And in case people wonder what POJO is (it seems to be tagged but not answered at the moment) they're Plain Old Java Objects (i.e. standard Java objects with no additional attributes or post-processing beyond what happens to any other class).
Sounds good, if a little unconventional and hardly known. I wonder how well it works with the AGPL in networked situations? I did know GPL linking exceptions were possible but trying to write one for a personal/community project is a bit difficult without paying a lawyer, so picking an "off the shelf" license is the easy option.
Exactly. I recently changed some of my code from LGPL to Affero GPL because they could be used as a back-end to a web service as well as being the back-end for an app. I'd started with LGPL because I didn't want to force a license on people, but then I changed my mind because the on-going freedom of the code was more important than what license people used. What would be ideal would have been to have had a "LGPL/GPL but allowed to link with anything else as long as it is open source", but since that isn't possible then not letting non-GPLed apps link to my library is the only option. C'est la vie.
I think the article is summed up in one of his later headings: "Why I Prefer the MIT X11 Licence". Basically the whole thing is a "why you should use X11 and anything else is bad" article.
Perhaps not, but if Crimewatch can (and does) catch criminals from old and unresolved cases purely by virtue of prompting someone's memory with a CCTV clip or still (someone who just happened to be watching the show when they could have been watching something else) then they must also be able to use it to catch criminals when it is the police purposefully looking at the footage to ID a person for a crime.
Just print the text, get the tablature or sheet music for any songs and print a booklet of screencaps of the videos so that she can flick through them to "animate" them. Put it all in a dry environment and it should be fine until it is opened, and you can guarantee the required technology is still available!
As a last resort in the UK (i.e. after the police have used it for ID) that'd be called Crimwatch, a show on BBC that uses recreations and CCTV images to prompt peoples' memory and get witnesses.
Hopefully people are modding this insightful for saying that there could be an undefined boundary of where to stop with cameras rather than for repeating the misinformation that the UK police are going to install cameras in homes (which is not true and came from one of the more exagerating/paranoid papers in the UK)
That's just crazy talk. How can you possible expect a mere user to control something like hardware? We, the hardware and proprietary OS manufacturers, together with our good friends at the RIAA know exactly what should and shouldn't be done with our hardware. Users sometimes whine about not being able to do something, but that's just because they are confused and don't really need to do it. We know best, and we know what they need. If you think we're wrong, email suckered-for-millions-in-license-fees@big-hardware-vendors.con
But that's one whole (incredibly obvious) problem with "cloud computing" and the like. As soon as you outsource to a remote site (especially one that is in some way shared) then you're at the whim of other traffic and can be slowed down at any moment.
I hate the concept of "slippery slope" but this really is exactly that.
Surely this is a good slippery slope, though? Once the ISPs get stung once or twice over this then maybe they'll stand up to the music industry and say "There are legitimate uses of X, and we're just a carrier. Want to stop people downloading your content? File the law suit against the person hosting it rather than the person carrying it, because we're not your police force".
I think it's simpler than that. I think they just assume "Pirate bay == piracy == must be illegal downloads", or as the GP said "BitTorrent == illegal". Why bother trying to work out what people are actually downloading when you can just convince people that the whole site or even the entire protocol are illegal? Hell, it's what they're doing to convince most politicians that downloads/bittorrent are illegal.
Ah, the irony of someone saying "I could have told you" and then saying that it's "completely subjective" and has "no real hard science to support [it]"!
Writing style probably can be useful evidence where the style isn't known by others in advance, but it is quite easy to fake a style (much like having a "normal written style" and a "formal report style").
(tr.im claims they will be forever open and totally not sell domain to highest bidder and whatnot, but domain is still weakest link - it goes broken and tons of links get broken too)
But he said it, and it is now reported on the Internet, so surely it must be true? How can anyone have ever said anything that was then reported on the Internet that wasn't true or that they knew couldn't last? I'm sure that if he does move ownership of the domain to a company or organisation then that company would never sell out for large amounts of money, and that they'll never run short of funds to fund the domain or the service, leaving it dead in the water.
As for the proxies, I wonder how many drive-by downloads are protected by multiple layers of shortener? It'd stop a simple "preview.tinyurl.com" system revealing the bad link that you're taking people to, and there's more than enough shorteners for most people to get discouraged before they get to the end, even if they all do it.
