Your "free market" is utopia without people who are selfish and especialy without people who are mean and get pleasure from having power over other people.
Any social/economic theory suffers the same problems. Hence, my sig:
A friend of mine recently got a job at GCHQ, which is a bit like the British version of the NSA. You ought to see the number of forms he has to fill in... background info, more personal details than you can possibly imagine, and they're going to background check all of it.
I should hope so! My wife had to fill a 30 page background info packet plus go through a year of testing and investigation just to get into the California Highway Patrol. And her investigation went really fast, since she basically has no background that's of any interest.
The funny thing is, they basically didn't talk to any of the people she listed as references, but just sent them a form asking for a brief opinion of the applicant and a list of people who knew them. I don't know how far they went beyond that, but they obviously didn't find anything of concern since she starts in the Academy next month.
Re:That's how discovery works in litigation
on
SCOrched Earth
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· Score: 4, Insightful
While your general point is correct, you seem to be missing an important fact. Discovery is not a fishing license. When you request information you have to do so in a specific manner. SCO, on the other hand, is basically saying "give us everything you think might incriminate you". There's nothing specific about that request, and IBM has rightly refused to comply with it unless and until they specify what it is they're looking for.
There are 2 reasons why IBM is right to refuse in this case. The first is that, in essence, SCO is demanding that IBM make their case for them. Under no sane theory of law is it the defendant's job to prepare the plaintiff's case.
The second is that such a non-specific request places an unreasonable burden on the side which is to supply the information. Just think of the mountain of documents a company as big and as old as IBM has, then think of being that guy that has to go through every one of them looking for anything that might, even in the vaguest way, be related to the case. Now think how much easier that job would be if they were asking for something specific.
SCO is treating discovery like a fishing expedition in which they have no idea what they might catch, or even if there is anything to catch at all. There's plenty of legal precedent that says that's not OK.
Bill can't put say a Reiser, or ext3, driver in Windoze, due to the GPL
The GPL certainly isn't going to stop him if he wants to do such a thing. Having a single GPLed module wouldn't magically make all of Windows GPL. Even if it would he could just (gasp!) write his own implementation! As long as all the code is origional, there's no reason it would be covered by the GPL.
or published in full by its designer so it can't be patented
Implementation being secret is certainly not a requirement for getting a patent. Quite the contrary, in fact! Full documentation is actually a requirement. Perhaps you're thinking of Trade Secret, which is a different thing entirely.
I would like to see Bill try this one in Europe. FAT has been in use for 20 years, or very close to it.
I'm not sure how this is relevant. Are you implying that FAT hasn't been in use in America for at least as long?
It also seems that anyone who wants to format a FAT drive only need do it in a country whose legislation, or the enforcement thereof, does not recognise the patents. I doubt that Bill would find a sympathetic court in France for example, to say nothing of India or China. If there is a workaround like that, his efforts will be in vain anyway.
They can do that all they want, I suppose, but they won't be able to sell them in America or the EU (which, IIRC, recently enabled software patents similar to the US), so it hardly seems worth the effort.
I know that I have not been able to format a partition smaller than about 125MB with reiser. Certainly, that isn't a problem for ext2, but I suspect the problem is the extra space needed for journaling, so ext3 might have that problem also.
seriously though: this is an inducement for people to use other file systems. is NTFS similarly protected? if not, is this the objective of this move?
I think the intention is to get everyone to move to NTFS. I'm sure NTFS is similarly protected, but MS will "generously" offer much more lenient licensing terms.
The problem with FAT, for MS at least, is that everyone and their third uncle has a driver for it. It's become the default, standard, even-my-kid-brothers-home-grown-OS-will-read-it filesystem. Clearly, this is not something MS wants to support. After all, the more problems people have with using their USB flash drives or whatever other portable media on other operating systems, the more likely they are to stick with Windows, right? Personally, I hope the whole thing blows up in their face and everybody starts using ext2 or the minix fs or, well, anything but NTFS basically.
IANAL, so would anyone care to explain the logic of continuing to sue Diebold over the C&D letters, when Diebold have stopped persuing the C&Ds?
Just off the top of my head, but this might be why:
The North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold... said it will continue to monitor the online proliferation of the leaked documents, and may sue others who publish the data.
In other words, they admit that they're only backing off because of the bad press, and not because they've had an epifany that what they're doing is fundamentally wrong.
His points about itch-scratching only illustrate that he lacks understanding of the community he's writting about at a fundamental level.
However, this is not ever likely to change when developers are unpaid volunteers. The simple fact of the matter is that people working for free will ALWAYS be inclined to work on stuff they're interested in.
Agreed, but there are many more reasons that are important to be aware of as well. Here's a few just off the top of my head:
1) Many of these projects start of as personal projects for personal reasons. Maybe they needed something that would work on really limited resources, and it was easier to start over than, say, try and trim down emacs. Maybe they had to write it from scratch as a class project. Should these people then be vilified for making their hard work available to all, just because somebody else also wrote a program once that performed some of the same basic functions?
2) There are different ways of doing things. Look at vi and emacs, both do the exact same thing, more or less, but in very different ways, and represent fundamentally different perspectives on how a text file should be dealt with. I've pretty much stuck with vi and haven't felt any need to explore beyond that, but I'm fairly sure that every single other text editor out there has some different way of doing things that maybe seemed better, faster, or more intuitive to the guy who wrote it. Not exploring these options is stupid, as you will never find the best way (asuming that there is a single best way at all).
3) Different languages. There are a lot of them, and again, there are reasons for every one of them, some of which have already been covered. Anyway, sometimes the itch that needs scratching is that they just want to write a text editor in Perl, for example, as a way of exploring and learning some aspects of the language that maybe they're a little weak on. Or, maybe they feel that a different language will achieve the same result more efficiently, or it's part of a larger project which, for some reason, needs to all be in the same language. Heck, maybe they just never got around to learning C.
