for a second I thought that was steel wool. There's the poor man's version of this. Wrap yourself in steel wool and apply a lead acid battery. "Oh, ow! put it out! put it out!"
you would expect a program that catalogues songs to store a list of media played somewhere, wouldn't you?
No, I would not. I expect programs to do what I ask them to when I ask them to. I'd expect a program that catalogues songs to store the songs I asked it to and present them to me in an organized way later. This "service" does nothing like that for me. What it does is store a list of all the songs I ever played so that M$ can read it, per their new EULA that alows them to spy on every thing I do, I mean alows them to prevent me from pirating music. Right. The new XP identity keeper that uses hardware installed and other checks to protect the OS from unauthorized modifications and use should make sure you act good. They don't need cookies or anything else.
By the M$ EULA they can write files, you can not. You are no longer root user of any M$ box.
How else is the Digital Rights Denial OS supposed to work? The terms of thier EULA alow them to scan the contents of your computer. Why bother to send it over the web when you have permision to take it at will? People downplaying this have obviously forgotten all M$ news of the last month. All the pieces fit so well.
Media Player will be used to extort money from users, media companies and advertisers. Microsoft wants to be the asshole in the middle and wants to use that position to make money. They have created their own media formats to break at will, a method to do it, and put it all in their EULA. What more can you ask for? Do you really think that they won't sell your information? Oh, I suppose you forgot how they sold "real estate" on your desktop.
The only way for them to keep themselves in that position is to eliminate every other option. If you continue to use M$, your internet will have three channels and you will never be able to contribute. Your money goes to those who would enslave you.
Let's see, M$ can write files to my computer that I can't delete and can access my computer in ways that I can not. They must be root, and I am not.
I used to work for Dr. Edward Lambremont, who did some pioneering work in this area, back in the 60's. The idea is to elliminate a vector of human disease, sleeping sickness in this case. The idea worked. Sterile flies, captured or raised fat and happy in captivity, overwhelm the breeding population and can eliminate the wild population. Tests were done on various islands and both the vector and the disease were erradicated. The island's echo systems were not destroyed as other non disease carrying insects took the place of the erradicated flies. Anyone really interested can look up the work and go visit the test sites.
Those opposed might do the same, before their ill founded fears keep the world from using a 40 year old, tested and verified idea to spare some 400,000 lives and untold livestock a year. Yes, ludites piss me off.
It spends millions of dollars each year on bandwidth, sysadmins, and server farm in order to get maybe half a million dollars in contract fees. IBM is not in the business of losing money, and neither is RedHat. Neither needs SourceForge for PR purposes.
Let's see, Microsoft spends $1,000,000,000 to promote XP through print, TV, Radio, purchase of journalists, politicians and stenographers and billboards. This brings abslolutlly nothing in return but some marginal good will that they nullify with poor programs and scandal. Their sales are kept through extortion and other monopoly tricks. Yet people consider it a viable business.
You would conclude that Red Hat, IBM and Source Forge taken as a unit are not a viable business? Source Forge returns good will and programs for free use to both Red Hat and IBM. Without that kind of PR, what does Open Source have? The scale of losses you quote, if accurate are nothing to a company with revenues in the billions. Those paltry millions, spent on ordinary adverts, could hardly push a brand of soap.
The only think that can kill source forge is a betrayal of free software or some other greedy grab move. It's bad enough that they would switch to comercial databases and made the site an advertisment for software they would sell rather than a demonstration of free software they would service and issue with equipment. Anything to lessen Source Forge good will or software contribution would hurt them more than any direct costs.
Is 65ms a bad a ping time? Are those jumps expected? To talk from baton rouge to new orleans, my packets made 17 hops through a great circle from baton rouge to houston to washington to atlanta to new orleans. The ping time was 53ms average. Sure you might expect things to be a little nicer than that for a 100 mile trip. Is there a better way to build these networks? Are there other backbones that they could route through that they are not, simply to collect information about their user's habits?
By the way, that shell sure could use some help. The authors should consult the source code for Eterm, gnome-terminal and rxvt.
In related news, the library of congress has announced that all volumes and public records would be moved to XP platforms. "Even if they are crashed half the time, it's still much more accesible to people than their local library is.", said the newly appointed librarian. "We just love the auto update feature, " he continued...
And you thought the posters at the post office were just advertisement.
Whatever the merits of this case, I will enjoy M$'s beating. The case is either a valid use of patent law or a spurious attempt to gain a franchise on a general idea. If it's the first, M$ deserves to be beat. If it's the second, M$ deserves to be beat by the laws they helped innovate.
