What you're essentially saying is that artists should accept that there's no gaurantee that we'll ever be able to make a decent living from our work.
I'm not siding with the RIAA here, but it does take time and effort to make music, art, literature, whatever... are you suggesting that all artists should simply "do art" as a hobby? Should I, as an internet musician, resign myself to the fact that for the rest of my life I'll simply have to squeeze my music in whatever free time is not taken up with work?
Look at it from your own perspective, Jon -- what if someone took your articles, word for word, and posted them on their own site, where they sold ad banners? This is for some reason quantifiably different than an MP3?
I like the idea of free music -- I release music over the internet in MP3 format, and most of it is freely available and freely distributed. But making music isn't something that can be done completely for free... not if you're recording it, and trying to get a reasonably decent recording. It takes equipment, time, and money... and while I've been able to afford this little side-life (so far) not everyone can.
So do we decide that musicians can only be middle-class and higher, so they can afford to distribute their music free of charge to anyone who wants it? Or do we decide that musicians must only be bands, so that they can distribute their music for free but still make money performing live? Do we tell all the studio musicians to get bent? I hope not.
I want to see the concept of free music coexist, peacefully, with the idea that internet musicians can make a living. If it's not possible, well, we're screwed. +----------------------------------------------- -------
b/c for home users, the home user will have access to the root account.
And in many cases with Linux software, you have to be logged in as root (or at least su) to install software in the first place... so AOL could easily exploit that. Ugh, any software company could.
Hm... suddenly, widespread acceptance of Linux doesn't seem like a good thing any more... do I really want Microsoft to have root access on my machine while it's installing Microsoft Office for LInux?:-) +----------------------------------------------- -------
SuSE 6.2 had an interesting problem where you'd enter all the information into KPPP, it'd try and dial and not connect. The problem turned out to be something that you had to edit in one of the ppp scripts, or lmhost or something like that... I can't remember anymore.
Point being, it's possible to screw up the configuration files in ways that KPPP can't fix. +----------------------------------------------- -------
It should be obvious that whether or not Linux is "ready" for the desktop depends on whose desktop you're talking about. It MIGHT be ready for some use in some areas of a corporation, but for the "average" user (someone who has only passing familiarity with the inner workings of a PC) Linux isn't ready.
This isn't a knock on Linux at all -- the fact that it's come as far as it has in the amount of time it has is, quite simply, amazing. But in all honesty, more work needs to be done before the "average" desktop user will spend more time using the machine productively than he/she will trying to figure out what to do next when something doesn't work as expected.
So again I ask, why the reversal of this position? Was SuSE getting flack for that comment? It would seem grossly unfair if they were.
I know my understanding of programming and the GPL are both very basic, but it was my understanding that you couldn't do this. The GPL states that if a program that requires specific libraries to work is GPL'd, those libraries must _also_ be GPL'd, with the exception of the actual operating system -- yes?
That would mean that a GPL front end on top of a proprietary environment that is not an operating system would be a violation of the GPL.
Unless I'm wrong! I don't deny that I could be wrong! I'm not a programmer.
that as long as a software project is intelligently planned and developed, it really doesn't NEED to be OO. OO programming has some advantages to development (especially when it comes to designing a UI) but its main advantage is that if you use OO programming you MUST be more careful in your design (in order to really get any benefits OO programming gives you).
As far as I understand, the Linux kernel is very consistently thought out and new additions are considered very carefully before being implemented. So is there any really significant gain to an OO kernel?
are not likely to download a huge CDrom image and burn a Linux CD, they're more likely to go to CompUSA and buy Corel Linux or Red Hat or Mandrake or SuSE or Caldera OpenLinux...
and while some of those distros may be more appropriate to newbies than others, ANY of them will be thousands of times better than LO appears to be...
Does GNU have any specific comments on the validity of the license with regards to minors? If minors in the US can break contracts willy-nilly, there's doesn't seem to be any binding way of enforcing the GPL. OTOH, there's no binding way of enforcing any of the other "for profit" licenses, either... so theoretically a 14 year old and a CD burner could LEGALLY pirate Microsoft software... +----------------------------------------------- -------
There's really no way that AOLWarner can monopolize content or press. They can certainly make a whole stinking buttload of money through producing a lot of content and making it available to a lot of customers, and I'm sure this will make many, many executives very rich and very happy.
HOWEVER, Time Warner does not controll the media... they are a big publishing firm, but they are not the only one. And AOL does not control the net.
A site like, oh, Slashdot can be independently conceived, set up, and eventually bring websites to their knees by sending huge masses of readers to them. The web makes it pretty easy to reach anyone with a modem as long as you let them know you're out there.
It will be a lot easier for AOL to tell people they're out there, but that doesn't necessarily make it any harder than it already is for an independently run operator to let people know they're out there.
