See, I've been without cable for probably going on 3-4 years now. And we get crappy reception, so broadcast TV doesn't work well either.
I was pretty happy with my lack of TV until someone told me where I could get full episodes of The Daily Show via bittorrent. So I downloaded Azureus since it has a couple of nifty RSS plugins and started gathering them.
Then I noticed other shows on the list. Wait a minute, is that really the new Battlestar Galactica? I watched the mini-series at a friend's house, this is great! I downloaded them all, and I told my friends who watched it when it finally aired on Sci-Fi in the U.S. I also started to get Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, since those were a couple of weeks ahead of the U.S. (and I was basically getting mega-doses at a TiVo-owning friend's house).
I was renting Smallville through Netflix, but when I hit the end of season 3, I started getting those through bittorrent as well. Then the new Doctor Who showed up, and I was thrilled; the show is good, and I was telling my friends in the hopes that it would eventually hit the U.S. in DVD form.
I was basically starting to reconsider getting cable again -- the downloads are nice, but I have a small hard drive, and I work a swing shift, so they're not always done when I get home -- and perhaps even springing for a TiVo since I can't be home to watch stuff when it normally airs. Then I got home to read this article.
So I have to say, thanks MPAA! With this incredibly fucktarded move on your part, you have lost a potential paying customer, probably for good.
You almost made me forget what short-sighted, greedy fools you were. I'll not make that mistake again.
>>Where in the GPL does it say you have to provide a CVS history?
>Here: The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.
Um, I hate to break it to you, but the "preferred form" wording in the (L)GPL is an anti-obfuscation clause. It means that I have to give you the code in the form that I actually use for development -- no stripping out all the whitespace and comments, changing function names and variables to random strings, etc.
It does not mean that I have to give you the code in whatever form you want.
Besides, CVS server logs are not source code anyways. Or maybe you'd like copies of their email and IM conversations, too?
What we expect is for them to contribute back to the community,
They have given their patches to the KDE team.
in the terms previously agreed,
They have given their patches to the KDE team in accordance with the LGPL. If the KDE team believes otherwise, then they need to call a lawyer.
so that the community may benefit from the improvements, the same way as the company previously bennefited from the community work.
The KDE team has gotten patches from Apple. How many times does this need to be said?
The LGPL does not mandate that the code be given out in the form of easy-to-use patches, or be accompanied by CVS server logs, or that the developer be required to hold the hand of anyone who wants to fiddle with their code. Apple could just squat out a big tarball of WebCore source with no pointers as to what's been changed. The LGPL doesn't require that code be given out a specific intervals, only "on demand".
Are Apple being assholes about this? Quite possibly. Are they being bad neighbors in the OSS community? Sounds like it.
But Apple is honoring their commitment to the LGPL. You're entitled to the code, and Apple is giving it to you. All of this talk about (L)GPL violations and breaking commitments is just hot air.
All we need is a few great games... Well, how about: No Gravity http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/ Vegastrike (and mods) http://vegastrike.sf.net/ Bzflag http://bzflag.org/ glest http://www.glest.org cube http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/ globulation http://www.ysagoon.com/glob2/ foobillard http://foobillard.sunsite.dk/ trigger http://www.positro.net/trigger/ netpanzer http://netpanzer.berlios.de/
I just don't know what you are talking about. There are plenty of good games out there. Can anyone else remember some good ones?
I have a question...
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games?
How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
B5 got futzed about by the uncertainty over the fifth season; consequently, the intended end of the arc was moved to series four, and when series 5 got the go-ahead, it was missing the main plot that drove the whole series.
No, that's not what happened.
All that happened at the end of S4 was that the end of the Earth Civil War was wrapped up at the end of season four -- it was intended to finish early on in S5 -- and the final episode, "Sleeping in Light", was filmed at the end of S4. (It takes place several years after the events of S4 and S5, so isn't really out of place at the end of either season.)
When B5 got renewed, they replaced "Sleeping in Light" with "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" (filmed first thig in S5) and showed SiL at the end of S5 -- which is why it's the only episode in that season that has Ivanova in it.