Someone was good enough to post one of the patents involved. It looks fairly specific. It specifies energy storage by a capacitor, and microprocesor control in the handset. Hmmm, a microprocessor for a specific task and a capacitor for energy storage, neither is too new or unique individually. Specifying them together for a determined purpose starts to look like a valid invention. Any invention can be broken down into a combination of general parts that anyone might look at and call obvious. Think of a piece of aluminum sheet, made ridgid by stamping holes and forming the edges, rivited above another sheet which has been formed to recieve it and scored near one end of it. The first sheet when raised by the long end applies pressure to the second sheet that causes it to shear around 90% of the scored shape and bend at the unsheared portion. Yes, that is a pop top. Nothing new about any of the pieces, a leaver, formed sheets, scores. Together, however, they make a new machine that was not obvious to people who have been working metals for six thousand years.
Then again, it might just be stupid to say that it's unique because the microprocessor and energy storage is in your hand not in the box. If it is possible to abuse the law like that, MicroSoft's contribution has been large. Those that live by the sword, die by the sword. It's even more satisfying to see one of the great sword makers and wielders stuck. Eat you innovation, Microshit.
I, for one, wouldn't mind paying $1-2 for a DVD which allows me to watch a movie a couple times until the coating on the disk makes it unreadable.
You are going to hate to death the first time you get one home that does not work because it expired on the shelf, in the warehouse, or on the slow boat from China. Then you will have to go buy another one (these will be about as refundable as a dozen bad eggs). You will wish you had just gone to the video store and caughed up four bucks to begin with.
Because these things require special coating, packaging and because they are perrishable and will require special treatment, THEY WILL COST MORE TO PROVIDE. Because they deliver less than a DVD that costs less to provide, they will command a lower retail value. Retailers will hate them, people who buy them will hate them. The whole thing is stupid and they will all rot on the shelf leaving investors without returns. Oh well. As everyone is pointing out, it's got a DIVX's chance. All this goes to show is how absurdly overvalued Comercial DVDs are.
Why is it that so many people are suckers for things like planned obsolescence and other methods of turning durrable goods into perrishable ones? When will there be enough examples to disuade the greedy. Reference DIVX and the US automobile industry vrs Honda, proffits up by 60% in this reccsion year over last year.
I think you misunderstand the purpose of copyright.
Try to weigh the rights of an author to own their labour vs. a free for all. This law protects and extends the right of each of us to create something, and either give it away, or sell it, or distribute it in some other novel way. Without that, anyone can take anything any of us does and use it in any way they wish, without our permission, and without compensation, and most importantly, without any concerns as to the intent for the use of the work originally.
The purpose of copyright is to expand the public domain, NOT to control how infomation and public works are used. Copyright laws in the US were designed to offer a temporary franchise on publication of works at a time when publication itself was costly and required encouragement. The current expansion of copyright into a 75 year, effecutally permenant, franchise is an abomination especially in light of electronic publication costs. The author's intent has nothing to do with how I should think or express myself or use his material to do so. I will freely quote people I disagree with to show them up. It was never about the ability to force your will on others or to be able to make money forever off someone's "work" (both are equivalent, how is left as an exercise).
The callenge for lawmakers is to forge laws that continue to encourage publication without inflicting undue restrictions on use. The GPL exits because of undue restrictions that have been placed into current copyright law and it's strength is how abusive copyright laws are. If those abuses did not exist, the GPL would have no more force than any other more restrictive copyright. Your confusion is the reason copyright is so screwed up and is the greatest obstical lawmakers have.
Don't be misled. You will not be protected when _largeCorp rips you off (as you consider it). _largeCorp would more likely copy your image or what not to their own machine and dispense with the reference alltogether. _largeCorp will be able to hit you with a very large stick if you EVER try to use their content. A great example of that is the whole "for Dummies" fiasco where the publisher of the popular dead tree serries used copyright law to commondere a common english phrase. We can be sure of prior use and publication of the phrase, but the publisher sent out thousands of threatening emails to sites that used it. A lighter aproach to the situation is found in the excellent dispair.com trade mark parody of:-(
To summarize, copyright is a created right to encourage contributions to the public domain and should never be used to defeate the real right of free speech.
If someone posts a negative personal experience with a company/product, said company could demand that it be removed due to the clause in their EULA... worse, they could demand the identity of the poster and proceed to sue their ass off.
