Well, it's not meant to be about putting Microsoft's products in the public domain, is it?
I don't want Microsoft's shitty products. I want to be able to read and write their file formats with my open source software.
It's about providing a reasonably level playing field for Microsoft's marketplace competitors.
Microsoft has eliminated all their closed source competitors through illegal, monopolistic practices. The only companies able to compete with them are open source companies because they are the only ones not susceptible to Microsoft's dirty tricks. But in order for open source companies to compete with Microsoft, Microsoft must open up their protocols and file formats, with no strings attached.
Which means that the information should be free for non-commercial use.
That's completely useless, since most open source use is, in fact, commercial.
Which IMHO should not be applicable to non-commercial use as "royalty" implies a cut of your profit.
No, it doesn't. All the term "royalty" implies is that someone is paying for using something that is proprietary. For $10k, you get information that lets you write an interoperable commercial implementation, but probably prevents you contractually from ever creating an open source implementation.
This looks to me as a complete win for the FOSS movement.
So the pertinent question isn't really whether there's a fee or not, or even whether there's a copyright on the docs or not. The most important question in my mind, is whether the info will be available under an NDA or not.
You're stating the obvious.
Now, if you thought it through more carefully, you'd realize that the fact that Microsoft is permitted to charge $10k for the information means that the EU is letting them keep the information secret. And that's a problem with the EU judgment. Maybe the information will leak out anyway, and that would be a good thing, but that would be no thanks to the EU.
WWII is probably one of the few wars where there really was an unequivocal "right" vs "wrong", and it was a war that the allies had to win at any cost. Furthermore, the victors did handle the aftermath of the war in a way that transformed the losing nations into prosperous and free societies.
The major moral problem with WWII is that it has served as an excuse and model for subsequent wars, wars that were nowhere near as clearcut.
No, they'll be just as bad because of the systematic structure of the US electorial system
And you seriously think this is better anywhere else? Many European nations have institutionalized special interests far more than the US. Britain has become an Orwellian state and gone from empire to irrelevant. And if you think that forms of voting that are less winner-take-all are good, look up the Weimarer republic and what happened to it.
Democracy is hard and has lots of problems, but it's still the best form of government among those we know.
Apple is a publicity slut: glitzy ad campaigns, using pictures of Einstein and Chavez, carefully controlled leaks, etc. If Greenpeace uses them as a target to give more visibility to a cause, that seems reasonable to me. Why should we let Apple get away with only creating positive images for marketing purposes?
$10k is peanuts for commercial companies. It even is peanuts for open source companies. But the fact that there is any fee at all means that the information is not public, and this will likely exclude open source competitors, which is what Microsoft wants most of all.
Fortunately, there may be workarounds: people can write small binary-only Microsoft compatibility plug-ins which plug into larger open source applications that eventually can replace Microsoft's applications.
There are two kinds of radiation: ionizing and non-ionizing. For ionizing, it's dosage and energy that matter, but not narrow frequency ranges. For non-ionizing radiation, nobody really knows yet.
Satellites could also heat the cloud tops by beaming microwaves from space.
I'm a bit concerned with this recent obsession to beam microwaves from space. First, it's some hare-brained plane for solar energy, now steering hurricanes. Give it up already: it simply is not going to happen.
Yeah, there is a lot of "criminal" activity involving technology. But that criminal activity consists mostly of moving numbers around and rarely results in people getting hurt in a physical way. Overall, we're still a lot safer and better off than we were. And if you don't like the technology or the crime related to it, just don't use it. And if we, as a society, decided that some technologies might be too risky (on-line banking, e-voting, whatever), we could go back to paper.
The definition of a "4Mbps connection" is that I can download 4 million bits per second over it. WHich is what I said.
Apparently, you don't know what a "4Mbps connection" is; figures like that refer to a theoretical upper limit. Even if Comcast weren't within their right to restrict your download speeds, you wouldn't be getting that download speed.
I don't know what the problem with people like you is; if you don't like the service, stop your subscription. You obviously have figured out what you are and are not getting for your money.
No, they will merely be "UNIX 03" certified; that doesn't make them a useful replacement for a UNIX or Linux machine. Those kinds of certifications are minimal standards, not guarantees that the systems are useful.
There is a common standard: you upload your videos, and these sites filter them for you. For Google (or anybody else) to disclose their algorithms would be stupid, simply because that would make circumventing the copyright filters much easier.
I think what's really going on here is that Microsoft is egging on Viacom to gain an advantage for themselves.
