anyone who is flashing a laser pointer off at a POLICE HELICOPTER these days is obviously a complete idiot/jackass.
Most people would agree with you, there, but what's not obvious is that the defendant is guilty. It's possible that what he says is true, the he and his daughter were out pointing a laser at trees and the sky when the FBI swooped in.
There are two rights issues at stake here, libel and the banning of harmless devices. How would you like for your picture to be published by the USA Today online with a highly incriminating description? Fun, fun, fun online. Second, the whole thing may be a stupid stunt to get you to believe that laser pointers are dangerous and should be controlled like firearms. If distractions really were dangerous, there would be no billboards on public highways.
It's garbage like this that shows how sorry mainstream media is. It's slanted and poorly researched but it has power due to self advertisement and a perception of proper editing. Understanding these issues is a critical part of your ability to defend your rights online.
... if something can be proven, the issue of belief does not arise.
Prove evolution. I believe it, but the origin of life is not something that has been demonstrated or proved yet.
What you really believe is that other people are honestly reporting things to you. So long as we have a free press, that will be true. But there is no way that you have time to demonstrate or prove everything you believe. To convince yourself, examine the periodic chart. Have you demonstrated to yourself that the elements are presented in the correct order, with the stated properties or that they all even exist? Can you imagine how much it would cost you do do that? All of us depend on honest reporting of facts, and that is a basic belief.
It's a shame that Stallman seems to be mostly interested in bashing the Open Source movement.
That would be a shame, but the overwhelming picture I got was of someone interested in promoting software freedom.
Your characterizations are a little over the top. Prominent members of the Open Source Movement would have no argument with RMS' statements, but would object to being called "like Microsoft" or "corrupting". Open Source does appeal to "practical" people who don't mind using non-free software when it gets a job done. That's something that RMS thinks is a mistake and that is a real difference of opinion that's worth pointing out. Linux Torvalds consistently describes himself as an "engineer" more concerned with getting things done than freedom. RMS is right to say he dissagrees with that and tell you why.
... that's the point of the article - in a capitalistic environment you will always have closed software.... I can't justify to the board pushing $5m into development of a new system unless they KNOW that the company will make it's money back.
And my point was that the investment boom of the 80s and 90s was an anomaly. The whole NDA fad created by Ma Bell, and perfected in EULAs by Microsoft was a fraud. All the cross licensing, copyright, trademark and patent work was parasitcal and gets in the way of real innovation. The article also pointed out that only a few investors made money and most lost. Huge companies lost out. So, investors basically KNOW that they are going to lose money and why. Things are changing for the better, but the money won't be back until closed source is dead.
So now it is Microsoft's fault that your ISP is preventing you from running all the services you want?
Yes. I use Cox and was told by a service tech that it was pressure from M$ and AOL that forced them into their current stupid mail set up. All incoming mail is blocked and you may only use their mail servers going out. Part of the pressure was a threatened blacklisting. The other part, no doubt, are all the usual M$ desktop power and Cox's stupid use of M$ for various servers. I also imagine that Microsoft had a say in other restrictions.
Maybe you should get a new ISP then, because there are alot of ISPs that provide no port blocking or forbidding of services.
Name one in Baton Rouge. Cox's "Business" service is a tremendous rip off, so no thanks. Telocity DSL was killed years ago,
Of course there will always be the problem of upload speeds, but alot of the time that is due to technology limitations.
At Home had none of those problems, with less equipment than Cox has. There's room for uploading in a normal world, even when you divide the capacity of the cable favoring downloading as is done.
The real technological problem is a speed crimp placed in the modem, and the continued M$ DoS. The limit seems arbitrary unless we consider worm owned M$ crap as a source of noise the cable company can not predict and must limit. Once again, that's Microsoft's fault for breaking the law to force an inferior operating system on the world. It would be better to turn off infected computers until they are fixed.
The world would be a much better place without Microsoft.
I have been a developer for many years... graphics are important, but sound, network and input APIs are actually in a much worse situation.... too behind the times in terms "out of the box" functionality or ease of use. We need better API integration, better driver support from chipset vendors...
The last thing quoted is the only thing that makes sense to me, chipset support is needed but not from vendors. Live CDs like Knoppix, which typically find and make everything work perfectly despite lack of chip maker support, should convince you that the only problem is with chip makers who refuse to share information. Knoppix spins up in a minute or so. Getting Winblows to work as well typically eats hours of time downloading drivers, patches and all that and it's never "perfect" or ever over. Winblows to me is a four minute half life pain in the ass.
If you want to sell me a game, stick it on a live CD. I've been winblows free for years now and I'm hungry for games. I've got plenty of money for your game that I have not spent on Winblows or big name computers. Make it happen and people like me will be there. Hell, I'll even set aside a nice little partition for you. What's a CD cost your company, 0.005 cents? Try a nice little $5 game like Leisure Suit Larry and advertise it here on Slashdot to see what kind of market there really is.
As a side note, I have also notice some of your "typical" responses on my own. ALSA does rock as does KDE's arts deamon. Linux is more stable and it's networking performance is dramatically better. I'm a CS zero, but I've got four computer up on a home LAN that WORKS. A Winblows set up would have cost me a minimum of $400 and half that many computers used to cost me five times as much time dealing with bugs. Linux is CLEAN and when it works it works much, much better.
Really, I want to play games and I'm willing to PAY YOU MONEY for it. As much a Zealot as I am about free software, games get a special pass. Just look at my posting history, I've got a M$ fan club. So long as you don't fuck my installs, and I get to play, I'm happy. Good luck, and I hope to see your CD out there.
if they can get enought revenue from linux people.... how much money can they have got those companies from the linux port? Nothing?
Bzzzt, try again. It's more like a slice of $37,500,000,000. Equivalent to the current game market. I'll quote parts of the article, so you don't have to read it all:
why would game developers spend the money to add Linux functionality to games for a limited number of users? The answer is not that simple, especially since Linux desktop use continues to grow.
