The problem is that MS isn't distributing anything. They are getting pulled into the coverage of the GPLv3 license by specific wording of the GPLv3 that includes conveying as well as distribution. This inclusion is not by any act of Microsoft but a change in an ancillary operations of a intentful license. If Microsoft is paying someone else (Novell) to distribute someone else's copyright work (GPL3 software), they had better have a valid license to do so (i.e. be doing it within the GPL3 terms), or they're going to be liable for (either contributory or direct) copyright infringement.
Indirect copyright infringement is what brought down Napster -- they weren't actually distributing the software, but they were enabling someone else to.
If Microsoft doesn't want to be tied by the terms of the GPL3, the only real way to be sure that they aren't is to not be party to the distribution of GPL3 software. Anything else is just dancing on the head of a pin, and hoping you don't fall off.
As far as I can tell, you're still free to treat the GPLed software (whether GPL2 or GPL3) like GPL software and ignore the Linspire/Microsoft agreement. It's just that, if you do that (or are so stupid as to do something like use your system to share your printer ('using it as a server), play quake, balance your books, share your internet connection or do thousands of other things that many people expect computers to do, you won't be protected by it.
(either that, or Linspire is in violation of the GPL, and the agreement is toxic to their continued existence).
Essentially, the problem probably showed up first with iPhones, because they were relatively numerous, going back and forth between different nodes , and running on a relatively continuous basis. Because the problem showed up just about the time that iphones did, and iphone users were the most common complainers about the problem, they assumed that iPhones were also causing the problem.
An understandable, but fallacious, intermediate conclusion.
.... Unless your definiton of 'cheap spaceflight' is limited to suborbital flight.
One of the few companies likely to have the knowledge and balls to make cheap space flight possible is now owned by a company that has a real bottom-line incentive to keep spaceflight from getting too cheap.
I think that the point is that it's no longer more expensive to get a Linux box from Dell than it is to get a windows box from Dell, nuke the Windows partition (and thus lose even hardware support) and install Linux. -- or get the same box sans OS*, and install Linux yourself.
I will note that even just resizing the Windows partition for your 120GB hard drive to make room for a 20GB Linux install is enough to cause the Dell nuke-Windows-and-reinstall script to freak out and stop.
(*
Yeah, I'm discounting FreeDos as a legitimate OS -- Have you ever even heard of someone [other than a FreeDos developer] actually leaving their FreeDos partition permanently on their machine and using it as anything other than a launching point for installing another OS and/or claiming HW support from Dell?_
I can't believe that a Linux distro, even at one-of prices, costs them only $50 more than Vista... Er, um, no. They're now charging $50 less for Ubuntu than for Vista. -- I take this to mean that they're expecting to make it a Profit source, relative to Vista.
Remember, they're making it available for free, but they're not providing support (you get to go to 'the community' for support, or buy support directly from Canonical). All they have to provide support for is the hardware, and Ubuntu makes it a lot easier to diagnose hardware problems than Windows does. (and Vista is probably gonna be a lot worse with all the problems from DRM interactions).
In other words, $50 is probably the expected average per-user drop in support charges vs. Vista. Dell then gets to pocket the Windows OEM price as pure profit. (or vice-versa if I'm wrong).
First of all, 3x500GB drives gives a single 1TB raid (with one 500GB drive used for redundancy).
Now, if you want to replace them with 1TB drives,....
Pull out one drive and replace it with an empty drive.
wait for the RAID software to (re)populate the new drive
Add a second drive the same way as steps (1) and (2).
At this point you can concatonate the third 500GB drive with one of the drives you pulld out of the raid, (thus giving a virtual third 1GB drive) or properly replace it with a real 1TB drive.
Now you have 3 (virtual or real) 1TB dries, and you can now resize your virtual drive and it's associated partition(s).
I would -- with a video camera to record the look on the users' face when they realize that their entire data store is inaccessible.
I would, of course, be using a different 10-drive raid-0 pack to record the tragedy -- but I'd be safe because it's my disk pack (which makes it impervious to catastrophic failure).
I will say that it was far easier to get the printers at work running on my ubuntu box than it was to get it working on Windows... Actually, I used the information that was gleaned on the Linux install to figure out how to get it to work on Windows. It was actually a bit of a surprise to find that the Linux setup was far easier than the Windows setup.
I'd say that the GP post was referring to Microsoft.
This is what happens when you found a movement based on the idea that other people's intellectual property is yours to take as you wish. Doesn't that sound like Microsoft to you???
And the thing is: If they sue some random company over a supposed MS patent in Linux, what happens when that company gets disclosure of all of MS's software and gets someone to go over it looking for patents that they (or someone in the OS movement has)? And then what happens if they find all sorts of embarrassing things in that source code that come out in court?
