And not to nitpick even further, but if there is one thing Outlook is, it is responsive.
Are you kidding? The work machines use Outlook and they're incredibly slow. These desktops are less than 12 months old. Here are the typical daily slowdowns.
I have local-side filters to sort email from mailing lists. When a mail arrives, the entire interface locks up while Outlook sorts it! I can be typing a letter and have it lockup for almost 10 seconds while Outlook gets its act together.
In the morning when I start Outlook (forced logouts overnight) I can often have 100+ mails waiting to be sorted. Takes at least 5 minutes during which time Outlook is unresponsive.
Instantiating a new e-mail has noticeable lag. Presumably because the default settings use Word for the editor.
Finding a mail in my 15,000+ Unsorted folder takes upwards of 5 minutes. This isn't exactly a large folder. On my home computer (Linux with Evolution) I have 50,000+ folders and finding an e-mail is faster by an order of magnitude (mere seconds). And I used to complain that Evolution was slow compared to mutt!
Even viewing that 15,000+ Unsorted folder is slow. The interface doesn't paint properly for at least 5 seconds. Then when it does paint, you can see it struggling to fill the list.
Printing has a 10 second delay. Hit print and wait... and wait... and wait... oh, there's the "I'm printing" dialog. Great.
Any HTML infested e-mail causes an interface lockup for a second or two. It's even better if the HTML references an offsite image, because then it throws the proxy authentication dialog and you must respond before Outlook will work again. Bloody annoying when you're arrow keying through a folder.
Now I'm sure somebody will respond with "that doesn't happen for me, your desktop must not be configured properly". This is a large government department - I'm talking several 10s of 1000s of identical Windows desktops - so if they can't get it right then what hope is there for the average home user?
Is this a joke? What happened to your Open Source Religion? If just anybody can offer a patch for linux, and you trust THEM, why won't you trust someone else offering a patch for Windoze? A bit hypocritical, don't you think?
Anybody can offer a patch but the project maintainer still has to accept it. I can't imagine many maintainers just blindly applying random patches from anonymous donors. They'll read the patch first, talk about it with the donor, probably modify it a bit, then apply it, and it'll be tested by the "bleeding edge" community well before the patched version hits the main distros.
That's not to say the process is perfect, but it's not as bad as my having to trust "anybody". I trust the process. There are lots of people in the process. All of them would need to be crooked and/or incompetent for the process to fail. It's a complete fantasy that "anybody" can update my Linux box.
Please enlighten me? Why GPL Java?
Java is pretty good right now.
A GPL Java might become a standard part of the Linux desktop (really GNOME/KDE desktop). Right now it doesn't even rate on the meter.
I can appreciate Sun's position. They want to avoid a fork and the current Java license was a good attempt. Unfortunately it's too restrictive for most Linux distros. Oh sure, I can install a free JVM like Kaffe or Jikes but nobody seriously thinks they're "there yet". And the majority of value in Java isn't the language or the JVM. The value is in the class libraries. The free class libraries definitely aren't there yet.
So I'm on Debian and I can't install a decent Java environment from the primary apt archives (only from third party apt sources). And if it's not part of the standard distribution then nobody is going to target it for their applications. I see a lot of enthusiasm for Java anyway, but it's mostly in the webspace where people are expected to be intelligent enough to download and install Sun's J2SE by themselves. Java isn't "integrated" with Linux like Perl or Python or Bash has been integrated. An open source J2SE would allow it to be a standard part of Linux, alongside Perl and Python. It doesn't have to be Sun's J2SE either, but none of the other J2SE implementations look like they'll be finished this decade, so Sun's J2SE is the only practical choice.
Think of it this way. Nobody seriously thinks that the majority of apps for a future version of GNOME will be written in C. It's hard to write C code. You have to do your own memory management. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of effort. Even the "flagship" GNOME applications like RhythmBox and Galeon have their fair share of memory leaks and segmentation faults. GNOME needs a framework and language for writing simple apps. Stuff like image viewers and music players and cheque-book balancers. Stuff that isn't performance critical. Take a look at the current apps being written for MONO, like Muine. They're written in C# and use the Sharp framework but the performance is really good. Because modern apps don't do a lot. A modern application is just glue between the underlying libraries and objects. An interpreted language like C# is fine for that.
So it must really burn Sun's boots that there is a good chance that a future version of GNOME will promote MONO for writing Linux desktop applications. Sun knows that would be the death blow for Java on the desktop. Linux and Microsoft in arms against Java, who would have imagined that would ever happen! It's in Sun's best interest to ensure that Java is the preferred applications language for the GNOME desktop. But that's never going to happen with the current license.
Who fucking cares? For the cost of one of your "super-reliable" Suns, I can run a dozen PCs -- and if one, or even two fail, I can -- *gasp* -- simply replace them.
I find that hard to believe. I can buy a fully equipped SunFire V240 for $10k Australian (about $7k US). That's multiple disks, multiple CPUs, multiple power supplies, multiple gigabit ethernet, etc. Any single component can release blue smoke and the system won't care. I can hotswap just about everything. This isn't white box territory btw. These are 15000RPM Ultra160 drives, quad gigabit Ethernet, and an industrial strength case you could parachute drop onto site.
An equivalent x86 computer from a real vendor like IBM or HP runs around the same price (in fact sometimes IBM and HP are more expensive for the same performance). You could get slightly cheaper x86 systems (around $6k) by going to Dell but I wouldn't touch a Dell on a dare. You could go for whiteboxes - I could do an equivalent whitebox system for around $3k - but then you're definitely getting what you paid for.
I certainly don't buy your argument that you could get *12* whiteboxes for the price of one decent Sun box. The price ratio isn't that bad. My impression is that you have only ever bought personal computers for home use from a local whitebox supplier because Sun gear is certainly priced competitively for the corporate server market.
Gates is only the richest man in the world, with Steve, Paul and others not too far behind.
They didn't get to be that way by accident.
I disagree. I think they entirely did get to be that way by accident. It's an Accidental
Empire, in fact.
Look at it this way. PCs came out in the 70s. They were hobbyist things, built by
amateurs in their basements and garages. The big computing companies treated PCs with
contempt. They didn't see the money to be made. So 2-person coops like Apple managed to make
millions while nobody was noticing. Even when Apple made their first "big" PC - the Apple II
- it was a small organisation but it still raked in billions.
IBM notices that money is being made in PCs, so they want a piece of the action, but
they're still not "getting it". They don't understand that PCs are more than a fad, or a
thing for a home hobbyist. They think the real money is in the corporate world (and it is)
but they think the corporate model will always be mainframes + dumb terminals. Where do PCs
fit in? Maybe small businesses, but surely that's all.
