This raises some tricky and confusing (to me) problems. The company is Canadian and operates in Canada, but the signals in question are American based, and the companies being harmed are in America. In iCraveTV's country, what they're doing is legal, but in their victim's country, it isn't. If I throw a rock across the border and hit a Canadian, whose country do I get sued in?
As for the banners, they are not really changing the signal - the signal is broadcast unaltered as a separate stream, and the ads are added by RealPlayer.
But the original signal could be watched without the banners. The modified version cannot.
When you consider that Canadian law allows for this, so long as they pay the copyright holders, their only motivation can be the ratings.
So what's wrong with that? Television broadcasters make their money by getting sponsors to pay for advertising. The sponsors buy the advertising because they to get exposure for their products. They measure the exposure by the number of viewers as projected from a survey of a small population slice, also known as a rating. The higher the ratings, the more exposure the sponsor is getting, so the more money they pay the broadcaster. Lower ratings mean less money, so if a company such as iCraveTV rebroadcasts their signal in such a way that ratings suffer, the broadcaster is losing money. If you were losing money because someone was stealing your signal and rebroadcasting it in a way that isn't covered by any current rating system, you'd be pissed off too. And justly.
Suppose a company has a factory right on the border between Canada and the USA, on the Canadian side. And suppose they have a long pipe that extends right to the border, where they pump all of the toxic waste that their plant generates. While no part of their plant is in the United States, they are still dumping toxic sludge there.
I'm not saying the Judge in has any jurisdiction in Canada, or that the United States has any right to stop iCraveTV from rebroadcasting into the United States, but it does seem to cause a problem when a Canadian company is directly costing American companies money.
The point is not whether or not it will be missed; the point is whether or not they should be able to do what they are doing. If they want to provide a service that nobody wants, they still have the right to provide that service (unless doing so breaks laws or violates someone else's rights).
Yeah, I guess you're right. Those darned Asians with their dishonest "Asia-centric" tactics. If only everyone was a white American, we would all live in a happy candyland of honesty and contentment, right? (That was sarcasm. I'm not a racist. In fact, quite the opposite.)
I say beat on them until they cry, "Uncle!" or come clean. But supposing they are genuine, are perpetrating no fraud, and have really done nothing particularly wrong? Sure, maybe their product stinks. So don't buy it! And maybe they've exagerated their claims a little bit, but I can name at least 5 toothpaste brands that get my teeth the whitest. Give them a chance before you beat them to death with suspicion.
Do you see any distro's that are just repackages of the Kernel, sold for money? If not money, what are they sold for? Is it possible for a publicly traded company like RedHat to do anything solely for the good of the community, not for profit? Possible, but highly unlikely. The system works as long as companies can profit by making things better.
If anything, you are just taking the opposite side of the argument becuase you think you should, or you think its cool to do so. I'm taking the opposite side of the argument (from you) because I'm a little ticked that the entire linux community has already judged this company, and had judged them prior to this release. If you don't like the product they're offering, don't buy it and don't reccommend it. But don't call them a "slimeball company" just because they're a little late getting to the field and haven't done anything innovative yet. If you don't give them a chance to prove themselves, they never will. (The upside of that, of course, is that you will end up having been right. But at the cost of a potentially useful company.)
You've already judged them. Aren't all the current Linux distributions based on the Linux kernel? Did any of the non-slimeball Linux companies write that kernel themselves? No, they are releasing products which someone else created. Give LinuxOne some time and see if they create something worth using before you condemn them as a slimeball company.
As much as we like to act nonjudgemental and high/mighty, geek culture is very non-permissive. Once an entity has been criticized by a couple of Ubergeeks, the ignorant masses adopt the cry and zealously attack. Just wait until you know more about them than what you have been fed by CmdrTaco's editorials in the headline before you judge.
Does anyone else find it funny when two people with names like Chris and Christine get married? I guess it makes me a hick, but I get a chuckle out of that.
