Actually, the issue you're replying to is a strawman. Dilger didn't make the assertions you're addressing. The problems Dilger actually asserts is that people learn to do a few simple things on a GUI and have no clue what to do outside that limited ability. It has nothing to do with the technical nature of the OS. Any OS which installs an easy-to-use GUI sets is open to this criticism.
Uh, did you (and most of the other posters here) bother to read the article? Because you just proved the point you were refuting. Why do you need to get to the guts? Why not just use the GUI? Precisely because'Ease is never free: its gain is matched by a loss in choice, security, privacy, health, or a combination thereof. Certainly you can have both an easy to use GUI and a powerful CLI on the same system. But the very fact that power users feel the need for the CLI indicates that the GUI is limited.
The article is discussing the fact that we are making the GUI so easy to use that the average user (NOT the power user) have no clue what they're actually doing. For example, the university provides a link to an FTP client to allow users to transfer files between the University system and their home systems. The users click on the link then complain that "I clicked, the computer downloaded something but then nothing happened. Now what do I do?"
The question isn't "Are GUI's restricting the power users from getting at the guts of the machine?" The issue is "Is making GUI's so easy to use a good idea?"
One of the problems is that changes are made to the OS at a fundamental level in order to (theoretically) make the "newbie" level easier to use. One example of this is moving configuration data from a text config file to a database. This makes it easier to set-up a GUI front end for tweaking the config, but makes it much more difficult to change things manaually.
First, Napster functions something like a public carier. If they make the attempt to control the content, they become legally liable for the content. Second, how do you propose they go about preventing it? How do they prevent the distribution of Metallica's "King Nothing" while allowing the distribution of "Metallica Sux" by the band Kings of Nothing?
If this is Petreley's best article, I'm glad I missed the rest of them. The article is shallow, cursory and the few valid points made are quite obvious.
The phrase "information wants to be free" is a description of how the system functions, not a moral judgement. People naturally tend to spread information. It takes a lot of work (encryption, propretary formats, restriction on the production of various types of hardware or machines, vigorous prosecution and enforcement of a host of laws, etc) to prevent it from happening. And despite the best efforts of the multi-million dollar companies involved, info continues to spread. You can argue about the morality of the situation all you want. But you can't argue with the reality of the situation. Information tends to spread. It "wants" to be free.
As for Napster, the real issue isn't whether distributing copyrighted material is wrong. The real issue is - should a technology with perfectly legitimate uses be restricted because it is used by some for morally questionable purposes? Should Napster be held responsible for the uses to which their users put the system?
Finally, I have no problem with someone being compensated for their efforts. In the case of the music business, however, this isn't happening. You have a situation analagous to feudal England. The "lords" (ie, the record companies) collect all of the produce (music) from the peasants (artists), who get next to nothing for their labor. If you take a bit of that produce, the lords are screaming that you're heartlessly stealing from the poor, pitiful starving peasants.
The root "vita" means life. These are "living" books, in that they're constantly updated and changed. They "grow" with you. Still kinda silly, but there ya have it.
Assuming you're using the term "conservative" in the bastardized American sense (meaning essentially the Republican platform, although the party itself has drifted a bit more centrist in hopes of picking up votes), I don't consider John Stossel conservative. He is fiscally conservative, certainly, but I believe he is more acurately described as libertarian. Libertarians have some significant disagreements with conservatives over issues such as the death penalty, pornography, prayer in public schools, etc.
I don't know about this particular case but I know all too often the situation is as outlined in the lead story: you don't have a choice. You get handed a mandate that the organization is moving to AD (or whatever) and you're stuck with trying to implement it. You either make it work or you give up and go entirely MS.
Sorry, but this isn't insightful. It misses the blatant fact that almost everyone here is well aware that Sony can't do what is threatened. The first issue is the arrogance displayed. Even if this is only one relatively minor cog in the wheel, he undoubtedly represents the attitude that previals in the board room. Second, even if Sony isn't successful, they're a powerful, deep-pockets organization. Their efforts will be ultimately futile, but they can definitely stir up hate and discontent in the American political process if they start throwing their money around.
Patents encourage monopolies, Photocopiers encourage copying of books (Really, people do this... don't know why, it costs them more.) , Audio tapes encourage audio piracy, Video tapes encourage movie piracy.