There are many reasons why you might want to shift from Windows to a Linux OS. We won't cover what those reasons might be in detail here, but will note that users routinely complain of Windows instability, high prices and many layers of software that impede performance.
Linux "is no longer a niche phenomenon." The overall Linux marketplace revenues for server and PC hardware and packaged software are expected to reach $35.7 billion by 2008, IDC says. Packaged software revenue is the fastest growing market segment within the Linux marketplace, growing 44% annually to over $14 billion in 2008.
Bling, Bling! Let me demonstrate what's going on here and why Windoze is a loser. I can go out and buy a big_name or I can build my own computer for gaming. If I buy the big_name, it's going to come all nice and configured with Windoze and ready to roll, but it will set me back about $1,000. I can get the same kind of hardware from a no name or parts market for about $450 to $700, depending on how stu^H^H^H much I want to pay for a video card. Even if I'm stupid, I can get a hell of a lot better hardware on the parts market for less money. Then, I can buy windoze, pirate windoze or use free software. Whether I pirate or buy windoze, I still only have a four minute halflife online, that's FUCKING UNACCEPTABLE. With free software there's now a chance I will be able to play. Bang for the buck is going toward Linux in a big way. If I want to play games, Microsoft is the expensive and expendable middle man.
What I'd love to see is live game CDs. I'd pay good money for that, and trust me, I've got plenty I have not been spending on $100 operating systems that suck.
Let me paraphrase Gandhi:
they ignore you
the laugh at you
they bust their ass accommodating the market share of the future.
That time has come. I think the $37.5 billion estimate is low. Gamers have traditionally driven PC hardware markets and gone to pains for their pleasure. Linux is now about as easy to set up as Winblows and is much easier to keep up. Companies that ignore this to stay in M$ clutches are going to lose out big time.
I'd really love for them to be "free". Then they might stop leaning on my ISP to crimp upload speeds, block ports and forbid services. In fact there's a whole host of problems that would dissapear overnight if Microsoft were not so stupid and evil.
It's not going to happen, regardless of how many free beer binaries they dump. Microsoft does not think they can offer the world the four software freedoms and survive. This bad attitude ensures their destruction.
can you name some current oss ideas that are not already in the commercial world?
The real benefit of free software is being able to chose what you want. I can think of a few places that are likely to have real innovation but I'm loath to offer specifics because some obscure package someplace may very well offer it. It's not like people can't very easily make their own version of any free program and sell it. The development problem will be making it as good as the free program when your resources are so relatively limited. The user's problem, aside from quality, lack of freedom and peer check, is getting all the pieces in the same place. It may be possible to assemble all of the commercial programs to get what you want, but the result will not be as good and it will cost you lots of research, money and pain when the parts don't play well. There's nothing like being able to apt-get what you want and just knowind it's going to work as advertised.
The people at OpenBSD have lots to offer for secure systems. They have developed algorithms and systems that are indeed innovative. Can you name a commercial system that has all of the features of OpenBSD? Bastile Linux?
GNU has loads of great stuff. Everyone uses their compiler. Can you name a commercial compiler that has been ported so so many platforms?
When you step back, there are innumerable small details that make free software so polished relative to commercial software. Other details are small but annoying. When using Solaris, I really miss -h and other conveniences such as transparent X forwarding through OpenSSH. Does even Exceed have transparent X forwarding through ssh in their excellent Windoze products yet? There are few interfaces that can compete with Gnome and KDE. Winblows is completely outclassed and Mac OSX is pretty but has far fewer features. KDE's beauty rivals anything. Is there a file manager as excellent and Konqueror anywhere in the commercial world?
You might find any and all of the things I mentioned in the commercial world, but you won't find them all in the same place. Free software gives you what you want, or the tools to get it done.
Copying is a lesser crime than theft(you do not directly deprive anyone else of an object) but it is still a crime
No, it's a matter of civil law in the civilized world. Sharing ideas, words and songs should never be a crime.
I am disgusted by the idea that bits of our culture will be lost because some moron who owns the right to it is overprotective.
Me too, and that's a larger crime to me than plaguerism, which would be the nastiest of copyright violations. Nothing is worse than throwing your work away, not even taking credit and profit for it away from it's creator.
Create your own free art and give it to the world if you want and if anyone is interested.
I do, thank you. All of my photographs and classwork are posted for anyone to use as are my wife's music. I'd rather people not use them for commercial purposes or to promote things I don't believe in, but I doubt I'll be able to enforce my "rights" the same way Disney does.
... making a living by selling your art is not evil.
Those are your words not mine. There are plenty of ways to make money without 100 year copyrights and other laws that throw away the vast majority of popular culture.
You talk about it being unfair that art isn't free.... recognize the act that you are just trying to get something for nothing.
I recognize no such thing and the suggestion is offensive.
The hard-core FOSS advocates would like to go directly from Stage 1 (Innovation) to Stage 6 (The FOSS Era) and skip the whole commercial part. They argue that proprietary software ownership is undesirable at best, and immoral or unethical at the worst.... And in the commercial corner is software that can never be FOSS. It might be encumbered by patents, or more likely, is sold as an adjunct to some piece of hardware, such as "embedded" software found in modern cars, printers, scanners, wrist watches, cell phones, and so forth.
It is interesting that the author uses the unethical behavior of commercial software producers to say that free software advocates are wrong. Patents, FUD and other tricks the author mentions do not make commercial software more innovative.
The second assertion above, that embedded software is not well served by free software is simply wrong. Embedded development has swung to free software in a big way, as commercial software there was expensive, buggy and had all the other problems of closed source. According to the Free Software Foundations' last newsletter, the majority of embedded developers now make use of free software, at least for development. They will soon make flexible tools that will dominate the embedded market. The same development model, which is more flexible for servers and desktops works for embedded projects too.