I'm not convinced this is an entirely bad thing as it tends to avoid monoculture, at least in these popular areas. For instance, I LIKE having a number of mail systems to choose from.
That's an excellent point that the vast majority of the "Problems with Open Source" articles miss. I know the article in question lists this as another problem, but here it is: Windows has the same problem.
The author really showed is bias by presenting that arguement as "Windows sucks too", but, once again, he's missed the point. The point is that Windows also has hundreds of text editors and bunches of email programs for it, and that isn't a problem! Has the author never been to a grocery store? Even the most indecisive, easily over-whelmed people still manage to acquire what they need even though they are faced with a huge number of options even for basic things like laundry soap.
If anything, the problem is not with choice, but with poor labeling. It is difficult to know, if you haven't tried them, what the differences are between vi, emacs, joe, pico, etc. Typically their just presented as a list of text editors, with maybe one additional adjective. If he'd complained about that he would have had a valid point, but instead he argues for monoculture.
Honestly, if this guy had his way we'd all be using punch cards still. He'd never admit it, of course, but that's essentially what he's arguing for.
Have you/she actually had problems with one? I have an iPod, and haven't had problems with skipping or anything, except for the time I actually dropped it onto the pavement, after which it acted weird for a couple of days, but fixed itself once I plugged it into my computer, and has been fine since.
We haven't tried one. We're Linux users, and it seems kind of pointless to even look at an iPod unless Apple decides to support us.
However, as a professional repair technician who supports mainly hard drives I'm quite aware of what modern notebook drives can withstand, and based on that experience I am not interested in any hard drive based player. I realize that there are remarkably few problems with them, but IMO the cost vs. risk just isn't favorable. It seems pretty pointless to take that kind of risk when I can get her a 256MB flash-based player for under $125, which is more than adequate for her purposes while being lighter and less fragile.
I'm sorry to hear that your iPod's drive now has damaged sectors, though I am quite impressed that it has continued to function.
Are you in fact implying that you think Apple might change/remove the service out from under us?
I'm saying that, as a publically traded company, we can't expect them not to. The difference is subtle I suppose, but important. I don't think it's likely mind you, as Apple is generally a fairly enlightened company, but it would be foolish not to prepare for that chance. If nothing else, as you yourself pointed out, Apple isn't the sole decision maker with regards to iTMS's DRM, is it?
I think you'll allow that the RIAA would never allow such a music service with no DRM at all. Agreed?
Agreed, but with a caveat. We, as consumers and voters, are the real 900lb gorilla, but ONLY IF we stand up for ourselves. It is quite possible for us to force the issue, and in the very unlikely event that we did, the RIAA would have little choice in the matter.
I see FairPlay as, essentially, a token DRM that prevents people from just downloading from the iTMS and putting the song directly on Kazaa, but doesn't stop ordinary people from doing most of what they want with their music. We geeks are different; we have more different stuff we like to do with our music, and we understand what's going on better. But aside from transferring music to a non-iPod, non-CD-based portable player, I can't see what your average user would want to do with an iTMS track that they can't. And given that the iPod is the most popular player anyway, that takes some of the sting out of even that. (And yes, I know that DRM is far more encumbering to ordinary people than to serious pirates; I think this is aimed at "casual" sharers)
It is exactly those "casual" sharers whose rights need to be protected. Not their right to share, there isn't one, but their rights to fair use. These are the same users who won't know that they should back up their songs to Red Book CD. Some of these people are part of the infamous "cup holder" demographic.
Rights need to be protected in the most extreme circumstances. I hate what the KKK has to say, but I support their right to say it, as to say that they can't opens the door to a slippery slope, and before you know it I don't have the right to criticize the President's "energy policy".
You have to think in the long term. Yeah, DRM might not be much of a problem for you today, but just think how much it would suck if all of Shakespeare's works were locked up behind DRM and the DMCA. That's why we need to fight this.
I don't see anything in section 109 that says you get to keep any back-up copies you made after you sell the origional. Perhaps you could quote that section for me?
What I DO see is support for "First Sale", but that just means you have the right to sell a copy which you have legally obtained, NOT that you get to also keep a copy for yourself.
To my knowledge Sec 117 is the only section of USC 17 that allows for back-up copies at all (feel free to prove me wrong). Although it specifically says "computer program", it was referenced to by an RIAA lawyer in an interview I read a while back while describing what was legal to do with copyrighted songs and what wasn't. According to his interpretation, Sec 117 allows you to make "back-up" copies for time-, space, or media-shifting (copy CD for use in the car, copy LP to CD, rip to mp3, etc) as long as you retain ownership of the origional, but that these copies are the same as an archival copy of software in that it is for personal use and must be destroyed in the event of a transfer of ownership of the origional copy.
I guess you really didn't know, but yes, iTMS does allow this.
You're correct, I didn't know that, and that is pretty damned cool of Apple to do that. However, there is no guarantee that this will continue to be iTMS's policy, and thus my point is not invalidated.
My point about it being an exaggeration was, how would you get the files to the 8088 from a modern machine?
They were created on the 8088 in the first place? Perhaps you're too young to have dealt with this issue. I, on the other hand, have documents which I created and saved on my old 8088 that it would be pretty cool to have access to, but doing so is pretty much impossible. If you honestly think you aren't going to have the same problem with your current machine in 10-20 years, you are a fool.
And the fact that you couldn't be playing those files on iTunes on a machine that old in the first place, so if you have them there, you can't listen to them now, let alone if Apple suddenly decided to turn evil.
This statement only proves that you COMPLETELY missed my point, which was about future accessability, not trying to hack iTunes onto hopelessly obsolete technology.
