Actually, it seems possible to me that they're trying to overturn the Betamax ruling. If they can get win enough of these cases against service providers (as opposed to those actually breaking the laws in question), it might overweigh that decision, which is definitely not in their favour. I don't know much about legal precident laws, but is this possible?
So, uh, what are you using to click on buttons anyway?
My keyboard.;-) Seriously, I do use my keyboard for most GUI tasks, including menus, navigating between windows, and a bunch of other things. Actually, for the most part, buttons and radio/check boxes are the only things I use my rodent for.
That would probably be better, and much more logical than embedding the links in the message. Kinda like Slashdot's related links box, but automatically generated. And it removes the entire possibility of copyright infringement, in this area at least.
Personally, I think there should be a seperate anime section, since there do seem to be a lot of articles about it posted lately... And, FYI, there is a lot of anime that has nothing to do with mecha at all.
I sympathize with your position, and remind you that this problem is a lot more widespread than just those who write bad tech reviews. I KNOW that Linux or OS/2 or whatever isn't perfect, and I'm interested to see what flaws there are, so that I can find a way to get involved, maybe by fixing one or two. So here's my suggestion to you.
Get/write some E-Mail filtering software. Provide it with a list of "abusive phrases" and have it simply replace them with some character (* is always popular). If a message crosses a certant percentage of replacement (say, 25% of the words? 40%?) flag it as probably offensive. So you get some stress relief by seeing someone's abusive rant reduced to a bunch of ****-ing *s, and you get less abusive E-Mail.
Yeah, this idea probably won't work incredibly well, but I think its a start.:) Now, we just have to hope that more people think before hitting the send button.
I'll admit that I was rather surprised and pleased by this. Even though I'm not an American citizen, I'm very concerned about these issues, because Canada has a tendency to roll over whenever America barks. Sen. Hatch's efforts, from what I understand, seem to be oriented towards getting record labels to do some of their classic price-gouging over the Internet instead of just through stores, as opposed to getting them to stop going after all these online music distribution services and instead go after the people abusing them. But its a step in the right direction, and one that might open some eyes.
Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I'm leading an ice skating expidition in hell at 7:00 PM Eastern time this evening. Be sure to dress warmly.;)
Of course, having that many different programs to fulfil one need isn't necissarily bad. It means you always have alternatives, if one starts doing something you don't like or gets abandoned. And there's lots of different feature sets, and more different ways of doing things...
Another idea I've had kicking around for a while that might work well here. Custom CDs. I know that anyone with a burner can create them, but that takes time. Usually lots of it. So if the band offers to make and sell custom CDs (choose fifteen tracks), complete with packaging/CD art (you won't get that on custom CD!) and charge only a bit more (one or two dollars more?) than it takes to buy a CD blank and burn it, I suspect a lot of people might go for that.
Ok, let me ask you if you've read the GPL. It doesn't try and infringe upon your rights, it doesn't remove any rights you have under copyright law. It is related to click-wrap licenses only in the most superficial ways. Instead, the GPL grants you extra rights, saying that you are allowed to do things you normally wouldn't be allowed to. It also puts some restrictions on those extra rights, to ensure the extra rights are granted to everyone who can use the software.
Apologies for the hostile tone of that, but anyway... That entire authorship thing is incrediblty confusing. Could someone tell me what these "rights of authorship" they're going on about are? Its not copyright law, because I doubt a court would say that once someone sells something, he/she can no longer enforce their copyright. Some kind of clarification would be incredibly helpful.
I just read Mr. Cox's message, and I wouldn't say that its a "roadblock." Roadblock seems to imply that there isn't much chance of progress at all. Mr. Cox was just saying that the current VM doesn't work right at all, and that he wants to take a couple of months to re-code it (presumably from scratch) and test it extensively before the official release. At least, that's what I got out of the "linked" message (you can include HTML, you know...).
If I'm missing something, please point it out to me.
We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.
As you can see, the poster answered your question already. You do raise a good point though. The primary reason to open-source software, that I can see, is morals. You believe in open source, being a benefit to the community, etc, and see this as more important than any problems making money off software could cause you.
As for a reply to the original question, I'd say the best way would be to sell your services customizing your product or building other products that use it. Since I don't know what your product is, I don't know how feasable this is. But it is a suggestion, all the same.