Would you do it? Is it a reasonable request to follow? Setting things up and keeping the system current does not come for free. And there is the question if you should do it at all.
He is Canadian and bound by Canadian law. Canadian law recognizes and enforces European copyrights in Canada. So, yes, he should do it. If, on the other hand, I were in a situation where I wasn't bound by law to enforce it, then I wouldn't enforce it.
If you read their letter, they didn't ask him to shut down, they asked him to filter his IP addresses to prohibit accesses from regions where their copyright is still in force. That seems like a reasonable request to me.
The reason he shut down was because he considered that too much work. I'm sorry, but downloading a geolocation database and using it to filter requests is not a lot of work. In fact, from his remarks, it sounds like running the server was just becoming too much work in general and this was simply the final straw.
It think it's stupid that they the publishers still hold the copyright, but that's an issue to be taken up with the legislatures. The fact that they have these rights in Europe is clear, and it's reasonable for them to try to enforce them.
Let me second that: I also got a MacMini because of the form factor. In terms of software, I find OS X to be largely a disappointment; it's better than Vista, but in the end, it's just another complicated and bloated commercial OS.
Actually, the more compressed the less likely you can embed anything useful.
Well, apart from the fact that MP3 and MPEG4 are piss-poor compression methods, the source data itself contains noise, which people frequently want to preserve.
Trying to embed information would either lead to inefficient compression, which can be detected or to unnatural noise which can also be detected
So you are saying that all those audiophiles that compress their vinyl records as 192kbps should become terrorist suspects?
See, right there I'm with Bruce. Why would you put steganography tools on microSD cards?
I didn't say that you necessarily neededed steganography on microSD cards. Just the fact that there are tiny storage cards means that you can also physically hide the storage cards.
I don't doubt technology plays a role in this, but I doubt 'encryption' or 'steganography' does, as tools like that are, as you pointed out, dangerous.
Of course, they are "dangerous". My point is that there are a lot of other things that are just as dangerous, and we can't eliminate them all if we want to continue to live in a free and democratic society.
But it is an advertisment for their service. Do you think it fair that they say one thing in their ads, and another thing in the 'fine print'? I call that deceptive, and... false advertising.
I don't think it is, but even if it were, you now know. If you don't like it, cancel your service.
In other words, for each second that passes, I am allowed to download 4 million bits.
No, it merely says that you get a 4Mbps connection.
So, you are perfectly fine with Comcast taking your money, and deciding to offer you NO service whatsoever? Because that's perfectly allowable using that clause in the TOS.,/i>
Yes, I am. I am a Comcast customer, and I'm happy with their service. If I weren't, I'd pick one of the other Internet providers that I can choose from.
but THEY DO NOT SAY WHAT THAT MEANS. They hold you to limitations they refuse to tell you.
Correct. If you don't like it, don't sign the contract (or cancel it if you have signed up already).
First, legislatures pass bullshit laws about cryptography despite warnings that they are going to be ineffective because of steganography. Now, they claim that the sky is falling because people are using it.
Right now, police can still detect the steganography tools, but those will start to be hidden as well. Encrypted, hidden data can be added to MP3s, MPEG4s, PDFs, scans, executables, random leftover noise on the disk. It can be hidden on microSD cards, printed on paper, and hidden on DVDs.
There is no way governments or companies can stop covert communications of data. Get over it and stop making laws that are unenforceable but give police and governments ever more tools to abuse their powers.
Please tell me where in this page, the phrase "burst bandwidth' appears:
That's not ther TOS.
All I see is a speed expressed in "Kbps", or Kilobits per second. On another page, they say "Your time spent online is completely unlimited..." SO, each month, they are offering 'X' Kbps * number of seconds in the month
No, they are merely saying that your download speed is X Mbps and that you don't get metered by time. 10 years ago, your download speed might have been 56kbps and you paid $5/h. Now, you get 4Mbps and you pay $0/h. That doesn't mean that you can use the full bandwidth 24/7.
The TOS say that Comcast can, at their sole discretion, decide whether your usage is acceptable.
More importantly, the TOS say that you cannot run file sharing at all, period. So, if they let you run file sharing, even at a lower rate, they're giving you something you didn't sign up for.
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Well, it's not meant to be about putting Microsoft's products in the public domain, is it?
I don't want Microsoft's shitty products. I want to be able to read and write their file formats with my open source software.
It's about providing a reasonably level playing field for Microsoft's marketplace competitors.