But that's GPLed. I disagree with the GPL on [insert random reason here] grounds. If only they'd used the BSD license then I could take all of their work and incorporate it in to [insert proprietary program here] without having to pay anything back to the community.;)
Really? The LibDems do? They've not made a good message of it!
I've always thought the LibDems were most reasonable because of their focus on supporting students and generally being sensible with policies, but they've not enough of their policies to make me bother voting (why vote in a party if they're all going to make the same cock-ups? then you're just responsible for it). The Pirate Party is too extreme in some areas (like the "Teh free muzicz") but they are more obviously against some of the other sensible issues (copyright overly in favour of the corporation, excessive use of the police state, etc).
You seem to have forgotten that the government is meant to be there to implement what the people want.
I think you got that wrong. I can't remember the Terry Pratchett quote, but he has a very fitting one about the matter. A government is not there to do what the people want, but what the people need (which are not always the same thing). While a person may be intelligent, "people are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it" (to quote Men In Black).
What people want isn't always best for society (more speeding = more accidents and more deaths on the roads, free copyright infringement = no need to purchase music/film = no incentive to produce it). A government that bows to every whim of a rabble-roused populace is bound to ruin a country.
People want to speed because they're either ignorant or specifically ignoring the risks. Britain has too many junctions on the motorways that are too close together to handle people doing 90Mph, but people think "I can handle it and my car can handle it, so I'll ignore the fact that it hugely increases the likelihood of an accident by hugely increasing my reaction distance just so that I can get there sooner" because they don't think it'll happen to them. It's dumb and short-sighted, but until it happens to them then it is human nature for some people to think that way.
But this time it's the Americans on the receiving end of being over-charge for a product (for now). They're not used to it, so they feel it is unfair. Us Brits have got used to the fact that a lot of prices are basically taken at $1=£1, even if the exchange rate is closer to $2=£1 and given up hoping that prices would be adjusted accordingly.
(less facetiously, the UK still uses miles for distances and miles per hour for speed, and fair number of people still use feet & inches for human height)
That's because it'd be too awkward to re-teach all of the old people and change all of the signs;)
As for height in feet and inches, I grew up through the period of teaching the "Metric System" at school and I still find it easier to judge 5' 10" than 1.8m or 10st 5lbs instead of ###kg (or even ###lbs for the American way). Oddly, I find cooking and any DIY easier in metric, though:D
According to the article, this is "a practice engaged in by one in 12 of the population".
If that large a portion of the population think that something should not be illegal (and it's reasonable to assume that most people consider behaviour they indulge in should not be illegal), then perhaps their views should be considered rather than having them declared criminals.
Or perhaps they just think they're unduly entitled to free stuff because they don't want to pay for it;) Just because people drive along roads at reckless speeds doesn't mean that we should bump the speed limits up, and just because lots of people want stuff for free doesn't mean that everything needs to be made available for free.
As for the general idea, I seem to have had the misunderstanding that doing something illegal was already criminal. In a less strict sense it is (if it isn't legal then you're not a law-abiding citizen, and if you're not a law-abiding citizen then the other class is generally "criminals"), but strictly there is apparently law that isn't criminal law. At the end of the day you're still breaking a law and getting something for nothing that you shouldn't do (not stealing - that's a corporate misdirection/lie) so it is only reasonable to charge people for it. They need to make sure that what they're charging people over a) isn't allowed to be shared (i.e. don't just go "he was using BitTorrent", since it could be a Linux distro), b) is actually something they did and c) is reasonably in proportion to the crime (i.e. not multiples of a thousand over the actual cost for sharing to three people). Unfortunately I don't think they're too accurate on any of those counts in general.
7.62mm seems like an unusual size for a drill bit, and what kind of drill are you managing to use at up to 100m? Seems like a longer distance than I've seen any normal pillar drill move over.
I do agree that not removing the circuit board causes lots of debris, though, and is especially dangerous when it spins off at an angle!
I think you must have missed part of the study. They explained before-hand to the rats that if they completed the maze then they'd get good quality food instead of McDonalds drippings (the coagulated fat from frying, in case it is a British thing) but they still couldn't make themselves do any better;)
Am I the only one thinking "A generic and uncontrolled system that is completely virtual and could be run anywhere isn't sufficiently secure for storing or processing credit card details? No shit!"?