The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 has numerous posts from JMS about the show, written at the time it was happening (I was a regular reader at the time).
I agree with the comment about Version Control and Finder. I use TortoiseSVN on win32 and love it. When I code on my mac, I greatly miss this significant integration.
The beauty of TortoiseSVN (CVS) is that they integrate to the Windows Explorer, which is in turn used by *most* applications in windows for managing files allowing the version control to be very well integrated with the entire operating system.
[...]
If Apple could allow for Icon overlays and adding of file attributes similar to Windows Explorer it would be a huge improvement to the usability of OSX for GUI based hacking.
So you mean the Finder plugin I've been using doesn't exist? Or is it lumped in with the "other projects out there" you mentioned?
To be fair, it's not terribly polished; you do get badging of files, but they don't always update properly. And it requires a command-line Subversion installaion, either via Fink or through some standalone Subversion packages. But a new version is supposed to be coming that includes the necessary Subversion libraries, and I believe they're supposed to fix the badging issue at the same time.
Why should Adobe be held to any different standard than Microsoft? If we've decided that Microsoft can't (at least in the U.S.) be forced to remove IE from Windows (even after they have been proven to posess market "monopoly" power) then why should we now demand that an "integral part of Adobe's product" be removable, hidable or whatever.
You're assuming that "we" agree with the opinion that MS shouldn't be forced to unbundle IE...
Use the Java VM >=1.5 to keep CPU usage from going through the roof though
Can you tell me where I can find Java 1.5 for Mac OS X? From what I gather, Apple is holding their release for OS X 10.4; does Sun have a build for Mac OS X?
Good. Maybe this will make people more aware that these things aren't the greatest idea.
I don't see how meeting someone online is any more cangerous than meeting someone in real life.
If you're the kind of person who'd take off to the opposite coast with someone you just met, whether or not you met that person online or at a bar/nightclub/party/whatever is kind of moot.
DISCLAIMER: I met a woman back in 1997 at an IRC party; it's eight years later, and we've been married for 4 1/2 years. (The ironic thing is, she's not even the person I went to the party to meet.)
I know others from the same circle of IRC relationships who have gotten married; several are still together.
Saying "meeting people online is dangerous" is kinda like saying "video games cause violent behavior"; there may be a correlation, but I don't see causation.
a) They know they have potential infiltrators but they haven't secured their amories.
That gets addressed in the episode "Litmus".
b) A doctor of CIS and an education minister don't know that you can burn Hydrogen to get water.
Enough to supply a whole fleet at the rate Baltar described? Where does the hydrogen come from? Or the oxygen, for that matter? They're not planet-bound, ya know; renewable resources are going to be pretty scarce.
c) No one in the war college thought to consider that Cylons might exploit the slave circuits on Vipers.
If you're talking about the Cylons being able to disable all of the newer-model vipers, I think that was the point of the mini-series. IIRC, the Cylons had been gone for most of a generation; Baltar was a famous scientist arguing against irrational paranoia about advanced computer systems. It seems that as the Cylons became less and less of an evident threat, the colonies let their guard down. And NO ONE thought they'd come back looking like humans.
d) A guy like Adama let slave circuits anywhere near his vipers.
Um, he didn't. The Galactica survived against the Cylons in the mini-series because it was the only remaining military craft in service that did not have an integrated computer system, while the vipers most of the are flying are literally museum pieces. IIRC, there was exactly one advanced-model Viper in the fleet, Apollo's.
e) Cylons capable of infiltration would even bother with conventional weapons.
I've seen all of them, so I won't comment except to say I don't think the Cylon's plan involves wiping out all of humanity just yet...
f) They had such pisspoor maintenace practices that a buckle failed due to metal fatigue.
The ship was being decommissioned; security and maintenance was probably getting lax, as was discipline (e.g. Tigh's railing on Boomer for her relationship with Tyrol).
For all we know, that rack wasn't even rated for use storing those drones; but when you're in an emergency situation, you use what you have available.
g) They have any pilots left at all given the attrition rate implied by f.
That seemed to be a single, catastrophic event. And I guess you missed the rest of that episode, where Starbuck was training new pilots?