The whole argument that closed source software provides swifter innovation is shaky. Many of the so called features are involve product lock in and other dirty tricks that cost you more in the long run. IBM and others are showing that you can develop free software faster than closed source and make a profit. The era of software development he looked at, where indeed many closed source projects were "innovative", is over. As he pointed out, many people lost lots of money in the closed source game and will be reluctant to risk it again. In short, the rush he saw was unsustainable and should not be used to judge the future. Software development itself has reached a Maturity phase where the tools needed are well known and available. Free software now has a combination of development, distribution and user tools that can not be matched by any single closed source thing. To say that rapid development MUST be closed source ignores the awesome and unmatched feature advancement going on with KDE, Gnome and others. It's somewhat insulting to say free software developers simply copy commercial junk.
WS_FTP --> Filezilla , Winzip --> 7-zip,
I'd be interested in seeing what factors it takes to push the above into Stage 6 (FOSS version dominates).
How about the integration of many superior and excellent parts that closed source software can never match? As an example following yours, I give you Konqueror which integrates local file management with the features of the above utilities and more. By using free archive software and free networking software all the functions above are folded into a single client that's better than the commercial pieces. With Konqueror, I can drag and drop files from ftp and sftp across a split window into my local or another remote file system without a problem. Konqueror also has excellent archive manipulation. No single commercial package matches it. When you combine that with the ease of maintaining a free software system by dselect, synaptic, kpackage, yum or Red Hat's method, the potential difference is overwhelming.
Inertia, as mentioned in the article, is the only thing that keeps commercial software going at this stage. Intertia being that commercial software is designed like a roach motel for your data. Between that and ignorance, stage 6 takes longer than you would expect but it is only a matter of time.
how can Open Source gain a foothold, even already its free
That's easy.
Service providers are not going to pay M$ rape prices and will use free software if it gets the job done. Witness early Hotmail, Google, the use of Sendmail, Apache and on and on. They all recognized that free software offered a cheaper and better way to get their work done and MAKE LOTS OF MONEY.
Bandwith for the desktop is even more important. I have not used M$ junk for years. The key was having the bandwith to be able to install and keep systems updated. With stable distributions, like Woody, I could do it with CD publishers and good dial up. With Testing, I need a cable modem but it's so much better. More importantly, end users need a reliable way to find their computers on a network. This is the only way software can be remotely repaired. If the end user does not have this or only the ISP knows, the end user can not shop around what little repair and upgrade work there is. Without remote administration, free software loses a key advantage over winblows. Without regular and free updates, free software loses another key advantage over winblows. Then the user is left with nothing but superior software that's harder to get than the garbage their computer came with. An ideal world for free software was the one that At Home created, fixed IP addresses and no bandwith restrictions. Not only was it easy to get and repair free software, you could also run services for yourself and others. That kind of internet service will return, if we don't let Microsoft legislate us back thirty years in the name of "virus protection" and "copyright enforcement". Sharing is what free software is all about, and that's what Microsoft and other publishers must prevent.
Development is also tied to bandwith, but it is less important due to the modular nature of free software. People were able to co-operate all the way back in 1993 and they will be able to do that regardless of how dumb bandwith gets.
when I write a book or create an album it is MINE. I should have the right to distribute it where and when I please. If I choose to charge 500 pounds for it then you can choose not to buy it.
That "right" is government created and not much of a right as it infringes on my right to copy your work, or perhaps to share it with my friends, and the price you get will be determined by market forces beyond your control. Your "right" is a negation of behavior on my part that does you no real harm beside deprive you of some potential income. Your "Fly to Britian" nonsense is a "right" people like Ben Franklin violated with joy. What people do with legitimate coppies of your work after they purchase it is none of your business and they might export it.
Laws which are obviously designed to protect the wealth of a few at the expense of others are bad for morals and the law itself. As Lessing points out, such laws are corrosive. How do you expect people to obey and respect law when it is normal to violate it? Modern copyright is a gross example of a law that's designed to enrich a few at the expense of others. The proportion of works no longer in commercial publication demonstrate that copyright is not performing it's purpose of encouraging publication. It's working to thwart competition and control culture. The choice before you then is to be controlled like a slave or to violate the law.
Me, I'm a slave with some hope. The costs associated with rebellion are too steep for me, so 20th century popular culture is something I can not really enjoy. The copyright warriors have made it impossible for me to legally collect and enjoy early jazz, for example, and the works may dissapear before it becomes legal for people to share. My hope is that free culture will break the big publishers. My rebellion is to simply not give those publishers my money. Authors will do better when that happens too as you will receive the reward a free market gives rather than monopoly slave wages.
This sounds like some MPAA exec's fantasy of how the Internet works. Small armies of "curries" manually FTPing files from one server to another? Get real.
Ah yeah, the mythical movie/music pirate pyramid distribution network. If there is one, the RIAA/MPAA or it's employees are the ones feeding the first layer. That's why the author was talking to some supposed "elder statesman" and uses the word "Pirate". Arrrr, me hardies!
The article intentionally ignores lots of things. Fundamental issues, the fact that you can get out of publication music on P2P, and the whole CD and DVD publishing industry that exists without computer networks. Those out of publication files were not put up by someone who broke into some server someplace, they were put there by someone who had they record. DVDs and CDs from intentional production over runs and other publications are in markets all over the world. It's not just in 3rd world markets either. I know a local store owner who got burnt by his supplier who sent him unlicensed coppies of Windoze. The packages were identical and there was no way he or the supplier could tell the difference. It took him years and nearly all of his money to beat Microsoft in Federal court. All of these little issues ignore the real change that's happened in publishing. The cost of publishing has gone to zero and the encouragement for publication needs to fall in proportion. It's silly that while publication is cheaper than ever, copyright is stricter than ever.
