which I must shoulder the blame: the judge in question in the DeCSS case is Lewis Kaplan, not Chaplain, as rendered in this story of last week.
Calling Tim Theisen, calling Tim Theisen to the white courtesy telephone ... Richard M. Stallman can't win. At least, that's the impression one gets sometimes from hearing the reactions he draws for saying nearly anything. Critical or glowing, the man says what's on his mind, and there's plenty on it. Including, of late, plenty about GNOME and KDE. As usual, the whole story is both more complex and more satisfying when you know more about it. Several readers pointed at Stallman's response at LinuxToday to the criticism he recieved (both official and unofficial) after he said "Making Qt available under the GPL makes it legal to take an existing GPL-covered program and adapt it to work with Qt." As a happy user of both KDE and GNOME, I must say RMS sounds pretty reasonable to me.
And a special deal for our guests from AOL -- Two bridges! Amazon says: don't worry! It's just an accident! jeko writes "Amazon.com just sent me an email claiming that their different prices for different customers are merely a mistake."
He cites email from a customer rep at Amazon:
"Finally, at any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the more than 4.7 million items on our site may be mispriced."So, there you go. This latest PR row is all just a 'mispricing.' I wish my customers would let me get away with that."Kristine Jorgensen, Amazon.com"
Meanwhile, Amazon is apparently not the only company to play cookie-based pricing games ... An unnamed correspondent writes: "[...] Similar to your story on Amazon.com regarding price differences, I think I've found a similar ploy on flyfrontier.com. I've been checking flights from Washington, DC to Denver, CO. When I first checked prices, the flight came back at $400. Several minutes later, the same flight was priced at over $500. When I switched computers, the same thing happened again: The price on the same flight was $400 in the first instance, and over $500 on the second. Then, I switched browsers ... it happened again. When I cleared my history and disabled cookies, I was able to recreate the price difference again. Try it and see for yourself. So, what's up with this? What is the advantage of switching prices around? Has this practice become widespread on the web?"
You have exactly 15ms to complete your response ... Go. Rick Lehrbaum writes "Victor Yodaiken, creator of RTLinux, has provided a brief statement about MontaVista Software's recent announcement of a hard real-time Linux (MontaVista, it should be noted, supports both RTLinux and the new kernel preemption technology.) In his response, Yodaiken draws significant distinctions between the architectural approaches taken by each (RTLinux; kernel preemptability), provides a technical perspective on the usefulness of each, and mentions some issues that need to be considered in proceeding along a kernel preemption path (which he does *not* summarily dismiss). Yodaiken claims that under RTLinux, "real-time software can communicate with Linux through fifos, shared memory, or signals but still gets hardware speed interrupt latencies, RTLinux worst case interrupt latencies are 15 microseconds on a generic x86 and better on PowerPC and Alphas." Additional detailed background on RTLinux appears in this interesting interview with Yodaiken (including info about "the infamous RTLinux patent")."
Also, the point that Amazon is probably not scamming, that they have the right to set whatever price they want--it is us who choose whether to buy--is valid. The original fact is useful, but is not itself an indicator of whether Amazon is evil and tyrannical like, say, MicroSoft or WalMart which use their power to buy competition outright to define the market, that being a whole 'nuther issue.
-Water Paradox
information is immaterial
because it is information about the producers pricing function that you didn't have before.
Is a certain item that worth say, $15.49 to you, suddenly become worth only $14.49 to you because they are selling it to someone else for that much?
well, this is sort of obvious: people want the lowest price they can get. Duh. In Econ101 this concept is expressed as "consumer surplus".
If a seller can determine exactly how much you are willing to pay and "price discriminate" to single you out, they can turn your surplus into their surplus. This keeps the overall "happiness" (economists call it "utility") the same, but it will also lead to your being less happy, and that's what we may be seeing here.
I say may be because people are making the assumption that the low price is "right" price and the high one is the "wrong" one. What Amazon may be trying to do is not figure out how much each individual will pay, but they may be trying to figure out what the average price should be, by experimenting with different random prices. Probably they are lying though, IMHO, and trying to screw each person on an individual basis. It fits in with some of the other stuff they've done, the one-click patent, changing the terms of the privacy agreement, etc.