I'm not sure that "encourage" is the right word here. "Encourage" implies explicit exhortation. "Facilitate" might be better. Also, while photocopying a book might cost more than purchasing the same book, the cost of photocopying is often born by someone else such as an employer.
someone will eventully figure out how to prevent people from leeching and not contributing. (Anyone ever think of making use of a kind of cookie that keeps tabs on how many times someone downloads/uploads/aborts uploads, and being able to see those stats... think about it... if they aren't going to share (Lots of upload aborts, few successful uploads) or are not stable... no point in dealing with them then. Kinda reminds be of the WLT(win loss tie) scores in Starcraft battle.net)
If you read Napster's legal response to the recent ruling, it seems to indicate that there are specific legal reasons why any sort of quota system would be legally bad for Napster. Napster provides a file sharing service. How that is used is strictly up to the user. If Napster starts imposing rules on how it's used, then Napster becomes an active party in the transaction and assumes more legal responsibility. (IANAL, but that's my layman's understanding of it, anyway.) At some point, another system may be implemented which enforces some sort of limit. They would most likely be underground outfits, however, similar to the warez boards that currently prosper. I've seen ftp sites for MP3s which require a user name and password. In order to get one, you have to go through one of those "get paid to surf" type programs, using the ftp site administrator as your reference. When you build up a specific amount of credit to their account, you get your login, usually for a limited time/download.
Snooping the outgoing packets isn't the issue here. Most people, including most "professional" installers for cable modems or xDSL, throw a nic into the computer, set up TCP/IP and viola, you're on the net. Trouble is, the net is also onto you. I've seen @Home installations where you could browse the hard drives of half your neighbors in Network Neighborhood. Even if you don't have loose shares just hanging out, cracking the typical home computer is trivial. A firewall and/or IP masquerading makes things a bit more difficult. If they're set up properly, it should make things difficult enough that the average script kiddie will go find easier prey.
There's some validity to this point, but at the same time Word Perfect was pretty sure that they were "too embedded into society" to be dethroned as well.
I assume that you're talking about Windows File Protection, which replaces system critical files if they're changed. We're talking about system administrators here, not home users. I'm quite sure they'll know how to get around it.
Granted, but if you have admin privileges, what backdoor do you need? And what's the difference in tweaking the code to provide a backdoor and deliberately installing Back Orifice or similar? Bottom line - you CAN NOT keep your system secure FROM your administrators.
The hypocrisy of of Napster is one thing, but as for artists willingly signing their contracts, so did indentured servants. That doesn't change the fact that it's a horrible, corrupt system.
I know what property rights are, and I know what property is. I also know what theft is. Theft is when I take something from you. It involves the illicit transfer of value from you to me.
Intellectual property is a different thing. You insist that you have these rights. I'm asking you to justify that claim. Why do you have those rights? Where do they come from? Tell me WHY I should respect them. And all you keep doing is yelling about their existence.
As for your lithographs, certainly nobody has the right to reprint them and sell or distribute them as one of the original. That's forgery; it's fraudulent. But that scenario is totally different from a clearly abandonded piece of software.
When you abide by the law because it's what you'd do anyway, it's worthless. When you abide by the law because it's the law, you are making a decision that the public good (being able to rely on certain rules of behavior) is worth sacrificing personal liberties (e.g. by not yelling "fire!" in a crowded room, or by not stealing music just because someone else CAN rip a CD and CAN post it on the web and you CAN download it for "free" (like beer)).
Laws should be written to protect the individual, not to support the common good. It isn't wrong to yell "fire!" in a public theater because it protects the common good. It's wrong because my individual right to attend a theater in relative safely over-rides your right to free speech in that particular instance. If you obey the law solely because it's the law, you're making a decision to allow someone else to think for you. I refuse to do that.
Wrong. The creator of a work controls the rights to how it is distributed. If that creator decides, for whatever reason, that s/he does not want it distributed at all, it is the perogative of that person to just seal it in a steel safe and not allow anybody to distribute it.
Why? It's easy to sit back and say this. Now, tell me why I should respect it. If I have a piece of your work, and I give a copy to a friend, you've lost nothing unless that gift prevents a potential sell. But in the case of abandonware, there is no potential of a sell. Therefore, you have been harmed in no way at all. So what justifies your use of force against me to prevent my giving that copy in the first place?
I'm not a lawyer either, but I think this means only that they can not sue you for your past use of the program. Once you're aware that the program was fraudulently released, I believe the owning company can demand that you return/destroy your copy of the program.
Normally, I'd agree. However, with the brouha currently surrounding Napster, including the possibility of the site being shut down, Gnutella has been in the spotlight lately. You may not find it particularly interesting but it IS news.
