> Very few people and companies customize the software or utilize the source code in any way.
According to a study in Western Europe, you (and he) are quite wrong! While one might expect that the zero-dollar price tag would be the big incentive, companies are actually quite willing to pay for software if they think they're getting value for their dollar, and it's the quality and flexibility of Free/Libre/Open Source Software that is the real attraction among those who are actually installing and deploying it.
From the article I linked: "industries that treated software as a commodity were less likely to have open-source deployments." (Emphasis mine.)
I can't speak for your motivations, but I certainly didn't replace the software that came with my computer with a copy of Debian because I wanted to save money! I already had the opaque, insecure, virus-ridden monstrosity known to the world as MS Windows right there! And as for applications, well, I know where to get tons of free Winapps, and have for years and years. No, money was not at all a factor in my decision.
Good programmers know goto is harmful - great programmers know when it's not.
Actually, even there I'm exaggerating a bit. Even fairly average programmers can usually be taught when goto is acceptable and when it's not. Anyway, the goto statement in C is much more limited, and much safer than the wide-open, global-scale thermonuclear goto that Wirth originally wrote about.
Highwayman: I know you Wizards have rules against using your powers on civilians, so you don't scare me. Just hand over the money, er...ri-deep? Ridcully: (blowing on his finger and staring at the new-made frog) It's more of a guideline than a rule, actually.
I think a lot of people are missing the point of this. The original purpose, as I understand it, of the "Genuine Advantage" program was to allow users to verify that they had not been ripped off when buying a Winbox, i.e. that they'd actually received a validly licensed copy of Win. Why you would care was never adequately explained, but that's a side issue. But if you do care, then this would seem to be somewhat of an unfortunate development.
Anyway, I would like to present my own "Debian Genuine Advantage" program that people can use to verify that their Debian-based systems are not pirated:
#!/bin/sh echo "This system is not \"pirated\"."
Adapting this system for using on other flavors of Linux is left as an exercise for the student.:)
It would be "correct" either way! It would be more clear, less ambiguous and less open to misinterpretation the way you phrased it (and kudos for that), but being unclear, ambiguous and misinterpretable is par for the course for an English sentence, correctly grammarified or not.
To quote Mustrum Ridcully, "it's more of a guideline than a rule." English grammar has a great deal of flexibility--more than you seem to give it credit for--a fact which is praised by poets and humorists and condemned by engineers, computer scientists and high-school English teachers.
> Some verbs, like "action"...
"Action" is always a noun, except, perhaps, in PHB-speak (where it can be an adjective). If "action" had been a verb, I would probably have agreed with you, but the sentence would have had far deeper problems in that case. For one thing, it would have had a noun action--er, acting as a verb!:)
If it were that simple, the EFF wouldn't have bothered getting involved. The DMCA has exceptions specifically allowing reverse engineering! So I think your last statement ("Whether bnetd folks agreed to the EULA or not they would still be liable under the DMCA") is highly debatable, and apparently so does the EFF.
The EFF's page on this case can be found here. The important part is this: "As it stands, the lower court's decision makes it unlawful in most cases to reverse engineer any commercial software program, thus making it impossible to create new programs that interoperate with older ones. This squeezes consumer choice out of the marketplace by essentially allowing companies to outlaw competitors' products that interact with their own."
The problem I see (and here I'm relying entirely on my own feeble analytic skills) is that they might win on the DMCA point and still lose on the EULA point. In fact, I think they should win on the DMCA point, and might still lose on the EULA point, which would be unfortunate and stupid for reasons I pointed out earlier.
As PJ wrote in the Groklaw coverage, "I hear you cynics saying that the courts let the DMCA trump everything, and in this case you may prove correct, but don't forget that the issue of the DMCA and the aftermarket was also at issue in the Lexmark and Skylink cases, and those cases worked out fine."
So...we'll see.
p.s. I should throw in a reminder at this point to donate to the EFF, and help keep one of the few groups that's on our side going.
