how often do you see releases for the "latest and greatest" games that dont require Windows?
Board games don't need Microsoft Windows. Card games don't need Microsoft Windows. Athletic games (basketball, dodgeball, etc.) don't need Microsoft Windows.
Restricting "games" to mean "video games" produces the following: None of the games released for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, or Palm OS uses a Microsoft operating system. (Xbox OS is a slimmed-down Win2k, and some Dreamcast games run Windows CE.)
Restricting "games" to mean "video games designed for computing devices not sold explicitly for playing games" seems to exclude most current x86 PCs.
Keep in mind that if you're watching a movie you're seeing it in 720x480 resolution at a measly 24 fps
When I see a movie in theaters, I see the jitter in the 24 fps presentation. (I don't see the flicker at 72 Hz, caused by flashing each frame 3 times, but I do see the jitter in a smooth pan.) But 24 fps in a movie looks better than 24 fps on a video game primarily because the movie camera adds some natural motion blur, which your eyes pick up as a visual cue. PCs don't do motion blur very well; they need to render multiple frames into an accumulation buffer, but by then, you might as well just display the frames (unless you're displaying on a tv at 640x480x60Hz).
I've got to wonder, though: Linux hackers work on a movie with a major character named "Lilo"
The name "Lilo" for a female motion picture character was around long before Disney's Lilo & Stitch, at least in the variation "Leeloo". (See also MOOL-TEE-PAHSS!!) Therefore, it's not distinctive enough to qualify as a trademark.
It's not like there's going to be a sequel called "Grub and Stitch" or anything.
As far as try-before-you-buy goes, how come no one ever complains that we don't get to preview entire movies before we decide to shell out for the tickets?
A movie is one coherent audiovisual work that tells a single story. Reviews dissecting every part of a movie are available in almost every imaginable news medium. On the other hand, a typical album is a recording comprising twelve musical works, unrelated except for having been recorded (and possibly written) by a single team of performers called a "band". (Themed albums are the exception to this rule, but they are also the exception in the pop marketplace.) It's hard to judge whether or not critics like a whole album because 1. the music reviews don't get as much publicity as the movie reviews, and 2. music listeners have much more diverse tastes than movie viewers.
It's about time media companies realized that if they want customers' money, they must work with their customers, not against them. To let listeners preview a whole album, I'd suggest that the label publicly release an MP3 file containing a representative 20 second snippet of each song for free promotional redistribution.
In addition, if the RIAA labels put up a site where I could download high-quality singles (MP3 encoded with LAME 3.92, preset r3mix) for $1.00 each, and the site showed exactly how much of my buck went to the songwriters and performers, I would sign up in a heartbeat. The most popular legit major-label MP3 site (eMusic, $15 per month for unmetered downloads) offers only 128 kbps MP3, and 128 kbps MP3 sounds like crap on my speakers because it throws away so much information.
When I used Audiogalaxy it was specifically to get live recordings, mostly of artists with a pro-trading stance
If you want to restore access to works by recording artists who 1. write their own songs (click here to see why) and 2. authorize public trading of live recordings and/or studio recordings, then by all means, contact the artists and ask them to put their songs on New Napster and AG. If you can't find them, put up a web site listing the names of the artists you can't track down, and then ask Slashdot if anybody else knows how to contact them.
The RIAA cares only about the copyrights on its member labels' recordings. If you cover a song, you create a new recording.
NMPA/Harry Fox, on the other hand, cares about the copyrights on underlying musical works. (Musical works, commonly called "songs," are distinct from recordings of such works.) If you cover a song, you are creating a "derivative work" of the original song, and it's a pain in the neck (see my other comment) to license it.
If you are the copyright holder, which you are unless you have signed your rights away to a RIAA member
WRONG. If your recording is a cover of a published musical work, or even if it borrows a (surprisingly small) number of notes from a published work (see Handel v. Silver), you are not the copyright holder, and distributing a recording of such a musical work infringes the copyright of the songwriter. You need to license the "mechanical rights" to the song from the music publisher, and AFAIK, that's both a pain in the ass and expensive unless you are affiliated with a major label.
Now, you've got these decentralized P2P networks to contend with, which are generally slow and unwieldy.
WinMX 3.1 is fast even on my dial-up connection. It should be even faster on cable because it supports downloading from multiple sources based on the MD5 hash of the file.
A copy is the program itself, regardless of medium.
OK, I was unclear. By "the copy is the medium", I was referring to the definition of "copies" in 17 USC 101: "'Copies' are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Thus, a CD containing the Windows operating system is a copy of Windows, and a hard disk with Windows installed on it is a copy of Windows.