There are three things that protect slashdot from this. They have signed no agrement and they are either a common carrier or a news paper.
The first problem is easiest to see, Slashdot does not use and will always be able to avoid $oftware that comes with a license that is not the GPL. No use, no problem no matter how stupid contract law may become.
The other protections are a little less obvious, but a freshman level journalism class and the API stylebook helps to understand the purpose and function of liability laws. Slashdot is mostly a common carrier and can not be blamed for the comunications they facilitate. The phone company is not responsible for crank calls. If you count deleting machine generated posts and blocking other denial of services "editorial control" then Slashdot may be a newspaper. A company that wishes to sue Slashdot for slander must prove that damage intent and malice, and even then the truth is the ultimate shield. One of the goals of free speech is to protect the public by alowing people to reveal damaging truths. Now if Slashdot were to tell a lie, and knew it was a lie, and knew it would cause someone distress, Slashdot would have done something wrong and deserves to be spanked. Proving all of those things is next to impossible.
Wrong. The UCC, passed by all 50 states says that a form-agreement is a type of contract where you get no negotiations. Either you accept, or you decline.
The legally binding part is untested, however, for the most part; I'd think they'd be found legal. There are few clauses which I think would be(or should be) found illegal.
That something is a contract does not make it leagal. All contracts are subject to law, and any that violates the law is null and void. For instance, we could make a contract where I made you my slave for use of my lands and protection. You could sign forms, swear before an alter and jump backwards over a broomstick, but the agreement has no legal force. I could not call the police to catch you if you decided to run away and I'd get spanked for not paying into your social security among other things.
As far as possible. Yeah right, so if something is not "possible" without someone's goofey patent getting in the way they will make it a standard anyway? Great, this is what they have been calling RAND all along and it's what everyone is upset about.
How about a clear statement such as the free software foundation has about US patent laws being insane, the patent office being incompetent and then refusing to support the insanity?
First, nobody knows if lawyers (or judges, they still exists, you know) could "break" the GPL. Right now, we only know nobody tried it yet.
Sigh. The GPL grants rights to copy that ordinary copyrights don't. If the GPL does not hold no copyright holds. The GPL has been defended and no one has dared go to court because they knew they would loose.
Furthermore, the important part of Red Hat are not protected by the GPL. Neither their name and credibility, nor their customer base is GPLed. (In fact, I don't even know if all their software is - AFAIK SuSEs Yast is closed source, e.g.)
As far as I can tell, you have never used Red Hat or looked at any of their source. Most is GPL. Show me one "important" piece that is not.
We have been ridiculed because we are using an "off-brand" processor, we've rationalized a way thermal problem's and fragile cores to get the benefit of more bang for the buck. We have suffered through inadequate compiler support...
Wow, what a bunch of FUD. I've never had a thermal problem, never had a "fragile core" and never suffered from "inadquate compiler support", whatever that is. My new XP system seems to get stuck every now and then, but it's a new system and I've probably done something stupid like make my swap file much too large. My k6/2s and my Athlon perfom better than their more expensive Intel counterparts. According to reviews the XP system sould work just fine when I finish ironing it out. Other people have made it work and so it will work for me too. AMD does math cheap and better than Intel. Gaming? That's not my bag, but others are reporting good results.
When you look at the support AMD gives the Widoze world, you have to remember that those who suffer under M$ OS NEED the help. Just check out the utilities offered at their site. AMD CPUID? cpuinfo gets that for me. They rushed out with the goofey win2k utility because Windoze users can't pass information like, "no_pentium" to their kernel or recompile it. I'm no kernel hacker, but the AMD documentation site looks informative.
Yeah, they could have been nicer about it, but I'm not about to give up on AMD over a video bug. The short answer is that this looks like an error of ommision that could occur in any large organization. The folks in the Windoze software branch, asside from having goog feelings toward M$ by the nature of their jobs, might not know who to contact to get the word out to the Linux world. Does AMD even have a Linux division?
We're often treated as a minority because we are.
Another beautiful flame disguised as advocacy. It's neither true nor right. There are now more Linux developers than there are M$. I refuse to accept immoral or offensive behavior for myself, a minority of one. Fortunatly, there seems to be none of that here, at least not intentionally.
from the DOJ: The exemptions authorize federal agencies to withhold information covering: (1) classified national defense and foreign relations information; (2) internal agency rules and practices; (3) information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law; (4) trade secrets and other confidential business information; (5) inter-agency or intra-agency communications that are protected by legal privileges; (6) information involving matters of personal privacy; (7) certain types of information compiled for law enforcement purposes; (8) information relating to the supervision of financial institutions; and (9) geological information on wells. The three exclusions, which are rarely used, pertain to especially sensitive law enforcement and national security matters.
