...having a population that's actively misinformed presents problems when it comes to participating in the national debate, or the democratic process.
That all depends on your point of view and who you are. For many political parties then a misinformed populace is a major boon. If they're dumb/misinformed then you can tell them what you like and they'll support you. If they're intelligent/informed then you might get to that problem point where the voters actually question what the politicians are doing and whether it's for the best.
Still, at least ideology doesn't trump everything - here in the UK the Labour party are abandoning their "for the working masses" ideology and picking up a more right-wing ideology because it gets them votes. Then again, maybe that's one place where ideology should have won out.
Not that I've had Windows as my main install for ages (it's now relegated to a virtual machine) but I read "Movie Maker" in the list and went "Huzzah! They've finally decided to ditch that crappy app they install in XP that I've never wanted to use and that I'd find a better alternative of if I did want to make movies". I've never understood why it was one of the core apps.
So are we to throw out all patents because anyone who is an expert would consider a new invention to be trivial and obvious? Is "non-obvious" really a good measure of patentability?
Is "being the first to file on anything" a good measure of patentability? That's the other alternative to a measure of "non-obviousness".
As for trivial and obvious, there are things you can patent that aren't trivial or obvious. They may seem like a logical step after the fact, but if no-one else has made that step then it isn't that obvious. If, however, hundreds upon thousands of software developers have had the idea of linking data objects in to a list in multiple directions for easy access then patenting it is patenting the obvious.
Taking the definition of "revenue" then you'd only be able to do that if you didn't bring in any money at all, not if you don't make money (profit). Even then I suspect they might have other ways around it (like not selling the music to you in the first place and then enforcing copyright/DMCA legislation on the CDs that you probably got the music from).
It'd be great if some rich person did put their money towards a station that brought in zero money (including no ad revenue) though!
Beryl? BERYL? A bit behind the times, aren't we?;)
Most of the highlights are definitely a bonus. The colour scheme is dreadful, though. I think I'd rather have the blue than the brown! Other than that it sounds like a promising new release for newbies.
Okay, so "contract" isn't the best way to look at it. Still, not following the EULA would be a breech of the terms of the license (hence EULA - end user license agreement) in the same way as the license on GPL code. The Firefox license just says that "you can use it, it's open source, but we own the trademarked logos etc".
The other part of the EULA (the lack of warranty and liability) is a part of the GPL, so there's no difference there. The main difference is still just active versus passive - a dialog you confirm versus some files in a folder hierarchy that you're assumed to read.
No, there's nothing wrong with including those files. Try finding a corporation with lawyers that think "two files in some system folder (probably/usr/share/firefox) that people are highly unlikely to look in" is sufficient for the warranty and liability disclaimer, though. By putting it up-front as well as in the files the lawyers are happy and everyone else can just ignore it and click through because they're mainly canned text anyway and we're sick of "it might not do anything, it might be completely broken, it might cause a black hole that destroys the world, but it isn't our fault".
"I agree" is hardly a usage restriction, though. Using software that has a license file has an implicit agreement that you'll follow the license. If you modify a GPL app and never read the LICENSE file then you're still breaching an implicit contractual agreement if you then released it as public domain or another license. Putting a simple and non-restricting EULA at first run just removes the excuse of "I didn't see it" (or at least reduces it). It makes the acceptance of the license (which all open source code has, except public domain) more interactive and less passed, nothing more.
On the whole EULAs are used for bad, but looking at another post about the rough layout then please show me which part governs how you use it.
As an officially branded product all it basically does is say "Yes, we as a company made it. No you don't get a warranty, despite the corporate backing. Since there's no warranty we aren't liable for anything. The logos are not open-source, so you can't edit them." Sentence one doesn't apply to most OSS projects as they're not corporate backed and so don't need to worry about the implications as much. Two and three are often covered in the license document, but as a corporate entity then Mozilla obviously feel they need to be more up-front about the exact same stuff. Four is just a clarification of what you can and can't do if you take advantage of the open source part with regards the trademarks. No usage restrictions at all.