(I get the impression that the Cylon raiders are not demonstrably superior pilots to humans -- at best, they're on par with an average pilot -- but their advantage typically comes from numerical superiority. Whereas the Cylons appear to have an infinite number of raiders to throw at the fleet, every pilot they lose is one the can't replace.)
In the last episode "You Can't Go Home Again", the timer they've been using to track Helo (the pilot stranded on Caprica) is up to 15 days.
So how much can you get done to revamp your tactics and policies and refresh your personnel in two weeks (especially when you spend the first 5 days constantly on the run with no chance for sleep, let alone regular maintenance) with severely limited resources, NO means of new production and the added burdens of coordinating a relatively defenseless civilian fleet and trying to preserve some semblance of a normal civilization?
and still don't care what you think about the CDDL.
So you don't think there's a problem with offering patents under a license meant for copyrighted works?
Clearly, the GPL isn't for everyone... try to remember that.
Here's a hint: if you actually had cared enough read the article, you might have been surprised to note that RMS does not mention the GPL at all. Which, y'know, is fitting since we're talking about patents, not copyrights.
Instead, you had to run to/. to proclaim to everyone how one person's opinion doesn't matter you at all.
Which is ironic, since I don't care if RMS's opinion matters to you, yet I took the time to read what you said before commenting.
Jay (=
P.S. Can you point me to a reference where RMS says "now all code should be free without exceptions"? I find it odd, since on at least one occasion he agreed with the use of the BSD license over the LGPL.
Did anybody expect that Stallman would not blast anything that wasn't the GPL?
He's a zealot. That means its his way or no way. Rathewr than praising the steps in the right direction, he chooses to blast that its not his license.
Isn't there a Chinese saying about the longest journey beginning with a single step?
Stallman really needs to understand that his zeal sometimes does as much harm as good to his cause.
Did anybody expect that Stallman-haters would not blast anything that wasn't total gushing praise from Stallman?
They are zealots. That means its their way or no way. Rather than thanking Stallman for highlighting serious issues in Sun's "donations" (the fact that the patents are apparently released under a license meant for copyrighted materials, which pretty much makes it useless for determining what rights you have to use those patents, and the fact that Sun's gesture seems to benefit their particular OSS community at the expense of the rest of us) they choose to blast Stallman for not creaming in his pants over Sun's tossing the OSS community a bone.
Stallman-haters really need to understand that their zeal sometimes does as much harm as good to their cause.
Rather they will buy them from you at $7.10 each. Even though you paid nearly twice that for them.
Lemme tell you something; I worked as a supervisor at my local Fry's Electronics for about two years, and one of them was as the supervisor for CDs & DVDs.
As a good supervisor, I paid attention to what my buyers were telling me about what products were high-margin, so I knew what to promote. In particular, Fry's seems to have a good relationship with MGM; if you'll notice, you'll see huge displays for MGM movies in just about every Fry's (not to mention Fred Meyer, Best Buy, etc.)
If you follow your local Fry's ad, you'll see ads on huge sales for MGM DVDs(things like "2 for $15" or "$5.99 each"). The same probably also goes for Best Buy, etc.
Here's the thing: almost every movie on this list are movies that I remember seeing, over and over again, in Fry's special promotions! Most of these movies came out at $9.99 or less when they were first released.
In short, if you paid more than $10 for most of these movies, you got ripped off. $7.10 per movie is almost close to a full refund, if you were smart and shopping the ads -- it's definitely a lot more than MGM was selling them to Fry's for.
Don't just take my word for it, print this list out and take it to your local Fry's -- you'll see these movies on every endcap or display. Follow your local Fry's ad for the next couple of months; you'll see these movies pop up, again and again.
It's bad when it's used against us, and it's good when it's used for us (or someone we like or admire).
There will be a test later, so you better study if you hope to pass "Understanding Slashdot 101".
Well, I'm afraid you'd only get partial credit for that answer.
The correct answer is "Slashdot has a broad readership which has differeing viewpoints on just about every topic Slashdot covers. Some people think all IP rights are bad, others think IP rights are sacred and inviolable; still more fall in the middle, believing the current system that handles different types of IP needs to be revised or even completely overhauled in light of how that system is used."
