use an older version of Windows in a virtual machine.
If you still have that older version. How many copies of Windows came with nothing but a re-install disc that won't work on anything but the original (now dead) machine that it was delivered with? How many ancient Windows CDs have been sat on/lost/used as skeet? I've got a bunch of old games, but I don't think I could come up with a single old copy of Windows. And it's not like you can go to the store and buy those ancient versions. Or are you suggesting piracy? Some people may be uncomfortable with that.
what seriously pisses me off with WINE is that something works with one version of it, but breaks in the next.
So, it's just like Windows, in other words!:)
(To be fair, it's surely for the same reason--applications depending on specific behaviors from undocumented APIs. And yes, MS is a little more rigorous in their backwards-compatibility testing than the WINE devs. Nevertheless....)
You could always try keeping multiple copies around, and run the version that's known to work with the game you want to play when you want to play it. In fact, that may be the only possible solution if you have two different games that depend on two different, incompatible behaviors of the same undocumented API.
You're probably not the only one on Slashdot. To the semi-mythical average Joe, those achievements probably seem like some sort of triumph over the incomprehensible computing device, while a slashdotter is more likely to recognize it as merely a subroutine in the code triggered by some arbitrary numbers.
I wonder if adding "achievements" to other types of software might be useful, though, to help counter computerphobia. "Congrats, you have typed 50,000 words in your Word Processor." "Achievement: 20 different programs executed." "Opaquemastery: you have successfully shoved more than fifty elements into a single PowerPoint slide!":)
The rights under US law are not, as far as I know, part of copyright law per se. I don't know whether the UK has any sort of equivalent rights, but if they do, limiting your search to copyright laws may not be the best way to find them.
Actually, they frequently use their power for good. It's just that their power is mainly based on the practical application of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (warning, TVTropes link, may suck you in for hours), combined with semi-directed flash-mob behavior. So normally their version of good is being fuckwads to people who deserve it. This is a rare case of them not being fuckwads at all, while still being a flash-mob.
It is cool that they managed to pull this one off.
Basically correct as I understand it, but if you're a private citizen, then I believe you retain some rights over images and descriptions of yourself. The creator of those images or descriptions would still be the primary copyright holder, but I don't think they can publish without your permission.
If you become a public figure (like a Senatorial candidate, for example), then it's a whole different story, and you're more or less fair game. This is why regular photographers get people to sign releases, but paparazzi don't.
Given the option to choose whether I want to be flashed by the hairy 300lb'er, yes, I'll take the option. I can always choose no, until the day I decide I want to make a prank video to gross out my friends.:)
I wish that bands didn't have all-flash websites, but if I've driven the forty miles to San Jose, and realize I've forgotten the name of the venue, I'd rather not drive an extra eighty miles just to figure out where I'm going.
When Apple decided not to include Flash on iDevices, Flash became no longer a standard, and started a move towards HTML5.
Yes, I'm glad that Apple is starting the movement; I'll be even more glad if they're successful. At the same time, I'm glad I don't own an iPhone, so I don't have to suffer during this transitional period. It's like I get the best of both worlds!:)
Yes, but "west of the Bermuda Triangle" wouldn't have been as funny. Though if you compare actual accident statistics in the Triangle with oil-rig accident statistics in the Gulf, it's possible that they would have been better off drilling in the Triangle to start with.:)
Yeah. We're drifting sadly off-topic here, but a complaint that this hardly seems like "News for Nerds" might have been more understandable, and may have been his actual issue, but the claim that Slashdot "has become" a news aggregator is just silly. It was never anything but.
In a feeble attempt to bring this back on-topic: I would rather have seen slashdot link to some technical analysis of what happened and why. Details are probably lacking as of yet, but I'd find that a lot more interesting, and much more "News for Nerds" than the current article.
Funny, when I started reading it, which was well before I got my low four-digit id, it was a news aggregator. Of course, their sources tended to be more things like OS-related blogs back then, but it was still an aggregator. Here's the earliest record the Internet Archive has: Jan 13, 1998. Everything there is a link to a news story or press release elsewhere.
I think the troll mod you got may have been a bit harsh, but the only alternative I see is that you're either severely confused or viewing the past through rose-colored glasses.
You're right that none of these cases (and ObjC was just one example--maybe not the best) have been to court, but I don't want to be the first. Even if I believed I'd prevail, court is expensive and a massive waste of my time.
A better example might be the fellow who was distributing a patch to link RSA with FSF code, back when RSA was proprietary, patented, and only available from one source. Even though it was just a patch, it was pulled after an FSF challenge.
I'm not saying you're wrong, or that it's definitely not legal. I'm just saying, from what I've heard, it may not be as clear-cut as you seem to believe. I would consult a lawyer before attempting anything like it. Especially since rumor has it that Sun chose their license in large part to prevent ZFS and a few other technologies from being added to Linux.