So the IBM PC is a neglected project. It gets limited time, limited budget, lesser
designers, inferior managers, and so on. IBM didn't even put the effort into the IBM-PC
they'd put into tape drives like the 3490. The PC was still a joke to them. They weren't
serious about it.
So because IBM's not all that serious they're looking around to license a third party PC
OS. Something cheap, already written, because almost certainly it'll be discarded in a
year's time, right? That's what happens with all the other PC OSs back then. PCs have a
short life time. Back then a PC was like a console today; you used it for a year or two then
you bought a completely new one with new software. And IBM doesn't have enough in-house
experience to write anything as small and featureless as a PC OS. They identify the 800lb
gorilla of the day, CP/M, and try to get a license for that. But due to NDAs and one spooked
wife of a CEO, that falls through.
Up until now we're running on facts, but now we're forced to speculate a bit. The manager
of the IBM-PC project whinges to his boss that they can't license a PC OS from anybody. He
probably even asks for money to fund an in-house project to write their own IBM-PC OS. The
IBM CEO is on the same charity committee as Bill Gates mum (he is from a fairly wealthy
family to begin with). The conversation probably drifts around to kids and Bill Gates mum
mentions something about her son and his fledgling PC software company. Bingo. The IBM CEO
asks to get in contact with Bill and this is where things get interesting.
Bill sees an opportunity and although he doesn't have a PC OS he knows where to get one in a hurry. He tells IBM that he can deliver and IBM is desperate (they're behind schedule and they still haven't secured a third party OS). IBM still isn't treating this project very seriously though, so they don't try and secure ownership of the PC OS. They just license the OS from Microsoft. That's the mistake. That's the accident right there. That's where IBM turned Microsoft from a miniscule company (smaller than Apple) into the world's largest and richest software company.
For some unfathomable reason the IBM-PC is wildly successful. Probably a mixture of reasons. It was the right time; PCs were rapidly being adopted by small to medium businesses. It was the right price; not too cheap so as to say "I'm a toy" but not too expensive so as to push customers towards Apple. It had IBM's name on it and all the excellent aspects of purchasing from IBM; worldwide support, plenty of addons, plenty of upgrade opportunities.
Bill Gates was lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time, and had the right product (sort of). He was also lucky enough that the IBM-PC exploded in popularity and that IBM didn't foresee that happening and that the contract with IBM allowed Bill to continue selling MS-DOS. MS-DOS became th
Heres my quote "the content industry doesn't care if you can't build your own player". Where did I say that the content industry doesn't care about you making your own player??
Uhh, right there in that quote.
Look sonny, the Internet is an international net so I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt and assume that English isn't your native language. Or perhaps you are a product of the American public education system. Either way, whatever brilliant rebuttal you think you have just delivered has been entirely lost on me.
But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people [engineers] when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved.
As others have pointed out, Jack is fibbing. The policy is aimed at restricting all 284.1 million people. The policy is aimed at helping only 100,000 film industry workers. So it's not a case of 284million versus 100,000. It's more a case of 100,000 film industry workers versus 100,000 engineers. Jack is falsely claiming the entire 284 million person user population as the beneficiaries of the legislation, when in reality it's the MPAA that is the beneficiary.
In fact, let's be even more specific. The DMCA doesn't have any effect on most of those 284 million people. They can't build CSS decrypters anyway. So in fact, the DMCA is specifically targetted exactly at those 100,000 engineers. So in reality that law harms 100,000 people and helps... 8 rich white men? Oh look, now the false argument is balanced in my favour instead of Jack's. Wasn't that easy.
But of course, argument by numbers is false, because it doesn't matter how many people are harmed if the law is unfair.
Your being foolish, you are attributing a belief to me that I simply do not hold. My comments were in reference to Valenti's responses. I agree that it would be nice to take my laptop running Linux on a plane to watch DVDs on. My point is that Valenti will argue that 99% of the population can get by with the alternatives (Windows/portable players/etc.) why can't techies?
If you repeat Jack's arguments then you might try to act less surprised when people think that you're making them. You certainly didn't say "this is Jack's argument and I don't believe it has merit" when you said "no congress-criter is going to buy my argument". I'm pretty sure Jack never used the word "congress-criter".
No the point is that the distribution of the player is illegal because we as the tech community have been inadequate at communicating our arguments in the language of those that make the laws.
Nonsense. Your foolish claim suggests the only dissenting opinions are coming out of Slashdot and MIT. The DMCA struck a nerve with all sorts of legal and libertarian groups. The EFF made a big stink over it and the EFF has lawyers and lobbyists. They have already made the directed arguments towards "congress-criters" that you claim have not been made.
I have never claimed that politicians are level headed.
Perhaps not, but you did characterise the Linux guys as "waaah waaah I want you to give me stuff for free" and you characterised the politicians as requiring sound economic and liberal reasons. How about we turn that around. How about we say that the Linux guys are using sound logical reasoning and the politicians just need some bribe-money, I mean "campaign donations", to sway their opinion. Do you see the obvious problem with using character assassination to make your argument?
In the orchard of bad analogies, yours is far worse.
I think they're both awful, but then again, I'm not a big fan of analogies. I don't think they do anything except let anal retentive people go on and on about specifics.
Lets' break it down to specifics, shall we?:
Oh please, let's not.
Whining about your ability to create your own tool is absurd. You stand and the shoulders of all the others who came before you, and the intellectual property they choose to share with you. If the movie content provider doesn't want to share, so be it.
I really do find it funny that the "MPAA is right" crowd characterise all dissenting opinion as "whining". How about I characterise you as "shilling" for the MPAA? That way, we can both have a more productive argument as we quickly descend into ever greater rhetoric.
As to the concept of the MPAA sharing their intellectual property. We don't want their property. We want them to stop taking away our property.
Read my entire post, my point is the content industry doesn't care if you can't build your own player.
They seem to care enough to stop me from building my own player. It seems they will sue people who distribute DVD decoders (see MPAA vs 2600) or build DVD decoders (MPAA vs Jon). So I think your claim that they "don't care" if I cannot build a player is entirely false. They've gone to incredible efforts to make sure that I cannot build a player. That seems like a lot of effort, all that legal legwork and bribing the right politicians to make sure I cannot build a player, if as you claim they do not care. The more reasonable explanation is that they care very much.
Didn't you notice Velenti's argument? Basically whenever the issue came up he countered with something like "so what, buy a player". With $20 DVD players around, no congress-criter is going to buy your argument.