1)Fair
2)That's not really code, is it? Unless they are using Rule Buider TM.
3)Fair enough, you can't think of everything.
4)ALARM! This is not what your tax dollars should be supporting! This is the whole problem and what most of us are resentful over. I'm not giving research money to my competitors.
5)This again is not code.
6)This agian is not code.
7)This again is not code.
8)This again is not code.
9)This again is not code.
So the only thing the federal government is not allowed to tell us are matters of national security, and private information that regulating common resources (banks, oil wells) requires them to be trusted with. It looks like all code not used for military purposes is fair game, unless we invent stupid laws to defeat ourselves.
The whole notion of not disclosing your code is stupid and greedy. If you want to be a software firm, do it, and good freaking luck. If you want to be a researcher, you had better come clean with your methods. If you have developed some codes that you want to use, but don't want to make free (that's not what research is all about), OK, but you had better make coppies available so that others can repeat your results and prove it works. But don't try to milk the public to develop private code. Fill up your time as you pleas, but don't put code you have not intention of sharing in your grant.
I'm hoping someone figures out how to make an x-ray laser. The trouble would seem to be bouncing them so that your productive media would be pumped in sync. How do you line up things to x-ray flatness? What kind of media do you use full of k-shells? Ehhh, it's not my department.
In the mean time, the folks at places like CAMD have had coherent xrays for a while. There are supposed to be about five other labs like this around. I supose you could try to miniturize this technology. If someone comes up with something better, great, but the techniques that can take advantage of it ARE being worked out today.
I'm so sick of this Linux is communism bullshit. Marxist economic theory applies to the world of physical goods, not free speech publishing and ideas. The modern notion of copyright is a modern by product of mass produced printed material and now obsolete mechanisms of press. Before such mass production, people who published hoped that their ideas would be coppied and improved on. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ECONOMIC OR POLITICAL SYSTEMS. Today, the Free Software Foundation and others believe that their code should be free of obsolete notions of copyright and have taken steps to insure that others will benifit from their works. It's called public spirit and co-operation and it's one of the hallmarks of free societies.
The domino theory was that they newly aquired slave states could be put to use spreading the interests of the Soviet slave state. This was seen in Cuba, which supplied the USSR with sugar, and fighting men for troubles in Angloa, as well as subversives for the rest of Central America. The whole country was made into state property controlled by Fidel, who therefore owned it all. Free speech and press were eliminated, those opposed were liquidated, universities, schools and presses all became tools of the party which was ultimatly rulled by people in Moscow. The reward for this slavery is one of the lowest standards of living in the Americas, matched only by slave states in Eastern Europe and Asia. So while these unfortuanate places became horribly inefficient, all of the effort could be directed at conquest. China agreed with this assesment at the time and was rather upset about North Korea and Vietnam, which they viewed as an extention of Soviet power. China had designs of it's own.
In the software world, M$ is the slave state. It is an all embracing company that sees itself getting between you and anything you want to do with computing machinery so that Bill Gates can extract your money. M$ is one of the largest proponents of the inaptly named "Digital Rights Management" movement that will strip you of ownership of your intelectual property. M$ has already written software licenses that forbid use of their software to criticise M$ (see Front Page story Slashdot ran a few months ago for evidence of this blatant corporate censorship). All M$ licensess are written so that M$ may terminate your use of their software at anytime, though they would never dare test it in court. Those who fall victim to M$ software inadvetantly spread it as M$ jurry riggs their file formats to be impossible to impliment on other platforms. All money and efforts spent on M$ software is effort and money furthering the M$ slave state.
Those who argue that Linux is not ready for the desktop must finally face the fact that the cash strapped *desktop* IS ready for Linux.
Incredible. The poorest desktops will then be the first to embrace all the goodness of freedom and be technically superior. So while government cubicles in Korea have ssh, X, compilers of all types, postgress, mySQL, multiple virtual screens, multiple workplaces, multiple and superior image manipulators, multiple and superior file and web browsers, I at a fortune 500 US company will be stuck with an w2k machine with all of it's fundamental and implimentational flaws. No real user accounts, no real file permissions, no encypted remote login, no real GUI export, no real image manipulation, one quirky file and web browser, no real shell, no grep, no find, and no compilers. How much of that do I really need to get my job done? None, but I don't need anything other than a knife and a match to cook dinner. The match is optional really, I could just eat nuts, berries and grass.