Think about it like this: If Apple were to discontinue iTunes tomorrow, and MacOS XI were incompatible with the final version of iTunes, how would you access your iTunes files 10 years from now? You'd pretty much have to keep an OS X machine around and running and, more importantly, accessable, which in 10 years is likely going to be just as much of a PITA as it is for me to get to the files on my old 8088.
I don't think that scenario is likely, but it is possible. Yes, I'm deliberately ignoring the fact that iTMS currently allows you write those files to CD as standard Red Book music files because I don't think it's relevant to the discussion of DRM in general. There's a phrase popular among MBAs that you would do well to remember: "Past performance is no indication of future performance". Most of the time it's only used in regard to stock performance, but even a modicum of experience in Corporate America should prove to you that it applies to all facets of the business. Just because they allow it today doesn't mean they're going to allow it tomorrow.
How???? I still don't see how they can stop you from listening to your music if you have half an ounce of sense.
2 patches included in a "security patch" (that's how MS would do it, anyway, and there's no technical barrier to Apple doing it the same way): the first disables burning the files to CD, the second requires that iTunes phone home every arbitrary-amount-of-time or it shuts off access to the files.
So you think you could have negotiated a better deal with the RIAA?
No, and that's the problem.
The point isn't what you "should" be able to do with them. Of course we should be able to exercise full fair use rights with no hassle.
The point IS what we SHOULD be able to do with them. That's why they're called fair use RIGHTS.
The point is that allowing that would also allow sharing on Kazaa and friends with no hassle, and the RIAA don't want that--and, more importantly, it's illegal. The point is that it is different because it's digital, whether any of us like it or not.
Bullshit. Copyright infringement is illegal, period. Whether it's done digitally is irrelevant. it is NOT different because it's digital.
there's really nothing stopping you from legally removing the DRM from the songs by burning them to CD.
This just proves the lie above. If it's possible to legally remove the DRM and burn them to CD as regular Red Book files, then it's quite simple to re-rip them to share on Kazaa, and so effectively there is no difference between the current policy and distributing those files without DRM except the added expense to everyone (and by everyone I mean the RIAA members and Apple as well). In this case DRM needlessly inflates the price without creating any actual additional value for anyone, does nothing to stop the "bad guys", but rather punishes the "good guys", such as my wife, for whom an iPod (or any other mechanical music device) is basically useless since she would only use it when she's working out.
Copyright only matters when the actual reproduction occurs. A later change of ownership of the original media does not retroactively change the legality of a given copy.
Wrong.
USC 17, Ch 1, Sec 117:
it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:...
that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
If you sell or give away the origional your continued posession is no longer rightful, and your back-up copies must be destroyed. Failure to do so is an infringement of copyright.
In the next paragraph it says you may opt to sell your back-ups along with the origional rather than destroy them, but you may not retain them.
I always voted for Democrats in the past because I felt they had less influence from the religious right. However now I am so pissed off at Boxer & Feinstien and their support of these Hollywood extortionists that I will vote for whoever has the best chance of kicking them out of office.
Well said. It's like I've found my political twin.
if I rip and encode a cd and give you the resulting mp3s, that's illegal.
Right.
if I rip and encode a cd, keep the mp3s and give or sell you the CD, that's legal.
Wrong.
Fair use allows backup copies. When you give away or sell the origional copy, those mp3s are no longer backup copies, and therefor they are infringing.
It's extremely unlikely that you will ever get caught, but that doesn't make it legal.
I'll be perfectly honest that I support "pirating" music (though I've never done it) because *anything* that makes big record studios lose money is GOOD.
Piracy (in the modern sense) isn't punishment, it's support. By pirating and sharing those files you are increasing the mindshare owned by that product, which increases its popularity, and therefore its profitability. The "Record Industry" is largely a marketing operation, and you're doing their work for them for free. Not even for free, really, since at any time they can sue you, effectively making you pay them for the privilege of doing their work for them.
Hopefully you can see my point. It occured to me with regards to Microsoft, and I think it's easier illustrated in that context, but the same principle applies to any abusive copyright holder. Essentially the problem is: how do you break the monopoly stranglehold MS has on the software industry by giving their product away for free? You can't. If anyone can get the same software "everyone else is using" for free, why would they bother considering alternatives? By pirating MS Office you aren't "sticking it to the Man", you're actively perpetuating his regime.
Think about it.
If you want to affect change, the only way to do it is by supporting the bands/labels/companies that do things the way you think they should, and NOT supporting, in any way, the status quo. Don't be the "punk" who rails against the "evil corporations" while sucking down 2 packs of cigarettes a day.
Like a typical mac zealot, you've assumed that just because I've said something less than glowing about an Apple product, I must be out to bash Apple. Let me clear that up for you: I have nothing against Apple. I have the exact same things to say about any DRM scheme, iTMS just happens to be the topic of this thread.
Huh??? I don't know what you're smoking, but once you burn it to CD, it's a real, honest-to-goodness, Red Book CD, that is exactly like any audio CD you bought before DRM was more than a mad gleam in the RIAA's eye. No DRM there.
So, how do you get it to a non-DRM format without breaking the DRM? Is this something iTMS allows with their DRMed files?
OK, first off, your example of an 8088 is a serious exaggeration, and highly implausible besides. Secondly, while, again, I don't know how the authorization works, you can deauthorize a machine and move the files to another...which you can then authorize. But you can certainly burn them, as mentioned before, at which point you can listen to them anywhere.
OK, if it's such an exageration, how would you get the files from the 8088 to a modern machine? Where are you going to find an ISA optical network card? On the off chance that you do find one, where are you going to find DOS drivers for it? Alternatively, I suppose you could transfer them by sneakernet, but even if you have a 5.25" floppy drive you can hook up to your modern machine, where are you going to find a disk that hasn't totally decayed yet? Are you honestly naive enough to think that you won't have the same problem with your current machine in 20, 15, or even 10 years?