Er, just "chinese wall", sorry, my mistake. Here's a link. See the bottom entry, under "Computer Science". If they'd properly used Chinese walls, there'd be no question of EULA violations, since the guys writing the code wouldn't be the guys who agreed to the EULA.
My understanding is that the DMCA is involved in this case mainly because of its provisions that specifically allow reverse engineering. But now that I see that Groklaw is also covering this (at least in passing), you can probably get more and better info there than I can possibly provide.
The thing you're missing is that they're not being nailed for their reverse engineering--they're being nailed for a minor procedural flaw! They failed to use proper Chinese firewalls in their reverse engineering process. If they HAD done it "properly", there would be no question whatsoever that bnetd was fully legal. Reverse engineering with Chinese firewalls has been upheld by the courts time and time again! So any questions about Blizzard's "rights" to control their "property" are completely off-base and irrelevant, as are questions about whether "pirates" might use bnetd.
This is a challenge to the (rather stupid, and never really court-tested) requirements to use Chinese firewalls in reverse engineering. And those requirements are stupid, since the results are the same in either case. If the bnetd folks lose, another team could easily come along, follow proper procedures, and give us pretty much the same software, and Blizzard wouldn't have a leg to stand on. So what's the point? A requirement that has no practical, useful effects is a stupid, stupid requirement!
This case goes way, WAY beyond any questions of a particular game or a particular company. This is a fundamental challenge to the whole idea of what's involved in providing/creating interoperable systems; a challenge that has repercussions for the entire industry. Whether you like StarCraft or not is as irrelevant as whether I like butterscotch ice cream. (For the record: I do.:)
As part of my religious ritual, I would now like to chant, "I know I'll get modded down for this, but....":)
> This is Slashdot. It's defending Christianity that gets you attacked by the moderators-on-crack.
Um, no--I have never defended Christianity in my life, nor am I likely to ever do so (except in the most broad of terms), but I have gotten negative mods nearly every time I've mentioned religion in any way.
> It definately demonstrates the innate desire for humans to search after something to obsess after/find truth in. One man might take that piece of evidence to suggest that all of these things we obsess over are clearly wrong, but another man might take it to mean that this desire to seek after a set of ideals or truths suggests that such a truth exists
And yet a third man (i.e. me) might suggest that it simply demonstrates that people feel a strong need to find explanations for things, without attaching a value judgement, good or bad, to that fact. The human brain is remarkably good at finding patterns, even where no patterns exist. This pattern-finding ability has generally stood us in good stead over the years, but has also lead many, many people to believe in the significance of apparent patterns that spring from randomness.
> It takes wisdom, not intelligence, to consider all the possible reasons for things being the way they are.
Now that I fully agree with. And yet, I have almost never run into a religious person who has actually considered all the possible reasons for things being the way they are. In fact, in one sense, it's impossible: there are an infinite number of possible reasons for things being the way they are. For example, consider the Invisible Pink Unicorn hypothesis. Is it true? I can't say. But I see no reason to think it's any more or less likely than any of the other many theories humanity has come up with.
Most religious people I've encountered (although, to be fair, I do have to say, not all of them) seem to think it boils down to two possibilities: the religion they were brought up with or out-and-out atheism. When you try to throw in all the other religions that exist, and the infinite number more that don't, but could, they get very uncomfortable and try to brush you off. At best, they say their religion "feels right" to them. (They often use far more emphatic terms, but that's what it boils down to.) Well, gee, why, possibly, might the religion you were brought up with feel right? Hmmm? Could it possibly be merely because it was what you were brought up with? Oh no, it must be the One True Religion! They can just feel it in their bones! Bah, pfui!
To bring this back vaguely on-topic, one of the best things I find in science fiction (and even, frequently, in science fantasy), is that it can open your eyes to the mere fact of new possibilities. If the strange alien race has a strange alien religion, it can suddenly make you realize that there's more than one (or even four) possible religions. Of course, that doesn't just apply to religion--it applies to all sorts of things, like politics, economics, biology, sexuality, art, etc., etc. Sure, a lot (probably even most) science fiction is mere brain candy, but the genre is still, at its core, about exploring boundaries and new ideas, and I think that's a good thing, despite Sturgeon's law.