Somehow, I don't think this competitive advantage will escape corporate America forever.
The article mentions phone service. If they do add services like that, it might be cheaper to chop the phone for some people. It would still represent an increase for me over cable modem, all movie expendatures, local phone, logn distance and cell phone. The good news is that someone in the cable industy is trying to compete with the phone companies.
The problem is not that AOL is greedy, the problem is that we have not assured compitition in the cable market. It is improperly regulated, so we can expect the greedheads to screw us.
They have another thing comming with price resistance however. Cable where I live is already too expensive at sixty five bucks for "basic" and modem service. "Basic" is essentially broadcast TV so we don't get it. The modem charge is about fifty bucks and the bastards block port 80 and 25 inbound. If the try to charge anymore they lose me. I want more from the thing, not less. They can continue to collect $50/month from me and let me figure out how to use it as a phone, or they they can jump in the river.
I want a reliable way of identifying myself, to my computer, to my bank, or to an airline. That's in my own interest: it makes it harder for other people to steal from me.
A national ID will just be another ID for people to steal. What makes you think the post office is going to detect fraud any better than a national bank? You delude yourself to think any kind of computer program can take the place of personal service.
Get to know the people you trust your money to. If you want to know your banker, go visit him! Open an account at some nice stable local bank and get to know someone there. If you want to be sure of ticket purchasing, get to know a travel agent. The local banker can offer you the same account and credit card insurnce that the national bank does but he might know your spending habits better than a computer program. Sure, it costs more but there's a trade off to everything isn't there? As a society, we get what we demand.
Identity theft is rampant because big institutions are irresponsible with their lending. The same fool that thought automatic executions of email attachments thought it would be a good idea to offer credit cards by mail. It just screams, screw me and everyone else, I don't care so long as I'm raking in the cash.
There will simply be a blank driver's license space under your social security number. The other information will be filled in from private databases that the federal government can now demand under the Patriot Act (or whatever it was called). Sure enough that Sam's card photo will provide all the information some deranged file jockey thinks he needs for facial recognition software. All the careful records your insurance company has been keeping will go in. The debt collectors have had them for years, as an aquantence painfully made aware a friend of mine who defaulted on a pap smear. Enough data is available is available to eliminate inconsistencies due to errors or intention.
You have been a number for years. Now it's overt. The technology has made invasion cheap, we can fight it or roll over. Any ideas on how to fight?
Linux is a multiuser OS. Are the Lindows people going to bill me for every user account I create? The multiuser power is right up there with not worrying about licenses and all the other blessings of freedom. Being able to share my computers with other people and myself is important to me.
Slashdot Mirror
-Do NOT do that.
No, I would not. I expect programs to do what I ask them to when I ask them to. I'd expect a program that catalogues songs to store the songs I asked it to and present them to me in an organized way later. This "service" does nothing like that for me. What it does is store a list of all the songs I ever played so that M$ can read it, per their new EULA that alows them to spy on every thing I do, I mean alows them to prevent me from pirating music. Right. The new XP identity keeper that uses hardware installed and other checks to protect the OS from unauthorized modifications and use should make sure you act good. They don't need cookies or anything else.
By the M$ EULA they can write files, you can not. You are no longer root user of any M$ box.
Media Player will be used to extort money from users, media companies and advertisers. Microsoft wants to be the asshole in the middle and wants to use that position to make money. They have created their own media formats to break at will, a method to do it, and put it all in their EULA. What more can you ask for? Do you really think that they won't sell your information? Oh, I suppose you forgot how they sold "real estate" on your desktop.
The only way for them to keep themselves in that position is to eliminate every other option. If you continue to use M$, your internet will have three channels and you will never be able to contribute. Your money goes to those who would enslave you.
Let's see, M$ can write files to my computer that I can't delete and can access my computer in ways that I can not. They must be root, and I am not.
Those opposed might do the same, before their ill founded fears keep the world from using a 40 year old, tested and verified idea to spare some 400,000 lives and untold livestock a year. Yes, ludites piss me off.
Let's see, Microsoft spends $1,000,000,000 to promote XP through print, TV, Radio, purchase of journalists, politicians and stenographers and billboards. This brings abslolutlly nothing in return but some marginal good will that they nullify with poor programs and scandal. Their sales are kept through extortion and other monopoly tricks. Yet people consider it a viable business.