Seriously, I can see the benefit of cloud (which is effectively a glorified grid) for research and the like, but for information that needs to be secured like corporate secrets, proprietary information and credit cards? How can people consider "thing that is inherently changing and not controlled by you" to be a good answer?
In the end, it really comes down to accepting your creative talents as gifts and having faith that you will be sufficiently compensated for your efforts.
It's always good to base things of worth (e.g. future quality of creative works or your ability to pay for your housing etc) on faith. After all, faith in the fact that people will pay up for creative works when they don't have to has no flaws in it at all(!)
As I mentioned to someone else, one difference between the older situations (Beethoven etc) and today is the quality and speed of copying. With the classical composers you might be able to play someone's work again from an "unauthorised" copy of the sheet music, but it wouldn't be the same as having paid to hear it performed professionally (which was the only way to hear it).
Today people want to hear music in their own home, they can get that in media such as CDs, and those CDs are perfect copies that play the same each and every time. Not only that but any copy can be a perfect copy and can be made very quickly, rather than some cheap knock-off performance from a bunch of friends that's no-where near as good as the original.
Music is a bit of a bad example, though, because there is the argument that people can move to live performances. Books, games and software are where the problems lie, since readings by authors can't be done on the scale of gigs and wouldn't be as well attended, and software could try to sell support or subscription services but the majority of people don't want support and are already noticing a trend towards "nickel and diming" with subscriptions/micro payments.
I'm also not sure whether the "rent-seeking behaviour" argument works or whether it is self-defeating. It tries to argue that, when given copyright, authors attempt to monetize all that they can rather than actually working. What it ignores is that a similar effect is also true - if people can't monetize their effort, knowledge and expertise then they'll have to find other ways to live, and those other ways (jobs) will necessitate a reduction in production. Basically if you don't allow profit from creative works (or allow people legal ways to avoid paying for it) then other jobs become the substitute for creative work.
It's purely anecdotal, but neither my wife (with her fanfiction writing) nor myself (with open source applications) feel we'd bother putting in the effort to make things for general distribution if copyright were removed, everyone was free to copy anything and there was no control to say "hey, that isn't yours, I made that and I at least want recognition for it". What's the point in wasting your effort if anyone can take it for free and do what they want with it?
Slashdot Mirror
And in case people wonder what POJO is (it seems to be tagged but not answered at the moment) they're Plain Old Java Objects (i.e. standard Java objects with no additional attributes or post-processing beyond what happens to any other class).
Sounds good, if a little unconventional and hardly known. I wonder how well it works with the AGPL in networked situations? I did know GPL linking exceptions were possible but trying to write one for a personal/community project is a bit difficult without paying a lawyer, so picking an "off the shelf" license is the easy option.
Exactly. I recently changed some of my code from LGPL to Affero GPL because they could be used as a back-end to a web service as well as being the back-end for an app. I'd started with LGPL because I didn't want to force a license on people, but then I changed my mind because the on-going freedom of the code was more important than what license people used. What would be ideal would have been to have had a "LGPL/GPL but allowed to link with anything else as long as it is open source", but since that isn't possible then not letting non-GPLed apps link to my library is the only option. C'est la vie.
I think the article is summed up in one of his later headings: "Why I Prefer the MIT X11 Licence". Basically the whole thing is a "why you should use X11 and anything else is bad" article.
Perhaps not, but if Crimewatch can (and does) catch criminals from old and unresolved cases purely by virtue of prompting someone's memory with a CCTV clip or still (someone who just happened to be watching the show when they could have been watching something else) then they must also be able to use it to catch criminals when it is the police purposefully looking at the footage to ID a person for a crime.
Just print the text, get the tablature or sheet music for any songs and print a booklet of screencaps of the videos so that she can flick through them to "animate" them. Put it all in a dry environment and it should be fine until it is opened, and you can guarantee the required technology is still available!
As a last resort in the UK (i.e. after the police have used it for ID) that'd be called Crimwatch, a show on BBC that uses recreations and CCTV images to prompt peoples' memory and get witnesses.
Yeah, after all, some criminals get caught on camera showing tattoos of their name and date of birth!