I frequently get pissed off at all the trolls who call the GPL "viral". However, if it worked the way you suggest, then it WOULD be viral! You should get, and you deserve, control over your own code. You neither need nor deserve control over someone else's code! Which is exactly how it works right now.
If it really bothers you all that much, then, when it happens to you, you can try to go for your share of the profits and maybe some punitive damages on top when your case comes up. If you can establish that they knew what they were doing, and deliberately decided to risk it anyway, then getting punitive damages should be a snap. But just forget about the trying to open up other people's code against their will! You're not going to find anything in copyright law or the GPL to support that, and neither (IMO) should you.
The GPL is not viral because the GPL is a defense! Keep that in mind, and you won't have unreasonable expectations.
The broadcast flag - that has something to do with television programs, yes? Am I supposed to give a rats ass about television programs? Anyway, as someone else pointed out, the broadcast flag would only be effective with the backing of the DMCA. Otherwise, it's as stupid and useless as the rot13 "encryption" used by Adobe e-books. (Whoops, I think I just broke the DMCA with that last sentence.)
I'm not sure the clerk was actually clueless. Consider:
Clerk: the new PS3 and the new XBox/360 are both expected within the next few months. Customer: ok, I'll keep my money in my pocket and come back some other time (maybe). Bye!
vs.
Clerk: well, there's this new, small Playstation that we have in stock, but I don't know of any plans for a new XBox. Customer: cool, I'm going to pull out my wallet and buy one each of the machines you've got right now. Ring me up!
I mean, duh, these guys are trying to sell stuff, not keep you up-to-date with the latest industry gossip! If you go into a store and ask questions, you should expect to hear answers designed to separate you from your money. It's that simple.
You're absolutely right, but I think the point is that MS has been ordered to provide this information in order to encourage competition, but they are blatantly and deliberately trying to lock out the only viable existing competition.
> Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Dismantle? Dismantle?? What kind of drugs are you on? Providing documentation is not the same as being dismantled! And as for why, well, you might as well ask why a private citizen has to go to jail. It's because they were convicted of a crime and are being punished. I mean, duh!
> It's not like Samba could be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions.
Geeze, even for slashdot, this is a silly comment. Hasn't the "free speech, not free beer" quote been posted about a million times? Of course Samba can be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions! Vendors like IBM, HP, Sun, Red Hat, Novell, and yes, even SCO sell Samba. Just because none of them have exclusive rights to the code does not mean it's not a commercial product! Locking out Samba harms dozens, maybe thousands, of companies, as well as consumers, for the private benefit of just one company. That is the definition of antitrust.
Really? So what about rxvt and konsole? As far as I know, the KDE developers have never released any patches to try to integrate any of their enhancements to rxvt back into the rxvt code base. They simply release the code for konsole. It's up to the rxvt developers to review the konsole code and backport any useful bits they may stumble across. Would you say that the KDE developers are violating the spirit of the GPL there? I don't think so! Apple's doing a lot more for KHTML than KDE is doing for rxvt -- where's the outrage at KDE?
I'm sure their habit of suing their own customers has greatly helped their position in the market as well. I know that I always prefer to buy things from someone who'll sue me for having bought it later. And while I'm at it, can I get one of those new cars with the bear trap built into the accelerator pedal?:)
What you say is true, as far as it goes, but, on the other hand, sharing copyrighted materials is NOT illegal IF the copyright owner has given permission, as tens or hundreds of thousands of musicians, filmmakers and software developers have.
I think the interesting point of this particular case is that it serves to counter the standard "sharing hurts artists" line. Many artists are already clued into that fact that sharing can be beneficial (and some even were before the Internet came along, having seen the example of the Grateful Dead), but this is a nice instance of a retroactive discovery of that fact.