Oracle owns ZFS now, and they still claim to be pro-Linux, despite the Google suit. If they want ZFS in Linux, they can easily relicense it. Until then, I'd rather not rely on legal trickery to get around the licenses, no matter how firmly some random guy on slashdot suggests that it "should be" ok.:)
Where has Stallman ever said that it's not as free as he would like? I know the FSF disapproves of licenses that aren't GPL-compatible, but not on the grounds that they're not free enough. They simply don't like code that they can't use for their own projects--and who can blame them? I don't either, and I use a wide variety of licenses, including ones that the FSF isn't necessarily thrilled with.
I know you probably can't redistribute the kernel with the CDDL bits but you can redistribute them separately
Not necessarily. I know programmers like to interpret the law as if it were a computer program--rigidly, and with no room for interpretation--but it doesn't necessarily work that way. The law will consider your intent, and if your intent is to deliver a derivative work, then forcing the customer to obtain the pieces and glue them together won't necessarily let you off the hook.
This came up most famously with Objective C. Originally, Steve Job's NeXT made a proprietary front-end to GCC, and they made their customers get the rest of GCC for themselves. When the FSF objected, Steve consulted his lawyers, and decided to release the Objective-C front end source, which is why GCC includes Objective-C today.
Of course, the laws may be different in India, but I wouldn't touch this module without consulting with my lawyers first, since I'm in the US.
Having a free-as-in-beer-for-the-data-consumer-user-and-hobbyist-data-creator is a good thing.
Except that it's still not free-as-in-beer for the consumer. Encoders and decoders still have to be paid for, and those costs will be passed on to the consumer. Likewise, commercial videos will still have costs that again get passed on to the consumer. The x264 code remains illegal in the US and people outside the US are still mostly going to be paying unnecessary fees for their encoders and decoders, unless their vendors make separate US and non-US versions of their products (or non-US versions only) and manufacture the non-US versions outside of the US to avoid the patent licenses.
It does mean that hobbyist-creators in the US will only have to pay the one-time fee for the encoder, rather than paying per-video as well. That's the main benefit. Except that since the licenses already weren't being enforced for free videos, nothing's really changing. This just removes a potential future threat. There's a secondary benefit to the general consumer that this will likely encourage the creation of free videos, but since the patent licenses weren't already weren't being enforced against free video creators, the practical effect of this secondary benefit will be approximately nil. In other words, the only thing that's changed is that things that were de-facto free-as-in-beer have now become officially free-as-in-beer.
Thus, the good news isn't anywhere near as good as you suggest--but the bad news is exactly as bad as you suggest.
There's a lot of numbers stations around the world. The Conet project offers a selection of recordings from many of them (available on the Internet Archive). Unless you have some specific reason to believe that you tuned into this particular one, I would guess that you just picked up one at random.
Yes, but Sun deliberately chose a license that was incompatible with Linux. In their efforts to prevent Linux devs from "stealing" their precious ZFS, they cut themselves off from access to all those nice Linux drivers that might have actually made their system into a general purpose one.
Of course, as I understand it, Linux and the Solaris kernel are incompatible enough that porting drivers either way is going to be only slightly less complex than a full rewrite from scratch anyway. So maybe it's all for the best.
Depends on how you count. Slackware and Debian started the same year. Of course, Debian took a lot longer to reach the 1.0 milestone, but then they had a much more ambitious design.
Big difference is that Microsoft signed a contract saying they wouldn't do what they did. Google did a clean-room implementation. MS case was about contracts; this case is about patents. Also, Java wasn't under the GPL at the time of MS's shenanigans, but it is now. Further, from my point of view, MS tried to extend Java, so software developed for MS's systems wouldn't run elsewhere, which potentially hurts everyone but MS; Google, AFAIK, implemented a subset of Java, so software developed on other systems might not run on Google's, which really only hurts Google. The cases really aren't parallel at all, but you are correct that Oracle America's motivations may be similar.
I'm a little surprised by the timing of this. They just released a new version of Windows, so they can't simply make sure that Steam breaks in the new version of Windows. To succeed in their usual manner, they'll have to slipstream Steam-breakage into their regular updates, and hope that enough people are willing to install those updates.
Slashdot Mirror
use an older version of Windows in a virtual machine.
If you still have that older version. How many copies of Windows came with nothing but a re-install disc that won't work on anything but the original (now dead) machine that it was delivered with? How many ancient Windows CDs have been sat on/lost/used as skeet? I've got a bunch of old games, but I don't think I could come up with a single old copy of Windows. And it's not like you can go to the store and buy those ancient versions. Or are you suggesting piracy? Some people may be uncomfortable with that.
what seriously pisses me off with WINE is that something works with one version of it, but breaks in the next.