This whole article has an industry stink to it. The article ignores strengths of P2P over meat space publication and makes it look like everything P2P is simply criminal. This little bit sums it all up:
It's a commonly held belief that P2P is about sharing files. It's an appealing, democratic notion: Consumers rip the movies and music they buy and post them online. But that's not quite how it works. In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible. People don't share what they buy; they share what is already being shared - the countless descendants of a single "Adam and Eve" file
Let's start with reason #1 for going to a filesharing network, YOU CAN'T GET IT LOCALLY OR AT ALL. Nowhere is this mentioned. Nor is the fact that only a tiny fraction of all media is still in commercial production. More importantly, I'm not going to find music from non RIAA acts in a music store or at WalMart. P2P is the only way to get music out of production and a good way to get new music by acts that are as good or better than monopoly pushed crap.
The whole purpose of copyright protection is to encourage publication, but file sharing turns that on it's head. Encouragement has traditionally been done by granting an exclusive franchise to the author. Authors never had much bargaining power, and now have virtually none, thanks to media consolidation brought on by insane copyright laws. The point of the exclusive franchise was to allow the publisher to recoup the price of the publication and make a little money, some of which might actually trickle down to the author. But today, THE COST OF PUBLICATION IS ESSENTIALLY ZERO. The whole basis of granting exclusive franchises in the first place has dissapeared.
Today, copyright is more restrictive than ever but it's not working. While media companies are indeed enjoying "best years ever" and record profits, they do so at everyone else's cost and fail while doing so. The very fact that people go to to P2P shows that traditional publishing is not meeting people's needs. The vast majority of YOUR CULTURE has been locked away in vaults, unpublished, until it has lost it's social relevance.
You say,
I don't condone such theft, and would prefer that all media be acquired through legitimate channels.
If you don't believe in theft, you should avoid all RIAA and MPAA publications. They are the biggest thieves of all. Support a local band or one that's giving it's music away by going to a show. You might be able to find them right there on your P2P client.
So lets think this one through for a second. The people who work there say the system that failled runs on AIX and that its the application thats gone whoopsie. So they obviously must be lying...
At the time, you did not know that people who worked there said that. All you had to go on was a post by another Slashdotter claiming an anonymous person told them that. It was pure hearsay, but it seems to have turned out correct as Comair has come out and said the same thing.
with this type of thinking there is no way that reputations are ever going to change since every computer error is attributed to Windows even if it has nothing to do with the issue.
Actually, the reputation will not change because Microsoft will not change. This one woopsie just happened to not be Windows, that does not make the platform any more stable. Microsoft has been warned about the dangers of their system designs but has chosen to blunder forth.
Given a choice, which one would you rather be responsible for? Which one would you use for a mission critical application? Unbelievably, many airlines use Windows as a terminal for ticketing and other very important functions.
I'm fairly certain the comment was a self-deprecating one, and he was appreciative that she put up with him as he dealt with the huge learning curve that is Broadcast TV.
That's nice. Would you mind telling me why you are so certain?
I'm fairly certain my interpretation is right for the reasons I outlined. Also, most people don't put their own words in quotation marks, so when he says he made 'stupid intern mistakes' that someone else put up with, I imagine the other person used the term. The learning curve in the incident quoted had nothing to do with TV and everything to do with poor instructions. The instructions were to get sounds of 9/11, without qualification. The intern got sounds of death and destruction, which must have been hard work, but the boss wanted people singing. That to me is a stupid employer mistake.
Of course that was just the beginning of kiss and tell. The author then exposed dangerous working conditions, while telling us that he did it of his own accord, and finishes off by telling us the new call ins are a complete fraud.
The first two stories are a big deal on their own. The story about using his body as a moving blanket for heavy equipment in a U-haul alone will get someone in union hot water. The sound story is more wasteful than you might think. I can only imagine how long he had to work and how much money he had to lay out to get permission to broadcast other people's death and destruction noises. These are not things you tell about yourself unless you have alternate career plans are trying to set someone else on fire.
Most of my work was for Megan Morrone. I did a lot of screen captures from websites, CDs, DVDs, etc.... She wanted me to capture some video of the sounds of 9/11. I totally misinterpreted what she wanted and captured all of the horrible, heart wrenching sounds as the trade centers fell, people screaming, etc. She was looking for more G-rated material like songs dedicated to all the victims, etc. It was just a stupid intern mistake. I also want to mention that Megan is one of the nicest people I?ve ever met. She was always good to me and very patient as I made those ?stupid intern mistakes.?
Excellent! A story of being called "stupid intern" by a woman who gives vague guidance and supervises so poorly that lots of time is wasted, where the same person is praised as patient and nice. I love it.
I'm disgusted by the contradictory language. The loophole you mention seems to undo lots of other careful language.
"authorized updates of software or system firmware, authorized remote system management, or detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of or fraudulent or other illegal activities in connection with a network, service, or computer software, including scanning for and removing software proscribed under this chapter"
This looks custom made for grievous EULAs for junk like Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows Media Player. Even the nasty Overpeer effort might be overlooked with an attitude like that. So the thing that is fundamentally wrong, doing things to other people's computers without asking them, is explicitly allowed if you are "authorized".
Another section defines "authorized user" and expressly prohibits EULAs as a vehicle:
22947.1.(b) "Authorized user," with respect to a computer, means a person
who owns or is authorized by the owner or lessee to use the computer. An "authorized user" does not include a person or entity that has
obtained authorization to use the computer solely through the use of an end user license agreement."
The contradiction is clear, how it will play out is not. If I click through Microsoft's Windows updater, have I signed onto having my computer monitored for copyright infringing works? What are security purposes? Microsoft's EULAs clearly grant them power to do these things and exercising those powers is a violation. We will see if some companies are allowed to violate this law while others are punished.
California uber Ales! The kind you can drink, that is.
Arnold has just set fines for spyware in California, so say the BBC. So what's Holywood going to do when their little bitch Overpeer get's fined for all the spyware they are installing? Isn't DRM just another form of spyware anyway? Cheers to all as this winds itself out.