Hopefully people are modding this insightful for saying that there could be an undefined boundary of where to stop with cameras rather than for repeating the misinformation that the UK police are going to install cameras in homes (which is not true and came from one of the more exagerating/paranoid papers in the UK)
That's just crazy talk. How can you possible expect a mere user to control something like hardware? We, the hardware and proprietary OS manufacturers, together with our good friends at the RIAA know exactly what should and shouldn't be done with our hardware. Users sometimes whine about not being able to do something, but that's just because they are confused and don't really need to do it. We know best, and we know what they need. If you think we're wrong, email suckered-for-millions-in-license-fees@big-hardware-vendors.con
Tracks can, and wheels can too if they're in the right configuration. The Daleks just had ground clearance issues ;)
But that's one whole (incredibly obvious) problem with "cloud computing" and the like. As soon as you outsource to a remote site (especially one that is in some way shared) then you're at the whim of other traffic and can be slowed down at any moment.
Why is this news?
Surely this is a good slippery slope, though? Once the ISPs get stung once or twice over this then maybe they'll stand up to the music industry and say "There are legitimate uses of X, and we're just a carrier. Want to stop people downloading your content? File the law suit against the person hosting it rather than the person carrying it, because we're not your police force".
I think it's simpler than that. I think they just assume "Pirate bay == piracy == must be illegal downloads", or as the GP said "BitTorrent == illegal". Why bother trying to work out what people are actually downloading when you can just convince people that the whole site or even the entire protocol are illegal? Hell, it's what they're doing to convince most politicians that downloads/bittorrent are illegal.
Ah, the irony of someone saying "I could have told you" and then saying that it's "completely subjective" and has "no real hard science to support [it]"!
Writing style probably can be useful evidence where the style isn't known by others in advance, but it is quite easy to fake a style (much like having a "normal written style" and a "formal report style").
But he said it, and it is now reported on the Internet, so surely it must be true? How can anyone have ever said anything that was then reported on the Internet that wasn't true or that they knew couldn't last? I'm sure that if he does move ownership of the domain to a company or organisation then that company would never sell out for large amounts of money, and that they'll never run short of funds to fund the domain or the service, leaving it dead in the water.
As for the proxies, I wonder how many drive-by downloads are protected by multiple layers of shortener? It'd stop a simple "preview.tinyurl.com" system revealing the bad link that you're taking people to, and there's more than enough shorteners for most people to get discouraged before they get to the end, even if they all do it.
But that's GPLed. I disagree with the GPL on [insert random reason here] grounds. If only they'd used the BSD license then I could take all of their work and incorporate it in to [insert proprietary program here] without having to pay anything back to the community. ;)
Really? The LibDems do? They've not made a good message of it!
I've always thought the LibDems were most reasonable because of their focus on supporting students and generally being sensible with policies, but they've not enough of their policies to make me bother voting (why vote in a party if they're all going to make the same cock-ups? then you're just responsible for it). The Pirate Party is too extreme in some areas (like the "Teh free muzicz") but they are more obviously against some of the other sensible issues (copyright overly in favour of the corporation, excessive use of the police state, etc).
I think you got that wrong. I can't remember the Terry Pratchett quote, but he has a very fitting one about the matter. A government is not there to do what the people want, but what the people need (which are not always the same thing). While a person may be intelligent, "people are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it" (to quote Men In Black).
What people want isn't always best for society (more speeding = more accidents and more deaths on the roads, free copyright infringement = no need to purchase music/film = no incentive to produce it). A government that bows to every whim of a rabble-roused populace is bound to ruin a country.
People want to speed because they're either ignorant or specifically ignoring the risks. Britain has too many junctions on the motorways that are too close together to handle people doing 90Mph, but people think "I can handle it and my car can handle it, so I'll ignore the fact that it hugely increases the likelihood of an accident by hugely increasing my reaction distance just so that I can get there sooner" because they don't think it'll happen to them. It's dumb and short-sighted, but until it happens to them then it is human nature for some people to think that way.
But this time it's the Americans on the receiving end of being over-charge for a product (for now). They're not used to it, so they feel it is unfair. Us Brits have got used to the fact that a lot of prices are basically taken at $1=£1, even if the exchange rate is closer to $2=£1 and given up hoping that prices would be adjusted accordingly.