So, it's just like Windows, in other words! :)
(To be fair, it's surely for the same reason--applications depending on specific behaviors from undocumented APIs. And yes, MS is a little more rigorous in their backwards-compatibility testing than the WINE devs. Nevertheless....)
You could always try keeping multiple copies around, and run the version that's known to work with the game you want to play when you want to play it. In fact, that may be the only possible solution if you have two different games that depend on two different, incompatible behaviors of the same undocumented API.
You're probably not the only one on Slashdot. To the semi-mythical average Joe, those achievements probably seem like some sort of triumph over the incomprehensible computing device, while a slashdotter is more likely to recognize it as merely a subroutine in the code triggered by some arbitrary numbers.
I wonder if adding "achievements" to other types of software might be useful, though, to help counter computerphobia. "Congrats, you have typed 50,000 words in your Word Processor." "Achievement: 20 different programs executed." "Opaquemastery: you have successfully shoved more than fifty elements into a single PowerPoint slide!" :)
The rights under US law are not, as far as I know, part of copyright law per se. I don't know whether the UK has any sort of equivalent rights, but if they do, limiting your search to copyright laws may not be the best way to find them.
Put enough comments in your code so that five years from now you (and others) can remember what you indented [sic] the code to do.
But not so many that you (or others) will find it more work than it's worth to change the comments when the code changes.
I prefer code with no comments to code with actively misleading comments, and I hate code with no comments! :)
Actually, they frequently use their power for good. It's just that their power is mainly based on the practical application of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (warning, TVTropes link, may suck you in for hours), combined with semi-directed flash-mob behavior. So normally their version of good is being fuckwads to people who deserve it. This is a rare case of them not being fuckwads at all, while still being a flash-mob.
It is cool that they managed to pull this one off.
Basically correct as I understand it, but if you're a private citizen, then I believe you retain some rights over images and descriptions of yourself. The creator of those images or descriptions would still be the primary copyright holder, but I don't think they can publish without your permission.
If you become a public figure (like a Senatorial candidate, for example), then it's a whole different story, and you're more or less fair game. This is why regular photographers get people to sign releases, but paparazzi don't.
removing your noses to spite your faces
I think that's supposed to be "removing your noses despite your faces". (Although I personally prefer "to spit in your faces".) :)
Given the option to choose whether I want to be flashed by the hairy 300lb'er, yes, I'll take the option. I can always choose no, until the day I decide I want to make a prank video to gross out my friends. :)
I wish that bands didn't have all-flash websites, but if I've driven the forty miles to San Jose, and realize I've forgotten the name of the venue, I'd rather not drive an extra eighty miles just to figure out where I'm going.
When Apple decided not to include Flash on iDevices, Flash became no longer a standard, and started a move towards HTML5.
Yes, I'm glad that Apple is starting the movement; I'll be even more glad if they're successful. At the same time, I'm glad I don't own an iPhone, so I don't have to suffer during this transitional period. It's like I get the best of both worlds! :)
Yes, but "west of the Bermuda Triangle" wouldn't have been as funny. Though if you compare actual accident statistics in the Triangle with oil-rig accident statistics in the Gulf, it's possible that they would have been better off drilling in the Triangle to start with. :)
The Jury is the last line in the law. Unjust Law? Say not guilty in face of the law.
Like those "unjust laws" that say a white man can be convicted of murder, even if his victim was black or hispanic?
The problem with jury nullification is that it can cut both ways. It's hardly the universal panacea that many paint it to be.
Yeah. We're drifting sadly off-topic here, but a complaint that this hardly seems like "News for Nerds" might have been more understandable, and may have been his actual issue, but the claim that Slashdot "has become" a news aggregator is just silly. It was never anything but.
In a feeble attempt to bring this back on-topic: I would rather have seen slashdot link to some technical analysis of what happened and why. Details are probably lacking as of yet, but I'd find that a lot more interesting, and much more "News for Nerds" than the current article.
Maybe all this drilling for oil in the Bermuda Triangle isn't such a good idea after all! :)
Funny, when I started reading it, which was well before I got my low four-digit id, it was a news aggregator. Of course, their sources tended to be more things like OS-related blogs back then, but it was still an aggregator. Here's the earliest record the Internet Archive has: Jan 13, 1998. Everything there is a link to a news story or press release elsewhere.
I think the troll mod you got may have been a bit harsh, but the only alternative I see is that you're either severely confused or viewing the past through rose-colored glasses.
You're right that none of these cases (and ObjC was just one example--maybe not the best) have been to court, but I don't want to be the first. Even if I believed I'd prevail, court is expensive and a massive waste of my time.
A better example might be the fellow who was distributing a patch to link RSA with FSF code, back when RSA was proprietary, patented, and only available from one source. Even though it was just a patch, it was pulled after an FSF challenge.