You are being foolish. I'm on an aeroplane. I have my laptop with me and a DVD movie. You're telling me I should lug around a $20 hi-fi DVD player and the television to go with it instead of using Totem on my laptop? Be realistic.
Even ignoring the logistic impossibility of your suggestion, there is a deeper problem here that seems to be beyond the comprehension of literalists such as yourself. The MPAA has had the laws written such that is illegal for any entity to build a DVD player except those entities that the MPAA approves. This wasn't done with copyright, or patent, or trade secret. The MPAA invented a new law called the DMCA and they are abusing that law to establish a cartel. Yet another way for the MPAA to further increase their power. You should be raging against the machine, instead of bleating like a well-trained consumer.
They WILL however, buy legal and economic arguments.
Throw around terms like fair use and the constitution and you have a much better chance at getting heard than saying "ohhhh noooo I can't build my own player whaaaaaa".
I think the point is entirely that the player has already been built (for example, Totem) but the "congress-criters" have made it illegal to use or distribute afore-mentioned player.
But your amusing portrayal of the debate as being between crying babies and level-headed "congress-criters" has certainly made up for the lack of merit in your argument. Very entertaining.
For a jigsaw puzzle, this is great. For a useful operating system, not so much.
Sure they're both pretty in the end, but it's the middle that both look like crap.
You're seeing the glass as half empty. Adopt the more positive attitude. You're watching the development process. You are enjoying ringside seats where you can watch Linux (really GNOME, KDE, X, Ooo,...) being created. So you see the mess, the clutter, the "crap" that goes into a development process. The same thing goes on at Microsoft and Apple, you just don't see it!
You throw your hands up in disgust and go "I don't want that, I just want the final product". Well, sure, come back in 2-3 years time when the next release is ready. But the rest of us are happy that we can use whatever is ready today, rather than having to wait until it is completed. Because the reality is, even though it is half finished it most certainly is useful... at least to some people.
The content industry doesn't HAVE to sell anything to geeks.
It's not about the content industry selling to geeks. That's not the issue. The issue is that the content industry is preventing geeks from building their own players.
That you can't see that's a problem is another problem in its own right.
It's wrong to try and end-run someone's encryption, no matter how easy it is to do.
It's illegal in some countries, but I don't think it's wrong. This is entirely the crux of the argument.
It's easy to pick fruit from a neighbors tree if their yard has no fence; that doesn't make the fruit yours.
That's a terrible analogy. A better one would be it's your tree, in your backyard, and you gave it fertiliser and watered it, with your own money and effort, but the MPAA won't let you eat the fruit unless you use an MPAA-approved knife to cut the fruit and the MPAA-approved knife is a piece of shit Ginso thing that constantly breaks and costs you $249 per year in repair costs.
And that's still a bad analogy but it's a damn sight better than yours.
On a more serious note: This question wouldn't arise if KDE people didn't insist on prefixing EVERYTHING with "K." Of course, same goes for GNOME folks prefixing everything with "G." Why is this necessary?
Tradition.
The C language doesn't have namespaces so you ran the risk of two (or more) libraries having the same name for a symbol. Of course, this would stop you from linking against both libraries. To avoid these so-called "conflicts" the library designers would prefix all their symbols with a short extension. So for example, the X11 symbols would have the "X" prefix and all OpenGL symbols use "gl"
Unfortunately this tradition has extended out into program names. The most obvious example was from the X11 designers who stuck "x" in front of nearly everything. Other platforms did similar things, eg, the "win" prefix on Windows and the "mac" prefix on Macintosh. So you have WinMAME, MacMAME, WinZIP, WinWord, and so on.
The KDE people repeated the tradition by using the prefix "k" and the GNOME people responded with the prefix "g". But just sticking the prefix at the front is not very clever so it's a UNIX tradition to make the prefix clever. So "Klever" would be a good choice. And "Kontact" is pretty good too. But "KWord" is not very clever.
But at the end of the day the user couldn't give a crap about tradition or the programmer trying to be clever. So more and more KDE/GNOME programs are choosing names which actually mean something. This is both good and bad. It's good because it makes for a better "personal computer" feel to KDE/GNOME. It's bad because we're losing one of the in-jokes that UNIX has had for almost 30 years.
I don't mean to undermine what the author did, but what's the point of being able to do so? I mean, you have to pull the Firmware from a Mac/Wintel machine in the first place, and even when you get it updated, you still can't actually use the iTunes Music Store on Linux to take advantage of any of the new features in the Firmware. It's a cool hack, but a useless one at that.
It's not useless. It's another piece of the puzzle. This guy works out how to upload the firmware. Another guy worked out how to unlock his downloaded songs. Another guy worked out how to download and play the previews from the iTunes Music Store. Another guy worked out how to upload songs to his iPod. You highlight that obtaining the firmware requires Windows or MacOS. So that means getting the firmware purely with Linux is the next piece of the puzzle.
You remind me a little bit of the people who said the same thing about Linux back in the early 90s. "It doesn't have SCSI". "It doesn't have networking". "What's the point, without the feature I need it's useless". Ok, maybe it was useless to them at that time. But Linux isn't useless now. You keep adding a piece at a time until the entire solution is there.
Close. Copyright is GOOD when protecting music, as well.
Though I don't think "protect" is exactly the right word.
I think you'd find Linux users are more in tune with copyright than the general populace. I'm not saying that all Linux users are goody two shoes. I'm saying that as a percentage, the Linux people I know are far more "honest" than Windows or MacOS users. I know that I don't download MP3s or "steal" music. I know that a heap of friends who use Windows and MacOS are copying like crazy.
I think your confusion is over the details. I can't say for certain, but if pressed to guess I would say that most Slashdotters think copyright is good, that patents are bad (or at least given out too easily), that the length of copyright is far too long, and that certain "additional" laws like the DMCA are bad, wrong, immoral, and maybe evil. Wouldn't this be a good selection for one of those Slashdot polls?
Jobs is generally the guy Linux zealots love to hate (he was the cool kid in school).
No, I hate Jobs because he made Wozniak cry. Then I cried. Then Maggie laughed. She's such a little trooper.
From reading folklore.org, plus other material from early 80s Apple developers, I get the strong impression that Jobs is a bit of a dick. Though nobody ever comes right out and says that, of course.
Plus he wore a bow tie in the 80s. You've got to hate him for that.
Oh, there's not a "Free as in gimme gimme i deserve it" DVD player for linux.
It's more like there's not a "Free as in I wrote it but Jack Valenti won't let me give it to my friends unless I pay Jack lots of money" DVD player for Linux.