That being said, I've found an online bookseller that seems to have consistently better prices than Amazon's, if not all the bells and whistles: Booksamillion.com.
--
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
ok, so now u see why i was a "grammer" nazi for a day....i got fired, they found out i cant spell for shit
But still there is a difference between -milli and -micro as was my original point regardless.
I was searching for some titles on Bibliofind the other day. Coincidentally, they're owned by Amazon. I instructed my browser not to allow cookies from the site, and I was disappointed to find that a few titles had disappeared since I last searched for them on Bibliofind. I then enabled cookies and returned to the site. Lo and behold, the lost titles were miraculously found.
Supply of digital media is limitless? No, silly. First of all, duplication and distribution of digital media incurs (possibly small but still) finite costs. More importantly, you're neglecting the cost of creating the media in the first place. By "digital media" you mean software, images, music, text, etc; correct? I can't imagine how creating these things will ever be free, and so their supply will be limited. That's why, though it costs nearly nothing to copy Adobe Photoshop, the software engineers on its dev team get paid such hefty salaries.
Oh, I see, this is a joke? Or you are stoned? Or both? Hope I haven't just wasted my time. Whatever.
If you're not wasted, the day is.
If you're not wasted, the day is.
Speaking of digging ditches, check out the shopping cart at PondSolutions.com These guys actually make you calculate your own tax and everything, for each item separately before you purchase!
Ummmm... last I checked, "ms" denoted "milliseconds". For microseconds, you have to use "um" in text, unless you can somehow get a lower-cased Greek letter Mu to show up in front of the "s". THAT is microseconds.
Of course, they may as well be the same thing relative to human response times... :)
Mr. Ska
Mispriced? Huh? Prices that dynamically change as you reload, or when you clear cookies, or change browser is not a mistake! Duh! Unless it is a bug in their software, this price fluctuating is intentional. What, do they have a group of monkeys, randomly changing prices so that when users reload the prices have changed? Bollocks. This is not an accident.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What's interesting about these little pricing games is that we internet users have been sticking it to the online businesses for a while now. Armed with (nearly) perfect information about the marketplace we have forced them to give up the premiums that businesses have traditionally been able to charge for better location, better advertising, and the like, resulting in a huge consumer surplus. Now, it looks like businesses are finally learning how to use the unique characteristics of the net to their advantage, and they're starting to win back some of that consumer surplus. For all the talk about how the rules of business have changed in the digital age, it looks as if the game may be fundamentally the same, once everyone learns how to play under the modified rules.
-rpl
If the price can be modified by cookies, wouldn't this pose some form of security risk? Cookies are supposed to be secure from other people viewing them, but wouldn't it be possible to defraud them, if one were to figure out how it worked?
Pax Digitalia
Were there a single company selling goods, this would be true. But when there are many (not a few--oligopolies have problems similar to monopolies), the effect of competition means that each customer can find prices within the range he is willing to pay and each seller can find prices within the range he is willing to pay. No, you'll never get the minimum you wish to pay because the minimum is $0.00! But you will prob. not have to pay the maximum either.
In a traditional haggling-based market the effect is even more pronounced. Fixed prices make the market much less elastic. The magic words `I can get this for less at Joe's' can work wonders.
Does this surprise anyone? Of course they're going to claim that "4.7 million items are accidently mispriced." They're not going to say, "that's right, we've been fucking with you all along, muahahha! And that extra money that we make on some of you, goes straight to our friends in the patent office. Muahahaha"
What does this have to do with cookie-based price differentiation? The above is true regardless of whether they are charging different prices to different customers. And the above statement clearly does not explain the cookie-based price game Amazon is trying to play.
In a completely unrelated story , Amazon was caught with prices that were too low, and they tried to explain the mistake to the customers for the purpose of charging full price. This has nothing to do with the cookie-pricing.