You would conclude that Red Hat, IBM and Source Forge taken as a unit are not a viable business? Source Forge returns good will and programs for free use to both Red Hat and IBM. Without that kind of PR, what does Open Source have? The scale of losses you quote, if accurate are nothing to a company with revenues in the billions. Those paltry millions, spent on ordinary adverts, could hardly push a brand of soap.
The only think that can kill source forge is a betrayal of free software or some other greedy grab move. It's bad enough that they would switch to comercial databases and made the site an advertisment for software they would sell rather than a demonstration of free software they would service and issue with equipment. Anything to lessen Source Forge good will or software contribution would hurt them more than any direct costs.
By the way, that shell sure could use some help. The authors should consult the source code for Eterm, gnome-terminal and rxvt.
And you thought the posters at the post office were just advertisement.
Whatever the merits of this case, I will enjoy M$'s beating. The case is either a valid use of patent law or a spurious attempt to gain a franchise on a general idea. If it's the first, M$ deserves to be beat. If it's the second, M$ deserves to be beat by the laws they helped innovate.
Someone was good enough to post one of the patents involved. It looks fairly specific. It specifies energy storage by a capacitor, and microprocesor control in the handset. Hmmm, a microprocessor for a specific task and a capacitor for energy storage, neither is too new or unique individually. Specifying them together for a determined purpose starts to look like a valid invention. Any invention can be broken down into a combination of general parts that anyone might look at and call obvious. Think of a piece of aluminum sheet, made ridgid by stamping holes and forming the edges, rivited above another sheet which has been formed to recieve it and scored near one end of it. The first sheet when raised by the long end applies pressure to the second sheet that causes it to shear around 90% of the scored shape and bend at the unsheared portion. Yes, that is a pop top. Nothing new about any of the pieces, a leaver, formed sheets, scores. Together, however, they make a new machine that was not obvious to people who have been working metals for six thousand years.
Then again, it might just be stupid to say that it's unique because the microprocessor and energy storage is in your hand not in the box. If it is possible to abuse the law like that, MicroSoft's contribution has been large. Those that live by the sword, die by the sword. It's even more satisfying to see one of the great sword makers and wielders stuck. Eat you innovation, Microshit.
You are going to hate to death the first time you get one home that does not work because it expired on the shelf, in the warehouse, or on the slow boat from China. Then you will have to go buy another one (these will be about as refundable as a dozen bad eggs). You will wish you had just gone to the video store and caughed up four bucks to begin with.
That would be bird food.
Why is it that so many people are suckers for things like planned obsolescence and other methods of turning durrable goods into perrishable ones? When will there be enough examples to disuade the greedy. Reference DIVX and the US automobile industry vrs Honda, proffits up by 60% in this reccsion year over last year.
Try to weigh the rights of an author to own their labour vs. a free for all. This law protects and extends the right of each of us to create something, and either give it away, or sell it, or distribute it in some other novel way. Without that, anyone can take anything any of us does and use it in any way they wish, without our permission, and without compensation, and most importantly, without any concerns as to the intent for the use of the work originally.
The purpose of copyright is to expand the public domain, NOT to control how infomation and public works are used. Copyright laws in the US were designed to offer a temporary franchise on publication of works at a time when publication itself was costly and required encouragement. The current expansion of copyright into a 75 year, effecutally permenant, franchise is an abomination especially in light of electronic publication costs. The author's intent has nothing to do with how I should think or express myself or use his material to do so. I will freely quote people I disagree with to show them up. It was never about the ability to force your will on others or to be able to make money forever off someone's "work" (both are equivalent, how is left as an exercise).
The callenge for lawmakers is to forge laws that continue to encourage publication without inflicting undue restrictions on use. The GPL exits because of undue restrictions that have been placed into current copyright law and it's strength is how abusive copyright laws are. If those abuses did not exist, the GPL would have no more force than any other more restrictive copyright. Your confusion is the reason copyright is so screwed up and is the greatest obstical lawmakers have.
Don't be misled. You will not be protected when _largeCorp rips you off (as you consider it). _largeCorp would more likely copy your image or what not to their own machine and dispense with the reference alltogether. _largeCorp will be able to hit you with a very large stick if you EVER try to use their content. A great example of that is the whole "for Dummies" fiasco where the publisher of the popular dead tree serries used copyright law to commondere a common english phrase. We can be sure of prior use and publication of the phrase, but the publisher sent out thousands of threatening emails to sites that used it. A lighter aproach to the situation is found in the excellent dispair.com trade mark parody of :-(
To summarize, copyright is a created right to encourage contributions to the public domain and should never be used to defeate the real right of free speech.