You're an idiot, and I'm an idiot for responding to you, but the moderators are even bigger idiots for moderating you up to +5. What's with the "Linux users are freeloaders" nonsense on Slashdot lately? And why does it always get moderated into the stratosphere? The point about having Linux is you're not infringing copyright. You're allowed to make copies of Linux software. Compare this against all the pirates using Windows; how many of them actually paid for Windows XP and Office XP.
Linux users do not have a God or country given right to watch American Wedding on their Linux box.
And the DVDCCA does not have a God or country given right to prevent me from watching American Wedding on my Linux computer.
Let's not forget that copyrights and patents are *government* granted rights and DVDCSS does not infringe on either. So the only thing going for the DVDCCA is the DMCA and the details are murky in this particular situation.
So be careful with that double-edged sword, because it cuts both ways.
Linux users need to give up their technology that doesn't work correctly and use that which does.
The Linux DVD-playing technology works really well. It's the legality that is dubious. Isn't that always the way, the law holding technology back. When the revolution comes, I swear the lawyers will be the first up against the wall.
Maybe it's just because I'm not a zealot, but I don't see how that interview makes Valenti look like an idiot. The interviewer doesn't even ask him about fair-use, or any other non-technical questions, he just wants to know why he can't watch DVD's under Linux. Valenti replies that he doesn't know why no one makes a licensed DVD player for Linux, but there must be a good reason. The simple fact is that he's right. Why don't all the bitchers and whiners go out and write a licensed DVD player for Linux and SELL it it? There's such a big market for it, and it should be trivial to write, right?
Couple of reasons.
Why should I pay for a decoder when I know it is only 6 lines of perl code, I already have a faster working version written in C, and it's an artificial construct anyway? I mean, I pay for the computer, I pay for the DVD player, I pay for the disc, but those are all tangible things. I even pay for a license to use the data on the disc because that's copyrighted material and one thing that GNU/Linux beats into your skull is respect for copyright and licenses. But why should I pay for a decoder? I know it's trivial and I've already got one and I don't need another one.
I think the DVDCCA requires CSS decoders to be closed source. No thanks. Been there. Done that. Not going down that path again. I'm too pragmatic to get tied into binary single-platform closed source non-free software again.
Most likely the company won't just sell the decoder for 10c (which is more than it's worth). They will want to bundle their own DVD player with it that's closed source, only available for the x86 platform, and uses Motif. No thanks. I want to use *my* player (Totem) and *my* platform (PPC). I don't want to be tied to somebody elses technology choices because of the DVDCCA.
One of the great things about Linux is you don't need to keep track of licenses and per-seat royalties. If you have ever worked in a corporate environment with licensing software you will know what I'm talking about. It's hell! Once you start needing CSS decoder licenses then that's going to happen to Linux too. No bloody way. That's why I like Debian; the Debian team puts the effort in so I don't need to worry about licensing.
Death by a thousand cuts. Right now it's just DVD and maybe it'll be "cheap" at $29.99 (this week only, free steak knives). Then it'll be $25 for an MP3 player, then $16 for a Real player, then $28 for a Quicktime player. Pretty soon my fully equipped Linux box will cost me $1000 in licensing fees. You're not even getting software for your money, just a license to use somebody elses algorithm. How idiotic! I don't want Linux to be whittled away "$5 here, $5 there". That's one of the quickest ways to make Linux TCO shoot through the roof, plus have all the hassle of contacting dozens of companies to collect all of the licenses.
To stem the imminent replies of "well if you don't like it, don't watch DVDs" and "you have to play by the DVDCCA's rules because DVD is their technology". No freaking way. My country doesn't allow that sort of thing to happen. It's anti competitive vendor lock-in. CSS isn't patented and there's no DMCA where I live (yet) so I have the legal right to choose any vendor I want for CSS decoders. I choose the open-source royalty-free CSS decoder.
At the risk of getting flamebait/troll all over my good karma, I think it was unfortunate that the interviewer chose to browbeat Valenti with technical questions and focus on a single side effect of the core issue that Valenti could not be expected to be an expert on (the DVD situation on Linux). Had he stuck to the more general issues, like the fact that the behavior of legally purchased hardware is not entirely under the owner's control, he might have obtained more coherent answers that reveal more about Valenti's position, rather than cheapen the anti-DMCA camp by appearing to indulge in personal attacks.
Hrm, I sort of agree and disagree.
I agree it would have been good (though not necessarily better) to have asked questions about how the laws and technology hurdles are harming future advancements in the science of television and video because it's effectively killing the hobbyist market. Radio, Personal Computers, and Television were all invented by hobbyists. The Internet was invented by govt-funded scientists but many of the advancements in the application space were from small teams of hobbyists.
However I disagree that the browbeating was unfortunate. Jack Valenti learnt that 2 million people are being obstructed by these laws. He didn't even know that! I find it a bit hard to believe he didn't know that, but I think it's brilliant that he definitely knows it now. For somebody to learn something they didn't know before is the entire point of dialogue. Look at the start of the interview and Jack thinks the laws only effect a handful of engineers doing a few abnormal things (building HDTV sets). At the end you can see his worldview has been toppled; he's seeing things from a new perspective.
Whether that makes any difference, who can say. I find it interesting that Jack thinks the broadcast flag doesn't effect home users, who can make copies freely for personal use, but prevents Internet distribution of that material. From what I have learnt it's the exact opposite. The flag is easily stripped out (eg, by decoding and then reencoding) but home users constantly get tripped up by the stupidity of it all. I've been bit by Macrovision more times than I care to remember by doing 100% legit stuff. But Macrovision defeaters cost $15 at the local electronics store. So it harms the normal user who doesn't know any better and barely hinders the experienced "thief". I don't see the broadcast flag as being anything other than a modern day Macrovision.
Sit there and complain about it, but the reason you're able to do things like read news for free online, perform fast google searches, and even use some software without paying for it is because companies pay for these services with advertisements. Remove the advertisements and you can kiss all of this goodbye. I'm not saying we should support the more obnoxious approaches to advertising, but our demand for "free software" and "free services" requires that the people running them find a way to make a living. Obviously I'm not a supporter of spam, I'm talking about something entirely different here. We live in a material world and I am a material girl...or boy.
I pay for my Internet connection. It's not free. The idea of paying for a service is not a problem here. And the "free" in "free software" refers to various freedoms, not the price. I've paid several $1000s over the years for "free" software.