Unless I missed something, there are two completely separate issues here. Hmm. I thought slashback was where we checked the facts and presented corrected information.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
It's quite simple really. They--rightly or wrongly--never recognised Stallman as having a valid complaint. Thus his point is (in their view) invalid and his forgiveness unneeded at best and pompous at worst.
I hereby forgive the Aleuts for stealing my chocolate chip cookies, and extend to you personnally my forgiveness for burning my bushes.
Only prob. is, if you and the Aleuts have never done those things, my forgiveness is a bit presumptuous and silly. Likewise, if one does not accept Stallman's premises--among which is that dynamic linking is creating a derivative work; beware this as it could bite us--then one need not accept his conclusions.
My own take on it is that while I love the GPL--I release my work under it where I can--I do not believe that it reaches as far as the FSF thinks. If we let it do that then we must let those godawful EULAs reach as far as they like too. Nein dankeschön.
Although shouldn't it be copyright law, rather than RMS, that dictates what is and is not a derivative work? What if Microsoft slipped something into the Windows EULA saying that all programs that call the windows DLLs are derivative of those DLLs, and thus royalties must be paid to Microsoft for the distribution of the "derived" work?
The reason that it is RMS that decides what is and what isn't a derivative work under the GPL is that RMS wrote the GPL and has the power to change it.
To further use your example, Microsoft probably could change the license to Windows so that developers would have to pay a royalty for linking their DLLs. They won't do this because coercing developers into using basing their code on Microsoft DLLs is central to Microsoft's business plan, but Microsoft could change the license on their next round of software so that linking their libraries required royalties. There are plenty of other companies that charge you for the privilege of linking against their libraries.
Something to think about.
In the bedroom, the quiet bedroom, John Bobbitt sleeps tonight. ...
In the kitchen, the quiet kitchen, Lorena grabs a knife.
A wiener whack, a wiener whack,
The 3 major benefits which can be gained from these types of practices, in order of importance, are:
Economics is a challenging science. It is not possible to validate economic theories in a laboratory; economists must, in a general sense, patiently analyze those situations presented to them by the normal course of civilization. Data gained from the price targetting of individual consumers could prove invaluable to academics. Think about how beneficial an understanding of the atomic structure of silicon has been to the electronics industry. This sort of information not only atomizes the consumer/supplier relationships, but also allows for, in a limited sense, the opportunity for quasi-ethical controlled econonomic experiments.
I say "quasi-ethical" because dynamically changing a price does sound creepy. But is it truly any different, in principle, than what already occurs? Management and those who control prices are taught to understand the market; they know what groups buy what, and how changing the price of a good affects the quantity bought.
It is my view that Amazon's techniques accomplish nothing more than customizing the "market" to a single person. Once that person's unique elasticity of demand for each object is known, the prices can be set accordingly. The result: no change in consumer's flow of payment, but an increase in the consumer's reward for that payment. I come to this conclusion based on this reasoning (which could be flawed
- Currently, each of us exists, in the price-setter's mind, within a defined and homogenized market category.
- This particular market's elasticity of demand is known, and the prices of goods are adjusted accordingly.
- Sometimes individuals are faced with a higher charge, for a certain good, than they can pay. This is because some wealthy individuals, who share the category, influence the perceived elasticity.
- The new system will exclude everyone else.
- Consumers will be charged a personalized maximum price per good.
- However, whereas we may pay a little more for one item, the cost of those items, which we were previously unable to afford, will now be within our price range.
Obviously, we can only spend our income, and my logic does break down in extreme cases. (Gold plated Feraris will always be too expensive for meOf course, corporations will gather a great deal more revenue by implementing individual prices. The knee-jerk reaction, "If it enriches corporations it must be bad," is only a reaction. Think about who pays your salary. Corporation's success cause econonic prosperity for all of us through the DOW, NASDAQ, lower inflation, and a generally higher standard of living (just think, more money for research!!)
Most people, understandably, feel uncomfortable that they are being charged differently than their neighbor. I also have my doubts, but, by the same token, such a system does have merits, and the reluctance to investigate those merits is not healthy.