Since the first time it appeared on Slashdot, nothing even remotely positive has appeared about LinuxOne. Everyone seems to have already decided their shady and evil, and are interpreting everything they do that way. Give them a chance before you judge them. Maybe some new and useful software will come of it. And keep in mind, this is their first distro, ever.
For you, maybe the "good old days" are indeed happening right now. But not for me, primarily because I don't like the artists and works you mentioned (except for Bill Watterson, who was retired the last time I checked).
I personally have a very nice ceramic penguin I got at one of those "paint it yourself" ceramics places. I made it years ago, before I'd ever wanted a ceramic Tux, but when I found it in a box in the garage three months ago, I saw the likeness immediately.
If anything, there's probably more risk in using a credit card offline than online. Online SSL makes it difficult to intercept transmitted numbers, and massive credit card number theft such as this is rare enough that it is big news. But when you hand your Visa card to a waiter in a restaurant, how hard would it be for him to write down the name and number on the card?
Seems like more and more brilliant artists are dying or retiring these days, with none stepping forward to replace them. The comic artists of today are like pen-lights to the artistic flames of men like Don Martin or Charles Shulz or Carl Barks or (in another vein of comic art) Jack Kirby.
Among readers of MAD, I have no doubt that Don Martin will be missed.
Optometrists use eyedrops that glow under UV light to help find eye problems or something. Not as cool as glowing without any light, perhaps, but still pretty neat looking.
It looks as if doubt everything is going to be the norm, and I think that's very sad. It's an indication of the state of general society that people feel they have to do this (they always have to a certain extent, but not as much as now).
It seems to me that people have always doubted things to the extent that they do now. The difference is just evidence; if a 12 year old kid walks up to you and says he's a 37 year old doctor, you have enough evidence to judge at least some of what he says. If a person in a chatroom tells you the same thing, you have absolutely no evidence to go on. Your choices are to either assume the best and risk being let down, or to assume the worst until shown otherwise.
A few years ago I knew literally no women involved in computers. Now, while the majority of the geeks I know are guys, there seem to be a lot more technically inclined chicks around. It appears to me that the percentage of women in the computer industry (in non-clerical or management positions) has increased significantly over the last decade. Does anyone have any hard figures?
I'll yield the point; it would be prudent to get the other side of the argument before passing final judgement. It's possible that LinuxTech (Uruguayan, not Swiss) was just trying to protect themselves and had no intention of blocking others from using the word Linux. I suppose they have every right to apply for trademarks to whatever they want, they just shouldn't neccesarily be granted them.
But regarding the original complaint by the users' group, don't confuse poorly translated with poorly thought out. There's no telling what was lost in the translation. Unless you can read both languages.
2. Just because you've never heard of a Swiss company doesn't mean it isn't well known in Switzerland. There are countries in the world besides your own. And do you think it would be OK for a Uruguayan company to call itself RedHat or Microsoft or Ford?
3. I think they're pointing out that they are using the free, unrestricting nature of the Linux community at the same time as they are actively attempting to destroy it in Uruguay.
And lastly, trademarking something which you have no right to trademark in any circumstance is wrong. If it were your "small country", you might feel a little bit differently.
Not only did Tesla prove the worth of AC power, he defeated the evil Edison and his army of thugs to get people to accept it. Unfortunately, Edison succeeded in getting it restricted to 55hz (I think), thus making it much less safe than it would have been under Tessla's proposed 400hz. It was later upgraded to 60hz, but that's about as far as it can go without reinventing everything in the entire country.
Remember Windows 95? Windows 98? Windows 2000? Seeing a pattern? What's wrong with just naming the software for the year it's released (or close to it)? Of course that makes it difficult if you have multiple releases in a year, but who cares? You call the second version released in 2000 "Product 2000, release 2" or something. I don't see how this is a big deal.
I took hacking as having a negative connotation because the article I was replying to used the term "hacker" to refer to a man who "hacked" into a bank's computer, stole money, got caught, and was sentenced to death. That doesn't sound like making things "*work*".