I know, that answer is long and not quite as witty as yours; I was shooting for extra credit.:)
I used to work at Fry's Electronics, and we had a pair of thieves who did this.
They'd paste the UPC of a lower-priced item over the sticker of a higher-priced item of similar make (handhelds were good for this). Even if the checker was looking at the display, you might not catch the fact that the model numbers on the PDAs didn't match. The guys at the door didn't always catch it either.
Basically, they took advantage of two things at my location: the fact that relabelling items that had price changes did not always happen 100% (the result being that sometimes an item scanned at a different price than was ont he sticker; and believe me, I handled plenty of customers who complained that the CD/DVD/software that said $19.99 on the sticker rang up at $29.99) and the fact that many items Fry's purchased were often bought at clearance or through a special arrangement, so oftentimes the items had custom stickers over the original barcode.
So you have A) items that legitimately had UPC stickers on them, and B) items that scanned at different prices. It was a recipe for disaster; we only caught them when someone noticed them sticking a label on a product.
Ah, but you forget that they need encryption for their DVDs. And here's the beautiful part: once they add an encryption layer to BitTorrent, it will be impossible to sue anybody over movie sharing. Thanks to the DMCA, if they sue you, they obviously illegally broke encryption somewhere along the line and would be liable themselves (as well as nullifying their evidence).
The DMCA does not make breaking encryption illegal; it makes breaking access control mechanisms illegal.
You're going to have to convince a judge or jury that the MPAA breaking an encryption layer on a P2P client to prove you are illegally trading their copyrighted works is the same as you breaking their encryption so you can illegally trade their copyrighted works. Good luck on that...
But wait it gets better... reading further in the PR blurb, we see that their group filtering technology was based on an existing product, called Grouplens. I assume that this is the same kind of functionality that Cendant is claiming as their own work; if so, surely Grouplens must have something to say as far as prior art goes...
The Pulling Report (named after Patricia Pulling, founder of BADD -- "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons" -- who claimed that playing D&D led her son to commit suicide.
Of course, what comment about the "evils" of D&D would be complete without a link to Dark Dungeons, one of those annoying pamphlets that conservative Christian whackos hand out on the streets.
That's what you get for backing these poeple and helping cause all this FUD in the first place.
I think it's fairer to say that this is what you get for backing SCO's play, and if SCO prevails, you can expct to see a lot more of these...
This is why IBM's legal team is taking the time to slowly pulverize SCO's case, and set SCO's proverbial head out on a stake in front of the IBM HQ; to try to discourage anyone else from trying to play the "sue open source vendors" lottery, or trying to intimidate users of open source software into paying for dubious "intellectual property licenses" or stop using the software altogether.
Jay (= (Caveat: I don't know much more than anyone else about the Mambo case, and it may prove that there is a valid complaint. However, the open letter could have been written in Lindon...)
The reason DC is involved with it is because the producers got the rights to the "Catwoman" name from them. Apparently, that didn't mean they had to follow the continuity of the character.
I know that on twoother occasions, DC gave permission to use names of their characters to other movies. (I can't find an online reference for the second movie, though I remember seeing the acknowledgment in the credits.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm so glad this happened.
See, I've been without cable for probably going on 3-4 years now. And we get crappy reception, so broadcast TV doesn't work well either.
I was pretty happy with my lack of TV until someone told me where I could get full episodes of The Daily Show via bittorrent. So I downloaded Azureus since it has a couple of nifty RSS plugins and started gathering them.
Then I noticed other shows on the list. Wait a minute, is that really the new Battlestar Galactica? I watched the mini-series at a friend's house, this is great! I downloaded them all, and I told my friends who watched it when it finally aired on Sci-Fi in the U.S. I also started to get Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, since those were a couple of weeks ahead of the U.S. (and I was basically getting mega-doses at a TiVo-owning friend's house).