When are media companies just going to learn that the average person is not going to embrace DRM and will do anything to avoid it? I'm typical in that I have about 2,000 songs in my music collection. Does anyone really think that I'd go to ITunes and pay $2,000 for a music collection that will go away if my software gets hosed or when I want to transfer it to another computer one to many times? They are smoking some really bad pipe there a pipe dream. I've moved all those legitimate songs to ogg and I'm not getting anywhere close to WMP, ITunes or it's ilk. That's my way of managing my digital rights and these DRM dumb dumbs can kiss my ass.
It seems anyone the least bit concerned about DRM/sharing/etc wouldn't be using windows media anyway.
I don't thing this will bother xmms or xine, but I don't share music so I could care less either way.
The people who get burnt are going to be 12 year olds who don't know what they are doing is wrong in the first place. They get music for "free" on the radio, why should their computer be any different, they might think. Then boom, their computer explodes and they get taken for their life savings, even if it is only $2,000.
That's a good enough reason to never touch DRM inflicted Microsoft media files.
Really, it's a reason to steer clear of Microsoft. I don't think I'll have a problem using Xine. At the same time, I'll never make and distribute anything in those stupid formats. Why should I when the vast majority of the installed base will no longer trust the format and not be able to distinguish it from it's player?
This is a really big blow to Microsoft. The whole point of using their platform is to have easy access to the latest and greatest multimedia gadgets. Yet here you are not being able to trust the only player Microsoft wants you to have. At this rate, what's the point?
Don't give me BS about not having to worry if you are not into music sharing. The crackers and virus writers will be all over this backdoor and we'll soon see full auto worms propagating without any assistance from Joe Sixpacks, hapless Microsoft operator.
Slashdot Mirror
Most people would agree with you, there, but what's not obvious is that the defendant is guilty. It's possible that what he says is true, the he and his daughter were out pointing a laser at trees and the sky when the FBI swooped in.
There are two rights issues at stake here, libel and the banning of harmless devices. How would you like for your picture to be published by the USA Today online with a highly incriminating description? Fun, fun, fun online. Second, the whole thing may be a stupid stunt to get you to believe that laser pointers are dangerous and should be controlled like firearms. If distractions really were dangerous, there would be no billboards on public highways.
It's garbage like this that shows how sorry mainstream media is. It's slanted and poorly researched but it has power due to self advertisement and a perception of proper editing. Understanding these issues is a critical part of your ability to defend your rights online.
Strong magic is this reality of yours. Please define me some disposable income.
Prove evolution. I believe it, but the origin of life is not something that has been demonstrated or proved yet.
What you really believe is that other people are honestly reporting things to you. So long as we have a free press, that will be true. But there is no way that you have time to demonstrate or prove everything you believe. To convince yourself, examine the periodic chart. Have you demonstrated to yourself that the elements are presented in the correct order, with the stated properties or that they all even exist? Can you imagine how much it would cost you do do that? All of us depend on honest reporting of facts, and that is a basic belief.
That would be a shame, but the overwhelming picture I got was of someone interested in promoting software freedom.
Your characterizations are a little over the top. Prominent members of the Open Source Movement would have no argument with RMS' statements, but would object to being called "like Microsoft" or "corrupting". Open Source does appeal to "practical" people who don't mind using non-free software when it gets a job done. That's something that RMS thinks is a mistake and that is a real difference of opinion that's worth pointing out. Linux Torvalds consistently describes himself as an "engineer" more concerned with getting things done than freedom. RMS is right to say he dissagrees with that and tell you why.
And my point was that the investment boom of the 80s and 90s was an anomaly. The whole NDA fad created by Ma Bell, and perfected in EULAs by Microsoft was a fraud. All the cross licensing, copyright, trademark and patent work was parasitcal and gets in the way of real innovation. The article also pointed out that only a few investors made money and most lost. Huge companies lost out. So, investors basically KNOW that they are going to lose money and why. Things are changing for the better, but the money won't be back until closed source is dead.
Yes. I use Cox and was told by a service tech that it was pressure from M$ and AOL that forced them into their current stupid mail set up. All incoming mail is blocked and you may only use their mail servers going out. Part of the pressure was a threatened blacklisting. The other part, no doubt, are all the usual M$ desktop power and Cox's stupid use of M$ for various servers. I also imagine that Microsoft had a say in other restrictions.
Maybe you should get a new ISP then, because there are alot of ISPs that provide no port blocking or forbidding of services.
Name one in Baton Rouge. Cox's "Business" service is a tremendous rip off, so no thanks. Telocity DSL was killed years ago,
Of course there will always be the problem of upload speeds, but alot of the time that is due to technology limitations.
At Home had none of those problems, with less equipment than Cox has. There's room for uploading in a normal world, even when you divide the capacity of the cable favoring downloading as is done.
The real technological problem is a speed crimp placed in the modem, and the continued M$ DoS. The limit seems arbitrary unless we consider worm owned M$ crap as a source of noise the cable company can not predict and must limit. Once again, that's Microsoft's fault for breaking the law to force an inferior operating system on the world. It would be better to turn off infected computers until they are fixed.
The world would be a much better place without Microsoft.
The last thing quoted is the only thing that makes sense to me, chipset support is needed but not from vendors. Live CDs like Knoppix, which typically find and make everything work perfectly despite lack of chip maker support, should convince you that the only problem is with chip makers who refuse to share information. Knoppix spins up in a minute or so. Getting Winblows to work as well typically eats hours of time downloading drivers, patches and all that and it's never "perfect" or ever over. Winblows to me is a four minute half life pain in the ass.
If you want to sell me a game, stick it on a live CD. I've been winblows free for years now and I'm hungry for games. I've got plenty of money for your game that I have not spent on Winblows or big name computers. Make it happen and people like me will be there. Hell, I'll even set aside a nice little partition for you. What's a CD cost your company, 0.005 cents? Try a nice little $5 game like Leisure Suit Larry and advertise it here on Slashdot to see what kind of market there really is.