(background: proposing certification for software developers, and then comparing such certs to driver's licenses and amateur radio licenses)
Lets see, if [ham and driver licenses] were similar, you would have three levels of drivers license
The state of Indiana has graded driver licenses: state ID (no driving privileges), learner's permit (requires 21yo driver with standard license in passenger's seat), probation driver's license (issued to young drivers; if carrying passengers, one must be a 21yo driver with standard license), the standard operator's license, public passenger chauffeur (can haul people in a taxi/limo for money), and commercial driver's license (drive buses and semis). Motorcycle licenses are somewhat separate, but motorcycle credentials can be carried on the same card.
The higher licenses would require a demonstration of advanced driving skill, driving an obstacle course at high speeds, without hitting anything, (sort of like police traning).
Such a level of driver's license would be called a "badge."
A "copy" is the medium on which the program is fixed, i.e. the physical DVD-ROM on which Windows YQ ships. Copies of mass-market software are generally sold. Most EULAs state: "You own the copy, but we retain title to the program."
In the United States, the owner of a copy of a computer program has specific rights under 17 USC 117. The difference between grandparent's "commercial" and "licensed commercial" is that a "licensed commercial" case is a software rental in which the copyright owner retains ownership of the copy.
I can also store a bazillion books on my computer, but I don't think it's reasonable to charge me a million dollars tax for my hard drive.
Over half the books ever published were published since 1950. Every book published on or after January 1, 1923, or whose author died on or after January 1, 1931, or which is an adaptation of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, is under Bono Act copyright in United States and/or one or more countries in the European Union. (The Bono mentality is to extend copyright by 20 years every 20 years, circumventing the "limited times" language of the United States Constitution.)
The same reason the computing press, which should know better, spells FORTRAN Fortran, BASIC Basic, and COBOL Cobol.
I see your point for COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), but Fortran and Basic didn't start out strictly as acronyms. Fortran is a "formula translator" (two words not five or seven); Basic is a "basic" programming language. (The "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" expansion is considered by some to be a backronym.)
Philips's CD patents have probably expired by now. A patent lasts only 20 years after filing (it used to be 17 years after grant, which was the same in most situations, but that had loopholes). A trademark on "COMPACT DISC", on the other hand, can last forever.
Also, let's please be careful to never, ever refer to a crippled disk as a "CD", because (by the Red Book standard) it isn't.
To me, CD stands for one of two things. For Red Book conforming discs, it stands for "Compact Disc". For discs that deviate far enough from the Red Book standard that they become unplayable, CD stands for Completely Disabled. (Such discs are even more disabled than this little fellow.)
Why the hell would you want to retrain yourself to be better at coding for purpoises other than writing programs?
One purpose for learning to code is so that you can end up with a finished program. The other is so that you can end up with food on the table. Learning to code on paper gives you skills that get your foot in the employer's door so you can put food on the table.
It seems that you've associated syntax and semantics with the visual cues of a computer.
Quick, in what order do the arguments come in the C standard library's fread()? What about qsort()? If you were in a real coding situation, you could pull it up in man or something within two seconds.
Stop using IDEs. Use the plainest text editor that you can find to write your code.
Is using Microsoft Notepad OK (that's what I use half the time anyway), or do I have to go back to ed (or edlin, its MS equivalent)?
Write code away from a computer. Use a pencil and paper.
I did this in high school when I had already finished all pending short-term course assignments. It worked. Paper and pencil really helps a fellow visualize the analytic geometry necessary to develop a 2.5-dimensional real-time graphics engine. (Yes, 2.5-D engines are still in use on handheld gaming platforms.)
Slashdot Mirror
[PC graphics] aren't so much better that it makes it worth playing it with a keyboard and mouse. It's just so much easier to play with a dual shock.
Then buy a USB controller that feels like a PlayStation pad, or build one of those adapters that connects a PlayStation pad to a PC's parallel port.
I think it's just a stylized double "V"
<sarcasm>Actually, it's a backslash, a capital X, and a forward slash: \X/EGA<sarcasm>
Sony's electronics site spells it WEGA. But it's apparently pronounced as "WEGA" would be pronounced in German: "Vay-gah".
how often do you see releases for the "latest and greatest" games that dont require Windows?
Board games don't need Microsoft Windows. Card games don't need Microsoft Windows. Athletic games (basketball, dodgeball, etc.) don't need Microsoft Windows.
Restricting "games" to mean "video games" produces the following: None of the games released for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, or Palm OS uses a Microsoft operating system. (Xbox OS is a slimmed-down Win2k, and some Dreamcast games run Windows CE.)
Restricting "games" to mean "video games designed for computing devices not sold explicitly for playing games" seems to exclude most current x86 PCs.