Feel free to substitute an equivalent Apple machine for the 8088 if it makes the excercise any easier.
no, they can't do that. They can't destroy your files. They can't even stop you from listening to them.
Clearly that is not true, and they've already demonstrated that. Right now, if I bought music from iTMS and then moved to, say, Canada, those files would become unplayable. There's no reason they couldn't cut them off similarly for any reason, and there are any number of ways they could do that, most of which are trivial.
IMHO it's just a matter of time before one of the online music services requires that, for example, your software has to phone home every 30 days or your access to the DRMed files will be cut off. I don't think it will be Apple, but only because it would go against their current corporate strategy. There certainly isn't any technical barrier to them doing so, and that will only be more true as DRM becomes embedded at the hardware level, which is, if you recall, what this article is all about.
But do you know what kind of legal wrangling Apple would have to go through to get people outside the US permission to use iTMS songs? There are plenty of countries that don't view copyright the same way we do, and if Apple let people there have the same access that people here do, you can bet the RIAA would pull the plug on the iTMS in a New York second*.
While I'm sure that's the case, it's still shitty, and serves as a taste of a possible future, one which will only be avoided if we stick up for ourselves. That is my point. My CDs work just fine where ever I go, and there's no reason my iTMS files should be any different. "It's different because it's digital" is bullshit.
Um, the MPAA is backing DRM as well, and that $10 dvd you just bought is going to support DRM.
I'm aware of that, thanks. That the MPAA continues to be stupid doesn't change my point: that the only way to actually curb piracy is to charge reasonable prices and trust people to do the right thing.
It does reaffirm my belief that Corporate America is run by idiots, however.
Continue pirating movies and music, it's good for the world.
That's just stupid. Piracy isn't punishment, it's support. Sharing increases mindshare, which is the goal of any modern marketing campaign. All you're doing is perpetuating the status quo.
Put skills on your resume, but the synopsis should go on your work history. That's the way I did it, and I've been working for more than 10 years. Note that my work history doc is quite long. It's just the resume itself that needs to be short. Think of it as a teaser.
And if any of the following are true, you will still be able to listed to your music:
* You burned a copy to CD (whether or not you re-ripped it--Oh horrors, quality loss!)
The copy you burned still has DRM, and ripping it to a DRM-less format is against the law.
* The DRM authorizing agent actually resides on your machine, rather than on some server of Apple's
Which works great as long as that's true, and you still have access to that machine. Of course, it really sucks when you have to somehow get your old 8088 on your fibre-optic network so you can have access to your old files.
* Someone cracks the DRM on the songs, allowing you to easily play them or extract a non-DRMed copy
Except, as already mentioned, that it's illegal to do so. Of course, that might not be a problem once it's impossible for you to run "untrusted" software.
In your eagerness to jump to Apple's defense you completely missed the point. Do I think Apple is likely to do something like this? No, but neither am I dumb enough to ignore the fact that they can.
Then again, wasn't there a story not to long ago about how iTMS tunes would mysteriously stop working when you took them out of North America?
Use of Napster forced the RIAA to respond. What legal method would have worked?
Perhaps you're too young to remember the early days of VHS, when a prerecorded movie cost $60-80. Guess what? Piracy was rampant. You could walk into any house and you'd find at least one shelf packed to overflowing with tapes the residents had copied rented movies onto, often 2-3 to a tape. You're not likely to see that now. A brand new movie only costs $15, and that quickly gets reduced to around $10. At that price nobody bothers to pirate and, shockingly, the studios still make money.
There's an important lesson for the RIAA in there, I think...
CDs ARE overpriced. It has nothing to do with being able to afford it, it's a simple equation of value vs. price. Consider:
I'm in Best Buy and I have a $20 bill I intend to spend on some entertainment. Which is a better value? A CD, with roughly one hour of music, of which I'm only actually interested in 20-30% (perhaps as high as 50%, if it's a greatest hits collection of one of my favorite bands, but in that case I probably have all those songs already)? Or a DVD, with roughly 2 hours of audio and video, plus assorted extras, of which I'm interested in probably 80-90%? Seems like a no-brainer to me, and since they're priced the same, that means the CD is overpriced. If I could get 2 CDs for my $20, I might actually have to stop and think about it.
I know this isn't the solution you're looking for, but...
Your resume should never be more than one page. The reason for this is that it will be photocopied and/or faxed. The staple you use to bind your pages together will be an annoyance to the person processing it, so it will be removed, and the pages will be seperated and lost.
Your resume should just highlight your qualifications and goals, with only a couple of references listed (company name, city, and phone number only). Think bullet points, and keep everything brief and to the point, because not only should it be one page only, but it should be in a 10-12pt font.
The first person at the company to look at your resume has probably already looked at 100+ other resumes. His eyes are bleary. He doesn't want to have to read a lot to find what he's looking for, he certainly doesn't want to have to squint to read it, and his thumb has a blister from the staple-remover. You want to make this guy happy, because he is the one who decides which resumes are going to be forwarded on to the person who does the interviews.
Certainly, you should have a detailed work history, but it should be a seperate document, and there should be a note at the bottom of your resume saying that it is available upon request. A page of references (3 personal, 3 educational, and at least 3 professional) is probably a good idea as well. But, again, that should be a seperate document, available upon request.
This advice was given to me years ago by a guy who had worked in HR for many years, and it has served me well. His final tip, forget the special colored paper. The person making the final hiring decision will never see it, but they might notice that the third generation copy they have looks especially crappy. Use plain white paper and avoid this situation.
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Your "free market" is utopia without people who are selfish and especialy without people who are mean and get pleasure from having power over other people.