I can't say I'm particularly thrilled by the merger... simply because I have little faith in the people who run AOL and I don't know why I should have any more faith in them now that they're also running Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting. +----------------------------------------------- -------
Graffitti is not the exclusive purview of the Palm Pilot... Graffitti was also used by the HP OmniGo 100, and I believe it's used by others that were out BEFORE the Pilot was released. If you're not willing to actively defend a patent, doesn't that weaken your claim? +----------------------------------------------- -------
Slashdot Mirror
What you're essentially saying is that artists should accept that there's no gaurantee that we'll ever be able to make a decent living from our work.
I'm not siding with the RIAA here, but it does take time and effort to make music, art, literature, whatever... are you suggesting that all artists should simply "do art" as a hobby? Should I, as an internet musician, resign myself to the fact that for the rest of my life I'll simply have to squeeze my music in whatever free time is not taken up with work?
Look at it from your own perspective, Jon -- what if someone took your articles, word for word, and posted them on their own site, where they sold ad banners? This is for some reason quantifiably different than an MP3?
I like the idea of free music -- I release music over the internet in MP3 format, and most of it is freely available and freely distributed. But making music isn't something that can be done completely for free... not if you're recording it, and trying to get a reasonably decent recording. It takes equipment, time, and money... and while I've been able to afford this little side-life (so far) not everyone can.
So do we decide that musicians can only be middle-class and higher, so they can afford to distribute their music free of charge to anyone who wants it? Or do we decide that musicians must only be bands, so that they can distribute their music for free but still make money performing live? Do we tell all the studio musicians to get bent? I hope not.
I want to see the concept of free music coexist, peacefully, with the idea that internet musicians can make a living. If it's not possible, well, we're screwed.- -------
+----------------------------------------------
And in many cases with Linux software, you have to be logged in as root (or at least su) to install software in the first place... so AOL could easily exploit that. Ugh, any software company could.
Hm... suddenly, widespread acceptance of Linux doesn't seem like a good thing any more... do I really want Microsoft to have root access on my machine while it's installing Microsoft Office for LInux? :-) - -------
+----------------------------------------------
Point being, it's possible to screw up the configuration files in ways that KPPP can't fix.- -------
+----------------------------------------------
On the other hand, this would go a long way towards pushing the whole internet appliance concept forward.
- -------
+----------------------------------------------
This isn't a knock on Linux at all -- the fact that it's come as far as it has in the amount of time it has is, quite simply, amazing. But in all honesty, more work needs to be done before the "average" desktop user will spend more time using the machine productively than he/she will trying to figure out what to do next when something doesn't work as expected.
So again I ask, why the reversal of this position? Was SuSE getting flack for that comment? It would seem grossly unfair if they were.
+----------------------------------------------
That would mean that a GPL front end on top of a proprietary environment that is not an operating system would be a violation of the GPL.
Unless I'm wrong! I don't deny that I could be wrong! I'm not a programmer.
+----------------------------------------------
Looks like JFS can be ported over to the client, too, now...
+----------------------------------------------
+----------------------------------------------
As far as I understand, the Linux kernel is very consistently thought out and new additions are considered very carefully before being implemented. So is there any really significant gain to an OO kernel?
+----------------------------------------------
are not likely to download a huge CDrom image and burn a Linux CD, they're more likely to go to CompUSA and buy Corel Linux or Red Hat or Mandrake or SuSE or Caldera OpenLinux...
and while some of those distros may be more appropriate to newbies than others, ANY of them will be thousands of times better than LO appears to be...
+----------------------------------------------
Does GNU have any specific comments on the validity of the license with regards to minors? If minors in the US can break contracts willy-nilly, there's doesn't seem to be any binding way of enforcing the GPL. OTOH, there's no binding way of enforcing any of the other "for profit" licenses, either... so theoretically a 14 year old and a CD burner could LEGALLY pirate Microsoft software...- -------
+----------------------------------------------
HOWEVER, Time Warner does not controll the media... they are a big publishing firm, but they are not the only one. And AOL does not control the net.
A site like, oh, Slashdot can be independently conceived, set up, and eventually bring websites to their knees by sending huge masses of readers to them. The web makes it pretty easy to reach anyone with a modem as long as you let them know you're out there.
It will be a lot easier for AOL to tell people they're out there, but that doesn't necessarily make it any harder than it already is for an independently run operator to let people know they're out there.
I can't say I'm particularly thrilled by the merger... simply because I have little faith in the people who run AOL and I don't know why I should have any more faith in them now that they're also running Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting.- -------
+----------------------------------------------
Thanks for clarifying that.- -------
+----------------------------------------------
Graffitti is not the exclusive purview of the Palm Pilot... Graffitti was also used by the HP OmniGo 100, and I believe it's used by others that were out BEFORE the Pilot was released. If you're not willing to actively defend a patent, doesn't that weaken your claim?- -------
+----------------------------------------------