----(o)----
Even though I'm an economics professor, I don't have time to jump into this whole thing right now (I need to finish some sl9ides for this afternoon's lecture). However, on this narrow point, you've hit on the reason for experimental economcis.
Yes, economics is becoming actual science (in spite of the past. I'm as harsh a critic as annyone). We are now doing experiments to measure such willingness to pay. For example, a friend's dissertation randomly chose people from the phone book and wrote to them, asking them to participate in the experiment. It turns out that most are willing.
At the experiment, each receives their payment ($50-$100), and is asked to bid on the various types of pork--regular, organically grown, grown with hormones, irradiated for safety, etc. He used a "second price" auction, in which the winner only pays as much as the second highest bid, which lets people bid their "true" valuation--you don't have to worry about overbidding in this scheme.
The only cache with his work is that he lied to them. He got approval four years ago, but I don't think he'd get it today. The lie was small--all of the cuts were actually plain old pork chops rather than grown the way he claimed--but this just isn't tolerated. Psychologists have trouble running valid experiments because people know they're being lied to. We've taken a pretty hard line; ifyou're in an econ experiment, you can pretty much count on the truth. It's not just that we're altruists; we need to know tha *actual* responses; we gain nothing by lying (in his case, he saved a few bucks by not having the real meat).
hawk, as an econ professor
Yes, be the first in your town to register at the hardware store. None of those frilly curtains, silly plates and the like. No, get *real* presents: power tools! Drills, saws, compressors.
hawk, who always gives a cordless drill as a wedding present
I use Gnome rather than KDE, so I don't have an axe to grind, but it seemed to me that RMS implied in the earlier editorial that it wouldn't be over until the KDE development team sought for and obtained forgiveness from all authors whose code had been used in violation of its given license.
I think a better worded article would not have generated the responses he received. Had he spent more time dealing with the issue of past violations being sufficient to preclude use of code in perpetuity, he would have been able to call for developers to grant forgiveness as an act of embracing the changes that had been made and leading by example. Instead it looked like he was beating his own drum (look how nice I am) while continuing to withhold 'approval'.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I am a lawyer, but this is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
> The reason that it is RMS that decides what is and what isn't a
> derivative work under the GPL is that RMS wrote the GPL and has the
> power to change it.
no, No, NO! I keep hearing this, and it's 180 degrees from the truth.
There are approximately five billion people whose opinions on the proper
construction of the GPL get consdiered before RMS.
ne of the most basic legal rules of construction is that documents are construed against their author. Another is that the party who worte it is absolutely not an authority on the meaning of the document. THat party had their chance, and his words mean what they say, not what he wants them to say, or later wishes that they said.
Bottom line: RMS opinion on the meaning of the GPL carries absolutely no weight.
hawk, esq.
Considering your additude is condescending, you seem to think that I don't understand this.
In this case, why in the hell would I be pointing out the "2-bit amateur shopping cart" in the first place?
Blow.
I had the unfortunate experience of being involved in retail for several years, mainly at Circuit City and Software Etc.
All retail stores operate price zones. Software Etc had 3. Prices vary from region to region. The store in Baltimore's Inner Harbor had prices that were 15% to 20% more than the store in the burbs 30 minutes away.
At Circuit City, not only were there price zones, but prices in each store changed up/down daily. Employees are in the store every morning before opening to draw up new tags. The prices were sometimes based on available inventory but the changes where mainly designed to test the waters on products to see what prices points moved products at acceptable levels in each store. Several times a week there were also price changes that when out in the middle of the day. You could buy a TV in the morning and come back after lunch and find it $20 more or less.
This is exactly what Amazon is doing. They are not anti-christ of retail, they are just getting an unfair beating for doing exactly what every other retail store/chain is doing and has done since the dawn of time.
Anyway, enough of this stuff. KDE 2 RC1 is now tagged and coming soon -- if people have pent-up energy, they can direct it into bug reports.