But the popup advertising model is based on a "here, the content is free, now how do I make money?" mentality. It's stupid because they're starting on the backfoot. I've already got the content. They're crossing their fingers that I also click on the ad and generate some revenue. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
There are plenty of other solutions. Sites could work out a partnership with ISPs; if you provide content, you get paid by the ISP, funded by content "consumers" like myself. Or you could go like Salon; subscription model, or watch an ad in advance. I don't find either of Salon's solutions offensive (strangely enough).
You believe that the reason we're able to do things like "read news for free online" is because of advertising, and if we block all the advertising then the news goes away. Fine. I don't care. The web was much better back when it wasn't infested with spam, porn ads, and popup crap. I personally believe that companies will find other revenue, most likely pay-for-view or subscription models, and the content will not go away. But hey, we'll never know until we block all the ads and effect a change.
Yes, that's it. It's all a result of the RIAA/MPAA/corporate media evil propaganda machine. It's simply inconceivable that somebody might actually hold an opinion on this matter that is contrary to yours.
Don't be an ass.
Hey, you started it, man. Try mulling over the notion that there might be smart people out there who think you're wrong on this. Try considering for just a fraction of second that you might actually be mistaken.
For god's sake, consider for just a moment that you might be mistaken.
I didn't call you an ass because you disagreed with me.
I called you an ass because you had no basis for your accusation.
Now you have repeated the same accusation. So you're still an ass.
This is another case of OSS people saying, "I gave my stuff away for free... now it's not fair." To this I say, sorry kids. You gave it away for free. You're not entitled to money or acknowledgement of any kind.
Just to make it very clear, Pamela Jones has never written any OSS code so she couldn't have given any "stuff away". Let's wait for Linus or Alan or RMS to make a similar statement before making generalisations about "OSS people".
Then you won't have any difficulty naming a single situation where it is illegal. If you say the word "contract" or "treason" then you lose.
And reverse engineering things that you want for your platform when the people who produced them do not want them reverse-engineered is just stupid. It's shooting yourself in the foot.
Pandering to the self-interest of a faceless corporation is stupid. Throwing away your rights to increase their profits is stupid. Exchanging your legal rights for the the short-term benefit of downloadable music is stupid.
Using your paid-for equipment and your paid-for data as you see fit, in accordance with the laws of the land, is not stupid. The only truly stupid thing here is the person who says "hey, don't do what you're allowed to do, because Apple might go away". Tough titties. Apple can't buy the law with shiny toys unless you let them.
Yes, that's it. It's all a result of the RIAA/MPAA/corporate media evil propaganda machine. It's simply inconceivable that somebody might actually hold an opinion on this matter that is contrary to yours.
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Are you kidding? The work machines use Outlook and they're incredibly slow. These desktops are less than 12 months old. Here are the typical daily slowdowns.
I have local-side filters to sort email from mailing lists. When a mail arrives, the entire interface locks up while Outlook sorts it! I can be typing a letter and have it lockup for almost 10 seconds while Outlook gets its act together.
In the morning when I start Outlook (forced logouts overnight) I can often have 100+ mails waiting to be sorted. Takes at least 5 minutes during which time Outlook is unresponsive.
Instantiating a new e-mail has noticeable lag. Presumably because the default settings use Word for the editor.
Finding a mail in my 15,000+ Unsorted folder takes upwards of 5 minutes. This isn't exactly a large folder. On my home computer (Linux with Evolution) I have 50,000+ folders and finding an e-mail is faster by an order of magnitude (mere seconds). And I used to complain that Evolution was slow compared to mutt!
Even viewing that 15,000+ Unsorted folder is slow. The interface doesn't paint properly for at least 5 seconds. Then when it does paint, you can see it struggling to fill the list.
Printing has a 10 second delay. Hit print and wait... and wait... and wait... oh, there's the "I'm printing" dialog. Great.
Any HTML infested e-mail causes an interface lockup for a second or two. It's even better if the HTML references an offsite image, because then it throws the proxy authentication dialog and you must respond before Outlook will work again. Bloody annoying when you're arrow keying through a folder.
Now I'm sure somebody will respond with "that doesn't happen for me, your desktop must not be configured properly". This is a large government department - I'm talking several 10s of 1000s of identical Windows desktops - so if they can't get it right then what hope is there for the average home user?
Anybody can offer a patch but the project maintainer still has to accept it. I can't imagine many maintainers just blindly applying random patches from anonymous donors. They'll read the patch first, talk about it with the donor, probably modify it a bit, then apply it, and it'll be tested by the "bleeding edge" community well before the patched version hits the main distros.
That's not to say the process is perfect, but it's not as bad as my having to trust "anybody". I trust the process. There are lots of people in the process. All of them would need to be crooked and/or incompetent for the process to fail. It's a complete fantasy that "anybody" can update my Linux box.
A GPL Java might become a standard part of the Linux desktop (really GNOME/KDE desktop). Right now it doesn't even rate on the meter.
I can appreciate Sun's position. They want to avoid a fork and the current Java license was a good attempt. Unfortunately it's too restrictive for most Linux distros. Oh sure, I can install a free JVM like Kaffe or Jikes but nobody seriously thinks they're "there yet". And the majority of value in Java isn't the language or the JVM. The value is in the class libraries. The free class libraries definitely aren't there yet.
So I'm on Debian and I can't install a decent Java environment from the primary apt archives (only from third party apt sources). And if it's not part of the standard distribution then nobody is going to target it for their applications. I see a lot of enthusiasm for Java anyway, but it's mostly in the webspace where people are expected to be intelligent enough to download and install Sun's J2SE by themselves. Java isn't "integrated" with Linux like Perl or Python or Bash has been integrated. An open source J2SE would allow it to be a standard part of Linux, alongside Perl and Python. It doesn't have to be Sun's J2SE either, but none of the other J2SE implementations look like they'll be finished this decade, so Sun's J2SE is the only practical choice.
Think of it this way. Nobody seriously thinks that the majority of apps for a future version of GNOME will be written in C. It's hard to write C code. You have to do your own memory management. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of effort. Even the "flagship" GNOME applications like RhythmBox and Galeon have their fair share of memory leaks and segmentation faults. GNOME needs a framework and language for writing simple apps. Stuff like image viewers and music players and cheque-book balancers. Stuff that isn't performance critical. Take a look at the current apps being written for MONO, like Muine. They're written in C# and use the Sharp framework but the performance is really good. Because modern apps don't do a lot. A modern application is just glue between the underlying libraries and objects. An interpreted language like C# is fine for that.