The nasty thing (for Microsoft) is that just about anybody who has contributed to the code that Microsoft sues some random user for using can probably ask for standing "because it's my code that they're impugning", and then counter-sue MS over some patent that they have (or have just been assigned by some friend in the OS community).
We've already seen what's happen(ed,ing) to SCOX over their claims of 'millions of lines' of Linux code, now Microsoft is making similar claims -- and with the SCOTUS just having gutted patents, this seems to me like calling wolf, but everybody knows that, even if the wolf is real, it's lost most of it's teeth and claws and may be on a leash.
Face it buddy. DRM is now used almost as a swear word, because what it refers to is almost obscene. If you change the name to something 'prettier' then you will simply sully the prettier name.
Oh, and DCE?
Digital Consumer Entrapment.
(( I could say 'good luck buddy', but I really wouldn't mean it. ))
If protecting people's privacy is a violation of the first amendment, then it's also a violation of the first amendment to deny me the right to tell the Russians (or Chinese, or Al Quaeda) about the hole in the fence that lets them get into a top secret military installation, or whatever else it is that the government thinks should be kept secret.
If that defense passes, it'll set a precedent that the Government is gonna regret for a long, long time, starting about a year after the final appeal ends.
The patent does cover something like the PS3, you can install Linux and be root on your machine, but you are not allowed access to the whole system. In other words, 'root' on these systems really isn't a full-blown root user. You can still emulate this system with UNIX permissions -- You just never allow the user access to a UID=0 account or process (other than by a SUID process).
It's a counter-culture way to do things in the UNIX universe, but it's entirely possible.
artist's can make arrangements on their own. The one thing that they can't do is band together and create a co-operative of their own to do the work of collecting royalties.
He always had a talent for voices. His talent for voices extended to his Scottish accent. As the GF post said, He was born in Vancouver (that's 200Miles North of Seattle for the geographically impaired).
Ironicly, the best person to fix this rocket would have been scotty. That's probably why they decided to put him on this launch. Why else do you think that the flight went well?.
Had you read the article, you'd know this was a sub-orbital flight. If you read my original submission, I specifically mentioned that it was a sub-orbital flight -- I even put it into the link text. (" carried into sub-orbital space " [emphasis added] )
Not reading the linked-to article is perfectly acceptable here on Slashdot (well, at least, completely predictable) -- but not even reading the posting? There's not much more that a geek can do.
While technically a spaceflight, it was more or less a really high-altitude rocket. yeah -- and so is a moon-shot.. really really high-altitude.
Not that I have much nice to say about the RIAA, but this article is just wrong.
You can negotiate your own (noncompulsory) license with radio stations, you just can't have a collective other than soundexchange collect for you. This, however, isn't a big issue if you're using a royalty-free license (such as CC). They do, however, claim that you have to register your agreement with them. (( Does this mean that we should build a database of internet radio stations so that I can send them a list of 10,000 different sites that are allowed to broadcast my music for free... for each sound recording that I have released? ))
If I join SoundExchange can I still negotiate a license with a webcaster if I want to?
Yes. Although membership in SoundExchange prohibits you from licensing your sound recording copyrights to another royalty collective for purposes of collecting and distributing Sections 112 and 114 statutory royalties on your behalf, your membership in SoundExchange does not in any way limit your ability to enter into direct (i.e., nonstatutory) licenses of any sound recordings that you own, whether with webcasters or other potential statutory licensees. SoundExchange simply requires that SRCOs notify it of any direct licenses entered into with statutory licensees or digital music service providers so that it can ensure that payments received from services that hold direct licenses to certain recordings are calculated correctly and allocated properly.
However, there is no reason why a firmware update for the hardware player cannot be included on all new titles released. There is plenty of space on a Blu-Ray disk to hold thousands of firmware patches, for every compromised hardware player. So the end users will get updated. This assumes that:
the firmware includes the ability to get the patch off of new DVDs
there is enough space to update all compromised machines
this can be done without using the compromised keys
(otherwise hackers who have the compromised key could get the updates).
If you don't know what a SAN is, and are too lazy to consult Google, then why post? He's asking for someone who might be able to help, not trying to teach a lesson. There are two reasons why Slashdot posts 'ask slashdot' questions (that I can think of). One is to get an answer for the original poster (a minor point). The other is so that the other million or so readers have a chance to show off their knowledge and/or learn something new.
The latter is actually a lot more important (for the site as a whole) than the former.
Slashdot Mirror
Indirect copyright infringement is what brought down Napster -- they weren't actually distributing the software, but they were enabling someone else to.