As a side note, I have also notice some of your "typical" responses on my own. ALSA does rock as does KDE's arts deamon. Linux is more stable and it's networking performance is dramatically better. I'm a CS zero, but I've got four computer up on a home LAN that WORKS. A Winblows set up would have cost me a minimum of $400 and half that many computers used to cost me five times as much time dealing with bugs. Linux is CLEAN and when it works it works much, much better.
Really, I want to play games and I'm willing to PAY YOU MONEY for it. As much a Zealot as I am about free software, games get a special pass. Just look at my posting history, I've got a M$ fan club. So long as you don't fuck my installs, and I get to play, I'm happy. Good luck, and I hope to see your CD out there.
Bzzzt, try again. It's more like a slice of $37,500,000,000. Equivalent to the current game market. I'll quote parts of the article, so you don't have to read it all:
why would game developers spend the money to add Linux functionality to games for a limited number of users? The answer is not that simple, especially since Linux desktop use continues to grow.
There are many reasons why you might want to shift from Windows to a Linux OS. We won't cover what those reasons might be in detail here, but will note that users routinely complain of Windows instability, high prices and many layers of software that impede performance.
Linux "is no longer a niche phenomenon." The overall Linux marketplace revenues for server and PC hardware and packaged software are expected to reach $35.7 billion by 2008, IDC says. Packaged software revenue is the fastest growing market segment within the Linux marketplace, growing 44% annually to over $14 billion in 2008.
Bling, Bling! Let me demonstrate what's going on here and why Windoze is a loser. I can go out and buy a big_name or I can build my own computer for gaming. If I buy the big_name, it's going to come all nice and configured with Windoze and ready to roll, but it will set me back about $1,000. I can get the same kind of hardware from a no name or parts market for about $450 to $700, depending on how stu^H^H^H much I want to pay for a video card. Even if I'm stupid, I can get a hell of a lot better hardware on the parts market for less money. Then, I can buy windoze, pirate windoze or use free software. Whether I pirate or buy windoze, I still only have a four minute halflife online, that's FUCKING UNACCEPTABLE. With free software there's now a chance I will be able to play. Bang for the buck is going toward Linux in a big way. If I want to play games, Microsoft is the expensive and expendable middle man.
What I'd love to see is live game CDs. I'd pay good money for that, and trust me, I've got plenty I have not been spending on $100 operating systems that suck.
Let me paraphrase Gandhi:
That time has come. I think the $37.5 billion estimate is low. Gamers have traditionally driven PC hardware markets and gone to pains for their pleasure. Linux is now about as easy to set up as Winblows and is much easier to keep up. Companies that ignore this to stay in M$ clutches are going to lose out big time.
I'd really love for them to be "free". Then they might stop leaning on my ISP to crimp upload speeds, block ports and forbid services. In fact there's a whole host of problems that would dissapear overnight if Microsoft were not so stupid and evil.
It's not going to happen, regardless of how many free beer binaries they dump. Microsoft does not think they can offer the world the four software freedoms and survive. This bad attitude ensures their destruction.
The real benefit of free software is being able to chose what you want. I can think of a few places that are likely to have real innovation but I'm loath to offer specifics because some obscure package someplace may very well offer it. It's not like people can't very easily make their own version of any free program and sell it. The development problem will be making it as good as the free program when your resources are so relatively limited. The user's problem, aside from quality, lack of freedom and peer check, is getting all the pieces in the same place. It may be possible to assemble all of the commercial programs to get what you want, but the result will not be as good and it will cost you lots of research, money and pain when the parts don't play well. There's nothing like being able to apt-get what you want and just knowind it's going to work as advertised.
The people at OpenBSD have lots to offer for secure systems. They have developed algorithms and systems that are indeed innovative. Can you name a commercial system that has all of the features of OpenBSD? Bastile Linux?
GNU has loads of great stuff. Everyone uses their compiler. Can you name a commercial compiler that has been ported so so many platforms?
When you step back, there are innumerable small details that make free software so polished relative to commercial software. Other details are small but annoying. When using Solaris, I really miss -h and other conveniences such as transparent X forwarding through OpenSSH. Does even Exceed have transparent X forwarding through ssh in their excellent Windoze products yet? There are few interfaces that can compete with Gnome and KDE. Winblows is completely outclassed and Mac OSX is pretty but has far fewer features. KDE's beauty rivals anything. Is there a file manager as excellent and Konqueror anywhere in the commercial world?
You might find any and all of the things I mentioned in the commercial world, but you won't find them all in the same place. Free software gives you what you want, or the tools to get it done.
No, it's a matter of civil law in the civilized world. Sharing ideas, words and songs should never be a crime.
I am disgusted by the idea that bits of our culture will be lost because some moron who owns the right to it is overprotective.
Me too, and that's a larger crime to me than plaguerism, which would be the nastiest of copyright violations. Nothing is worse than throwing your work away, not even taking credit and profit for it away from it's creator.
Create your own free art and give it to the world if you want and if anyone is interested.
I do, thank you. All of my photographs and classwork are posted for anyone to use as are my wife's music. I'd rather people not use them for commercial purposes or to promote things I don't believe in, but I doubt I'll be able to enforce my "rights" the same way Disney does.
Those are your words not mine. There are plenty of ways to make money without 100 year copyrights and other laws that throw away the vast majority of popular culture.
You talk about it being unfair that art isn't free. ... recognize the act that you are just trying to get something for nothing.
I recognize no such thing and the suggestion is offensive.
It is interesting that the author uses the unethical behavior of commercial software producers to say that free software advocates are wrong. Patents, FUD and other tricks the author mentions do not make commercial software more innovative.
The second assertion above, that embedded software is not well served by free software is simply wrong. Embedded development has swung to free software in a big way, as commercial software there was expensive, buggy and had all the other problems of closed source. According to the Free Software Foundations' last newsletter, the majority of embedded developers now make use of free software, at least for development. They will soon make flexible tools that will dominate the embedded market. The same development model, which is more flexible for servers and desktops works for embedded projects too.