Any social/economic theory suffers the same problems. Hence, my sig:
It seems to me that icculus is the Loki successor. IMHO Mr. Gordon is doing a pretty good job in that regard.
A friend of mine recently got a job at GCHQ, which is a bit like the British version of the NSA. You ought to see the number of forms he has to fill in... background info, more personal details than you can possibly imagine, and they're going to background check all of it.
I should hope so! My wife had to fill a 30 page background info packet plus go through a year of testing and investigation just to get into the California Highway Patrol. And her investigation went really fast, since she basically has no background that's of any interest.
The funny thing is, they basically didn't talk to any of the people she listed as references, but just sent them a form asking for a brief opinion of the applicant and a list of people who knew them. I don't know how far they went beyond that, but they obviously didn't find anything of concern since she starts in the Academy next month.
While your general point is correct, you seem to be missing an important fact. Discovery is not a fishing license. When you request information you have to do so in a specific manner. SCO, on the other hand, is basically saying "give us everything you think might incriminate you". There's nothing specific about that request, and IBM has rightly refused to comply with it unless and until they specify what it is they're looking for.
There are 2 reasons why IBM is right to refuse in this case. The first is that, in essence, SCO is demanding that IBM make their case for them. Under no sane theory of law is it the defendant's job to prepare the plaintiff's case.
The second is that such a non-specific request places an unreasonable burden on the side which is to supply the information. Just think of the mountain of documents a company as big and as old as IBM has, then think of being that guy that has to go through every one of them looking for anything that might, even in the vaguest way, be related to the case. Now think how much easier that job would be if they were asking for something specific.
SCO is treating discovery like a fishing expedition in which they have no idea what they might catch, or even if there is anything to catch at all. There's plenty of legal precedent that says that's not OK.
Bill can't put say a Reiser, or ext3, driver in Windoze, due to the GPL
The GPL certainly isn't going to stop him if he wants to do such a thing. Having a single GPLed module wouldn't magically make all of Windows GPL. Even if it would he could just (gasp!) write his own implementation! As long as all the code is origional, there's no reason it would be covered by the GPL.
or published in full by its designer so it can't be patented
Implementation being secret is certainly not a requirement for getting a patent. Quite the contrary, in fact! Full documentation is actually a requirement. Perhaps you're thinking of Trade Secret, which is a different thing entirely.
I would like to see Bill try this one in Europe. FAT has been in use for 20 years, or very close to it.
I'm not sure how this is relevant. Are you implying that FAT hasn't been in use in America for at least as long?
It also seems that anyone who wants to format a FAT drive only need do it in a country whose legislation, or the enforcement thereof, does not recognise the patents. I doubt that Bill would find a sympathetic court in France for example, to say nothing of India or China. If there is a workaround like that, his efforts will be in vain anyway.
They can do that all they want, I suppose, but they won't be able to sell them in America or the EU (which, IIRC, recently enabled software patents similar to the US), so it hardly seems worth the effort.
I know that I have not been able to format a partition smaller than about 125MB with reiser. Certainly, that isn't a problem for ext2, but I suspect the problem is the extra space needed for journaling, so ext3 might have that problem also.
seriously though: this is an inducement for people to use other file systems. is NTFS similarly protected? if not, is this the objective of this move?
I think the intention is to get everyone to move to NTFS. I'm sure NTFS is similarly protected, but MS will "generously" offer much more lenient licensing terms.
The problem with FAT, for MS at least, is that everyone and their third uncle has a driver for it. It's become the default, standard, even-my-kid-brothers-home-grown-OS-will-read-it filesystem. Clearly, this is not something MS wants to support. After all, the more problems people have with using their USB flash drives or whatever other portable media on other operating systems, the more likely they are to stick with Windows, right? Personally, I hope the whole thing blows up in their face and everybody starts using ext2 or the minix fs or, well, anything but NTFS basically.
Problem solved: it's been slashdotted into oblivion!
IANAL, so would anyone care to explain the logic of continuing to sue Diebold over the C&D letters, when Diebold have stopped persuing the C&Ds?
... said it will continue to monitor the online proliferation of the leaked documents, and may sue others who publish the data.
Just off the top of my head, but this might be why:
The North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold
In other words, they admit that they're only backing off because of the bad press, and not because they've had an epifany that what they're doing is fundamentally wrong.
His points on "Itch scratching" are well-taken.
His points about itch-scratching only illustrate that he lacks understanding of the community he's writting about at a fundamental level.
However, this is not ever likely to change when developers are unpaid volunteers. The simple fact of the matter is that people working for free will ALWAYS be inclined to work on stuff they're interested in.
Agreed, but there are many more reasons that are important to be aware of as well. Here's a few just off the top of my head:
1) Many of these projects start of as personal projects for personal reasons. Maybe they needed something that would work on really limited resources, and it was easier to start over than, say, try and trim down emacs. Maybe they had to write it from scratch as a class project. Should these people then be vilified for making their hard work available to all, just because somebody else also wrote a program once that performed some of the same basic functions?
2) There are different ways of doing things. Look at vi and emacs, both do the exact same thing, more or less, but in very different ways, and represent fundamentally different perspectives on how a text file should be dealt with. I've pretty much stuck with vi and haven't felt any need to explore beyond that, but I'm fairly sure that every single other text editor out there has some different way of doing things that maybe seemed better, faster, or more intuitive to the guy who wrote it. Not exploring these options is stupid, as you will never find the best way (asuming that there is a single best way at all).
3) Different languages. There are a lot of them, and again, there are reasons for every one of them, some of which have already been covered. Anyway, sometimes the itch that needs scratching is that they just want to write a text editor in Perl, for example, as a way of exploring and learning some aspects of the language that maybe they're a little weak on. Or, maybe they feel that a different language will achieve the same result more efficiently, or it's part of a larger project which, for some reason, needs to all be in the same language. Heck, maybe they just never got around to learning C.