What, you mean you weren't born a geek? You didn't learn C at the tender age of two? Right, out you go. I'm sorry, there's no room for you here. And we'll be keeping that computer and those CD-ROMs, thank you very much....;-)
Note: The amount of serious material in this post is well below government-defined acceptable limits. Therefor, we ask you please not to take offense or flame the poster, as he is obviously not in his right mind. Thank you.
Umm.... Yeah.... Right... Could any moderator who moderated this up as anything but "Funny" please post a reply to this message so I know who you are and can take my revenge on you at a later date?;-)
I'm afraid I found your post a bit confusing and hard to read, and your last point didn't seem to make any sense. I know a lot of music "superstars" have spoken out against MP3s in general and Napster in particular, and the RIAA is trying desperately to stop them from catching on. But for the most part, every musician I know likes the idea of digital music that's easy to record, distribute, and edit. Remember that there are a lot of fairly well-known musicians that have spoken out in favour of MP3s. I think most of them like it because it means their music gets wide recognition and they get their revenue from sources other than selling tapes and CDs.
Also remember that most record-label-signed artists only get about $0.02 per CD, and most (from what I've heard) even wind up in debt to their label. I imagine that not having to pay a label to distribute their music might seem quite attractive...
Actually, I believe that you already have the right to modify the software all you like. All the GPL says is that, if you distribute the software, you also must distribute the code to it and have both under the GPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I could've sworn it said this somewhere in the GPL...
As a note, from everything I've heard about him, Pratchett definitely isn't a "dick." I'm not on alt.fan.pratchett myself, but I've heard that he visits it frequently, and contributes to and encourages his online fan community. Given the amount of comments he's made on the jackets of his latest books about how much time he spends infront of a keyboard, it might be neat to have a Slashdot interview done with him.
For those interested, L-Space has a giant library of Pratchett quotes, most amassed from his posts on alt.fan.pratchett.
Whatever happened to the spirit behind the Bill of Rights?
You really want to know? First, some judge decided against it because he liked the argument of a white lawyer over that of a black one. Then the contents were curtailed for wartime security, then coldwartime security. Then, the implied spirit was ruled to not be upheld by the letter of the law and to be communist.
More of it was ripped apart when the government legalized bribery, and again when out-of-control gun control (I have no opinion either way on the carrying of firerams) established a precident for restrictions on rights. Finally, corporate "extensions" to copyright law and "industry self-regulation" but the final bullet in its corpse.
Note that this is entirely from memory, and satire and irony are emphasized over accuracy. I'm just trying to cover some things that, IMHO, may have had an influence here.
There was an animated American TV series a few years back I was fairly impressed with. Invasion America, backed by Steven Spielburg. The animation started out being quite so-so, but improved a lot as the series went on. It was quite good sci-fi, the plot was well-written, and the characters were fascinating. Unfortunately, it was owned by Warner Bros. So you can guess what happened after the first season wasn't as popular as Friends.
I doubt you'd even be able to find anything about it on the Internet now. There was quite a thriving community until about a year after the cancellation was actually announced, at which point WB shut it down. You might be able to find the two books by Christie Golden, but even that's uncertant. The book titles are Invasion America and On The Run, if you're interested.
As a Pratcett fan, I'm kinda curious as to what the story behind the Vorbis bit is...
-RickHunter
Re:Mattel and the Learning Company are screwed up
on
Mattel Spyware
·
· Score: 1
Glad to see someone posting something about that book on Slashdot. It is excellent, and really made me think about why most proprietary software was so bad. Unfortunately, there's one chapter (but only one) that I felt was a "blame the programmers, its their fault, they act different" rant, but that's probably just me. He also doesn't cover Free Software, or even Open Sourced software, and the benefits it offers. In fact, as far as I could tell, a lot of the things he suggests are already being done by big Free Software/Open Souce projects.
And this little issue, that has popped up how many times this year, doesn't get addressed either, if I remember right. But I'm sure its going to get a couple of chapters to it in the next edition (assuming he does one).
About your hardware configuration point... I haven't used Mandrake 7.0 myself, but I know a couple of people who have. From what they said, DrakConf (I think that's the spelling...) makes hardware configuration so much easier. I'm sorry that I can't provide much more information about how it works. But you might want to check it out next time you need to talk a new user through a new hardware installation in Linux.