Ars Technica posted this as well. Hannibal had an interesting comment: So they're not requiring that all AmigaOS software and tools be written to the virtual processor, which is interesting because this at first seemed to me to be a sort of fence sitting approach that would reduce the advantages of translation -- why not just go ahead and use an OS that's completely portable at the source code level, like Linux? When I thought about, though, I realized that what Amiga wants is to release an OS in binary form that runs on a variety of platforms from the start, and have people start moving pieces of the OS into native binary form for their specific platform as they see fit. This would be the opposite of a Linux-style approach, where you initially release an OS in source code form that runs on one platform, and then let people port the entire thing to their individual hardware.
If you're with a dial-up ISP and get a dynamic IP address, probably no big deal. If you have a cable modem, DSL or similar and have a static IP, then having that IP address may be equivalent to having all of your private data.
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Actually, the issue you're replying to is a strawman. Dilger didn't make the assertions you're addressing. The problems Dilger actually asserts is that people learn to do a few simple things on a GUI and have no clue what to do outside that limited ability. It has nothing to do with the technical nature of the OS. Any OS which installs an easy-to-use GUI sets is open to this criticism.
The article is discussing the fact that we are making the GUI so easy to use that the average user (NOT the power user) have no clue what they're actually doing. For example, the university provides a link to an FTP client to allow users to transfer files between the University system and their home systems. The users click on the link then complain that "I clicked, the computer downloaded something but then nothing happened. Now what do I do?"
The question isn't "Are GUI's restricting the power users from getting at the guts of the machine?" The issue is "Is making GUI's so easy to use a good idea?"
One of the problems is that changes are made to the OS at a fundamental level in order to (theoretically) make the "newbie" level easier to use. One example of this is moving configuration data from a text config file to a database. This makes it easier to set-up a GUI front end for tweaking the config, but makes it much more difficult to change things manaually.
First, Napster functions something like a public carier. If they make the attempt to control the content, they become legally liable for the content. Second, how do you propose they go about preventing it? How do they prevent the distribution of Metallica's "King Nothing" while allowing the distribution of "Metallica Sux" by the band Kings of Nothing?
The phrase "information wants to be free" is a description of how the system functions, not a moral judgement. People naturally tend to spread information. It takes a lot of work (encryption, propretary formats, restriction on the production of various types of hardware or machines, vigorous prosecution and enforcement of a host of laws, etc) to prevent it from happening. And despite the best efforts of the multi-million dollar companies involved, info continues to spread. You can argue about the morality of the situation all you want. But you can't argue with the reality of the situation. Information tends to spread. It "wants" to be free.
As for Napster, the real issue isn't whether distributing copyrighted material is wrong. The real issue is - should a technology with perfectly legitimate uses be restricted because it is used by some for morally questionable purposes? Should Napster be held responsible for the uses to which their users put the system?
Finally, I have no problem with someone being compensated for their efforts. In the case of the music business, however, this isn't happening. You have a situation analagous to feudal England. The "lords" (ie, the record companies) collect all of the produce (music) from the peasants (artists), who get next to nothing for their labor. If you take a bit of that produce, the lords are screaming that you're heartlessly stealing from the poor, pitiful starving peasants.
The root "vita" means life. These are "living" books, in that they're constantly updated and changed. They "grow" with you. Still kinda silly, but there ya have it.
Assuming you're using the term "conservative" in the bastardized American sense (meaning essentially the Republican platform, although the party itself has drifted a bit more centrist in hopes of picking up votes), I don't consider John Stossel conservative. He is fiscally conservative, certainly, but I believe he is more acurately described as libertarian. Libertarians have some significant disagreements with conservatives over issues such as the death penalty, pornography, prayer in public schools, etc.
Might I ask where you're posting from? I suspect we may be running afoul of differing meanings for the term "left-wing."
I don't know about this particular case but I know all too often the situation is as outlined in the lead story: you don't have a choice. You get handed a mandate that the organization is moving to AD (or whatever) and you're stuck with trying to implement it. You either make it work or you give up and go entirely MS.
Sorry, but this isn't insightful. It misses the blatant fact that almost everyone here is well aware that Sony can't do what is threatened. The first issue is the arrogance displayed. Even if this is only one relatively minor cog in the wheel, he undoubtedly represents the attitude that previals in the board room. Second, even if Sony isn't successful, they're a powerful, deep-pockets organization. Their efforts will be ultimately futile, but they can definitely stir up hate and discontent in the American political process if they start throwing their money around.