Now, as a member of the Debian Project, I think it behooves me to respect copyright, not just on software, but in general. (Fortunately, at least some of the thousands of musicians who allow their music to be freely traded are also to my taste.) Still, even without the need to justify my own behavior, I find this a charming story and hope it provides a valuable lesson to someone.
While respect for the law is good, sharing is also good. Huge corporate interests are spending billions of dollars to try to deny this last, but it remains true, and it's nice to see a reminder every now and again.:)
The problem with that theory is that the person is (supposedly) talking about the GPL, but what you're saying has nothing to do with the GPL or any other license. It could be said about BSD code or the semi-free (no-commercial-distribution) editor that Linus originally used to write his kernel, or even just some random code I put on my web page that comes with no license whatsoever!
There may be a problem (of sorts) with code in general having less-than-perfect attributions and/or copyright statements, but that has nothing to do with the GPL. By claiming this is a problem with the GPL, ZDNet is clearly spreading lying FUD (though whether they are the source of the FUD is unclear - probably not).
Shouldn't this be filed under "It's Funny, Laugh" rather than "Your Rights Online"? Seems more like slapstick than much of anything else. How many times does it have to be said: you don't enforce the GPL, you enforce COPYRIGHT! The GPL (like "fair use") is a defense! You don't "enforce" a defense, you raise it - if you can.
Why do people have to post endless complaints about an open format that has many programs supporting it, most of them open source? Me, I tend to assume that people who COMPLAIN about PDFs must be "windows hounds". Certainly Linux users don't mind invoking xpdf or its gnome/kde variants. If I had to use Acrobat, I might complain, but I haven't had Acrobat installed since I dumped Windows back in '98.
That assumes A) the song has lyrics, and B) the lyrics are at all comprehensible (i.e. doesn't work for a lot of rock).
> if the song is stuck in your head [...]
If the song is stuck in your head (as opposed to, say, playing on the radio), this service isn't going to do much good, unless it's able to figure out the song when you hum a few bars, which seems pretty unlikely.:)
Google is pretty good at finding song lyrics for you, but not 100% reliable. Especially if you're mishearing the lyrics - for example, I was trying to find what turned out to be Leadbelly's Linin' Track a while ago, and the closest match I could find was Aerosmith's Hangman Jury, because what I heard as "lie on the track" was, actually, "line 'em track".
But in general, yeah, Google's pretty good at identifying songs if you have some lyrics. Whereas this new service is likely to be next-to-useless for most purposes. Especially for my main need - identifying tracks on concert recordings I get through Etree.
I wonder if you get your money back if the service can't identify the song? I could probably stump it over and over and over again with random songs from the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive.:)
In addition to "correlation does not imply causality", you also have to consider the sample space. How do they define "blokey jobs" and "caring jobs"? And why did they pick those categories (however they define them) to look at? There was a study that showed that Israeli Fighter Pilots had an 84% of having girl children (which, by the way, seems to contradict the current study). Here's a link to a PDF that discusses this case (among others), and, for the PDF-adverse, here's the Google HTMLization. The point is that "Israeli Fighter Pilots" was chosen as an "interesting" category because of this stand-out statistic.
From my link: "So going back to the Israeli fighter pilots--is it just random chance or is something else happening? To answer this, conventional statistics would set up the obvious sample space (children of fighter pilots), assign probabilities to boy and girl children, and calculate the chance of getting 84 per cent girls in a purely random trial. But this analysis ignores selective reporting. Why did anyone look at the sexes of Israeli fighter pilots' children in the first place? Presumably because a clump has already caught their attention."
Given that neither ABC News Australia nor Illuminating Science is exactly a reputable scientific journal, I would definitely hold off before reading too much into this. I also want to know how they explain the contradiction with the Israeli Fighter Pilot data.:)
Slashdot Mirror
The others were laughing so hard at the question that they had to be marked as "unavailable for comment". :)
> Very few people and companies customize the software or utilize the source code in any way.