Slashdot Mirror
This raises some tricky and confusing (to me) problems. The company is Canadian and operates in Canada, but the signals in question are American based, and the companies being harmed are in America. In iCraveTV's country, what they're doing is legal, but in their victim's country, it isn't. If I throw a rock across the border and hit a Canadian, whose country do I get sued in?
As for the banners, they are not really changing the signal - the signal is broadcast unaltered as a separate stream, and the ads are added by RealPlayer.
But the original signal could be watched without the banners. The modified version cannot.
When you consider that Canadian law allows for this, so long as they pay the copyright holders, their only motivation can be the ratings.
So what's wrong with that? Television broadcasters make their money by getting sponsors to pay for advertising. The sponsors buy the advertising because they to get exposure for their products. They measure the exposure by the number of viewers as projected from a survey of a small population slice, also known as a rating. The higher the ratings, the more exposure the sponsor is getting, so the more money they pay the broadcaster. Lower ratings mean less money, so if a company such as iCraveTV rebroadcasts their signal in such a way that ratings suffer, the broadcaster is losing money.
If you were losing money because someone was stealing your signal and rebroadcasting it in a way that isn't covered by any current rating system, you'd be pissed off too. And justly.
Suppose a company has a factory right on the border between Canada and the USA, on the Canadian side. And suppose they have a long pipe that extends right to the border, where they pump all of the toxic waste that their plant generates. While no part of their plant is in the United States, they are still dumping toxic sludge there.
I'm not saying the Judge in has any jurisdiction in Canada, or that the United States has any right to stop iCraveTV from rebroadcasting into the United States, but it does seem to cause a problem when a Canadian company is directly costing American companies money.
The point is not whether or not it will be missed; the point is whether or not they should be able to do what they are doing. If they want to provide a service that nobody wants, they still have the right to provide that service (unless doing so breaks laws or violates someone else's rights).
Yeah, I guess you're right. Those darned Asians with their dishonest "Asia-centric" tactics. If only everyone was a white American, we would all live in a happy candyland of honesty and contentment, right?
(That was sarcasm. I'm not a racist. In fact, quite the opposite.)
I say beat on them until they cry, "Uncle!" or come clean.
But supposing they are genuine, are perpetrating no fraud, and have really done nothing particularly wrong? Sure, maybe their product stinks. So don't buy it! And maybe they've exagerated their claims a little bit, but I can name at least 5 toothpaste brands that get my teeth the whitest. Give them a chance before you beat them to death with suspicion.
Do you see any distro's that are just repackages of the Kernel, sold for money?
If not money, what are they sold for? Is it possible for a publicly traded company like RedHat to do anything solely for the good of the community, not for profit? Possible, but highly unlikely. The system works as long as companies can profit by making things better.
If anything, you are just taking the opposite side of the argument becuase you think you should, or you think its cool to do so.
I'm taking the opposite side of the argument (from you) because I'm a little ticked that the entire linux community has already judged this company, and had judged them prior to this release. If you don't like the product they're offering, don't buy it and don't reccommend it. But don't call them a "slimeball company" just because they're a little late getting to the field and haven't done anything innovative yet. If you don't give them a chance to prove themselves, they never will. (The upside of that, of course, is that you will end up having been right. But at the cost of a potentially useful company.)
You've already judged them. Aren't all the current Linux distributions based on the Linux kernel? Did any of the non-slimeball Linux companies write that kernel themselves? No, they are releasing products which someone else created. Give LinuxOne some time and see if they create something worth using before you condemn them as a slimeball company.
As much as we like to act nonjudgemental and high/mighty, geek culture is very non-permissive. Once an entity has been criticized by a couple of Ubergeeks, the ignorant masses adopt the cry and zealously attack. Just wait until you know more about them than what you have been fed by CmdrTaco's editorials in the headline before you judge.
Does anyone else find it funny when two people with names like Chris and Christine get married? I guess it makes me a hick, but I get a chuckle out of that.
Since the first time it appeared on Slashdot, nothing even remotely positive has appeared about LinuxOne. Everyone seems to have already decided their shady and evil, and are interpreting everything they do that way. Give them a chance before you judge them. Maybe some new and useful software will come of it. And keep in mind, this is their first distro, ever.