If Microsoft doesn't want to be tied by the terms of the GPL3, the only real way to be sure that they aren't is to not be party to the distribution of GPL3 software. Anything else is just dancing on the head of a pin, and hoping you don't fall off.
(either that, or Linspire is in violation of the GPL, and the agreement is toxic to their continued existence).
An understandable, but fallacious, intermediate conclusion.
One of the few companies likely to have the knowledge and balls to make cheap space flight possible is now owned by a company that has a real bottom-line incentive to keep spaceflight from getting too cheap.
I will note that even just resizing the Windows partition for your 120GB hard drive to make room for a 20GB Linux install is enough to cause the Dell nuke-Windows-and-reinstall script to freak out and stop.
(* Yeah, I'm discounting FreeDos as a legitimate OS -- Have you ever even heard of someone [other than a FreeDos developer] actually leaving their FreeDos partition permanently on their machine and using it as anything other than a launching point for installing another OS and/or claiming HW support from Dell?_
Remember, they're making it available for free, but they're not providing support (you get to go to 'the community' for support, or buy support directly from Canonical). All they have to provide support for is the hardware, and Ubuntu makes it a lot easier to diagnose hardware problems than Windows does. (and Vista is probably gonna be a lot worse with all the problems from DRM interactions).
In other words, $50 is probably the expected average per-user drop in support charges vs. Vista. Dell then gets to pocket the Windows OEM price as pure profit. (or vice-versa if I'm wrong).
I wonder if they'll allow MS employees to use this service to store email that MicroSoft (ahem) doesn't have room to store on their own servers.
I would, of course, be using a different 10-drive raid-0 pack to record the tragedy -- but I'd be safe because it's my disk pack (which makes it impervious to catastrophic failure).
There's no need to wax eloquent about that gimpy sixth wheel. They're just using it for a crutch.
Oh, nevermind...
I will say that it was far easier to get the printers at work running on my ubuntu box than it was to get it working on Windows... Actually, I used the information that was gleaned on the Linux install to figure out how to get it to work on Windows. It was actually a bit of a surprise to find that the Linux setup was far easier than the Windows setup.
And the thing is: If they sue some random company over a supposed MS patent in Linux, what happens when that company gets disclosure of all of MS's software and gets someone to go over it looking for patents that they (or someone in the OS movement has)? And then what happens if they find all sorts of embarrassing things in that source code that come out in court?
The nasty thing (for Microsoft) is that just about anybody who has contributed to the code that Microsoft sues some random user for using can probably ask for standing "because it's my code that they're impugning", and then counter-sue MS over some patent that they have (or have just been assigned by some friend in the OS community).
We've already seen what's happen(ed,ing) to SCOX over their claims of 'millions of lines' of Linux code, now Microsoft is making similar claims -- and with the SCOTUS just having gutted patents, this seems to me like calling wolf, but everybody knows that, even if the wolf is real, it's lost most of it's teeth and claws and may be on a leash.
Face it buddy. DRM is now used almost as a swear word, because what it refers to is almost obscene.
If you change the name to something 'prettier' then you will simply sully the prettier name.
Oh, and DCE? Digital Consumer Entrapment.
(( I could say 'good luck buddy', but I really wouldn't mean it. ))
If that defense passes, it'll set a precedent that the Government is gonna regret for a long, long time, starting about a year after the final appeal ends.
It's a counter-culture way to do things in the UNIX universe, but it's entirely possible.
artist's can make arrangements on their own. The one thing that they can't do is band together and create a co-operative of their own to do the work of collecting royalties.
Not reading the linked-to article is perfectly acceptable here on Slashdot (well, at least, completely predictable) -- but not even reading the posting? There's not much more that a geek can do. While technically a spaceflight, it was more or less a really high-altitude rocket. yeah -- and so is a moon-shot
You can negotiate your own (noncompulsory) license with radio stations, you just can't have a collective other than soundexchange collect for you. This, however, isn't a big issue if you're using a royalty-free license (such as CC). They do, however, claim that you have to register your agreement with them. (( Does this mean that we should build a database of internet radio stations so that I can send them a list of 10,000 different sites that are allowed to broadcast my music for free ... for each sound recording that I have released? ))
From the Soundexchange website
Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to read WhiteHouse emails! (oh, wait.)
(otherwise hackers who have the compromised key could get the updates).
.....
Silly me thought that GP was complaining about how MSsed up Vista's driver situation is.Have you tried Ubuntu? Your argument might have been true at one time, but
There are two reasons why Slashdot posts 'ask slashdot' questions (that I can think of). One is to get an answer for the original poster (a minor point). The other is so that the other million or so readers have a chance to show off their knowledge and/or learn something new.
The latter is actually a lot more important (for the site as a whole) than the former.