Microsoft has eliminated all their closed source competitors through illegal, monopolistic practices. The only companies able to compete with them are open source companies because they are the only ones not susceptible to Microsoft's dirty tricks. But in order for open source companies to compete with Microsoft, Microsoft must open up their protocols and file formats, with no strings attached.
Which means that the information should be free for non-commercial use.
That's completely useless, since most open source use is, in fact, commercial.
Which IMHO should not be applicable to non-commercial use as "royalty" implies a cut of your profit.
No, it doesn't. All the term "royalty" implies is that someone is paying for using something that is proprietary. For $10k, you get information that lets you write an interoperable commercial implementation, but probably prevents you contractually from ever creating an open source implementation.
This looks to me as a complete win for the FOSS movement.
You're totally naive.
So the pertinent question isn't really whether there's a fee or not, or even whether there's a copyright on the docs or not. The most important question in my mind, is whether the info will be available under an NDA or not.
You're stating the obvious.
Now, if you thought it through more carefully, you'd realize that the fact that Microsoft is permitted to charge $10k for the information means that the EU is letting them keep the information secret. And that's a problem with the EU judgment. Maybe the information will leak out anyway, and that would be a good thing, but that would be no thanks to the EU.
WWII is probably one of the few wars where there really was an unequivocal "right" vs "wrong", and it was a war that the allies had to win at any cost. Furthermore, the victors did handle the aftermath of the war in a way that transformed the losing nations into prosperous and free societies.
The major moral problem with WWII is that it has served as an excuse and model for subsequent wars, wars that were nowhere near as clearcut.
So when is this guy gonna start blogging about what happens to American soldiers captured alive by Islamists?
We expect terrorist organizations to mistreat their captives. Are you drawing parallels between the US government and terrorist organizations?
No, they'll be just as bad because of the systematic structure of the US electorial system
And you seriously think this is better anywhere else? Many European nations have institutionalized special interests far more than the US. Britain has become an Orwellian state and gone from empire to irrelevant. And if you think that forms of voting that are less winner-take-all are good, look up the Weimarer republic and what happened to it.
Democracy is hard and has lots of problems, but it's still the best form of government among those we know.
The decision must still have been in the cache; why not post it somewhere else?
Statistically, what matters is the actual number of dead or injured; those are being reported accurately.
Apple is a publicity slut: glitzy ad campaigns, using pictures of Einstein and Chavez, carefully controlled leaks, etc. If Greenpeace uses them as a target to give more visibility to a cause, that seems reasonable to me. Why should we let Apple get away with only creating positive images for marketing purposes?
$10k is peanuts for commercial companies. It even is peanuts for open source companies. But the fact that there is any fee at all means that the information is not public, and this will likely exclude open source competitors, which is what Microsoft wants most of all.
Fortunately, there may be workarounds: people can write small binary-only Microsoft compatibility plug-ins which plug into larger open source applications that eventually can replace Microsoft's applications.
There are two kinds of radiation: ionizing and non-ionizing. For ionizing, it's dosage and energy that matter, but not narrow frequency ranges. For non-ionizing radiation, nobody really knows yet.
Satellites could also heat the cloud tops by beaming microwaves from space.
I'm a bit concerned with this recent obsession to beam microwaves from space. First, it's some hare-brained plane for solar energy, now steering hurricanes. Give it up already: it simply is not going to happen.
Yeah, there is a lot of "criminal" activity involving technology. But that criminal activity consists mostly of moving numbers around and rarely results in people getting hurt in a physical way. Overall, we're still a lot safer and better off than we were. And if you don't like the technology or the crime related to it, just don't use it. And if we, as a society, decided that some technologies might be too risky (on-line banking, e-voting, whatever), we could go back to paper.
The definition of a "4Mbps connection" is that I can download 4 million bits per second over it. WHich is what I said.
Apparently, you don't know what a "4Mbps connection" is; figures like that refer to a theoretical upper limit. Even if Comcast weren't within their right to restrict your download speeds, you wouldn't be getting that download speed.
I don't know what the problem with people like you is; if you don't like the service, stop your subscription. You obviously have figured out what you are and are not getting for your money.
No, they will merely be "UNIX 03" certified; that doesn't make them a useful replacement for a UNIX or Linux machine. Those kinds of certifications are minimal standards, not guarantees that the systems are useful.
There is a common standard: you upload your videos, and these sites filter them for you. For Google (or anybody else) to disclose their algorithms would be stupid, simply because that would make circumventing the copyright filters much easier.