According to a study in Western Europe, you (and he) are quite wrong! While one might expect that the zero-dollar price tag would be the big incentive, companies are actually quite willing to pay for software if they think they're getting value for their dollar, and it's the quality and flexibility of Free/Libre/Open Source Software that is the real attraction among those who are actually installing and deploying it.
From the article I linked: "industries that treated software as a commodity were less likely to have open-source deployments." (Emphasis mine.)
I can't speak for your motivations, but I certainly didn't replace the software that came with my computer with a copy of Debian because I wanted to save money! I already had the opaque, insecure, virus-ridden monstrosity known to the world as MS Windows right there! And as for applications, well, I know where to get tons of free Winapps, and have for years and years. No, money was not at all a factor in my decision.
Good programmers know goto is harmful - great programmers know when it's not.
Actually, even there I'm exaggerating a bit. Even fairly average programmers can usually be taught when goto is acceptable and when it's not. Anyway, the goto statement in C is much more limited, and much safer than the wide-open, global-scale thermonuclear goto that Wirth originally wrote about.
Highwayman: I know you Wizards have rules against using your powers on civilians, so you don't scare me. Just hand over the money, er...ri-deep?
Ridcully: (blowing on his finger and staring at the new-made frog) It's more of a guideline than a rule, actually.
Anyway, I would like to present my own "Debian Genuine Advantage" program that people can use to verify that their Debian-based systems are not pirated:Adapting this system for using on other flavors of Linux is left as an exercise for the student.
> That would be correct as:
:)
It would be "correct" either way! It would be more clear, less ambiguous and less open to misinterpretation the way you phrased it (and kudos for that), but being unclear, ambiguous and misinterpretable is par for the course for an English sentence, correctly grammarified or not.
To quote Mustrum Ridcully, "it's more of a guideline than a rule." English grammar has a great deal of flexibility--more than you seem to give it credit for--a fact which is praised by poets and humorists and condemned by engineers, computer scientists and high-school English teachers.
> Some verbs, like "action"...
"Action" is always a noun, except, perhaps, in PHB-speak (where it can be an adjective). If "action" had been a verb, I would probably have agreed with you, but the sentence would have had far deeper problems in that case. For one thing, it would have had a noun action--er, acting as a verb!
If it were that simple, the EFF wouldn't have bothered getting involved. The DMCA has exceptions specifically allowing reverse engineering! So I think your last statement ("Whether bnetd folks agreed to the EULA or not they would still be liable under the DMCA") is highly debatable, and apparently so does the EFF.
The EFF's page on this case can be found here. The important part is this: "As it stands, the lower court's decision makes it unlawful in most cases to reverse engineer any commercial software program, thus making it impossible to create new programs that interoperate with older ones. This squeezes consumer choice out of the marketplace by essentially allowing companies to outlaw competitors' products that interact with their own."
The problem I see (and here I'm relying entirely on my own feeble analytic skills) is that they might win on the DMCA point and still lose on the EULA point. In fact, I think they should win on the DMCA point, and might still lose on the EULA point, which would be unfortunate and stupid for reasons I pointed out earlier.
As PJ wrote in the Groklaw coverage, "I hear you cynics saying that the courts let the DMCA trump everything, and in this case you may prove correct, but don't forget that the issue of the DMCA and the aftermarket was also at issue in the Lexmark and Skylink cases, and those cases worked out fine."
So...we'll see.
p.s. I should throw in a reminder at this point to donate to the EFF, and help keep one of the few groups that's on our side going.
Er, just "chinese wall", sorry, my mistake. Here's a link. See the bottom entry, under "Computer Science". If they'd properly used Chinese walls, there'd be no question of EULA violations, since the guys writing the code wouldn't be the guys who agreed to the EULA.
My understanding is that the DMCA is involved in this case mainly because of its provisions that specifically allow reverse engineering. But now that I see that Groklaw is also covering this (at least in passing), you can probably get more and better info there than I can possibly provide.