So it must really burn Sun's boots that there is a good chance that a future version of GNOME will promote MONO for writing Linux desktop applications. Sun knows that would be the death blow for Java on the desktop. Linux and Microsoft in arms against Java, who would have imagined that would ever happen! It's in Sun's best interest to ensure that Java is the preferred applications language for the GNOME desktop. But that's never going to happen with the current license.
I find that hard to believe. I can buy a fully equipped SunFire V240 for $10k Australian (about $7k US). That's multiple disks, multiple CPUs, multiple power supplies, multiple gigabit ethernet, etc. Any single component can release blue smoke and the system won't care. I can hotswap just about everything. This isn't white box territory btw. These are 15000RPM Ultra160 drives, quad gigabit Ethernet, and an industrial strength case you could parachute drop onto site.
An equivalent x86 computer from a real vendor like IBM or HP runs around the same price (in fact sometimes IBM and HP are more expensive for the same performance). You could get slightly cheaper x86 systems (around $6k) by going to Dell but I wouldn't touch a Dell on a dare. You could go for whiteboxes - I could do an equivalent whitebox system for around $3k - but then you're definitely getting what you paid for.
I certainly don't buy your argument that you could get *12* whiteboxes for the price of one decent Sun box. The price ratio isn't that bad. My impression is that you have only ever bought personal computers for home use from a local whitebox supplier because Sun gear is certainly priced competitively for the corporate server market.
I disagree. I think they entirely did get to be that way by accident. It's an Accidental Empire, in fact.
Look at it this way. PCs came out in the 70s. They were hobbyist things, built by amateurs in their basements and garages. The big computing companies treated PCs with contempt. They didn't see the money to be made. So 2-person coops like Apple managed to make millions while nobody was noticing. Even when Apple made their first "big" PC - the Apple II - it was a small organisation but it still raked in billions.
IBM notices that money is being made in PCs, so they want a piece of the action, but they're still not "getting it". They don't understand that PCs are more than a fad, or a thing for a home hobbyist. They think the real money is in the corporate world (and it is) but they think the corporate model will always be mainframes + dumb terminals. Where do PCs fit in? Maybe small businesses, but surely that's all.
So the IBM PC is a neglected project. It gets limited time, limited budget, lesser designers, inferior managers, and so on. IBM didn't even put the effort into the IBM-PC they'd put into tape drives like the 3490. The PC was still a joke to them. They weren't serious about it.
So because IBM's not all that serious they're looking around to license a third party PC OS. Something cheap, already written, because almost certainly it'll be discarded in a year's time, right? That's what happens with all the other PC OSs back then. PCs have a short life time. Back then a PC was like a console today; you used it for a year or two then you bought a completely new one with new software. And IBM doesn't have enough in-house experience to write anything as small and featureless as a PC OS. They identify the 800lb gorilla of the day, CP/M, and try to get a license for that. But due to NDAs and one spooked wife of a CEO, that falls through.
Up until now we're running on facts, but now we're forced to speculate a bit. The manager of the IBM-PC project whinges to his boss that they can't license a PC OS from anybody. He probably even asks for money to fund an in-house project to write their own IBM-PC OS. The IBM CEO is on the same charity committee as Bill Gates mum (he is from a fairly wealthy family to begin with). The conversation probably drifts around to kids and Bill Gates mum mentions something about her son and his fledgling PC software company. Bingo. The IBM CEO asks to get in contact with Bill and this is where things get interesting.
Bill sees an opportunity and although he doesn't have a PC OS he knows where to get one in a hurry. He tells IBM that he can deliver and IBM is desperate (they're behind schedule and they still haven't secured a third party OS). IBM still isn't treating this project very seriously though, so they don't try and secure ownership of the PC OS. They just license the OS from Microsoft. That's the mistake. That's the accident right there. That's where IBM turned Microsoft from a miniscule company (smaller than Apple) into the world's largest and richest software company.
For some unfathomable reason the IBM-PC is wildly successful. Probably a mixture of reasons. It was the right time; PCs were rapidly being adopted by small to medium businesses. It was the right price; not too cheap so as to say "I'm a toy" but not too expensive so as to push customers towards Apple. It had IBM's name on it and all the excellent aspects of purchasing from IBM; worldwide support, plenty of addons, plenty of upgrade opportunities.
Bill Gates was lucky enough to be in the right place, at the right time, and had the right product (sort of). He was also lucky enough that the IBM-PC exploded in popularity and that IBM didn't foresee that happening and that the contract with IBM allowed Bill to continue selling MS-DOS. MS-DOS became th
Uhh, right there in that quote.
Look sonny, the Internet is an international net so I'm going to give you the benefit of a doubt and assume that English isn't your native language. Or perhaps you are a product of the American public education system. Either way, whatever brilliant rebuttal you think you have just delivered has been entirely lost on me.
As others have pointed out, Jack is fibbing. The policy is aimed at restricting all 284.1 million people. The policy is aimed at helping only 100,000 film industry workers. So it's not a case of 284million versus 100,000. It's more a case of 100,000 film industry workers versus 100,000 engineers. Jack is falsely claiming the entire 284 million person user population as the beneficiaries of the legislation, when in reality it's the MPAA that is the beneficiary.
In fact, let's be even more specific. The DMCA doesn't have any effect on most of those 284 million people. They can't build CSS decrypters anyway. So in fact, the DMCA is specifically targetted exactly at those 100,000 engineers. So in reality that law harms 100,000 people and helps... 8 rich white men? Oh look, now the false argument is balanced in my favour instead of Jack's. Wasn't that easy.
But of course, argument by numbers is false, because it doesn't matter how many people are harmed if the law is unfair.
If you repeat Jack's arguments then you might try to act less surprised when people think that you're making them. You certainly didn't say "this is Jack's argument and I don't believe it has merit" when you said "no congress-criter is going to buy my argument". I'm pretty sure Jack never used the word "congress-criter".
Nonsense. Your foolish claim suggests the only dissenting opinions are coming out of Slashdot and MIT. The DMCA struck a nerve with all sorts of legal and libertarian groups. The EFF made a big stink over it and the EFF has lawyers and lobbyists. They have already made the directed arguments towards "congress-criters" that you claim have not been made.
Perhaps not, but you did characterise the Linux guys as "waaah waaah I want you to give me stuff for free" and you characterised the politicians as requiring sound economic and liberal reasons. How about we turn that around. How about we say that the Linux guys are using sound logical reasoning and the politicians just need some bribe-money, I mean "campaign donations", to sway their opinion. Do you see the obvious problem with using character assassination to make your argument?
I think they're both awful, but then again, I'm not a big fan of analogies. I don't think they do anything except let anal retentive people go on and on about specifics.