I was renting Smallville through Netflix, but when I hit the end of season 3, I started getting those through bittorrent as well. Then the new Doctor Who showed up, and I was thrilled; the show is good, and I was telling my friends in the hopes that it would eventually hit the U.S. in DVD form.
I was basically starting to reconsider getting cable again -- the downloads are nice, but I have a small hard drive, and I work a swing shift, so they're not always done when I get home -- and perhaps even springing for a TiVo since I can't be home to watch stuff when it normally airs. Then I got home to read this article.
So I have to say, thanks MPAA! With this incredibly fucktarded move on your part, you have lost a potential paying customer, probably for good.
You almost made me forget what short-sighted, greedy fools you were. I'll not make that mistake again.
Jay (=
>>Where in the GPL does it say you have to provide a CVS history?
>Here: The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.
Um, I hate to break it to you, but the "preferred form" wording in the (L)GPL is an anti-obfuscation clause. It means that I have to give you the code in the form that I actually use for development -- no stripping out all the whitespace and comments, changing function names and variables to random strings, etc.
It does not mean that I have to give you the code in whatever form you want.
Besides, CVS server logs are not source code anyways. Or maybe you'd like copies of their email and IM conversations, too?
Jay (=
What we expect is for them to contribute back to the community,
They have given their patches to the KDE team.
in the terms previously agreed,
They have given their patches to the KDE team in accordance with the LGPL. If the KDE team believes otherwise, then they need to call a lawyer.
so that the community may benefit from the improvements, the same way as the company previously bennefited from the community work.
The KDE team has gotten patches from Apple. How many times does this need to be said?
The LGPL does not mandate that the code be given out in the form of easy-to-use patches, or be accompanied by CVS server logs, or that the developer be required to hold the hand of anyone who wants to fiddle with their code. Apple could just squat out a big tarball of WebCore source with no pointers as to what's been changed. The LGPL doesn't require that code be given out a specific intervals, only "on demand".
Are Apple being assholes about this? Quite possibly. Are they being bad neighbors in the OSS community? Sounds like it.
But Apple is honoring their commitment to the LGPL. You're entitled to the code, and Apple is giving it to you. All of this talk about (L)GPL violations and breaking commitments is just hot air.
Jay (=
All we need is a few great games...
Well, how about:
No Gravity http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
Vegastrike (and mods) http://vegastrike.sf.net/
Bzflag http://bzflag.org/
glest http://www.glest.org
cube http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
globulation http://www.ysagoon.com/glob2/
foobillard http://foobillard.sunsite.dk/
trigger http://www.positro.net/trigger/
netpanzer http://netpanzer.berlios.de/
I just don't know what you are talking about.
There are plenty of good games out there.
Can anyone else remember some good ones?
I have a question...
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games?
How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
Jay (=
I work at a fairly major web-based social software company (posting anonymously, but you've seen our ads)
Considering the topic at hand, I'd have to say... "Um, no I haven't".
Jay (=
B5 got futzed about by the uncertainty over the fifth season; consequently, the intended end of the arc was moved to series four, and when series 5 got the go-ahead, it was missing the main plot that drove the whole series.
No, that's not what happened.
All that happened at the end of S4 was that the end of the Earth Civil War was wrapped up at the end of season four -- it was intended to finish early on in S5 -- and the final episode, "Sleeping in Light", was filmed at the end of S4. (It takes place several years after the events of S4 and S5, so isn't really out of place at the end of either season.)
When B5 got renewed, they replaced "Sleeping in Light" with "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars" (filmed first thig in S5) and showed SiL at the end of S5 -- which is why it's the only episode in that season that has Ivanova in it.
The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 has numerous posts from JMS about the show, written at the time it was happening (I was a regular reader at the time).
Jay (=
I agree with the comment about Version Control and Finder. I use TortoiseSVN on win32 and love it. When I code on my mac, I greatly miss this significant integration.
The beauty of TortoiseSVN (CVS) is that they integrate to the Windows Explorer, which is in turn used by *most* applications in windows for managing files allowing the version control to be very well integrated with the entire operating system.
[...]
If Apple could allow for Icon overlays and adding of file attributes similar to Windows Explorer it would be a huge improvement to the usability of OSX for GUI based hacking.