That's because it'd be too awkward to re-teach all of the old people and change all of the signs ;)
As for height in feet and inches, I grew up through the period of teaching the "Metric System" at school and I still find it easier to judge 5' 10" than 1.8m or 10st 5lbs instead of ###kg (or even ###lbs for the American way). Oddly, I find cooking and any DIY easier in metric, though :D
Or perhaps they just think they're unduly entitled to free stuff because they don't want to pay for it ;) Just because people drive along roads at reckless speeds doesn't mean that we should bump the speed limits up, and just because lots of people want stuff for free doesn't mean that everything needs to be made available for free.
As for the general idea, I seem to have had the misunderstanding that doing something illegal was already criminal. In a less strict sense it is (if it isn't legal then you're not a law-abiding citizen, and if you're not a law-abiding citizen then the other class is generally "criminals"), but strictly there is apparently law that isn't criminal law. At the end of the day you're still breaking a law and getting something for nothing that you shouldn't do (not stealing - that's a corporate misdirection/lie) so it is only reasonable to charge people for it. They need to make sure that what they're charging people over a) isn't allowed to be shared (i.e. don't just go "he was using BitTorrent", since it could be a Linux distro), b) is actually something they did and c) is reasonably in proportion to the crime (i.e. not multiples of a thousand over the actual cost for sharing to three people). Unfortunately I don't think they're too accurate on any of those counts in general.
7.62mm seems like an unusual size for a drill bit, and what kind of drill are you managing to use at up to 100m? Seems like a longer distance than I've seen any normal pillar drill move over.
I do agree that not removing the circuit board causes lots of debris, though, and is especially dangerous when it spins off at an angle!
I think you must have missed part of the study. They explained before-hand to the rats that if they completed the maze then they'd get good quality food instead of McDonalds drippings (the coagulated fat from frying, in case it is a British thing) but they still couldn't make themselves do any better ;)
Am I the only one thinking "A generic and uncontrolled system that is completely virtual and could be run anywhere isn't sufficiently secure for storing or processing credit card details? No shit!"?
Seriously, I can see the benefit of cloud (which is effectively a glorified grid) for research and the like, but for information that needs to be secured like corporate secrets, proprietary information and credit cards? How can people consider "thing that is inherently changing and not controlled by you" to be a good answer?
It's always good to base things of worth (e.g. future quality of creative works or your ability to pay for your housing etc) on faith. After all, faith in the fact that people will pay up for creative works when they don't have to has no flaws in it at all(!)
As I mentioned to someone else, one difference between the older situations (Beethoven etc) and today is the quality and speed of copying. With the classical composers you might be able to play someone's work again from an "unauthorised" copy of the sheet music, but it wouldn't be the same as having paid to hear it performed professionally (which was the only way to hear it).
Today people want to hear music in their own home, they can get that in media such as CDs, and those CDs are perfect copies that play the same each and every time. Not only that but any copy can be a perfect copy and can be made very quickly, rather than some cheap knock-off performance from a bunch of friends that's no-where near as good as the original.
Music is a bit of a bad example, though, because there is the argument that people can move to live performances. Books, games and software are where the problems lie, since readings by authors can't be done on the scale of gigs and wouldn't be as well attended, and software could try to sell support or subscription services but the majority of people don't want support and are already noticing a trend towards "nickel and diming" with subscriptions/micro payments.
I'm also not sure whether the "rent-seeking behaviour" argument works or whether it is self-defeating. It tries to argue that, when given copyright, authors attempt to monetize all that they can rather than actually working. What it ignores is that a similar effect is also true - if people can't monetize their effort, knowledge and expertise then they'll have to find other ways to live, and those other ways (jobs) will necessitate a reduction in production. Basically if you don't allow profit from creative works (or allow people legal ways to avoid paying for it) then other jobs become the substitute for creative work.
It's purely anecdotal, but neither my wife (with her fanfiction writing) nor myself (with open source applications) feel we'd bother putting in the effort to make things for general distribution if copyright were removed, everyone was free to copy anything and there was no control to say "hey, that isn't yours, I made that and I at least want recognition for it". What's the point in wasting your effort if anyone can take it for free and do what they want with it?