I'm not convinced this is an entirely bad thing as it tends to avoid monoculture, at least in these popular areas. For instance, I LIKE having a number of mail systems to choose from.
That's an excellent point that the vast majority of the "Problems with Open Source" articles miss. I know the article in question lists this as another problem, but here it is: Windows has the same problem.
The author really showed is bias by presenting that arguement as "Windows sucks too", but, once again, he's missed the point. The point is that Windows also has hundreds of text editors and bunches of email programs for it, and that isn't a problem! Has the author never been to a grocery store? Even the most indecisive, easily over-whelmed people still manage to acquire what they need even though they are faced with a huge number of options even for basic things like laundry soap.
If anything, the problem is not with choice, but with poor labeling. It is difficult to know, if you haven't tried them, what the differences are between vi, emacs, joe, pico, etc. Typically their just presented as a list of text editors, with maybe one additional adjective. If he'd complained about that he would have had a valid point, but instead he argues for monoculture.
Honestly, if this guy had his way we'd all be using punch cards still. He'd never admit it, of course, but that's essentially what he's arguing for.
Have you/she actually had problems with one? I have an iPod, and haven't had problems with skipping or anything, except for the time I actually dropped it onto the pavement, after which it acted weird for a couple of days, but fixed itself once I plugged it into my computer, and has been fine since.
We haven't tried one. We're Linux users, and it seems kind of pointless to even look at an iPod unless Apple decides to support us.
However, as a professional repair technician who supports mainly hard drives I'm quite aware of what modern notebook drives can withstand, and based on that experience I am not interested in any hard drive based player. I realize that there are remarkably few problems with them, but IMO the cost vs. risk just isn't favorable. It seems pretty pointless to take that kind of risk when I can get her a 256MB flash-based player for under $125, which is more than adequate for her purposes while being lighter and less fragile.
I'm sorry to hear that your iPod's drive now has damaged sectors, though I am quite impressed that it has continued to function.
Are you in fact implying that you think Apple might change/remove the service out from under us?
I'm saying that, as a publically traded company, we can't expect them not to. The difference is subtle I suppose, but important. I don't think it's likely mind you, as Apple is generally a fairly enlightened company, but it would be foolish not to prepare for that chance. If nothing else, as you yourself pointed out, Apple isn't the sole decision maker with regards to iTMS's DRM, is it?
I think you'll allow that the RIAA would never allow such a music service with no DRM at all. Agreed?
Agreed, but with a caveat. We, as consumers and voters, are the real 900lb gorilla, but ONLY IF we stand up for ourselves. It is quite possible for us to force the issue, and in the very unlikely event that we did, the RIAA would have little choice in the matter.
I see FairPlay as, essentially, a token DRM that prevents people from just downloading from the iTMS and putting the song directly on Kazaa, but doesn't stop ordinary people from doing most of what they want with their music. We geeks are different; we have more different stuff we like to do with our music, and we understand what's going on better. But aside from transferring music to a non-iPod, non-CD-based portable player, I can't see what your average user would want to do with an iTMS track that they can't. And given that the iPod is the most popular player anyway, that takes some of the sting out of even that. (And yes, I know that DRM is far more encumbering to ordinary people than to serious pirates; I think this is aimed at "casual" sharers)
It is exactly those "casual" sharers whose rights need to be protected. Not their right to share, there isn't one, but their rights to fair use. These are the same users who won't know that they should back up their songs to Red Book CD. Some of these people are part of the infamous "cup holder" demographic.
Rights need to be protected in the most extreme circumstances. I hate what the KKK has to say, but I support their right to say it, as to say that they can't opens the door to a slippery slope, and before you know it I don't have the right to criticize the President's "energy policy".
You have to think in the long term. Yeah, DRM might not be much of a problem for you today, but just think how much it would suck if all of Shakespeare's works were locked up behind DRM and the DMCA. That's why we need to fight this.
I don't see anything in section 109 that says you get to keep any back-up copies you made after you sell the origional. Perhaps you could quote that section for me?
What I DO see is support for "First Sale", but that just means you have the right to sell a copy which you have legally obtained, NOT that you get to also keep a copy for yourself.
To my knowledge Sec 117 is the only section of USC 17 that allows for back-up copies at all (feel free to prove me wrong). Although it specifically says "computer program", it was referenced to by an RIAA lawyer in an interview I read a while back while describing what was legal to do with copyrighted songs and what wasn't. According to his interpretation, Sec 117 allows you to make "back-up" copies for time-, space, or media-shifting (copy CD for use in the car, copy LP to CD, rip to mp3, etc) as long as you retain ownership of the origional, but that these copies are the same as an archival copy of software in that it is for personal use and must be destroyed in the event of a transfer of ownership of the origional copy.
I guess you really didn't know, but yes, iTMS does allow this.
You're correct, I didn't know that, and that is pretty damned cool of Apple to do that. However, there is no guarantee that this will continue to be iTMS's policy, and thus my point is not invalidated.
My point about it being an exaggeration was, how would you get the files to the 8088 from a modern machine?
They were created on the 8088 in the first place? Perhaps you're too young to have dealt with this issue. I, on the other hand, have documents which I created and saved on my old 8088 that it would be pretty cool to have access to, but doing so is pretty much impossible. If you honestly think you aren't going to have the same problem with your current machine in 10-20 years, you are a fool.
And the fact that you couldn't be playing those files on iTunes on a machine that old in the first place, so if you have them there, you can't listen to them now, let alone if Apple suddenly decided to turn evil.
This statement only proves that you COMPLETELY missed my point, which was about future accessability, not trying to hack iTunes onto hopelessly obsolete technology.