The thing you're missing is that they're not being nailed for their reverse engineering--they're being nailed for a minor procedural flaw! They failed to use proper Chinese firewalls in their reverse engineering process. If they HAD done it "properly", there would be no question whatsoever that bnetd was fully legal. Reverse engineering with Chinese firewalls has been upheld by the courts time and time again! So any questions about Blizzard's "rights" to control their "property" are completely off-base and irrelevant, as are questions about whether "pirates" might use bnetd.
This is a challenge to the (rather stupid, and never really court-tested) requirements to use Chinese firewalls in reverse engineering. And those requirements are stupid, since the results are the same in either case. If the bnetd folks lose, another team could easily come along, follow proper procedures, and give us pretty much the same software, and Blizzard wouldn't have a leg to stand on. So what's the point? A requirement that has no practical, useful effects is a stupid, stupid requirement!
This case goes way, WAY beyond any questions of a particular game or a particular company. This is a fundamental challenge to the whole idea of what's involved in providing/creating interoperable systems; a challenge that has repercussions for the entire industry. Whether you like StarCraft or not is as irrelevant as whether I like butterscotch ice cream. (For the record: I do.:)
As part of my religious ritual, I would now like to chant, "I know I'll get modded down for this, but...." :)
> This is Slashdot. It's defending Christianity that gets you attacked by the moderators-on-crack.
Um, no--I have never defended Christianity in my life, nor am I likely to ever do so (except in the most broad of terms), but I have gotten negative mods nearly every time I've mentioned religion in any way.
> It definately demonstrates the innate desire for humans to search after something to obsess after/find truth in. One man might take that piece of evidence to suggest that all of these things we obsess over are clearly wrong, but another man might take it to mean that this desire to seek after a set of ideals or truths suggests that such a truth exists
And yet a third man (i.e. me) might suggest that it simply demonstrates that people feel a strong need to find explanations for things, without attaching a value judgement, good or bad, to that fact. The human brain is remarkably good at finding patterns, even where no patterns exist. This pattern-finding ability has generally stood us in good stead over the years, but has also lead many, many people to believe in the significance of apparent patterns that spring from randomness.
> It takes wisdom, not intelligence, to consider all the possible reasons for things being the way they are.
Now that I fully agree with. And yet, I have almost never run into a religious person who has actually considered all the possible reasons for things being the way they are. In fact, in one sense, it's impossible: there are an infinite number of possible reasons for things being the way they are. For example, consider the Invisible Pink Unicorn hypothesis. Is it true? I can't say. But I see no reason to think it's any more or less likely than any of the other many theories humanity has come up with.
Most religious people I've encountered (although, to be fair, I do have to say, not all of them) seem to think it boils down to two possibilities: the religion they were brought up with or out-and-out atheism. When you try to throw in all the other religions that exist, and the infinite number more that don't, but could, they get very uncomfortable and try to brush you off. At best, they say their religion "feels right" to them. (They often use far more emphatic terms, but that's what it boils down to.) Well, gee, why, possibly, might the religion you were brought up with feel right? Hmmm? Could it possibly be merely because it was what you were brought up with? Oh no, it must be the One True Religion! They can just feel it in their bones! Bah, pfui!
To bring this back vaguely on-topic, one of the best things I find in science fiction (and even, frequently, in science fantasy), is that it can open your eyes to the mere fact of new possibilities. If the strange alien race has a strange alien religion, it can suddenly make you realize that there's more than one (or even four) possible religions. Of course, that doesn't just apply to religion--it applies to all sorts of things, like politics, economics, biology, sexuality, art, etc., etc. Sure, a lot (probably even most) science fiction is mere brain candy, but the genre is still, at its core, about exploring boundaries and new ideas, and I think that's a good thing, despite Sturgeon's law.
I frequently get pissed off at all the trolls who call the GPL "viral". However, if it worked the way you suggest, then it WOULD be viral! You should get, and you deserve, control over your own code. You neither need nor deserve control over someone else's code! Which is exactly how it works right now.