Oh please, let's not.
I really do find it funny that the "MPAA is right" crowd characterise all dissenting opinion as "whining". How about I characterise you as "shilling" for the MPAA? That way, we can both have a more productive argument as we quickly descend into ever greater rhetoric.
As to the concept of the MPAA sharing their intellectual property. We don't want their property. We want them to stop taking away our property.
They seem to care enough to stop me from building my own player. It seems they will sue people who distribute DVD decoders (see MPAA vs 2600) or build DVD decoders (MPAA vs Jon). So I think your claim that they "don't care" if I cannot build a player is entirely false. They've gone to incredible efforts to make sure that I cannot build a player. That seems like a lot of effort, all that legal legwork and bribing the right politicians to make sure I cannot build a player, if as you claim they do not care. The more reasonable explanation is that they care very much.
You are being foolish. I'm on an aeroplane. I have my laptop with me and a DVD movie. You're telling me I should lug around a $20 hi-fi DVD player and the television to go with it instead of using Totem on my laptop? Be realistic.
Even ignoring the logistic impossibility of your suggestion, there is a deeper problem here that seems to be beyond the comprehension of literalists such as yourself. The MPAA has had the laws written such that is illegal for any entity to build a DVD player except those entities that the MPAA approves. This wasn't done with copyright, or patent, or trade secret. The MPAA invented a new law called the DMCA and they are abusing that law to establish a cartel. Yet another way for the MPAA to further increase their power. You should be raging against the machine, instead of bleating like a well-trained consumer.
I think the point is entirely that the player has already been built (for example, Totem) but the "congress-criters" have made it illegal to use or distribute afore-mentioned player.
But your amusing portrayal of the debate as being between crying babies and level-headed "congress-criters" has certainly made up for the lack of merit in your argument. Very entertaining.
You're seeing the glass as half empty. Adopt the more positive attitude. You're watching the development process. You are enjoying ringside seats where you can watch Linux (really GNOME, KDE, X, Ooo, ...) being created. So you see the mess, the clutter, the "crap" that goes into a development process. The same thing goes on at Microsoft and Apple, you just don't see it!
You throw your hands up in disgust and go "I don't want that, I just want the final product". Well, sure, come back in 2-3 years time when the next release is ready. But the rest of us are happy that we can use whatever is ready today, rather than having to wait until it is completed. Because the reality is, even though it is half finished it most certainly is useful... at least to some people.
It's not about the content industry selling to geeks. That's not the issue. The issue is that the content industry is preventing geeks from building their own players.
That you can't see that's a problem is another problem in its own right.
It's illegal in some countries, but I don't think it's wrong. This is entirely the crux of the argument.
That's a terrible analogy. A better one would be it's your tree, in your backyard, and you gave it fertiliser and watered it, with your own money and effort, but the MPAA won't let you eat the fruit unless you use an MPAA-approved knife to cut the fruit and the MPAA-approved knife is a piece of shit Ginso thing that constantly breaks and costs you $249 per year in repair costs.
And that's still a bad analogy but it's a damn sight better than yours.
Tradition.
The C language doesn't have namespaces so you ran the risk of two (or more) libraries having the same name for a symbol. Of course, this would stop you from linking against both libraries. To avoid these so-called "conflicts" the library designers would prefix all their symbols with a short extension. So for example, the X11 symbols would have the "X" prefix and all OpenGL symbols use "gl"
Unfortunately this tradition has extended out into program names. The most obvious example was from the X11 designers who stuck "x" in front of nearly everything. Other platforms did similar things, eg, the "win" prefix on Windows and the "mac" prefix on Macintosh. So you have WinMAME, MacMAME, WinZIP, WinWord, and so on.
The KDE people repeated the tradition by using the prefix "k" and the GNOME people responded with the prefix "g". But just sticking the prefix at the front is not very clever so it's a UNIX tradition to make the prefix clever. So "Klever" would be a good choice. And "Kontact" is pretty good too. But "KWord" is not very clever.
But at the end of the day the user couldn't give a crap about tradition or the programmer trying to be clever. So more and more KDE/GNOME programs are choosing names which actually mean something. This is both good and bad. It's good because it makes for a better "personal computer" feel to KDE/GNOME. It's bad because we're losing one of the in-jokes that UNIX has had for almost 30 years.
iTunes is MOL-able (LinuxPPC users can run MacOS in a virtual session with full audio and networking).
It's not useless. It's another piece of the puzzle. This guy works out how to upload the firmware. Another guy worked out how to unlock his downloaded songs. Another guy worked out how to download and play the previews from the iTunes Music Store. Another guy worked out how to upload songs to his iPod. You highlight that obtaining the firmware requires Windows or MacOS. So that means getting the firmware purely with Linux is the next piece of the puzzle.
You remind me a little bit of the people who said the same thing about Linux back in the early 90s. "It doesn't have SCSI". "It doesn't have networking". "What's the point, without the feature I need it's useless". Ok, maybe it was useless to them at that time. But Linux isn't useless now. You keep adding a piece at a time until the entire solution is there.
Close. Copyright is GOOD when protecting music, as well.
Though I don't think "protect" is exactly the right word.
I think you'd find Linux users are more in tune with copyright than the general populace. I'm not saying that all Linux users are goody two shoes. I'm saying that as a percentage, the Linux people I know are far more "honest" than Windows or MacOS users. I know that I don't download MP3s or "steal" music. I know that a heap of friends who use Windows and MacOS are copying like crazy.
I think your confusion is over the details. I can't say for certain, but if pressed to guess I would say that most Slashdotters think copyright is good, that patents are bad (or at least given out too easily), that the length of copyright is far too long, and that certain "additional" laws like the DMCA are bad, wrong, immoral, and maybe evil. Wouldn't this be a good selection for one of those Slashdot polls?
No, I hate Jobs because he made Wozniak cry. Then I cried. Then Maggie laughed. She's such a little trooper.
From reading folklore.org, plus other material from early 80s Apple developers, I get the strong impression that Jobs is a bit of a dick. Though nobody ever comes right out and says that, of course.
Plus he wore a bow tie in the 80s. You've got to hate him for that.
It's more like there's not a "Free as in I wrote it but Jack Valenti won't let me give it to my friends unless I pay Jack lots of money" DVD player for Linux.
You're an idiot, and I'm an idiot for responding to you, but the moderators are even bigger idiots for moderating you up to +5. What's with the "Linux users are freeloaders" nonsense on Slashdot lately? And why does it always get moderated into the stratosphere? The point about having Linux is you're not infringing copyright. You're allowed to make copies of Linux software. Compare this against all the pirates using Windows; how many of them actually paid for Windows XP and Office XP.