So you mean the Finder plugin I've been using doesn't exist? Or is it lumped in with the "other projects out there" you mentioned?
To be fair, it's not terribly polished; you do get badging of files, but they don't always update properly. And it requires a command-line Subversion installaion, either via Fink or through some standalone Subversion packages. But a new version is supposed to be coming that includes the necessary Subversion libraries, and I believe they're supposed to fix the badging issue at the same time.
Jay (=
Why should Adobe be held to any different standard than Microsoft? If we've decided that Microsoft can't (at least in the U.S.) be forced to remove IE from Windows (even after they have been proven to posess market "monopoly" power) then why should we now demand that an "integral part of Adobe's product" be removable, hidable or whatever.
You're assuming that "we" agree with the opinion that MS shouldn't be forced to unbundle IE...
Jay (=
Not all D&D players are your typical generalization. Nor are all of them imaginative.
Just ask every drow who's an outcast from his/her people, and not really evil, dual scimitars and all.
Use the Java VM >=1.5 to keep CPU usage from going through the roof though
Can you tell me where I can find Java 1.5 for Mac OS X? From what I gather, Apple is holding their release for OS X 10.4; does Sun have a build for Mac OS X?
Jay (=
Good. Maybe this will make people more aware that these things aren't the greatest idea.
I don't see how meeting someone online is any more cangerous than meeting someone in real life.
If you're the kind of person who'd take off to the opposite coast with someone you just met, whether or not you met that person online or at a bar/nightclub/party/whatever is kind of moot.
DISCLAIMER: I met a woman back in 1997 at an IRC party; it's eight years later, and we've been married for 4 1/2 years. (The ironic thing is, she's not even the person I went to the party to meet.)
I know others from the same circle of IRC relationships who have gotten married; several are still together.
Saying "meeting people online is dangerous" is kinda like saying "video games cause violent behavior"; there may be a correlation, but I don't see causation.
Jay (=
Dude, have you seen the chick he's seeing?
I dunno -- he keeps saying he's dating some hot chick, but I have yet to meet her; I think it's all in his head.
Jay (=
a) They know they have potential infiltrators but they haven't secured their amories.
That gets addressed in the episode "Litmus".
b) A doctor of CIS and an education minister don't know that you can burn Hydrogen to get water.
Enough to supply a whole fleet at the rate Baltar described? Where does the hydrogen come from? Or the oxygen, for that matter? They're not planet-bound, ya know; renewable resources are going to be pretty scarce.
c) No one in the war college thought to consider that Cylons might exploit the slave circuits on Vipers.
If you're talking about the Cylons being able to disable all of the newer-model vipers, I think that was the point of the mini-series. IIRC, the Cylons had been gone for most of a generation; Baltar was a famous scientist arguing against irrational paranoia about advanced computer systems. It seems that as the Cylons became less and less of an evident threat, the colonies let their guard down. And NO ONE thought they'd come back looking like humans.
d) A guy like Adama let slave circuits anywhere near his vipers.
Um, he didn't. The Galactica survived against the Cylons in the mini-series because it was the only remaining military craft in service that did not have an integrated computer system, while the vipers most of the are flying are literally museum pieces. IIRC, there was exactly one advanced-model Viper in the fleet, Apollo's.
e) Cylons capable of infiltration would even bother with conventional weapons.
I've seen all of them, so I won't comment except to say I don't think the Cylon's plan involves wiping out all of humanity just yet...
f) They had such pisspoor maintenace practices that a buckle failed due to metal fatigue.
The ship was being decommissioned; security and maintenance was probably getting lax, as was discipline (e.g. Tigh's railing on Boomer for her relationship with Tyrol).
For all we know, that rack wasn't even rated for use storing those drones; but when you're in an emergency situation, you use what you have available.
g) They have any pilots left at all given the attrition rate implied by f.
That seemed to be a single, catastrophic event. And I guess you missed the rest of that episode, where Starbuck was training new pilots?