---------
2) You just conclude your license is better than the GPL to draw your wicked rationale. Better for whom? For you? Well, good luck with your license, but if you want to merge you code with a GPLed code, the author DID NOT WANT YOU TO USE YOUR CODE ON A NON-GPLED PROGRAM, so you can't still use your license. That's the author condition. He decided to do it. He decided to use the GPL. If you want an exception, that's ok, write to him. But you do want an exception for the entire sort of GNU-protected programs just because you feel your license is better? Then CONVINCE EVERYONE ABOUT IT and they will be changing their licenses. There's simply NO REASON TO GO AFTER RMS FOR THAT.
My god, every time I see one of theses RMS-bashing articles I think the man can be considered a saint just for not getting mad at these accusations.
Patola (Cláudio Sampaio) - Solvo IT
IBM CATE
SAIR GNU/Linux Certified
Patola (Claudio Sampaio)
Unix System Administrator
While you certainly present a valid point, but there seems to be a difference between the way traditional "brick-and-mortar" stores change their pricing and what Amazon is doing. True, stores change their prices on a regular basis, and they often want to charge more for products that are all ready popular. However, stores generally do this based on market trends or whatever they use, they do not change the prices for individual consumers. From what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, that's what Amazon is doing to cause all this fuss. They change the prices on individuals based on their buying habits. I don't think anybody expects Amazon, or any other company for that matter, to always charge the exact same price, however, most people don't like the idea that they're being charged more for something than the next person. I for one would be pretty upset if I walked into McDonalds and they decided to charge me $10 for a small order of fries just because I seemed extra-hungry. True, I could, and most likely would, just walk out, but, realistically, how many people are going to do boycott Amazon because of this? Will the average consumer even notice? I'm pretty sure that Amazon has more customers than just the slashdot crowd (I'm not saying that word doesn't get around, but I'm simplifying for the sake of argument :-)). Well, my rant-fuel is starting to run out, but I guess I've made my point, so I'll stop now, cuz I have a tendency to ramble and wander once I've said my piece. :-) Basically what I'm trying to say is: This probably isn't something we should just pass off as "oh, everyone else does it too, it's no biggie."
:-)
Thanks for bothering to read my humble, and probably misinformed, opinion. Correct me as necessary (but please be gentle).
-------------------------------------------
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
-- Dr. Seuss
Wow, that explains the high voice in that song then. I always wondered how they did that.
Bite my yammer.
Now suddenly he says he doesn't even know what type of code KDE contains and that we were the ones that misinterpreted what he wrote.
RMS did not "suddenly" change what he said about anything. What he says here is that he doesn't know if KDE contains any FSF code or not. This is not a sudden change in position, he's never claimed it did! He did in the past quite correctly point out that it contained GPL'ed code, and that, lacking permission from the author, the KDE team was violating the GPL in using it the way they were.
As for you being one of the ones misinterpretting what he wrote, that's probably not the case. You don't seem to have read it to begin with...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Illegal? On my planet, it is not only legal, it's standard operating procedure. For instance, my people hold these things called "yard sales" where prices are negotiated based on the purchaser's willingness to pay and the seller's assessment of their ability to wheedle more money out of the purchaser. ;-)
Seriously, I don't understand why everybody's upset about Amazon's pricing. At worst, they are just determining the price elasticity curve of the market. Remember that all book and CD prices are totally arbitrary anyway. For example, the non-recurring expenses for production of a twenty year old music album have been paid for. Amazon's sole recurring expense for a CD is fixed (and much smaller than $1). Yet Seargent Pepper's Lonley Hearts Club Band (Beatles) costs $11.99, while Lost In The Ozone (Command Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen) costs $9.97. Given identical marginal cost of production, why is the Beatles album 20% more expensive? Because that's what the market will bear.
<slashdot>Come on, people. It ain't called the bazaar for nothing!</slashdot>
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
A bit back I posted an article that, while not outright flaming, questioned RMS's ability to lead due to this and other incidents.
Now, I'm not about to withdraw several other statements - I still don't think that he's definitely the ideal leader. But now it seems that he's actually going out of his way to make sure that what he meant to say is made certain. That is a Good Thing for someone in a leader's position to do, and it gives me a heck of a lot more confidence in him :).