There are three things that protect slashdot from this. They have signed no agrement and they are either a common carrier or a news paper.
The first problem is easiest to see, Slashdot does not use and will always be able to avoid $oftware that comes with a license that is not the GPL. No use, no problem no matter how stupid contract law may become.
The other protections are a little less obvious, but a freshman level journalism class and the API stylebook helps to understand the purpose and function of liability laws. Slashdot is mostly a common carrier and can not be blamed for the comunications they facilitate. The phone company is not responsible for crank calls. If you count deleting machine generated posts and blocking other denial of services "editorial control" then Slashdot may be a newspaper. A company that wishes to sue Slashdot for slander must prove that damage intent and malice, and even then the truth is the ultimate shield. One of the goals of free speech is to protect the public by alowing people to reveal damaging truths. Now if Slashdot were to tell a lie, and knew it was a lie, and knew it would cause someone distress, Slashdot would have done something wrong and deserves to be spanked. Proving all of those things is next to impossible.
The legally binding part is untested, however, for the most part; I'd think they'd be found legal. There are few clauses which I think would be(or should be) found illegal.
That something is a contract does not make it leagal. All contracts are subject to law, and any that violates the law is null and void. For instance, we could make a contract where I made you my slave for use of my lands and protection. You could sign forms, swear before an alter and jump backwards over a broomstick, but the agreement has no legal force. I could not call the police to catch you if you decided to run away and I'd get spanked for not paying into your social security among other things.
How about a clear statement such as the free software foundation has about US patent laws being insane, the patent office being incompetent and then refusing to support the insanity?
Sigh. The GPL grants rights to copy that ordinary copyrights don't. If the GPL does not hold no copyright holds. The GPL has been defended and no one has dared go to court because they knew they would loose.
Furthermore, the important part of Red Hat are not protected by the GPL. Neither their name and credibility, nor their customer base is GPLed. (In fact, I don't even know if all their software is - AFAIK SuSEs Yast is closed source, e.g.)
As far as I can tell, you have never used Red Hat or looked at any of their source. Most is GPL. Show me one "important" piece that is not.
Wow, what a bunch of FUD. I've never had a thermal problem, never had a "fragile core" and never suffered from "inadquate compiler support", whatever that is. My new XP system seems to get stuck every now and then, but it's a new system and I've probably done something stupid like make my swap file much too large. My k6/2s and my Athlon perfom better than their more expensive Intel counterparts. According to reviews the XP system sould work just fine when I finish ironing it out. Other people have made it work and so it will work for me too. AMD does math cheap and better than Intel. Gaming? That's not my bag, but others are reporting good results.
When you look at the support AMD gives the Widoze world, you have to remember that those who suffer under M$ OS NEED the help. Just check out the utilities offered at their site. AMD CPUID? cpuinfo gets that for me. They rushed out with the goofey win2k utility because Windoze users can't pass information like, "no_pentium" to their kernel or recompile it. I'm no kernel hacker, but the AMD documentation site looks informative.
Yeah, they could have been nicer about it, but I'm not about to give up on AMD over a video bug. The short answer is that this looks like an error of ommision that could occur in any large organization. The folks in the Windoze software branch, asside from having goog feelings toward M$ by the nature of their jobs, might not know who to contact to get the word out to the Linux world. Does AMD even have a Linux division?
We're often treated as a minority because we are.
Another beautiful flame disguised as advocacy. It's neither true nor right. There are now more Linux developers than there are M$. I refuse to accept immoral or offensive behavior for myself, a minority of one. Fortunatly, there seems to be none of that here, at least not intentionally.
1)Fair
2)That's not really code, is it? Unless they are using Rule Buider TM.
3)Fair enough, you can't think of everything.
4)ALARM! This is not what your tax dollars should be supporting! This is the whole problem and what most of us are resentful over. I'm not giving research money to my competitors.
5)This again is not code.
6)This agian is not code.
7)This again is not code.
8)This again is not code.
9)This again is not code.
So the only thing the federal government is not allowed to tell us are matters of national security, and private information that regulating common resources (banks, oil wells) requires them to be trusted with. It looks like all code not used for military purposes is fair game, unless we invent stupid laws to defeat ourselves.