I like the bit where he complains about the crapware and payments:
He assailed OEM system builders for including bad, buggy, or just plain useless apps on their machines in exchange for a few bucks on the back end.
I've worked in one of the vendor companies. Why do you think that places like Fujitsu Siemens, Dell and the like have the tag lines that say "[Insert company] recommends Windows Vista® [pick a version]"? It's because Microsoft give them kickbacks and payments for it!
Where's the difference between saying "Yes, use Windows Vista [version] because we get paid" and saying "Yes, have this 'useful' bit of junk on your machine because we get paid (a proportionally smaller amount, because it's a smaller app)"?
Strange. On average I've had two Linux and ATI experiences:
1) Download pre-built RPMs from Livna. Install using package manager. Restart and go.
2) Give up on waiting for Livna to make new releases. Download drivers from ATI. Compile using built-in "Fedora X" version. Install RPMs. Let RPMs reconfigure my XOrg.conf properly (or just change "radeon" to "fglrx" by hand, because that's all it seems to need). Run with graphical acceleration without a problem.
The only time I've had a problem is with Fedora 9, and that's just because they're using XOrg server 1.5, which hasn't reached a final release and so isn't supported. That just involved one quick check on the Fedora forums and a downgrade of XOrg to the one shipped with F8.
There's now an edit that "several" people have pointed out that it's Duke Nukem 3D and not Forever? Only "several"? Not "lots" or "hordes" or "huge numbers"?
Since this is from a Journal, I hope Hurricane has fun extolling the wonders of this new game that only he has found, or complaining about the quality of the graphics after so long in development (whichever happens to be his preference).
It has been a while since I read the details, but I thought it applied to radio as well. Maybe I made that bit up. You are right about the "used for the purposes of" but, though. You don't technically need one when you're only using it for console games, but you might have a fight with the licensing people to prove you're not 'smuggling' TV signals on to it;)
Okay, so I forgot about sales-type taxes. It's still not a tax, though. A tax is a levy paid on something - e.g. income tax is a levy paid on your earnings, sales tax is a levy paid on something you bought, stamp duty is a tax paid on your purchase of a house, etc.
The license fee is an additional license that you must purchase if you use any TV signal receiving equipment and is purchased from a separate group to the TV (which has VAT on it that is incorporated in to the price that you pay to the electronics store, which they then give to the Government).
a) I'm quite happy to stay in the UK. Why bother moving somewhere else when my choices are 1) countries I don't speak the language of (most of Europe), 2) Australia and New Zealand (which is too far away from my family) or 3) America (which has, IMO, a work ethic that I would never want)
b) The other main alternative to the license fee is that the BBC becomes a more commercial company complete with degraded content and interspersed adverts.
Yes, the BBC could expand their license fee world-wide (they already have the world-wide BBC channel, complete with adverts, and BBC.com has adverts) but that doesn't change the fact that the restriction on quality content distribution is based on the people who pay the license fee.
I think the people who run Linux and either a) want to be purists or b) don't want to have to shell out anything for their OS (which they'd have to do if it bundled codecs) or buy the codecs separately (which is what Fedora prompts you to do for MP3) are the ones who care.
The BBC made its own DIRAC codec so that it could keep its standard-def infrastructure but handle high-def camera feeds instead of spending even larger amounts of money tearing out and replacing its infrastructure. They open-sourced it, so they could quite easily create an iPlayer that used it and not have any issues with patent fees for anyone.
You can't begrudge people for wanting to make money from their work, but you also can't begrudge people not wanting to pay for something when a free and almost equally as good (if not better in the case of DIRAC) alternative is available.
The general angle seems to be that the Patent Office has said they won't issue them, people don't want them, and the government will contest them, yet there are still some flying around.