And the DVDCCA does not have a God or country given right to prevent me from watching American Wedding on my Linux computer.
Let's not forget that copyrights and patents are *government* granted rights and DVDCSS does not infringe on either. So the only thing going for the DVDCCA is the DMCA and the details are murky in this particular situation.
So be careful with that double-edged sword, because it cuts both ways.
The Linux DVD-playing technology works really well. It's the legality that is dubious. Isn't that always the way, the law holding technology back. When the revolution comes, I swear the lawyers will be the first up against the wall.
Couple of reasons.
Why should I pay for a decoder when I know it is only 6 lines of perl code, I already have a faster working version written in C, and it's an artificial construct anyway? I mean, I pay for the computer, I pay for the DVD player, I pay for the disc, but those are all tangible things. I even pay for a license to use the data on the disc because that's copyrighted material and one thing that GNU/Linux beats into your skull is respect for copyright and licenses. But why should I pay for a decoder? I know it's trivial and I've already got one and I don't need another one.
I think the DVDCCA requires CSS decoders to be closed source. No thanks. Been there. Done that. Not going down that path again. I'm too pragmatic to get tied into binary single-platform closed source non-free software again.
Most likely the company won't just sell the decoder for 10c (which is more than it's worth). They will want to bundle their own DVD player with it that's closed source, only available for the x86 platform, and uses Motif. No thanks. I want to use *my* player (Totem) and *my* platform (PPC). I don't want to be tied to somebody elses technology choices because of the DVDCCA.
One of the great things about Linux is you don't need to keep track of licenses and per-seat royalties. If you have ever worked in a corporate environment with licensing software you will know what I'm talking about. It's hell! Once you start needing CSS decoder licenses then that's going to happen to Linux too. No bloody way. That's why I like Debian; the Debian team puts the effort in so I don't need to worry about licensing.
Death by a thousand cuts. Right now it's just DVD and maybe it'll be "cheap" at $29.99 (this week only, free steak knives). Then it'll be $25 for an MP3 player, then $16 for a Real player, then $28 for a Quicktime player. Pretty soon my fully equipped Linux box will cost me $1000 in licensing fees. You're not even getting software for your money, just a license to use somebody elses algorithm. How idiotic! I don't want Linux to be whittled away "$5 here, $5 there". That's one of the quickest ways to make Linux TCO shoot through the roof, plus have all the hassle of contacting dozens of companies to collect all of the licenses.
To stem the imminent replies of "well if you don't like it, don't watch DVDs" and "you have to play by the DVDCCA's rules because DVD is their technology". No freaking way. My country doesn't allow that sort of thing to happen. It's anti competitive vendor lock-in. CSS isn't patented and there's no DMCA where I live (yet) so I have the legal right to choose any vendor I want for CSS decoders. I choose the open-source royalty-free CSS decoder.
Hrm, I sort of agree and disagree.
I agree it would have been good (though not necessarily better) to have asked questions about how the laws and technology hurdles are harming future advancements in the science of television and video because it's effectively killing the hobbyist market. Radio, Personal Computers, and Television were all invented by hobbyists. The Internet was invented by govt-funded scientists but many of the advancements in the application space were from small teams of hobbyists.
However I disagree that the browbeating was unfortunate. Jack Valenti learnt that 2 million people are being obstructed by these laws. He didn't even know that! I find it a bit hard to believe he didn't know that, but I think it's brilliant that he definitely knows it now. For somebody to learn something they didn't know before is the entire point of dialogue. Look at the start of the interview and Jack thinks the laws only effect a handful of engineers doing a few abnormal things (building HDTV sets). At the end you can see his worldview has been toppled; he's seeing things from a new perspective.
Whether that makes any difference, who can say. I find it interesting that Jack thinks the broadcast flag doesn't effect home users, who can make copies freely for personal use, but prevents Internet distribution of that material. From what I have learnt it's the exact opposite. The flag is easily stripped out (eg, by decoding and then reencoding) but home users constantly get tripped up by the stupidity of it all. I've been bit by Macrovision more times than I care to remember by doing 100% legit stuff. But Macrovision defeaters cost $15 at the local electronics store. So it harms the normal user who doesn't know any better and barely hinders the experienced "thief". I don't see the broadcast flag as being anything other than a modern day Macrovision.
I pay for my Internet connection. It's not free. The idea of paying for a service is not a problem here. And the "free" in "free software" refers to various freedoms, not the price. I've paid several $1000s over the years for "free" software.
But the popup advertising model is based on a "here, the content is free, now how do I make money?" mentality. It's stupid because they're starting on the backfoot. I've already got the content. They're crossing their fingers that I also click on the ad and generate some revenue. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
There are plenty of other solutions. Sites could work out a partnership with ISPs; if you provide content, you get paid by the ISP, funded by content "consumers" like myself. Or you could go like Salon; subscription model, or watch an ad in advance. I don't find either of Salon's solutions offensive (strangely enough).
You believe that the reason we're able to do things like "read news for free online" is because of advertising, and if we block all the advertising then the news goes away. Fine. I don't care. The web was much better back when it wasn't infested with spam, porn ads, and popup crap. I personally believe that companies will find other revenue, most likely pay-for-view or subscription models, and the content will not go away. But hey, we'll never know until we block all the ads and effect a change.
How many popups will a popup blocker block if a popup blocker could block popups?
Hey, you started it, man. Try mulling over the notion that there might be smart people out there who think you're wrong on this. Try considering for just a fraction of second that you might actually be mistaken. For god's sake, consider for just a moment that you might be mistaken.
I didn't call you an ass because you disagreed with me.
I called you an ass because you had no basis for your accusation.
Now you have repeated the same accusation. So you're still an ass.
Just to make it very clear, Pamela Jones has never written any OSS code so she couldn't have given any "stuff away". Let's wait for Linus or Alan or RMS to make a similar statement before making generalisations about "OSS people".
Then you won't have any difficulty naming a single situation where it is illegal. If you say the word "contract" or "treason" then you lose.
Pandering to the self-interest of a faceless corporation is stupid. Throwing away your rights to increase their profits is stupid. Exchanging your legal rights for the the short-term benefit of downloadable music is stupid.
Using your paid-for equipment and your paid-for data as you see fit, in accordance with the laws of the land, is not stupid. The only truly stupid thing here is the person who says "hey, don't do what you're allowed to do, because Apple might go away". Tough titties. Apple can't buy the law with shiny toys unless you let them.
Don't be an ass.