The whole notion of not disclosing your code is stupid and greedy. If you want to be a software firm, do it, and good freaking luck. If you want to be a researcher, you had better come clean with your methods. If you have developed some codes that you want to use, but don't want to make free (that's not what research is all about), OK, but you had better make coppies available so that others can repeat your results and prove it works. But don't try to milk the public to develop private code. Fill up your time as you pleas, but don't put code you have not intention of sharing in your grant.
Sorry for the rant folks, I'm not in a good mood.
In the mean time, the folks at places like CAMD have had coherent xrays for a while. There are supposed to be about five other labs like this around. I supose you could try to miniturize this technology. If someone comes up with something better, great, but the techniques that can take advantage of it ARE being worked out today.
The domino theory was that they newly aquired slave states could be put to use spreading the interests of the Soviet slave state. This was seen in Cuba, which supplied the USSR with sugar, and fighting men for troubles in Angloa, as well as subversives for the rest of Central America. The whole country was made into state property controlled by Fidel, who therefore owned it all. Free speech and press were eliminated, those opposed were liquidated, universities, schools and presses all became tools of the party which was ultimatly rulled by people in Moscow. The reward for this slavery is one of the lowest standards of living in the Americas, matched only by slave states in Eastern Europe and Asia. So while these unfortuanate places became horribly inefficient, all of the effort could be directed at conquest. China agreed with this assesment at the time and was rather upset about North Korea and Vietnam, which they viewed as an extention of Soviet power. China had designs of it's own.
In the software world, M$ is the slave state. It is an all embracing company that sees itself getting between you and anything you want to do with computing machinery so that Bill Gates can extract your money. M$ is one of the largest proponents of the inaptly named "Digital Rights Management" movement that will strip you of ownership of your intelectual property. M$ has already written software licenses that forbid use of their software to criticise M$ (see Front Page story Slashdot ran a few months ago for evidence of this blatant corporate censorship). All M$ licensess are written so that M$ may terminate your use of their software at anytime, though they would never dare test it in court. Those who fall victim to M$ software inadvetantly spread it as M$ jurry riggs their file formats to be impossible to impliment on other platforms. All money and efforts spent on M$ software is effort and money furthering the M$ slave state.
Incredible. The poorest desktops will then be the first to embrace all the goodness of freedom and be technically superior. So while government cubicles in Korea have ssh, X, compilers of all types, postgress, mySQL, multiple virtual screens, multiple workplaces, multiple and superior image manipulators, multiple and superior file and web browsers, I at a fortune 500 US company will be stuck with an w2k machine with all of it's fundamental and implimentational flaws. No real user accounts, no real file permissions, no encypted remote login, no real GUI export, no real image manipulation, one quirky file and web browser, no real shell, no grep, no find, and no compilers. How much of that do I really need to get my job done? None, but I don't need anything other than a knife and a match to cook dinner. The match is optional really, I could just eat nuts, berries and grass.
Somehow, I don't think this competitive advantage will escape corporate America forever.
The problem is not that AOL is greedy, the problem is that we have not assured compitition in the cable market. It is improperly regulated, so we can expect the greedheads to screw us.
They have another thing comming with price resistance however. Cable where I live is already too expensive at sixty five bucks for "basic" and modem service. "Basic" is essentially broadcast TV so we don't get it. The modem charge is about fifty bucks and the bastards block port 80 and 25 inbound. If the try to charge anymore they lose me. I want more from the thing, not less. They can continue to collect $50/month from me and let me figure out how to use it as a phone, or they they can jump in the river.
A national ID will just be another ID for people to steal. What makes you think the post office is going to detect fraud any better than a national bank? You delude yourself to think any kind of computer program can take the place of personal service.
Get to know the people you trust your money to. If you want to know your banker, go visit him! Open an account at some nice stable local bank and get to know someone there. If you want to be sure of ticket purchasing, get to know a travel agent. The local banker can offer you the same account and credit card insurnce that the national bank does but he might know your spending habits better than a computer program. Sure, it costs more but there's a trade off to everything isn't there? As a society, we get what we demand.
Identity theft is rampant because big institutions are irresponsible with their lending. The same fool that thought automatic executions of email attachments thought it would be a good idea to offer credit cards by mail. It just screams, screw me and everyone else, I don't care so long as I'm raking in the cash.
You have been a number for years. Now it's overt. The technology has made invasion cheap, we can fight it or roll over. Any ideas on how to fight?
Linux is a multiuser OS. Are the Lindows people going to bill me for every user account I create? The multiuser power is right up there with not worrying about licenses and all the other blessings of freedom. Being able to share my computers with other people and myself is important to me.