It's not tax pounds (which would be taken out of your pay) but a license fee that you have to pay if you own any equipment that is capable of receiving a TV signal (e.g. TV, computer, certain mobile devices, etc) or IIRC a radio signal. If you don't have either of those then you don't need a TV license and you don't need to pay anything. If you do have one then it's £12 per month (~£140 per year), which IMO is a bargain for quality TV without adverts, especially when people are willing to pay £30+ per month for the drivel on satellite/cable complete with large ad breaks.
It is true that they have a mandate to be open to anyone with a license, though. Other than buying equipment, there isn't supposed to be any restriction on who can access the content and so operating systems etc aren't supposed to stop people accessing things.
Okay, so the BBC do need some way of getting their iPlayer on to Linux and other OSes, but as a Brit I'll quite happily say "give me the license fee system for the next thousand years instead of having to watch the drivel that is generally on the commercial channels and is interspersed with adverts".
The BBC has by far the best quality TV of all the channels I receive (and I'm not just on terrestrial or Free-to-air any more) and I get to watch shows uninterrupted. That's worth more than the other channels combined, especially when watching something like a sporting event or a film.
How can these people complain. Being cartoon graphics (cel-shaded cartoons) then how can the Wii not be its best home? The XBox 360 and the PS3 fight it out for realism, the Wii wins on fun and cartoon.
If only these people could complain about something more worthwhile, like the fact that the real problem is the badly brought up children and not the game.
So that would be summarised as "Prosecutors go for cases that make them look good" and "Prosecutors avoid cases where the crime isn't as well understood"* then?
* because the general populace understand "he killed her" or "he was doing things he shouldn't to children" but tech-crime gets a glazed look from all the buzzwords.
Given that the Data Protection Act lets you demand to see any and all data stored about you (and have it corrected if it is wrong), does this mean we'll be able to demand to see all of the government's monitoring of us? Or is there some get-out clause for Government stuff? I can imagine they'd charge a rather large "reasonable amount" for getting the information through the bureaucracy, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Which I pretty much successfully avoided since about 2002 or something!
That all depends on your point of view and who you are. For many political parties then a misinformed populace is a major boon. If they're dumb/misinformed then you can tell them what you like and they'll support you. If they're intelligent/informed then you might get to that problem point where the voters actually question what the politicians are doing and whether it's for the best.
Still, at least ideology doesn't trump everything - here in the UK the Labour party are abandoning their "for the working masses" ideology and picking up a more right-wing ideology because it gets them votes. Then again, maybe that's one place where ideology should have won out.
Not that I've had Windows as my main install for ages (it's now relegated to a virtual machine) but I read "Movie Maker" in the list and went "Huzzah! They've finally decided to ditch that crappy app they install in XP that I've never wanted to use and that I'd find a better alternative of if I did want to make movies". I've never understood why it was one of the core apps.
Is "being the first to file on anything" a good measure of patentability? That's the other alternative to a measure of "non-obviousness".
As for trivial and obvious, there are things you can patent that aren't trivial or obvious. They may seem like a logical step after the fact, but if no-one else has made that step then it isn't that obvious. If, however, hundreds upon thousands of software developers have had the idea of linking data objects in to a list in multiple directions for easy access then patenting it is patenting the obvious.
Taking the definition of "revenue" then you'd only be able to do that if you didn't bring in any money at all, not if you don't make money (profit). Even then I suspect they might have other ways around it (like not selling the music to you in the first place and then enforcing copyright/DMCA legislation on the CDs that you probably got the music from).
It'd be great if some rich person did put their money towards a station that brought in zero money (including no ad revenue) though!
Beryl? BERYL? A bit behind the times, aren't we? ;)
Most of the highlights are definitely a bonus. The colour scheme is dreadful, though. I think I'd rather have the blue than the brown! Other than that it sounds like a promising new release for newbies.
And just to prove my point that there's no real issue with Mozilla's "EULA that isn't much of an EULA" they've now come out and said that EULA is a bad term and isn't really what it is because it doesn't add additional restrictions.
Okay, so "contract" isn't the best way to look at it. Still, not following the EULA would be a breech of the terms of the license (hence EULA - end user license agreement) in the same way as the license on GPL code. The Firefox license just says that "you can use it, it's open source, but we own the trademarked logos etc".