A bit of analysis as to why the misinterpretation may have happened:
The rest is really just compounded on those two points. In that light, "Go GNOMEs!" would easily be seen as a derisive jab instead of what it seems now to be intended as - a sort of good-natured "Okay, you folks are all right, we like ya, but we're 'still gonna getcha', heh heh, nudge nudge."
Final verdict? The first article needed a few rewrites. But who knows; maybe RMS was too excited about the thought that KDE was finally going to be Totally Without Problems to review his material.
And btw, no, I don't think that this is what the above poster seems to think it is - a "he's too good to mess up, so it's OUR fault" article. RMS does have a few issues with arrogance and tunnel vision - hell, anyone can - but that kind of arrogance is just a little beyond even him. :)
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
After all I have never bought any cookies online, in fact I have never bought any food products online (I barely buy food offline). I get my cookies from my (soon to be) mother-in-law for free. Therefore even if Amazon was changing the prices of cookies it didn't affect me at all.
Oh wait, nevermind...
Devil Ducky
Devil Ducky
MY peers would get out of jury duty.
would it hang if you didn't respond after 15.4mS?
If you don't get it, read the Metric Tonnes of Quickies.....
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Although shouldn't it be copyright law, rather than RMS, that dictates what is and is not a derivative work?
It already is. A lot of people either haven't read the GPL, or don't understand copyright law. The GPL states that it operates solely under copyright law. When it talks about "works based on the Program" and other derivations, it is meant solely in the sense of copyright.
The issue of drawing the line at process boundaries is a practical matter of drawing the line between derivation (compile time linkage) and performance (runtime linkage). The line is very fuzzy, and I'm on the side that says the boundary should be narrower than the process, but I can still understand and sympathize with the other viewpoint.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
or come clean and stop their illegal price discrimination
What's illegal about their price discrimination? As long as they aren't discriminating based on a protected category (sex, age, race, etc..) they are more than free to charge you whatever they want.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I don't know about your imaginary PL, but the GPL does not insist this. but each licenses insists that you cannot change it over to the other. Now we have a problem.
Nope. If your license is as you described ("the wording were a little different, but in essence, the license had exactly the same legal implications of the GPL"), then there's no problem. The GPL would only be incompatible with your license if your license did NOT have the same implications as the GPL. Even then, it would be compatible with the GPL unless it placed additional restrictions that the GPL does not. This is why the BSD license (sans advertising clause) is perfectly compatible with the GPL, despite being a different license with different legal implications.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it is always seemed to me that the GNU Public License exhibits an intolerance to even the slightest differences in philosophy.
You are mistaken. Many license advocates on all sides of the issue display intolerance to even the slightest differences in philosophy (including the people who've obviously lied to you about what the GPL says, assuming you really believe the stuff you wrote above), but the GPL works quite well with any license that doesn't place additional restrictions. It is only intolerant towards licenses less free than it, and considering its detractors don't think its very free at all, that means it's only intolerant towards truly non-free stuff. Which is not a "slight difference" in philosophy, it's a huge chasm.
Not that I think the GPL is perfect or anything. In fact, I'm rather more of a fan of the so-called "Lesser GPL" precisely because the GPL sucks for precisely the reasons that got KDE in trouble. You ought to be able to link to any damned library you like, just as you can code to any operating system you like, regardless of the "freeness" of the OS.
But you don't advance your cause by repeating lies about the GPL to do it. You just provoke arguments where people point out that you're blowing smoke, and we all avoid talking about the real issues...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Unless your shopping cart was coded by a total moron, the price will never be stored in the cookie. Even more to the point, the products you have in your shopping cart will never be stored in the cookie.
Your cookie is merely a ticket, an anonymous id if you will. A magic number. A security token. Get it yet?
The cookie has an id value (key into a db or a hash of one, usually a 32 char guid) and the db on the server saves the actual shopping cart data and is pointed to by the cookie. See, if you have db laying around handily, it is actually much easier and more intuitive to save the shopping cart on the database. You can query it, run reports, etc... you just get more flexibility. Not to mention security.