I think what's really going on here is that Microsoft is egging on Viacom to gain an advantage for themselves.
Would you do it? Is it a reasonable request to follow? Setting things up and keeping the system current does not come for free. And there is the question if you should do it at all.
He is Canadian and bound by Canadian law. Canadian law recognizes and enforces European copyrights in Canada. So, yes, he should do it. If, on the other hand, I were in a situation where I wasn't bound by law to enforce it, then I wouldn't enforce it.
If you read their letter, they didn't ask him to shut down, they asked him to filter his IP addresses to prohibit accesses from regions where their copyright is still in force. That seems like a reasonable request to me.
The reason he shut down was because he considered that too much work. I'm sorry, but downloading a geolocation database and using it to filter requests is not a lot of work. In fact, from his remarks, it sounds like running the server was just becoming too much work in general and this was simply the final straw.
It think it's stupid that they the publishers still hold the copyright, but that's an issue to be taken up with the legislatures. The fact that they have these rights in Europe is clear, and it's reasonable for them to try to enforce them.
Fink works so poorly that I have given up on it on all my Macs.
People should stop trying to pretend that the Mac is a replacement for UNIX or Linux machines; it is not.
Let me second that: I also got a MacMini because of the form factor. In terms of software, I find OS X to be largely a disappointment; it's better than Vista, but in the end, it's just another complicated and bloated commercial OS.
Actually, the more compressed the less likely you can embed anything useful.
Well, apart from the fact that MP3 and MPEG4 are piss-poor compression methods, the source data itself contains noise, which people frequently want to preserve.
Trying to embed information would either lead to inefficient compression, which can be detected or to unnatural noise which can also be detected
So you are saying that all those audiophiles that compress their vinyl records as 192kbps should become terrorist suspects?
See, right there I'm with Bruce. Why would you put steganography tools on microSD cards?
I didn't say that you necessarily neededed steganography on microSD cards. Just the fact that there are tiny storage cards means that you can also physically hide the storage cards.
I don't doubt technology plays a role in this, but I doubt 'encryption' or 'steganography' does, as tools like that are, as you pointed out, dangerous.
Of course, they are "dangerous". My point is that there are a lot of other things that are just as dangerous, and we can't eliminate them all if we want to continue to live in a free and democratic society.
But it is an advertisment for their service. Do you think it fair that they say one thing in their ads, and another thing in the 'fine print'? I call that deceptive, and ... false advertising.
I don't think it is, but even if it were, you now know. If you don't like it, cancel your service.
In other words, for each second that passes, I am allowed to download 4 million bits.
No, it merely says that you get a 4Mbps connection.
So, you are perfectly fine with Comcast taking your money, and deciding to offer you NO service whatsoever? Because that's perfectly allowable using that clause in the TOS.,/i>
Yes, I am. I am a Comcast customer, and I'm happy with their service. If I weren't, I'd pick one of the other Internet providers that I can choose from.
but THEY DO NOT SAY WHAT THAT MEANS. They hold you to limitations they refuse to tell you.
Correct. If you don't like it, don't sign the contract (or cancel it if you have signed up already).
First, legislatures pass bullshit laws about cryptography despite warnings that they are going to be ineffective because of steganography. Now, they claim that the sky is falling because people are using it.
Right now, police can still detect the steganography tools, but those will start to be hidden as well. Encrypted, hidden data can be added to MP3s, MPEG4s, PDFs, scans, executables, random leftover noise on the disk. It can be hidden on microSD cards, printed on paper, and hidden on DVDs.
There is no way governments or companies can stop covert communications of data. Get over it and stop making laws that are unenforceable but give police and governments ever more tools to abuse their powers.
Please tell me where in this page, the phrase "burst bandwidth' appears:
That's not ther TOS.
All I see is a speed expressed in "Kbps", or Kilobits per second. On another page, they say "Your time spent online is completely unlimited..." SO, each month, they are offering 'X' Kbps * number of seconds in the month
No, they are merely saying that your download speed is X Mbps and that you don't get metered by time. 10 years ago, your download speed might have been 56kbps and you paid $5/h. Now, you get 4Mbps and you pay $0/h. That doesn't mean that you can use the full bandwidth 24/7.
The TOS say that Comcast can, at their sole discretion, decide whether your usage is acceptable.
More importantly, the TOS say that you cannot run file sharing at all, period. So, if they let you run file sharing, even at a lower rate, they're giving you something you didn't sign up for.