(I get the impression that the Cylon raiders are not demonstrably superior pilots to humans -- at best, they're on par with an average pilot -- but their advantage typically comes from numerical superiority. Whereas the Cylons appear to have an infinite number of raiders to throw at the fleet, every pilot they lose is one the can't replace.)
In the last episode "You Can't Go Home Again", the timer they've been using to track Helo (the pilot stranded on Caprica) is up to 15 days.
So how much can you get done to revamp your tactics and policies and refresh your personnel in two weeks (especially when you spend the first 5 days constantly on the run with no chance for sleep, let alone regular maintenance) with severely limited resources, NO means of new production and the added burdens of coordinating a relatively defenseless civilian fleet and trying to preserve some semblance of a normal civilization?
Jay (=
and still don't care what you think about the CDDL.
/. to proclaim to everyone how one person's opinion doesn't matter you at all.
So you don't think there's a problem with offering patents under a license meant for copyrighted works?
Clearly, the GPL isn't for everyone... try to remember that.
Here's a hint: if you actually had cared enough read the article, you might have been surprised to note that RMS does not mention the GPL at all. Which, y'know, is fitting since we're talking about patents, not copyrights.
Instead, you had to run to
Which is ironic, since I don't care if RMS's opinion matters to you, yet I took the time to read what you said before commenting.
Jay (=
P.S. Can you point me to a reference where RMS says "now all code should be free without exceptions"? I find it odd, since on at least one occasion he agreed with the use of the BSD license over the LGPL.
Did anybody expect that Stallman would not blast anything that wasn't the GPL?
He's a zealot. That means its his way or no way. Rathewr than praising the steps in the right direction, he chooses to blast that its not his license.
Isn't there a Chinese saying about the longest journey beginning with a single step?
Stallman really needs to understand that his zeal sometimes does as much harm as good to his cause.
Did anybody expect that Stallman-haters would not blast anything that wasn't total gushing praise from Stallman?
They are zealots. That means its their way or no way. Rather than thanking Stallman for highlighting serious issues in Sun's "donations" (the fact that the patents are apparently released under a license meant for copyrighted materials, which pretty much makes it useless for determining what rights you have to use those patents, and the fact that Sun's gesture seems to benefit their particular OSS community at the expense of the rest of us) they choose to blast Stallman for not creaming in his pants over Sun's tossing the OSS community a bone.
Stallman-haters really need to understand that their zeal sometimes does as much harm as good to their cause.
Jay (=
Rather they will buy them from you at $7.10 each. Even though you paid nearly twice that for them.
Lemme tell you something; I worked as a supervisor at my local Fry's Electronics for about two years, and one of them was as the supervisor for CDs & DVDs.
As a good supervisor, I paid attention to what my buyers were telling me about what products were high-margin, so I knew what to promote. In particular, Fry's seems to have a good relationship with MGM; if you'll notice, you'll see huge displays for MGM movies in just about every Fry's (not to mention Fred Meyer, Best Buy, etc.)
If you follow your local Fry's ad, you'll see ads on huge sales for MGM DVDs(things like "2 for $15" or "$5.99 each"). The same probably also goes for Best Buy, etc.
Here's the thing: almost every movie on this list are movies that I remember seeing, over and over again, in Fry's special promotions! Most of these movies came out at $9.99 or less when they were first released.
In short, if you paid more than $10 for most of these movies, you got ripped off. $7.10 per movie is almost close to a full refund, if you were smart and shopping the ads -- it's definitely a lot more than MGM was selling them to Fry's for.
Don't just take my word for it, print this list out and take it to your local Fry's -- you'll see these movies on every endcap or display. Follow your local Fry's ad for the next couple of months; you'll see these movies pop up, again and again.
Jay (=
It's bad when it's used against us, and it's good when it's used for us (or someone we like or admire).
:)
There will be a test later, so you better study if you hope to pass "Understanding Slashdot 101".
Well, I'm afraid you'd only get partial credit for that answer.
The correct answer is "Slashdot has a broad readership which has differeing viewpoints on just about every topic Slashdot covers. Some people think all IP rights are bad, others think IP rights are sacred and inviolable; still more fall in the middle, believing the current system that handles different types of IP needs to be revised or even completely overhauled in light of how that system is used."