If it really bothers you all that much, then, when it happens to you, you can try to go for your share of the profits and maybe some punitive damages on top when your case comes up. If you can establish that they knew what they were doing, and deliberately decided to risk it anyway, then getting punitive damages should be a snap. But just forget about the trying to open up other people's code against their will! You're not going to find anything in copyright law or the GPL to support that, and neither (IMO) should you.
The GPL is not viral because the GPL is a defense! Keep that in mind, and you won't have unreasonable expectations.
The broadcast flag - that has something to do with television programs, yes? Am I supposed to give a rats ass about television programs? Anyway, as someone else pointed out, the broadcast flag would only be effective with the backing of the DMCA. Otherwise, it's as stupid and useless as the rot13 "encryption" used by Adobe e-books. (Whoops, I think I just broke the DMCA with that last sentence.)
I'm not sure the clerk was actually clueless. Consider:
Clerk: the new PS3 and the new XBox/360 are both expected within the next few months.
Customer: ok, I'll keep my money in my pocket and come back some other time (maybe). Bye!
vs.
Clerk: well, there's this new, small Playstation that we have in stock, but I don't know of any plans for a new XBox.
Customer: cool, I'm going to pull out my wallet and buy one each of the machines you've got right now. Ring me up!
I mean, duh, these guys are trying to sell stuff, not keep you up-to-date with the latest industry gossip! If you go into a store and ask questions, you should expect to hear answers designed to separate you from your money. It's that simple.
Advantages:
- Free/Open Source
- Single or multi-user
- Old and fairly robust
- Optional command-line appointment entry
- has official IANA assigned port (netplan)
- PDA sync available through PilotManager
Disadvantages:- Unix/Linux only
- Requires Motif/Lesstif (hence the previous)
- Not widely known
- A little fussy to configure sometimes
- Uses identd for auth - not for use on the open Internet
It's a simple system, but works fairly well on a single machine or small LAN.You're absolutely right, but I think the point is that MS has been ordered to provide this information in order to encourage competition, but they are blatantly and deliberately trying to lock out the only viable existing competition.
subject line says it all.
> Why a commercial company should be forced to dismantle and hand itself over to open source.
Dismantle? Dismantle?? What kind of drugs are you on? Providing documentation is not the same as being dismantled! And as for why, well, you might as well ask why a private citizen has to go to jail. It's because they were convicted of a crime and are being punished. I mean, duh!
> It's not like Samba could be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions.
Geeze, even for slashdot, this is a silly comment. Hasn't the "free speech, not free beer" quote been posted about a million times? Of course Samba can be commercially harmed by Microsoft's actions! Vendors like IBM, HP, Sun, Red Hat, Novell, and yes, even SCO sell Samba. Just because none of them have exclusive rights to the code does not mean it's not a commercial product! Locking out Samba harms dozens, maybe thousands, of companies, as well as consumers, for the private benefit of just one company. That is the definition of antitrust.
HTH, HAND
> IMHO the spirit of the GPL has been broken.
Really? So what about rxvt and konsole? As far as I know, the KDE developers have never released any patches to try to integrate any of their enhancements to rxvt back into the rxvt code base. They simply release the code for konsole. It's up to the rxvt developers to review the konsole code and backport any useful bits they may stumble across. Would you say that the KDE developers are violating the spirit of the GPL there? I don't think so! Apple's doing a lot more for KHTML than KDE is doing for rxvt -- where's the outrage at KDE?
I'm sure their habit of suing their own customers has greatly helped their position in the market as well. I know that I always prefer to buy things from someone who'll sue me for having bought it later. And while I'm at it, can I get one of those new cars with the bear trap built into the accelerator pedal? :)
What you say is true, as far as it goes, but, on the other hand, sharing copyrighted materials is NOT illegal IF the copyright owner has given permission, as tens or hundreds of thousands of musicians, filmmakers and software developers have.
:)
I think the interesting point of this particular case is that it serves to counter the standard "sharing hurts artists" line. Many artists are already clued into that fact that sharing can be beneficial (and some even were before the Internet came along, having seen the example of the Grateful Dead), but this is a nice instance of a retroactive discovery of that fact.