Think about it like this: If Apple were to discontinue iTunes tomorrow, and MacOS XI were incompatible with the final version of iTunes, how would you access your iTunes files 10 years from now? You'd pretty much have to keep an OS X machine around and running and, more importantly, accessable, which in 10 years is likely going to be just as much of a PITA as it is for me to get to the files on my old 8088.
I don't think that scenario is likely, but it is possible. Yes, I'm deliberately ignoring the fact that iTMS currently allows you write those files to CD as standard Red Book music files because I don't think it's relevant to the discussion of DRM in general. There's a phrase popular among MBAs that you would do well to remember: "Past performance is no indication of future performance". Most of the time it's only used in regard to stock performance, but even a modicum of experience in Corporate America should prove to you that it applies to all facets of the business. Just because they allow it today doesn't mean they're going to allow it tomorrow.
How???? I still don't see how they can stop you from listening to your music if you have half an ounce of sense.
2 patches included in a "security patch" (that's how MS would do it, anyway, and there's no technical barrier to Apple doing it the same way): the first disables burning the files to CD, the second requires that iTunes phone home every arbitrary-amount-of-time or it shuts off access to the files.
So you think you could have negotiated a better deal with the RIAA?
No, and that's the problem.
The point isn't what you "should" be able to do with them. Of course we should be able to exercise full fair use rights with no hassle.
The point IS what we SHOULD be able to do with them. That's why they're called fair use RIGHTS.
The point is that allowing that would also allow sharing on Kazaa and friends with no hassle, and the RIAA don't want that--and, more importantly, it's illegal. The point is that it is different because it's digital, whether any of us like it or not.
Bullshit. Copyright infringement is illegal, period. Whether it's done digitally is irrelevant. it is NOT different because it's digital.
there's really nothing stopping you from legally removing the DRM from the songs by burning them to CD.
This just proves the lie above. If it's possible to legally remove the DRM and burn them to CD as regular Red Book files, then it's quite simple to re-rip them to share on Kazaa, and so effectively there is no difference between the current policy and distributing those files without DRM except the added expense to everyone (and by everyone I mean the RIAA members and Apple as well). In this case DRM needlessly inflates the price without creating any actual additional value for anyone, does nothing to stop the "bad guys", but rather punishes the "good guys", such as my wife, for whom an iPod (or any other mechanical music device) is basically useless since she would only use it when she's working out.
Copyright only matters when the actual reproduction occurs. A later change of ownership of the original media does not retroactively change the legality of a given copy.
...
Wrong.
USC 17, Ch 1, Sec 117:
it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.
If you sell or give away the origional your continued posession is no longer rightful, and your back-up copies must be destroyed. Failure to do so is an infringement of copyright.
In the next paragraph it says you may opt to sell your back-ups along with the origional rather than destroy them, but you may not retain them.
I always voted for Democrats in the past because I felt they had less influence from the religious right. However now I am so pissed off at Boxer & Feinstien and their support of these Hollywood extortionists that I will vote for whoever has the best chance of kicking them out of office.
Well said. It's like I've found my political twin.
if I rip and encode a cd and give you the resulting mp3s, that's illegal.
Right.
if I rip and encode a cd, keep the mp3s and give or sell you the CD, that's legal.
Wrong.
Fair use allows backup copies. When you give away or sell the origional copy, those mp3s are no longer backup copies, and therefor they are infringing.
It's extremely unlikely that you will ever get caught, but that doesn't make it legal.
I'll be perfectly honest that I support "pirating" music (though I've never done it) because *anything* that makes big record studios lose money is GOOD.
Piracy (in the modern sense) isn't punishment, it's support. By pirating and sharing those files you are increasing the mindshare owned by that product, which increases its popularity, and therefore its profitability. The "Record Industry" is largely a marketing operation, and you're doing their work for them for free. Not even for free, really, since at any time they can sue you, effectively making you pay them for the privilege of doing their work for them.
Hopefully you can see my point. It occured to me with regards to Microsoft, and I think it's easier illustrated in that context, but the same principle applies to any abusive copyright holder. Essentially the problem is: how do you break the monopoly stranglehold MS has on the software industry by giving their product away for free? You can't. If anyone can get the same software "everyone else is using" for free, why would they bother considering alternatives? By pirating MS Office you aren't "sticking it to the Man", you're actively perpetuating his regime.
Think about it.
If you want to affect change, the only way to do it is by supporting the bands/labels/companies that do things the way you think they should, and NOT supporting, in any way, the status quo. Don't be the "punk" who rails against the "evil corporations" while sucking down 2 packs of cigarettes a day.
I think logic is a foreign concept to them.
You think? I tutored several business majors when I was in college. I know!
Like a typical mac zealot, you've assumed that just because I've said something less than glowing about an Apple product, I must be out to bash Apple. Let me clear that up for you: I have nothing against Apple. I have the exact same things to say about any DRM scheme, iTMS just happens to be the topic of this thread.
Huh??? I don't know what you're smoking, but once you burn it to CD, it's a real, honest-to-goodness, Red Book CD, that is exactly like any audio CD you bought before DRM was more than a mad gleam in the RIAA's eye. No DRM there.
So, how do you get it to a non-DRM format without breaking the DRM? Is this something iTMS allows with their DRMed files?
OK, first off, your example of an 8088 is a serious exaggeration, and highly implausible besides. Secondly, while, again, I don't know how the authorization works, you can deauthorize a machine and move the files to another...which you can then authorize. But you can certainly burn them, as mentioned before, at which point you can listen to them anywhere.