The whole argument that closed source software provides swifter innovation is shaky. Many of the so called features are involve product lock in and other dirty tricks that cost you more in the long run. IBM and others are showing that you can develop free software faster than closed source and make a profit. The era of software development he looked at, where indeed many closed source projects were "innovative", is over. As he pointed out, many people lost lots of money in the closed source game and will be reluctant to risk it again. In short, the rush he saw was unsustainable and should not be used to judge the future. Software development itself has reached a Maturity phase where the tools needed are well known and available. Free software now has a combination of development, distribution and user tools that can not be matched by any single closed source thing. To say that rapid development MUST be closed source ignores the awesome and unmatched feature advancement going on with KDE, Gnome and others. It's somewhat insulting to say free software developers simply copy commercial junk.
How about the integration of many superior and excellent parts that closed source software can never match? As an example following yours, I give you Konqueror which integrates local file management with the features of the above utilities and more. By using free archive software and free networking software all the functions above are folded into a single client that's better than the commercial pieces. With Konqueror, I can drag and drop files from ftp and sftp across a split window into my local or another remote file system without a problem. Konqueror also has excellent archive manipulation. No single commercial package matches it. When you combine that with the ease of maintaining a free software system by dselect, synaptic, kpackage, yum or Red Hat's method, the potential difference is overwhelming.
Inertia, as mentioned in the article, is the only thing that keeps commercial software going at this stage. Intertia being that commercial software is designed like a roach motel for your data. Between that and ignorance, stage 6 takes longer than you would expect but it is only a matter of time.
That's easy.
Service providers are not going to pay M$ rape prices and will use free software if it gets the job done. Witness early Hotmail, Google, the use of Sendmail, Apache and on and on. They all recognized that free software offered a cheaper and better way to get their work done and MAKE LOTS OF MONEY.
Bandwith for the desktop is even more important. I have not used M$ junk for years. The key was having the bandwith to be able to install and keep systems updated. With stable distributions, like Woody, I could do it with CD publishers and good dial up. With Testing, I need a cable modem but it's so much better. More importantly, end users need a reliable way to find their computers on a network. This is the only way software can be remotely repaired. If the end user does not have this or only the ISP knows, the end user can not shop around what little repair and upgrade work there is. Without remote administration, free software loses a key advantage over winblows. Without regular and free updates, free software loses another key advantage over winblows. Then the user is left with nothing but superior software that's harder to get than the garbage their computer came with. An ideal world for free software was the one that At Home created, fixed IP addresses and no bandwith restrictions. Not only was it easy to get and repair free software, you could also run services for yourself and others. That kind of internet service will return, if we don't let Microsoft legislate us back thirty years in the name of "virus protection" and "copyright enforcement". Sharing is what free software is all about, and that's what Microsoft and other publishers must prevent.
Development is also tied to bandwith, but it is less important due to the modular nature of free software. People were able to co-operate all the way back in 1993 and they will be able to do that regardless of how dumb bandwith gets.
That "right" is government created and not much of a right as it infringes on my right to copy your work, or perhaps to share it with my friends, and the price you get will be determined by market forces beyond your control. Your "right" is a negation of behavior on my part that does you no real harm beside deprive you of some potential income. Your "Fly to Britian" nonsense is a "right" people like Ben Franklin violated with joy. What people do with legitimate coppies of your work after they purchase it is none of your business and they might export it.
Laws which are obviously designed to protect the wealth of a few at the expense of others are bad for morals and the law itself. As Lessing points out, such laws are corrosive. How do you expect people to obey and respect law when it is normal to violate it? Modern copyright is a gross example of a law that's designed to enrich a few at the expense of others. The proportion of works no longer in commercial publication demonstrate that copyright is not performing it's purpose of encouraging publication. It's working to thwart competition and control culture. The choice before you then is to be controlled like a slave or to violate the law.
Me, I'm a slave with some hope. The costs associated with rebellion are too steep for me, so 20th century popular culture is something I can not really enjoy. The copyright warriors have made it impossible for me to legally collect and enjoy early jazz, for example, and the works may dissapear before it becomes legal for people to share. My hope is that free culture will break the big publishers. My rebellion is to simply not give those publishers my money. Authors will do better when that happens too as you will receive the reward a free market gives rather than monopoly slave wages.
Ah yeah, the mythical movie/music pirate pyramid distribution network. If there is one, the RIAA/MPAA or it's employees are the ones feeding the first layer. That's why the author was talking to some supposed "elder statesman" and uses the word "Pirate". Arrrr, me hardies!
The article intentionally ignores lots of things. Fundamental issues, the fact that you can get out of publication music on P2P, and the whole CD and DVD publishing industry that exists without computer networks. Those out of publication files were not put up by someone who broke into some server someplace, they were put there by someone who had they record. DVDs and CDs from intentional production over runs and other publications are in markets all over the world. It's not just in 3rd world markets either. I know a local store owner who got burnt by his supplier who sent him unlicensed coppies of Windoze. The packages were identical and there was no way he or the supplier could tell the difference. It took him years and nearly all of his money to beat Microsoft in Federal court. All of these little issues ignore the real change that's happened in publishing. The cost of publishing has gone to zero and the encouragement for publication needs to fall in proportion. It's silly that while publication is cheaper than ever, copyright is stricter than ever.
It's a commonly held belief that P2P is about sharing files. It's an appealing, democratic notion: Consumers rip the movies and music they buy and post them online. But that's not quite how it works. In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible. People don't share what they buy; they share what is already being shared - the countless descendants of a single "Adam and Eve" file
Let's start with reason #1 for going to a filesharing network, YOU CAN'T GET IT LOCALLY OR AT ALL. Nowhere is this mentioned. Nor is the fact that only a tiny fraction of all media is still in commercial production. More importantly, I'm not going to find music from non RIAA acts in a music store or at WalMart. P2P is the only way to get music out of production and a good way to get new music by acts that are as good or better than monopoly pushed crap.