Only 2-bit amateur shopping carts would be susceptible to such a lame and trivial attack.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
TrollTech makes available an excellent OO toolkit. The KDE desktop is based on same.
Many argue that QT is taking advantage of a free system to promote the non-free libraries.
Eventually, the libraries are released until the QPL.
Many whine that the developers in both the KDE/QT camps and the "opposing" GNOME camp are actually secret lovers, and it is the Linux Kommunity that causes all the outrage over the free/non-free issues.
Legal use of QT, as a developer in a pro environment (software for sale) costs more than twice that of Visual C++ Pro and Win NT combined.
Gnome advances much faster than many anticipated.
HP, Sun, Compaq, Eazel all throw in their support for Gnome, probably intending for it to replace their aging CDE desktops.
Shortly thereafter, Qt announces they will GPL their libraries, presumably a last ditch attempt at getting a share of the Linux future.
Competition once again servers the consumer. In a short time, Qt (and therefore KDE) will be free. This certainly helps Gnome advocates sink their teeth into a quality C++ toolkit.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
No it isn't. Please cite the law stating this. Car dealers, airlines, hotels, etc... do it all the time.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
So, after a 'slashback', she's now a he?
Ouch...
---
They may say that in the fine print, but it is still not illegal to have differentiated pricing for different customers.
Hell, I worked in a paint store for 4 years in college, and we had 5 or 6 different price schedules for the same item depending on who the customer was (retail, contractors, etc...) and we didn't have any fine print anywhere.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
the criticism he recieved ... after he said "Making Qt available under the GPL makes it legal to take an existing GPL-covered program and adapt it to work with Qt."
Uh, Timothy? Where have you been? The criticism was not directed at the statement you quoted. 99% of it was directed at his "forgiveness" and the remaining 1% directed at the "go GNOME" statement. I don't recall anyone bitching about Stallman's announcement of Qt under the GPL.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This is why the BSD license (sans advertising clause) is perfectly compatible with the GPL, despite being a different license with different legal implications.
Think about it. The BSD license sans advertising clause as is considered to be compatible with the GPL is essentially public domain, and no license at all.
However, the BSD license (even sans advertising clause) is not actually compatible with the GPL, because it requires that a copy of the BSD license be distributed with the software. This is an "additional restriction" that is not permitted by the letter of the GPL.
Whatever Stallman says, or the official position of the FSF, the GPL demands absolute exclusivity. A copy of software can be under the GPL alone or not under the GPL at all, but it can't be simultaneously under the GPL and any other license that requires that further copies also be placed under that other license and the software contain notices to that effect (which is the defining characteristic of redistributable software licenses).
No, for a license to be compatible with the GPL, it must contain a GPL-surrender, like the WxWindows license or the LGPL.
Even assuming I'm wrong, answer me this: how, exactly, is a license which doesn't require source to be distributed with binaries, but does require the source to be placed under the same license (which gives full permission to redistribute, modify, and compile to everybody) if it is distributed, less free than the GPL?
To me, this seems like a slight difference in philosophy which the GPL is intolerant of.
Another example would be a GPL-like license, but requiring that full joint copyright permissions to all modifications be transferred to the originator (or, for that matter, that the modifications be placed in the public domain), so he can re-release it under any terms he later decides without having to hunt down. This would be in all practical ways identical to the GPL, except that if license incompatibilities later arised, the originator could fix it. But the GPL would not be tolerant of this slight difference in philosophy, either.
The LGPL is almost as much of a pain in the butt: this kind of linking is okay, that kind isn't. That is why all my software goes into the public domain, the only "license" that really allows anyone to do anything with your work, except monopolize it and keep it from others.
The truth is, it wouldn't be hard to duplicate GPL'd software for proprietary code. The code's right in front of you, it's easy to rewrite it (hell, it would probably be worth doing just to clean up the syntax and make it match your personal standards). Furthermore, anyone who made a minor effort to modify GPL'd code so that it appears to be an original work would succeed. The GPL is not enforceable against someone who knowingly sets out to break it and not get caught. If they make the court complaint "It looks suspiciously like our work" they could easily say, "Of course, we read their code, it was freely available for educational use. Naturally we would produce something similar. They don't own the methods they used, just the text that they typed."