OK, if it's such an exageration, how would you get the files from the 8088 to a modern machine? Where are you going to find an ISA optical network card? On the off chance that you do find one, where are you going to find DOS drivers for it? Alternatively, I suppose you could transfer them by sneakernet, but even if you have a 5.25" floppy drive you can hook up to your modern machine, where are you going to find a disk that hasn't totally decayed yet? Are you honestly naive enough to think that you won't have the same problem with your current machine in 20, 15, or even 10 years?
Feel free to substitute an equivalent Apple machine for the 8088 if it makes the excercise any easier.
no, they can't do that. They can't destroy your files. They can't even stop you from listening to them.
Clearly that is not true, and they've already demonstrated that. Right now, if I bought music from iTMS and then moved to, say, Canada, those files would become unplayable. There's no reason they couldn't cut them off similarly for any reason, and there are any number of ways they could do that, most of which are trivial.
IMHO it's just a matter of time before one of the online music services requires that, for example, your software has to phone home every 30 days or your access to the DRMed files will be cut off. I don't think it will be Apple, but only because it would go against their current corporate strategy. There certainly isn't any technical barrier to them doing so, and that will only be more true as DRM becomes embedded at the hardware level, which is, if you recall, what this article is all about.
But do you know what kind of legal wrangling Apple would have to go through to get people outside the US permission to use iTMS songs? There are plenty of countries that don't view copyright the same way we do, and if Apple let people there have the same access that people here do, you can bet the RIAA would pull the plug on the iTMS in a New York second*.
While I'm sure that's the case, it's still shitty, and serves as a taste of a possible future, one which will only be avoided if we stick up for ourselves. That is my point. My CDs work just fine where ever I go, and there's no reason my iTMS files should be any different. "It's different because it's digital" is bullshit.
Um, the MPAA is backing DRM as well, and that $10 dvd you just bought is going to support DRM.
I'm aware of that, thanks. That the MPAA continues to be stupid doesn't change my point: that the only way to actually curb piracy is to charge reasonable prices and trust people to do the right thing.
It does reaffirm my belief that Corporate America is run by idiots, however.
Continue pirating movies and music, it's good for the world.
That's just stupid. Piracy isn't punishment, it's support. Sharing increases mindshare, which is the goal of any modern marketing campaign. All you're doing is perpetuating the status quo.
Put skills on your resume, but the synopsis should go on your work history. That's the way I did it, and I've been working for more than 10 years. Note that my work history doc is quite long. It's just the resume itself that needs to be short. Think of it as a teaser.
And if any of the following are true, you will still be able to listed to your music:
* You burned a copy to CD (whether or not you re-ripped it--Oh horrors, quality loss!)
The copy you burned still has DRM, and ripping it to a DRM-less format is against the law.
* The DRM authorizing agent actually resides on your machine, rather than on some server of Apple's
Which works great as long as that's true, and you still have access to that machine. Of course, it really sucks when you have to somehow get your old 8088 on your fibre-optic network so you can have access to your old files.
* Someone cracks the DRM on the songs, allowing you to easily play them or extract a non-DRMed copy
Except, as already mentioned, that it's illegal to do so. Of course, that might not be a problem once it's impossible for you to run "untrusted" software.
In your eagerness to jump to Apple's defense you completely missed the point. Do I think Apple is likely to do something like this? No, but neither am I dumb enough to ignore the fact that they can.
Then again, wasn't there a story not to long ago about how iTMS tunes would mysteriously stop working when you took them out of North America?
Use of Napster forced the RIAA to respond. What legal method would have worked?
Perhaps you're too young to remember the early days of VHS, when a prerecorded movie cost $60-80. Guess what? Piracy was rampant. You could walk into any house and you'd find at least one shelf packed to overflowing with tapes the residents had copied rented movies onto, often 2-3 to a tape. You're not likely to see that now. A brand new movie only costs $15, and that quickly gets reduced to around $10. At that price nobody bothers to pirate and, shockingly, the studios still make money.
There's an important lesson for the RIAA in there, I think...
CDs ARE overpriced. It has nothing to do with being able to afford it, it's a simple equation of value vs. price. Consider:
I'm in Best Buy and I have a $20 bill I intend to spend on some entertainment. Which is a better value? A CD, with roughly one hour of music, of which I'm only actually interested in 20-30% (perhaps as high as 50%, if it's a greatest hits collection of one of my favorite bands, but in that case I probably have all those songs already)? Or a DVD, with roughly 2 hours of audio and video, plus assorted extras, of which I'm interested in probably 80-90%? Seems like a no-brainer to me, and since they're priced the same, that means the CD is overpriced. If I could get 2 CDs for my $20, I might actually have to stop and think about it.
I know this isn't the solution you're looking for, but...
Your resume should never be more than one page. The reason for this is that it will be photocopied and/or faxed. The staple you use to bind your pages together will be an annoyance to the person processing it, so it will be removed, and the pages will be seperated and lost.
Your resume should just highlight your qualifications and goals, with only a couple of references listed (company name, city, and phone number only). Think bullet points, and keep everything brief and to the point, because not only should it be one page only, but it should be in a 10-12pt font.
The first person at the company to look at your resume has probably already looked at 100+ other resumes. His eyes are bleary. He doesn't want to have to read a lot to find what he's looking for, he certainly doesn't want to have to squint to read it, and his thumb has a blister from the staple-remover. You want to make this guy happy, because he is the one who decides which resumes are going to be forwarded on to the person who does the interviews.
Certainly, you should have a detailed work history, but it should be a seperate document, and there should be a note at the bottom of your resume saying that it is available upon request. A page of references (3 personal, 3 educational, and at least 3 professional) is probably a good idea as well. But, again, that should be a seperate document, available upon request.
This advice was given to me years ago by a guy who had worked in HR for many years, and it has served me well. His final tip, forget the special colored paper. The person making the final hiring decision will never see it, but they might notice that the third generation copy they have looks especially crappy. Use plain white paper and avoid this situation.