The whole purpose of copyright protection is to encourage publication, but file sharing turns that on it's head. Encouragement has traditionally been done by granting an exclusive franchise to the author. Authors never had much bargaining power, and now have virtually none, thanks to media consolidation brought on by insane copyright laws. The point of the exclusive franchise was to allow the publisher to recoup the price of the publication and make a little money, some of which might actually trickle down to the author. But today, THE COST OF PUBLICATION IS ESSENTIALLY ZERO. The whole basis of granting exclusive franchises in the first place has dissapeared.
Today, copyright is more restrictive than ever but it's not working. While media companies are indeed enjoying "best years ever" and record profits, they do so at everyone else's cost and fail while doing so. The very fact that people go to to P2P shows that traditional publishing is not meeting people's needs. The vast majority of YOUR CULTURE has been locked away in vaults, unpublished, until it has lost it's social relevance.
You say,
I don't condone such theft, and would prefer that all media be acquired through legitimate channels.
If you don't believe in theft, you should avoid all RIAA and MPAA publications. They are the biggest thieves of all. Support a local band or one that's giving it's music away by going to a show. You might be able to find them right there on your P2P client.
At the time, you did not know that people who worked there said that. All you had to go on was a post by another Slashdotter claiming an anonymous person told them that. It was pure hearsay, but it seems to have turned out correct as Comair has come out and said the same thing.
with this type of thinking there is no way that reputations are ever going to change since every computer error is attributed to Windows even if it has nothing to do with the issue.
Actually, the reputation will not change because Microsoft will not change. This one woopsie just happened to not be Windows, that does not make the platform any more stable. Microsoft has been warned about the dangers of their system designs but has chosen to blunder forth.
Given a choice, which one would you rather be responsible for? Which one would you use for a mission critical application? Unbelievably, many airlines use Windows as a terminal for ticketing and other very important functions.
That's nice. Would you mind telling me why you are so certain?
I'm fairly certain my interpretation is right for the reasons I outlined. Also, most people don't put their own words in quotation marks, so when he says he made 'stupid intern mistakes' that someone else put up with, I imagine the other person used the term. The learning curve in the incident quoted had nothing to do with TV and everything to do with poor instructions. The instructions were to get sounds of 9/11, without qualification. The intern got sounds of death and destruction, which must have been hard work, but the boss wanted people singing. That to me is a stupid employer mistake.
Of course that was just the beginning of kiss and tell. The author then exposed dangerous working conditions, while telling us that he did it of his own accord, and finishes off by telling us the new call ins are a complete fraud.
The first two stories are a big deal on their own. The story about using his body as a moving blanket for heavy equipment in a U-haul alone will get someone in union hot water. The sound story is more wasteful than you might think. I can only imagine how long he had to work and how much money he had to lay out to get permission to broadcast other people's death and destruction noises. These are not things you tell about yourself unless you have alternate career plans are trying to set someone else on fire.
Excellent! A story of being called "stupid intern" by a woman who gives vague guidance and supervises so poorly that lots of time is wasted, where the same person is praised as patient and nice. I love it.
True, and this will make things better. A whole new API to exploit, glorious!
"authorized updates of software or system firmware, authorized remote system management, or detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of or fraudulent or other illegal activities in connection with a network, service, or computer software, including scanning for and removing software proscribed under this chapter"
This looks custom made for grievous EULAs for junk like Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows Media Player. Even the nasty Overpeer effort might be overlooked with an attitude like that. So the thing that is fundamentally wrong, doing things to other people's computers without asking them, is explicitly allowed if you are "authorized".
Another section defines "authorized user" and expressly prohibits EULAs as a vehicle:
22947.1.(b) "Authorized user," with respect to a computer, means a person who owns or is authorized by the owner or lessee to use the computer. An "authorized user" does not include a person or entity that has obtained authorization to use the computer solely through the use of an end user license agreement."
The contradiction is clear, how it will play out is not. If I click through Microsoft's Windows updater, have I signed onto having my computer monitored for copyright infringing works? What are security purposes? Microsoft's EULAs clearly grant them power to do these things and exercising those powers is a violation. We will see if some companies are allowed to violate this law while others are punished.
Arnold has just set fines for spyware in California, so say the BBC. So what's Holywood going to do when their little bitch Overpeer get's fined for all the spyware they are installing? Isn't DRM just another form of spyware anyway? Cheers to all as this winds itself out.
When are media companies just going to learn that the average person is not going to embrace DRM and will do anything to avoid it? I'm typical in that I have about 2,000 songs in my music collection. Does anyone really think that I'd go to ITunes and pay $2,000 for a music collection that will go away if my software gets hosed or when I want to transfer it to another computer one to many times? They are smoking some really bad pipe there a pipe dream. I've moved all those legitimate songs to ogg and I'm not getting anywhere close to WMP, ITunes or it's ilk. That's my way of managing my digital rights and these DRM dumb dumbs can kiss my ass.
I don't thing this will bother xmms or xine, but I don't share music so I could care less either way.
The people who get burnt are going to be 12 year olds who don't know what they are doing is wrong in the first place. They get music for "free" on the radio, why should their computer be any different, they might think. Then boom, their computer explodes and they get taken for their life savings, even if it is only $2,000.
Really, it's a reason to steer clear of Microsoft. I don't think I'll have a problem using Xine. At the same time, I'll never make and distribute anything in those stupid formats. Why should I when the vast majority of the installed base will no longer trust the format and not be able to distinguish it from it's player?
This is a really big blow to Microsoft. The whole point of using their platform is to have easy access to the latest and greatest multimedia gadgets. Yet here you are not being able to trust the only player Microsoft wants you to have. At this rate, what's the point?
Don't give me BS about not having to worry if you are not into music sharing. The crackers and virus writers will be all over this backdoor and we'll soon see full auto worms propagating without any assistance from Joe Sixpacks, hapless Microsoft operator.