Keep in mind that if you're watching a movie you're seeing it in 720x480 resolution at a measly 24 fps
When I see a movie in theaters, I see the jitter in the 24 fps presentation. (I don't see the flicker at 72 Hz, caused by flashing each frame 3 times, but I do see the jitter in a smooth pan.) But 24 fps in a movie looks better than 24 fps on a video game primarily because the movie camera adds some natural motion blur, which your eyes pick up as a visual cue. PCs don't do motion blur very well; they need to render multiple frames into an accumulation buffer, but by then, you might as well just display the frames (unless you're displaying on a tv at 640x480x60Hz).
but then [Michael Eisner and the Walt Disney Company] lock Mickey Mouse up through their continued efforts to lengthen copyright law
Even in the presence of a potential Bono Act every 20 years, the early Mickey Mouse films have fallen into the public domain because Walt Disney screwed up a copyright notice. Summary of the argument: Back in the 1920s (under the Copyright Act of 1909), a copyright notice was required on the first publication of a work, and "© 1929" wasn't sufficient; it had to be "© 1929 Walt Disney".
Free the Mouse
I've got to wonder, though: Linux hackers work on a movie with a major character named "Lilo"
The name "Lilo" for a female motion picture character was around long before Disney's Lilo & Stitch, at least in the variation "Leeloo". (See also MOOL-TEE-PAHSS!! ) Therefore, it's not distinctive enough to qualify as a trademark.
It's not like there's going to be a sequel called "Grub and Stitch" or anything.
If they use GPLed software to draw mickey, then would Mickey then be covered by the GPL?
No. A cluster running the Linux kernel was used to render Titanic starring Leonardo DiCrappio, but it didn't put Titanic under GPL. See the GPL FAQ entry: Can I use GPL-covered editors to develop non-free programs? Can I use GPL-covered tools to compile them?
As far as try-before-you-buy goes, how come no one ever complains that we don't get to preview entire movies before we decide to shell out for the tickets?
A movie is one coherent audiovisual work that tells a single story. Reviews dissecting every part of a movie are available in almost every imaginable news medium. On the other hand, a typical album is a recording comprising twelve musical works, unrelated except for having been recorded (and possibly written) by a single team of performers called a "band". (Themed albums are the exception to this rule, but they are also the exception in the pop marketplace.) It's hard to judge whether or not critics like a whole album because 1. the music reviews don't get as much publicity as the movie reviews, and 2. music listeners have much more diverse tastes than movie viewers.
It's about time media companies realized that if they want customers' money, they must work with their customers, not against them. To let listeners preview a whole album, I'd suggest that the label publicly release an MP3 file containing a representative 20 second snippet of each song for free promotional redistribution.
In addition, if the RIAA labels put up a site where I could download high-quality singles (MP3 encoded with LAME 3.92, preset r3mix) for $1.00 each, and the site showed exactly how much of my buck went to the songwriters and performers, I would sign up in a heartbeat. The most popular legit major-label MP3 site (eMusic, $15 per month for unmetered downloads) offers only 128 kbps MP3, and 128 kbps MP3 sounds like crap on my speakers because it throws away so much information.
So where's the linux version [of KaZaA]?
Does KaZaA or WinMX work in Wine or ReWind? I looked for "Kazaa" in the Wine application database, and I found that kazaalite runs quite well if you use MS DLLs. So does WinMX.
When I used Audiogalaxy it was specifically to get live recordings, mostly of artists with a pro-trading stance
If you want to restore access to works by recording artists who 1. write their own songs (click here to see why) and 2. authorize public trading of live recordings and/or studio recordings, then by all means, contact the artists and ask them to put their songs on New Napster and AG. If you can't find them, put up a web site listing the names of the artists you can't track down, and then ask Slashdot if anybody else knows how to contact them.
The RIAA cares only about the copyrights on its member labels' recordings. If you cover a song, you create a new recording.
NMPA/Harry Fox, on the other hand, cares about the copyrights on underlying musical works. (Musical works, commonly called "songs," are distinct from recordings of such works.) If you cover a song, you are creating a "derivative work" of the original song, and it's a pain in the neck (see my other comment) to license it.
so this appears to be either "artist opts in"
Yes. Just like Vivendi's MP3.com.
or 'Somebody else is claiming copyright on my stuff'
That's very possible. See my other comment about cover bands.
If you are the copyright holder, which you are unless you have signed your rights away to a RIAA member
WRONG. If your recording is a cover of a published musical work, or even if it borrows a (surprisingly small) number of notes from a published work (see Handel v. Silver), you are not the copyright holder, and distributing a recording of such a musical work infringes the copyright of the songwriter. You need to license the "mechanical rights" to the song from the music publisher, and AFAIK, that's both a pain in the ass and expensive unless you are affiliated with a major label.