Excellent points. Especially your last ones, about all the responsibilities of the owner being shoved onto the consumer. I agree that the problem seems to be a combination of a general lack of effort on the part of consumers and corporations taking advantage of people. Perhaps some kind of easy-to-use comparison service that promotes awareness of these issues and the problems of leasing is in order?
Although, on second thought, that could be trouble too. If the UCITA passes in enough states, and the practices of the computer industry really are being picked up by everyone else... We could see companies banning negative reviews or criticism too. Which isn't good for this situation.
Please excuse any misinterpretation of your points or over-extending of ideas.
Then how DO lawyers understand any legal documents?;-) Seriously, I suspect that if you took a lisence a software lawyer wrote five years ago and showed it to him, he wouldn't be able to accurately tell you what a good portion of it was for. Kind of like writing an entire (insert large program here), and not putting in any comments. And if he couldn't understand what he'd written, think about what its like for a consumer to be expected to understand that stuff...
Good point. I've actually taken to trying to read the entirety of lisence agreements lately, and I've noticed that a good portion of the text, or at the very least the important bits, is in all caps. I've found that I then have a tendency to skim it or skip it completely, because its so irritating, instead of reading closely. And that's especially evil because, if anything about it ever comes before a judge, the lisencers can say:
"But, your honor, as you can see, this passage clearly states that the lisencee is not permitted/required/whatever to do this. And, to make sure they saw it, we put it in all caps!"
A smart judge would, at that point, proceed to make every document he provided to the lisencer have at least five paragraphs typed entirely in capital letters.;-)
Exactly! Its fine if I want to use Borland's RAD, but everyone shouldn't be required to. That's the pitfall that, IMHO, Windows falls into the pitfall of assuming everyone needs and wants the same tools, and I hope Linux doesn't. I can see the advantages of both GCC/(insert favorite text editor here) and a RAD. And I think I'd want both options to use when needed. So forcing everyone to use one or the other is a monumentally stupid move. IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it seems possible to me that they're trying to overturn the Betamax ruling. If they can get win enough of these cases against service providers (as opposed to those actually breaking the laws in question), it might overweigh that decision, which is definitely not in their favour. I don't know much about legal precident laws, but is this possible?
-RickHunter
So, uh, what are you using to click on buttons anyway?
My keyboard. ;-) Seriously, I do use my keyboard for most GUI tasks, including menus, navigating between windows, and a bunch of other things. Actually, for the most part, buttons and radio/check boxes are the only things I use my rodent for.
-RickHunter
That would probably be better, and much more logical than embedding the links in the message. Kinda like Slashdot's related links box, but automatically generated. And it removes the entire possibility of copyright infringement, in this area at least.
-RickHunter
Personally, I think there should be a seperate anime section, since there do seem to be a lot of articles about it posted lately... And, FYI, there is a lot of anime that has nothing to do with mecha at all.
-RickHunter
I sympathize with your position, and remind you that this problem is a lot more widespread than just those who write bad tech reviews. I KNOW that Linux or OS/2 or whatever isn't perfect, and I'm interested to see what flaws there are, so that I can find a way to get involved, maybe by fixing one or two. So here's my suggestion to you.
Get/write some E-Mail filtering software. Provide it with a list of "abusive phrases" and have it simply replace them with some character (* is always popular). If a message crosses a certant percentage of replacement (say, 25% of the words? 40%?) flag it as probably offensive. So you get some stress relief by seeing someone's abusive rant reduced to a bunch of ****-ing *s, and you get less abusive E-Mail.
Yeah, this idea probably won't work incredibly well, but I think its a start. :) Now, we just have to hope that more people think before hitting the send button.
-RickHunter
I'll admit that I was rather surprised and pleased by this. Even though I'm not an American citizen, I'm very concerned about these issues, because Canada has a tendency to roll over whenever America barks. Sen. Hatch's efforts, from what I understand, seem to be oriented towards getting record labels to do some of their classic price-gouging over the Internet instead of just through stores, as opposed to getting them to stop going after all these online music distribution services and instead go after the people abusing them. But its a step in the right direction, and one that might open some eyes.
Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I'm leading an ice skating expidition in hell at 7:00 PM Eastern time this evening. Be sure to dress warmly. ;)
-RickHunter
Of course, having that many different programs to fulfil one need isn't necissarily bad. It means you always have alternatives, if one starts doing something you don't like or gets abandoned. And there's lots of different feature sets, and more different ways of doing things...