The question is, is it worthwhile to attack proprietary code producers and add a slight inconvenience to the process of making a proprietary variant of your work if it causes problems to people who honestly want to produce free software?
Copyright law can't produce the protection the GPL was designed for in an enforceable way. The GPL is nothing but an inconvenience to everyone involved. It is just one more example of the ridiculous naivety and petulant idealism of the FSF, and there is no shortage of those.
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The funny thing is, I interpreted Richard's pro-Gnome remarks as being along the lines of a sports fan supporting the home team. I mean, he lives in the Boston metro area so he is probably more likely to be pro-Red Sox than to root for the (ahem) obvously far cooler Baltimore Orioles.
:)
In other words, "Lighten up already, people."
Messing with Free Software and Open Source and Linux is supposed to be *fun* and bring us all closer together, as opposed to the death - to - all - competitors rivalries that infest the commercial, closed source software world.
I happen to prefer KDE and will probably never use emacs in my life, but that's no reason for me to get into bar fights just because some misguided clown thinks the New England Patriots belong in the same league as the Redskins.
(Metaphors purposely mixed.)
- Robin
Amazon has taken its fair-share of heat on Slashdot. I remember that the uproar when Amazon patented "one-click shopping". IMHO, that was well deserved, but Amazon has invented new shopping "technologies" that I like.
I definitely like the wish lists. It's easy to add stuff to my wish list and update it when I purchase something. Also, it's nice to be able to publish wish lists and read other's wish lists especially when you want to surprise a loved one with a gift. Also, I like the Amazon Purchase Circles. It's interesting to browse the Purchase Circles and find out what books the Microserfs are buying.
This latest instant price changing incident is perhaps the latest Amazon shopping innovation being tested. Brick and mortar stores change prices often and track their customer purchase habits with all the specialty card programs. Amazon just has the luxury of changing prices at "Internet speed" simply because they ARE the largest retail store on the Internet.
This is a classic example of market manipulation and how the Internet is changing the ideals of traditional retail. If you don't like it, there are plenty of choices. Nobody is forcing you to purchase items at Amazon's prices. Everytime you purchase something on Amazon you do so at your own free will, at the price stated. If you don't like the price, then don't buy it. There are plenty of places to do some comparison shopping if you don't like Amazon. I use PriceScan.
Regarding the Amazon customer service, they are probably just doing some damage control. Amazon's main customer service center is in North Dakota and they're probably not up to speed on the plans at the Seattle headquarters. I take everything customer service says with a grain of salt.
Rangers Lead the Way!
Finally, at any given time, despite our best efforts, a small number of the more than 4.7 million items on our site may be mispriced.
:)
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Read it again there boy-o.... They didn't say they mispriced 4.7 million items as many people seem to think they have... I see it specifically says a small number of there 4.7 million items... which generally means a fraction thereof..
Now the small fraction... what is it? 0.1%? 0.5%? 1%? 2%?
Even assuming a 0.1% error rate (which is pretty good for a big company like that... my company generally allows a 2% error rate...) thats 47000 products being mispriced...
That also means that 1/1000 people get a mispriced item... which I suppose isn't all that great... but you have to give them credit... if they can keep there error rate to less than 1%, then they're doing better than alot of companys.
People also have to remember that.. despite our greatest efforts... computers are only as smart as there programmers... and nobodys perfect.
Synchis
The worlds most popular, famous, and loved super hero...
Just kidding
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
Price switching is nothing new. Most mail order firms have been doing this with catalogs for years. They will send one catalog to people who haven't bought anything in a few years, and another to people who have bought recently. Item numbers in the catalogs will then have a different prefix and higher prices for old customers. If you tell the people who take your order that you want the "new customer" price, they will often give you the lower price.
Even more recently, I recieved a catalog that sold the same ornamental bird house in two areas of the same catalog, but for $10 more in one area of the catalog than in another.
This is just another old marketing gimmick that made its way onto the net.