Why would I put a cd in when the game is fully installed?
Do you really want to copy all 8 GB of full-motion-video cut scenes of a DVD-ROM game to your hard disk?
Now, you've got these decentralized P2P networks to contend with, which are generally slow and unwieldy.
WinMX 3.1 is fast even on my dial-up connection. It should be even faster on cable because it supports downloading from multiple sources based on the MD5 hash of the file.
Is your PDA going to run real-time grammar and spelling checks as you type, all locally?
Perhaps the spell-check in this word processor (almost definitely not Microsoft Word, but something similar) runs only after a save.
A copy is the program itself, regardless of medium.
OK, I was unclear. By "the copy is the medium", I was referring to the definition of "copies" in 17 USC 101: "'Copies' are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Thus, a CD containing the Windows operating system is a copy of Windows, and a hard disk with Windows installed on it is a copy of Windows.
"You own the copy, but we own the program."
(background: proposing certification for software developers, and then comparing such certs to driver's licenses and amateur radio licenses)
Lets see, if [ham and driver licenses] were similar, you would have three levels of drivers license
The state of Indiana has graded driver licenses: state ID (no driving privileges), learner's permit (requires 21yo driver with standard license in passenger's seat), probation driver's license (issued to young drivers; if carrying passengers, one must be a 21yo driver with standard license), the standard operator's license, public passenger chauffeur (can haul people in a taxi/limo for money), and commercial driver's license (drive buses and semis). Motorcycle licenses are somewhat separate, but motorcycle credentials can be carried on the same card.
The higher licenses would require a demonstration of advanced driving skill, driving an obstacle course at high speeds, without hitting anything, (sort of like police traning).
Such a level of driver's license would be called a "badge."
Essentially all software is licensed not sold.
A "copy" is the medium on which the program is fixed, i.e. the physical DVD-ROM on which Windows YQ ships. Copies of mass-market software are generally sold. Most EULAs state: "You own the copy, but we retain title to the program."
In the United States, the owner of a copy of a computer program has specific rights under 17 USC 117. The difference between grandparent's "commercial" and "licensed commercial" is that a "licensed commercial" case is a software rental in which the copyright owner retains ownership of the copy.
I can also store a bazillion books on my computer, but I don't think it's reasonable to charge me a million dollars tax for my hard drive.
Over half the books ever published were published since 1950. Every book published on or after January 1, 1923, or whose author died on or after January 1, 1931, or which is an adaptation of Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, is under Bono Act copyright in United States and/or one or more countries in the European Union. (The Bono mentality is to extend copyright by 20 years every 20 years, circumventing the "limited times" language of the United States Constitution.)
Please donate to Eldred's legal fund.
The same reason the computing press, which should know better, spells FORTRAN Fortran, BASIC Basic, and COBOL Cobol.
I see your point for COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), but Fortran and Basic didn't start out strictly as acronyms. Fortran is a "formula translator" (two words not five or seven); Basic is a "basic" programming language. (The "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" expansion is considered by some to be a backronym.)
Doesn't Phillips own the patents
Philips's CD patents have probably expired by now. A patent lasts only 20 years after filing (it used to be 17 years after grant, which was the same in most situations, but that had loopholes). A trademark on "COMPACT DISC", on the other hand, can last forever.
Also, let's please be careful to never, ever refer to a crippled disk as a "CD", because (by the Red Book standard) it isn't.
To me, CD stands for one of two things. For Red Book conforming discs, it stands for "Compact Disc". For discs that deviate far enough from the Red Book standard that they become unplayable, CD stands for Completely Disabled. (Such discs are even more disabled than this little fellow.)
Why the hell would you want to retrain yourself to be better at coding for purpoises other than writing programs?
One purpose for learning to code is so that you can end up with a finished program. The other is so that you can end up with food on the table. Learning to code on paper gives you skills that get your foot in the employer's door so you can put food on the table.
It seems that you've associated syntax and semantics with the visual cues of a computer.
Quick, in what order do the arguments come in the C standard library's fread()? What about qsort()? If you were in a real coding situation, you could pull it up in man or something within two seconds.
Stop using IDEs. Use the plainest text editor that you can find to write your code.
Is using Microsoft Notepad OK (that's what I use half the time anyway), or do I have to go back to ed (or edlin, its MS equivalent)?
Write code away from a computer. Use a pencil and paper.
I did this in high school when I had already finished all pending short-term course assignments. It worked. Paper and pencil really helps a fellow visualize the analytic geometry necessary to develop a 2.5-dimensional real-time graphics engine. (Yes, 2.5-D engines are still in use on handheld gaming platforms.)