I know, that answer is long and not quite as witty as yours; I was shooting for extra credit.
Jay (=
I used to work at Fry's Electronics, and we had a pair of thieves who did this.
They'd paste the UPC of a lower-priced item over the sticker of a higher-priced item of similar make (handhelds were good for this). Even if the checker was looking at the display, you might not catch the fact that the model numbers on the PDAs didn't match. The guys at the door didn't always catch it either.
Basically, they took advantage of two things at my location: the fact that relabelling items that had price changes did not always happen 100% (the result being that sometimes an item scanned at a different price than was ont he sticker; and believe me, I handled plenty of customers who complained that the CD/DVD/software that said $19.99 on the sticker rang up at $29.99) and the fact that many items Fry's purchased were often bought at clearance or through a special arrangement, so oftentimes the items had custom stickers over the original barcode.
So you have A) items that legitimately had UPC stickers on them, and B) items that scanned at different prices. It was a recipe for disaster; we only caught them when someone noticed them sticking a label on a product.
Jay (=
Ah, but you forget that they need encryption for their DVDs. And here's the beautiful part: once they add an encryption layer to BitTorrent, it will be impossible to sue anybody over movie sharing. Thanks to the DMCA, if they sue you, they obviously illegally broke encryption somewhere along the line and would be liable themselves (as well as nullifying their evidence).
The DMCA does not make breaking encryption illegal; it makes breaking access control mechanisms illegal.
You're going to have to convince a judge or jury that the MPAA breaking an encryption layer on a P2P client to prove you are illegally trading their copyrighted works is the same as you breaking their encryption so you can illegally trade their copyrighted works. Good luck on that...
Jay (=
Seriously, there's a reference in patent application to the article "Amazon.com Catapults Electronic Commerce to Next Level With Powerful New Features", dated September 23, 1997 -- barely two weeks after the patent filing date. And the odds are good that it took Amazon.com a lot longer than two weeks to develop, test, and deploy that functionality.
But wait it gets better... reading further in the PR blurb, we see that their group filtering technology was based on an existing product, called Grouplens. I assume that this is the same kind of functionality that Cendant is claiming as their own work; if so, surely Grouplens must have something to say as far as prior art goes...
Jay (=
Just go to the site WITHOUT an affiliate link,
Aw, c'mon, leave the guy alone; if he gets 1,000 more affiliate points, he'll get a free copy of Firefox...
Jay (=
There is a good PCGamer interview with Michael Stackpole that covers a lot of it.
The Pulling Report (named after Patricia Pulling, founder of BADD -- "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons" -- who claimed that playing D&D led her son to commit suicide.
Of course, what comment about the "evils" of D&D would be complete without a link to Dark Dungeons, one of those annoying pamphlets that conservative Christian whackos hand out on the streets.
Jay (=
That's what you get for backing these poeple and helping cause all this FUD in the first place.
I think it's fairer to say that this is what you get for backing SCO's play, and if SCO prevails, you can expct to see a lot more of these...
This is why IBM's legal team is taking the time to slowly pulverize SCO's case, and set SCO's proverbial head out on a stake in front of the IBM HQ; to try to discourage anyone else from trying to play the "sue open source vendors" lottery, or trying to intimidate users of open source software into paying for dubious "intellectual property licenses" or stop using the software altogether.
Jay (=
(Caveat: I don't know much more than anyone else about the Mambo case, and it may prove that there is a valid complaint. However, the open letter could have been written in Lindon...)
That's the official site.
There's a DC Comics logo at the bottom.
'Nuff said.
The reason DC is involved with it is because the producers got the rights to the "Catwoman" name from them. Apparently, that didn't mean they had to follow the continuity of the character.
I know that on two other occasions, DC gave permission to use names of their characters to other movies. (I can't find an online reference for the second movie, though I remember seeing the acknowledgment in the credits.)
Jay (=
Plus, you gotta think that any show placed in the far distant future that shows Windows XP as the operating system running a dumpster is pretty cool.
Geez, the product activation for that copy must be insane...
Jay (=