I'm not saying you're wrong, or that it's definitely not legal. I'm just saying, from what I've heard, it may not be as clear-cut as you seem to believe. I would consult a lawyer before attempting anything like it. Especially since rumor has it that Sun chose their license in large part to prevent ZFS and a few other technologies from being added to Linux.
Oracle owns ZFS now, and they still claim to be pro-Linux, despite the Google suit. If they want ZFS in Linux, they can easily relicense it. Until then, I'd rather not rely on legal trickery to get around the licenses, no matter how firmly some random guy on slashdot suggests that it "should be" ok. :)
Where has Stallman ever said that it's not as free as he would like? I know the FSF disapproves of licenses that aren't GPL-compatible, but not on the grounds that they're not free enough. They simply don't like code that they can't use for their own projects--and who can blame them? I don't either, and I use a wide variety of licenses, including ones that the FSF isn't necessarily thrilled with.
I know you probably can't redistribute the kernel with the CDDL bits but you can redistribute them separately
Not necessarily. I know programmers like to interpret the law as if it were a computer program--rigidly, and with no room for interpretation--but it doesn't necessarily work that way. The law will consider your intent, and if your intent is to deliver a derivative work, then forcing the customer to obtain the pieces and glue them together won't necessarily let you off the hook.
This came up most famously with Objective C. Originally, Steve Job's NeXT made a proprietary front-end to GCC, and they made their customers get the rest of GCC for themselves. When the FSF objected, Steve consulted his lawyers, and decided to release the Objective-C front end source, which is why GCC includes Objective-C today.
Of course, the laws may be different in India, but I wouldn't touch this module without consulting with my lawyers first, since I'm in the US.
Having a free-as-in-beer-for-the-data-consumer-user-and-hobbyist-data-creator is a good thing.
Except that it's still not free-as-in-beer for the consumer. Encoders and decoders still have to be paid for, and those costs will be passed on to the consumer. Likewise, commercial videos will still have costs that again get passed on to the consumer. The x264 code remains illegal in the US and people outside the US are still mostly going to be paying unnecessary fees for their encoders and decoders, unless their vendors make separate US and non-US versions of their products (or non-US versions only) and manufacture the non-US versions outside of the US to avoid the patent licenses.
It does mean that hobbyist-creators in the US will only have to pay the one-time fee for the encoder, rather than paying per-video as well. That's the main benefit. Except that since the licenses already weren't being enforced for free videos, nothing's really changing. This just removes a potential future threat. There's a secondary benefit to the general consumer that this will likely encourage the creation of free videos, but since the patent licenses weren't already weren't being enforced against free video creators, the practical effect of this secondary benefit will be approximately nil. In other words, the only thing that's changed is that things that were de-facto free-as-in-beer have now become officially free-as-in-beer.
Thus, the good news isn't anywhere near as good as you suggest--but the bad news is exactly as bad as you suggest.
What if I hold a favorable opinion of Ceres but not Pluto or other Kuiper belt objects? Then it's nine, just like the man said. :)
(And yes, before you ask, yes I do consider that to be a more sensible categorization scheme than the one the IAU actually adopted,)
There's a lot of numbers stations around the world. The Conet project offers a selection of recordings from many of them (available on the Internet Archive). Unless you have some specific reason to believe that you tuned into this particular one, I would guess that you just picked up one at random.
Yes, but Sun deliberately chose a license that was incompatible with Linux. In their efforts to prevent Linux devs from "stealing" their precious ZFS, they cut themselves off from access to all those nice Linux drivers that might have actually made their system into a general purpose one.
Of course, as I understand it, Linux and the Solaris kernel are incompatible enough that porting drivers either way is going to be only slightly less complex than a full rewrite from scratch anyway. So maybe it's all for the best.
[Slackware is] the grandfather of the group
Depends on how you count. Slackware and Debian started the same year. Of course, Debian took a lot longer to reach the 1.0 milestone, but then they had a much more ambitious design.
Big difference is that Microsoft signed a contract saying they wouldn't do what they did. Google did a clean-room implementation. MS case was about contracts; this case is about patents. Also, Java wasn't under the GPL at the time of MS's shenanigans, but it is now. Further, from my point of view, MS tried to extend Java, so software developed for MS's systems wouldn't run elsewhere, which potentially hurts everyone but MS; Google, AFAIK, implemented a subset of Java, so software developed on other systems might not run on Google's, which really only hurts Google. The cases really aren't parallel at all, but you are correct that Oracle America's motivations may be similar.
I'm a little surprised by the timing of this. They just released a new version of Windows, so they can't simply make sure that Steam breaks in the new version of Windows. To succeed in their usual manner, they'll have to slipstream Steam-breakage into their regular updates, and hope that enough people are willing to install those updates.