For you, maybe the "good old days" are indeed happening right now. But not for me, primarily because I don't like the artists and works you mentioned (except for Bill Watterson, who was retired the last time I checked).
I personally have a very nice ceramic penguin I got at one of those "paint it yourself" ceramics places. I made it years ago, before I'd ever wanted a ceramic Tux, but when I found it in a box in the garage three months ago, I saw the likeness immediately.
If anything, there's probably more risk in using a credit card offline than online. Online SSL makes it difficult to intercept transmitted numbers, and massive credit card number theft such as this is rare enough that it is big news. But when you hand your Visa card to a waiter in a restaurant, how hard would it be for him to write down the name and number on the card?
Seems like more and more brilliant artists are dying or retiring these days, with none stepping forward to replace them. The comic artists of today are like pen-lights to the artistic flames of men like Don Martin or Charles Shulz or Carl Barks or (in another vein of comic art) Jack Kirby.
Among readers of MAD, I have no doubt that Don Martin will be missed.
Optometrists use eyedrops that glow under UV light to help find eye problems or something. Not as cool as glowing without any light, perhaps, but still pretty neat looking.
Yeah, but that would be highly irritating. There is no "Glo" atom, after all.
It looks as if doubt everything is going to be the norm, and I think that's very sad. It's an indication of the state of general society that people feel they have to do this (they always have to a certain extent, but not as much as now).
It seems to me that people have always doubted things to the extent that they do now. The difference is just evidence; if a 12 year old kid walks up to you and says he's a 37 year old doctor, you have enough evidence to judge at least some of what he says. If a person in a chatroom tells you the same thing, you have absolutely no evidence to go on. Your choices are to either assume the best and risk being let down, or to assume the worst until shown otherwise.
A few years ago I knew literally no women involved in computers. Now, while the majority of the geeks I know are guys, there seem to be a lot more technically inclined chicks around. It appears to me that the percentage of women in the computer industry (in non-clerical or management positions) has increased significantly over the last decade. Does anyone have any hard figures?
I'll yield the point; it would be prudent to get the other side of the argument before passing final judgement. It's possible that LinuxTech (Uruguayan, not Swiss) was just trying to protect themselves and had no intention of blocking others from using the word Linux. I suppose they have every right to apply for trademarks to whatever they want, they just shouldn't neccesarily be granted them.
But regarding the original complaint by the users' group, don't confuse poorly translated with poorly thought out. There's no telling what was lost in the translation. Unless you can read both languages.
Responses to your responses:
2. Just because you've never heard of a Swiss company doesn't mean it isn't well known in Switzerland. There are countries in the world besides your own. And do you think it would be OK for a Uruguayan company to call itself RedHat or Microsoft or Ford?
3. I think they're pointing out that they are using the free, unrestricting nature of the Linux community at the same time as they are actively attempting to destroy it in Uruguay.
And lastly, trademarking something which you have no right to trademark in any circumstance is wrong. If it were your "small country", you might feel a little bit differently.
Not only did Tesla prove the worth of AC power, he defeated the evil Edison and his army of thugs to get people to accept it. Unfortunately, Edison succeeded in getting it restricted to 55hz (I think), thus making it much less safe than it would have been under Tessla's proposed 400hz. It was later upgraded to 60hz, but that's about as far as it can go without reinventing everything in the entire country.
Remember Windows 95? Windows 98? Windows 2000? Seeing a pattern? What's wrong with just naming the software for the year it's released (or close to it)? Of course that makes it difficult if you have multiple releases in a year, but who cares? You call the second version released in 2000 "Product 2000, release 2" or something. I don't see how this is a big deal.
I took hacking as having a negative connotation because the article I was replying to used the term "hacker" to refer to a man who "hacked" into a bank's computer, stole money, got caught, and was sentenced to death. That doesn't sound like making things "*work*".
Can a country with over a billion residents, nuclear and ICBM capabilities, and a stable, lasting government really be called a "developing nation"?