Now, as a member of the Debian Project, I think it behooves me to respect copyright, not just on software, but in general. (Fortunately, at least some of the thousands of musicians who allow their music to be freely traded are also to my taste.) Still, even without the need to justify my own behavior, I find this a charming story and hope it provides a valuable lesson to someone.
While respect for the law is good, sharing is also good. Huge corporate interests are spending billions of dollars to try to deny this last, but it remains true, and it's nice to see a reminder every now and again.
Ha! We'll show him! We won't bother to RTFA, but we'll discuss it at great length anyway! :)
The problem with that theory is that the person is (supposedly) talking about the GPL, but what you're saying has nothing to do with the GPL or any other license. It could be said about BSD code or the semi-free (no-commercial-distribution) editor that Linus originally used to write his kernel, or even just some random code I put on my web page that comes with no license whatsoever!
There may be a problem (of sorts) with code in general having less-than-perfect attributions and/or copyright statements, but that has nothing to do with the GPL. By claiming this is a problem with the GPL, ZDNet is clearly spreading lying FUD (though whether they are the source of the FUD is unclear - probably not).
Shouldn't this be filed under "It's Funny, Laugh" rather than "Your Rights Online"? Seems more like slapstick than much of anything else. How many times does it have to be said: you don't enforce the GPL, you enforce COPYRIGHT! The GPL (like "fair use") is a defense! You don't "enforce" a defense, you raise it - if you can.
Why do people have to post endless complaints about an open format that has many programs supporting it, most of them open source? Me, I tend to assume that people who COMPLAIN about PDFs must be "windows hounds". Certainly Linux users don't mind invoking xpdf or its gnome/kde variants. If I had to use Acrobat, I might complain, but I haven't had Acrobat installed since I dumped Windows back in '98.
That assumes A) the song has lyrics, and B) the lyrics are at all comprehensible (i.e. doesn't work for a lot of rock).
:)
:)
> if the song is stuck in your head [...]
If the song is stuck in your head (as opposed to, say, playing on the radio), this service isn't going to do much good, unless it's able to figure out the song when you hum a few bars, which seems pretty unlikely.
Google is pretty good at finding song lyrics for you, but not 100% reliable. Especially if you're mishearing the lyrics - for example, I was trying to find what turned out to be Leadbelly's Linin' Track a while ago, and the closest match I could find was Aerosmith's Hangman Jury, because what I heard as "lie on the track" was, actually, "line 'em track".
But in general, yeah, Google's pretty good at identifying songs if you have some lyrics. Whereas this new service is likely to be next-to-useless for most purposes. Especially for my main need - identifying tracks on concert recordings I get through Etree.
I wonder if you get your money back if the service can't identify the song? I could probably stump it over and over and over again with random songs from the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive.
In addition to "correlation does not imply causality", you also have to consider the sample space. How do they define "blokey jobs" and "caring jobs"? And why did they pick those categories (however they define them) to look at? There was a study that showed that Israeli Fighter Pilots had an 84% of having girl children (which, by the way, seems to contradict the current study). Here's a link to a PDF that discusses this case (among others), and, for the PDF-adverse, here's the Google HTMLization. The point is that "Israeli Fighter Pilots" was chosen as an "interesting" category because of this stand-out statistic.
:)
From my link: "So going back to the Israeli fighter pilots--is it just random chance or is something else happening? To answer this, conventional statistics would set up the obvious sample space (children of fighter pilots), assign probabilities to boy and girl children, and calculate the chance of getting 84 per cent girls in a purely random trial. But this analysis ignores selective reporting. Why did anyone look at the sexes of Israeli fighter pilots' children in the first place? Presumably because a clump has already caught their attention."
Given that neither ABC News Australia nor Illuminating Science is exactly a reputable scientific journal, I would definitely hold off before reading too much into this. I also want to know how they explain the contradiction with the Israeli Fighter Pilot data.