The other part of the EULA (the lack of warranty and liability) is a part of the GPL, so there's no difference there. The main difference is still just active versus passive - a dialog you confirm versus some files in a folder hierarchy that you're assumed to read.
No, there's nothing wrong with including those files. Try finding a corporation with lawyers that think "two files in some system folder (probably /usr/share/firefox) that people are highly unlikely to look in" is sufficient for the warranty and liability disclaimer, though. By putting it up-front as well as in the files the lawyers are happy and everyone else can just ignore it and click through because they're mainly canned text anyway and we're sick of "it might not do anything, it might be completely broken, it might cause a black hole that destroys the world, but it isn't our fault".
"I agree" is hardly a usage restriction, though. Using software that has a license file has an implicit agreement that you'll follow the license. If you modify a GPL app and never read the LICENSE file then you're still breaching an implicit contractual agreement if you then released it as public domain or another license. Putting a simple and non-restricting EULA at first run just removes the excuse of "I didn't see it" (or at least reduces it). It makes the acceptance of the license (which all open source code has, except public domain) more interactive and less passed, nothing more.
On the whole EULAs are used for bad, but looking at another post about the rough layout then please show me which part governs how you use it.
As an officially branded product all it basically does is say "Yes, we as a company made it. No you don't get a warranty, despite the corporate backing. Since there's no warranty we aren't liable for anything. The logos are not open-source, so you can't edit them." Sentence one doesn't apply to most OSS projects as they're not corporate backed and so don't need to worry about the implications as much. Two and three are often covered in the license document, but as a corporate entity then Mozilla obviously feel they need to be more up-front about the exact same stuff. Four is just a clarification of what you can and can't do if you take advantage of the open source part with regards the trademarks. No usage restrictions at all.
I like the bit where he complains about the crapware and payments:
I've worked in one of the vendor companies. Why do you think that places like Fujitsu Siemens, Dell and the like have the tag lines that say "[Insert company] recommends Windows Vista® [pick a version]"? It's because Microsoft give them kickbacks and payments for it!
Where's the difference between saying "Yes, use Windows Vista [version] because we get paid" and saying "Yes, have this 'useful' bit of junk on your machine because we get paid (a proportionally smaller amount, because it's a smaller app)"?
But that's openSUSE. The summary/article means Novell's SLED version of Suse, which isn't a community distro.
Strange. On average I've had two Linux and ATI experiences:
1) Download pre-built RPMs from Livna. Install using package manager. Restart and go.
2) Give up on waiting for Livna to make new releases. Download drivers from ATI. Compile using built-in "Fedora X" version. Install RPMs. Let RPMs reconfigure my XOrg.conf properly (or just change "radeon" to "fglrx" by hand, because that's all it seems to need). Run with graphical acceleration without a problem.
The only time I've had a problem is with Fedora 9, and that's just because they're using XOrg server 1.5, which hasn't reached a final release and so isn't supported. That just involved one quick check on the Fedora forums and a downgrade of XOrg to the one shipped with F8.
There's now an edit that "several" people have pointed out that it's Duke Nukem 3D and not Forever? Only "several"? Not "lots" or "hordes" or "huge numbers"?
Since this is from a Journal, I hope Hurricane has fun extolling the wonders of this new game that only he has found, or complaining about the quality of the graphics after so long in development (whichever happens to be his preference).
It has been a while since I read the details, but I thought it applied to radio as well. Maybe I made that bit up. You are right about the "used for the purposes of" but, though. You don't technically need one when you're only using it for console games, but you might have a fight with the licensing people to prove you're not 'smuggling' TV signals on to it ;)
Okay, so I forgot about sales-type taxes. It's still not a tax, though. A tax is a levy paid on something - e.g. income tax is a levy paid on your earnings, sales tax is a levy paid on something you bought, stamp duty is a tax paid on your purchase of a house, etc.