-RickHunter
Another idea I've had kicking around for a while that might work well here. Custom CDs. I know that anyone with a burner can create them, but that takes time. Usually lots of it. So if the band offers to make and sell custom CDs (choose fifteen tracks), complete with packaging/CD art (you won't get that on custom CD!) and charge only a bit more (one or two dollars more?) than it takes to buy a CD blank and burn it, I suspect a lot of people might go for that.
Comments, suggestions, problems you can see?
-RickHunter
Ok, let me ask you if you've read the GPL. It doesn't try and infringe upon your rights, it doesn't remove any rights you have under copyright law. It is related to click-wrap licenses only in the most superficial ways. Instead, the GPL grants you extra rights, saying that you are allowed to do things you normally wouldn't be allowed to. It also puts some restrictions on those extra rights, to ensure the extra rights are granted to everyone who can use the software.
Apologies for the hostile tone of that, but anyway... That entire authorship thing is incrediblty confusing. Could someone tell me what these "rights of authorship" they're going on about are? Its not copyright law, because I doubt a court would say that once someone sells something, he/she can no longer enforce their copyright. Some kind of clarification would be incredibly helpful.
-RickHunter
I just read Mr. Cox's message, and I wouldn't say that its a "roadblock." Roadblock seems to imply that there isn't much chance of progress at all. Mr. Cox was just saying that the current VM doesn't work right at all, and that he wants to take a couple of months to re-code it (presumably from scratch) and test it extensively before the official release. At least, that's what I got out of the "linked" message (you can include HTML, you know...).
If I'm missing something, please point it out to me.
-RickHunter
We realize that if we do keep the source closed, but open the API or docs, someone will clone it because they don't want to pay for our work. Even with the typical no-quality clone, this makes the product life too short and the market too small to justify the large development costs.
As you can see, the poster answered your question already. You do raise a good point though. The primary reason to open-source software, that I can see, is morals. You believe in open source, being a benefit to the community, etc, and see this as more important than any problems making money off software could cause you.
As for a reply to the original question, I'd say the best way would be to sell your services customizing your product or building other products that use it. Since I don't know what your product is, I don't know how feasable this is. But it is a suggestion, all the same.
-RickHunter
I feel I was just about born a geek
What, you mean you weren't born a geek? You didn't learn C at the tender age of two? Right, out you go. I'm sorry, there's no room for you here. And we'll be keeping that computer and those CD-ROMs, thank you very much.... ;-)
Note: The amount of serious material in this post is well below government-defined acceptable limits. Therefor, we ask you please not to take offense or flame the poster, as he is obviously not in his right mind. Thank you.
-RickHunter
Umm.... Yeah.... Right... Could any moderator who moderated this up as anything but "Funny" please post a reply to this message so I know who you are and can take my revenge on you at a later date? ;-)
-RickHunter
I'm afraid I found your post a bit confusing and hard to read, and your last point didn't seem to make any sense. I know a lot of music "superstars" have spoken out against MP3s in general and Napster in particular, and the RIAA is trying desperately to stop them from catching on. But for the most part, every musician I know likes the idea of digital music that's easy to record, distribute, and edit. Remember that there are a lot of fairly well-known musicians that have spoken out in favour of MP3s. I think most of them like it because it means their music gets wide recognition and they get their revenue from sources other than selling tapes and CDs.
Also remember that most record-label-signed artists only get about $0.02 per CD, and most (from what I've heard) even wind up in debt to their label. I imagine that not having to pay a label to distribute their music might seem quite attractive...
-RickHunter
Actually, I believe that you already have the right to modify the software all you like. All the GPL says is that, if you distribute the software, you also must distribute the code to it and have both under the GPL. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I could've sworn it said this somewhere in the GPL...
No flame intended, just a minor correction.
-RickHunter
As a note, from everything I've heard about him, Pratchett definitely isn't a "dick." I'm not on alt.fan.pratchett myself, but I've heard that he visits it frequently, and contributes to and encourages his online fan community. Given the amount of comments he's made on the jackets of his latest books about how much time he spends infront of a keyboard, it might be neat to have a Slashdot interview done with him.
For those interested, L-Space has a giant library of Pratchett quotes, most amassed from his posts on alt.fan.pratchett.
-RickHunter
Whatever happened to the spirit behind the Bill of Rights?