I'm not sure that "encourage" is the right word here. "Encourage" implies explicit exhortation. "Facilitate" might be better. Also, while photocopying a book might cost more than purchasing the same book, the cost of photocopying is often born by someone else such as an employer.
someone will eventully figure out how to prevent people from leeching and not contributing. (Anyone ever think of making use of a kind of cookie that keeps tabs on how many times someone downloads/uploads/aborts uploads, and being able to see those stats... think about it... if they aren't going to share (Lots of upload aborts, few successful uploads) or are not stable... no point in dealing with them then. Kinda reminds be of the WLT(win loss tie) scores in Starcraft battle.net)
If you read Napster's legal response to the recent ruling, it seems to indicate that there are specific legal reasons why any sort of quota system would be legally bad for Napster. Napster provides a file sharing service. How that is used is strictly up to the user. If Napster starts imposing rules on how it's used, then Napster becomes an active party in the transaction and assumes more legal responsibility. (IANAL, but that's my layman's understanding of it, anyway.) At some point, another system may be implemented which enforces some sort of limit. They would most likely be underground outfits, however, similar to the warez boards that currently prosper. I've seen ftp sites for MP3s which require a user name and password. In order to get one, you have to go through one of those "get paid to surf" type programs, using the ftp site administrator as your reference. When you build up a specific amount of credit to their account, you get your login, usually for a limited time/download.
Snooping the outgoing packets isn't the issue here. Most people, including most "professional" installers for cable modems or xDSL, throw a nic into the computer, set up TCP/IP and viola, you're on the net. Trouble is, the net is also onto you. I've seen @Home installations where you could browse the hard drives of half your neighbors in Network Neighborhood. Even if you don't have loose shares just hanging out, cracking the typical home computer is trivial. A firewall and/or IP masquerading makes things a bit more difficult. If they're set up properly, it should make things difficult enough that the average script kiddie will go find easier prey.
There's some validity to this point, but at the same time Word Perfect was pretty sure that they were "too embedded into society" to be dethroned as well.
I assume that you're talking about Windows File Protection, which replaces system critical files if they're changed. We're talking about system administrators here, not home users. I'm quite sure they'll know how to get around it.
Granted, but if you have admin privileges, what backdoor do you need? And what's the difference in tweaking the code to provide a backdoor and deliberately installing Back Orifice or similar? Bottom line - you CAN NOT keep your system secure FROM your administrators.
The hypocrisy of of Napster is one thing, but as for artists willingly signing their contracts, so did indentured servants. That doesn't change the fact that it's a horrible, corrupt system.
Intellectual property is a different thing. You insist that you have these rights. I'm asking you to justify that claim. Why do you have those rights? Where do they come from? Tell me WHY I should respect them. And all you keep doing is yelling about their existence.
As for your lithographs, certainly nobody has the right to reprint them and sell or distribute them as one of the original. That's forgery; it's fraudulent. But that scenario is totally different from a clearly abandonded piece of software.
Laws should be written to protect the individual, not to support the common good. It isn't wrong to yell "fire!" in a public theater because it protects the common good. It's wrong because my individual right to attend a theater in relative safely over-rides your right to free speech in that particular instance. If you obey the law solely because it's the law, you're making a decision to allow someone else to think for you. I refuse to do that.
Why? It's easy to sit back and say this. Now, tell me why I should respect it. If I have a piece of your work, and I give a copy to a friend, you've lost nothing unless that gift prevents a potential sell. But in the case of abandonware, there is no potential of a sell. Therefore, you have been harmed in no way at all. So what justifies your use of force against me to prevent my giving that copy in the first place?
I'm not a lawyer either, but I think this means only that they can not sue you for your past use of the program. Once you're aware that the program was fraudulently released, I believe the owning company can demand that you return/destroy your copy of the program.
Normally, I'd agree. However, with the brouha currently surrounding Napster, including the possibility of the site being shut down, Gnutella has been in the spotlight lately. You may not find it particularly interesting but it IS news.
Try XOSL. It rocks!
Ars Technica posted this as well. Hannibal had an interesting comment: So they're not requiring that all AmigaOS software and tools be written to the virtual processor, which is interesting because this at first seemed to me to be a sort of fence sitting approach that would reduce the advantages of translation -- why not just go ahead and use an OS that's completely portable at the source code level, like Linux? When I thought about, though, I realized that what Amiga wants is to release an OS in binary form that runs on a variety of platforms from the start, and have people start moving pieces of the OS into native binary form for their specific platform as they see fit. This would be the opposite of a Linux-style approach, where you initially release an OS in source code form that runs on one platform, and then let people port the entire thing to their individual hardware.
Musta missed that one. Someone want to clarify the reference?
If you're with a dial-up ISP and get a dynamic IP address, probably no big deal. If you have a cable modem, DSL or similar and have a static IP, then having that IP address may be equivalent to having all of your private data.