The license fee is an additional license that you must purchase if you use any TV signal receiving equipment and is purchased from a separate group to the TV (which has VAT on it that is incorporated in to the price that you pay to the electronics store, which they then give to the Government).
Well that's easy enough.
a) I'm quite happy to stay in the UK. Why bother moving somewhere else when my choices are 1) countries I don't speak the language of (most of Europe), 2) Australia and New Zealand (which is too far away from my family) or 3) America (which has, IMO, a work ethic that I would never want)
b) The other main alternative to the license fee is that the BBC becomes a more commercial company complete with degraded content and interspersed adverts.
Yes, the BBC could expand their license fee world-wide (they already have the world-wide BBC channel, complete with adverts, and BBC.com has adverts) but that doesn't change the fact that the restriction on quality content distribution is based on the people who pay the license fee.
I think the people who run Linux and either a) want to be purists or b) don't want to have to shell out anything for their OS (which they'd have to do if it bundled codecs) or buy the codecs separately (which is what Fedora prompts you to do for MP3) are the ones who care.
The BBC made its own DIRAC codec so that it could keep its standard-def infrastructure but handle high-def camera feeds instead of spending even larger amounts of money tearing out and replacing its infrastructure. They open-sourced it, so they could quite easily create an iPlayer that used it and not have any issues with patent fees for anyone.
You can't begrudge people for wanting to make money from their work, but you also can't begrudge people not wanting to pay for something when a free and almost equally as good (if not better in the case of DIRAC) alternative is available.
Except that the UK patent office has been challenged over their newer policy of not granting software patents and people have had to petition to get it officially unenforceable. They even granted a patent that the government appealed.
The general angle seems to be that the Patent Office has said they won't issue them, people don't want them, and the government will contest them, yet there are still some flying around.
It's not tax pounds (which would be taken out of your pay) but a license fee that you have to pay if you own any equipment that is capable of receiving a TV signal (e.g. TV, computer, certain mobile devices, etc) or IIRC a radio signal. If you don't have either of those then you don't need a TV license and you don't need to pay anything. If you do have one then it's £12 per month (~£140 per year), which IMO is a bargain for quality TV without adverts, especially when people are willing to pay £30+ per month for the drivel on satellite/cable complete with large ad breaks.
It is true that they have a mandate to be open to anyone with a license, though. Other than buying equipment, there isn't supposed to be any restriction on who can access the content and so operating systems etc aren't supposed to stop people accessing things.
Okay, so the BBC do need some way of getting their iPlayer on to Linux and other OSes, but as a Brit I'll quite happily say "give me the license fee system for the next thousand years instead of having to watch the drivel that is generally on the commercial channels and is interspersed with adverts".
The BBC has by far the best quality TV of all the channels I receive (and I'm not just on terrestrial or Free-to-air any more) and I get to watch shows uninterrupted. That's worth more than the other channels combined, especially when watching something like a sporting event or a film.
How can these people complain. Being cartoon graphics (cel-shaded cartoons) then how can the Wii not be its best home? The XBox 360 and the PS3 fight it out for realism, the Wii wins on fun and cartoon.
If only these people could complain about something more worthwhile, like the fact that the real problem is the badly brought up children and not the game.
So that would be summarised as "Prosecutors go for cases that make them look good" and "Prosecutors avoid cases where the crime isn't as well understood"* then?
* because the general populace understand "he killed her" or "he was doing things he shouldn't to children" but tech-crime gets a glazed look from all the buzzwords.
I still see GMT. Given that /. is US based then it wouldn't be unreasonable to use a US timezone, even if GMT is easier for everyone to work from.
As for the four hour gap, I think that's called "The Americans haven't woken up yet" ;)
Given that the Data Protection Act lets you demand to see any and all data stored about you (and have it corrected if it is wrong), does this mean we'll be able to demand to see all of the government's monitoring of us? Or is there some get-out clause for Government stuff? I can imagine they'd charge a rather large "reasonable amount" for getting the information through the bureaucracy, though.