You really want to know? First, some judge decided against it because he liked the argument of a white lawyer over that of a black one. Then the contents were curtailed for wartime security, then coldwartime security. Then, the implied spirit was ruled to not be upheld by the letter of the law and to be communist.
More of it was ripped apart when the government legalized bribery, and again when out-of-control gun control (I have no opinion either way on the carrying of firerams) established a precident for restrictions on rights. Finally, corporate "extensions" to copyright law and "industry self-regulation" but the final bullet in its corpse.
Note that this is entirely from memory, and satire and irony are emphasized over accuracy. I'm just trying to cover some things that, IMHO, may have had an influence here.
-RickHunter
There was an animated American TV series a few years back I was fairly impressed with. Invasion America, backed by Steven Spielburg. The animation started out being quite so-so, but improved a lot as the series went on. It was quite good sci-fi, the plot was well-written, and the characters were fascinating. Unfortunately, it was owned by Warner Bros. So you can guess what happened after the first season wasn't as popular as Friends.
I doubt you'd even be able to find anything about it on the Internet now. There was quite a thriving community until about a year after the cancellation was actually announced, at which point WB shut it down. You might be able to find the two books by Christie Golden, but even that's uncertant. The book titles are Invasion America and On The Run, if you're interested.
-RickHunter
As a Pratcett fan, I'm kinda curious as to what the story behind the Vorbis bit is...
-RickHunter
Glad to see someone posting something about that book on Slashdot. It is excellent, and really made me think about why most proprietary software was so bad. Unfortunately, there's one chapter (but only one) that I felt was a "blame the programmers, its their fault, they act different" rant, but that's probably just me. He also doesn't cover Free Software, or even Open Sourced software, and the benefits it offers. In fact, as far as I could tell, a lot of the things he suggests are already being done by big Free Software/Open Souce projects.
And this little issue, that has popped up how many times this year, doesn't get addressed either, if I remember right. But I'm sure its going to get a couple of chapters to it in the next edition (assuming he does one).
-RickHunter
About your hardware configuration point... I haven't used Mandrake 7.0 myself, but I know a couple of people who have. From what they said, DrakConf (I think that's the spelling...) makes hardware configuration so much easier. I'm sorry that I can't provide much more information about how it works. But you might want to check it out next time you need to talk a new user through a new hardware installation in Linux.
-RickHunter
Excellent points. Especially your last ones, about all the responsibilities of the owner being shoved onto the consumer. I agree that the problem seems to be a combination of a general lack of effort on the part of consumers and corporations taking advantage of people. Perhaps some kind of easy-to-use comparison service that promotes awareness of these issues and the problems of leasing is in order?
Although, on second thought, that could be trouble too. If the UCITA passes in enough states, and the practices of the computer industry really are being picked up by everyone else... We could see companies banning negative reviews or criticism too. Which isn't good for this situation.
Please excuse any misinterpretation of your points or over-extending of ideas.
-RickHunter
Then how DO lawyers understand any legal documents? ;-) Seriously, I suspect that if you took a lisence a software lawyer wrote five years ago and showed it to him, he wouldn't be able to accurately tell you what a good portion of it was for. Kind of like writing an entire (insert large program here), and not putting in any comments. And if he couldn't understand what he'd written, think about what its like for a consumer to be expected to understand that stuff...
-RickHunter
Good point. I've actually taken to trying to read the entirety of lisence agreements lately, and I've noticed that a good portion of the text, or at the very least the important bits, is in all caps. I've found that I then have a tendency to skim it or skip it completely, because its so irritating, instead of reading closely. And that's especially evil because, if anything about it ever comes before a judge, the lisencers can say:
"But, your honor, as you can see, this passage clearly states that the lisencee is not permitted/required/whatever to do this. And, to make sure they saw it, we put it in all caps!"
A smart judge would, at that point, proceed to make every document he provided to the lisencer have at least five paragraphs typed entirely in capital letters. ;-)
-RickHunter
Exactly! Its fine if I want to use Borland's RAD, but everyone shouldn't be required to. That's the pitfall that, IMHO, Windows falls into the pitfall of assuming everyone needs and wants the same tools, and I hope Linux doesn't. I can see the advantages of both GCC/(insert favorite text editor here) and a RAD. And I think I'd want both options to use when needed. So forcing everyone to use one or the other is a monumentally stupid move. IMHO.
-RickHunter