"Despite what they've been repeatedly telling the press, they haven't claimed in court that Linux infringes on their Unix copyrights."
Not exactly true. Remember, tSCOg is involved in several cases. When Red Hat sued them (for, among other things, trade libel), they told that court (Delaware) that the copyright issues with respect to Linux would be sorted out in the Utah case (tSCOg v IBM). However, in the Utah courts, they told the judge that the case doesn't have anything to do with Linux copyrights. Which kind of suggests that they perjured themselves in Delaware, but that case is still on hold....
There's also the claims they made in the Autozone case in Nevada, which don't jibe with what they've said elsewhere, and none of it matches what they've said to the press....
According to America (the book) by John Stewart, et al.:
1. A
judicial activist sees the Constitution as a living document that can be adapted and re-interpreted to protect the needs of a changing society, such as "marriage between sodomites" and "impulse abortions."
2. A strict constructionist interpets the Constitution according to the language and original intent of the text at the time of its writing, in much the same way as a fundamentalist views the Bible. Fortunately for strict constructionists, they have been endowed by God with the super-human gift of being able to read the minds of people who died 200 years ago. Naturally, they use this power only for good.
But it's not going to work very well for that, either. Linux has a huge repository of drivers for all sorts of assorted devices. Solaris/x86 has a serious lack of HW drivers. By choosing a GPL-incompatible license, Sun has seriously hampered their ability to make a better Solaris.
Now don't get me wrong. I like Solaris. I've used it a lot, and hope to continue using it. But I think Sun really shot themselves in the foot over this one. I think you're right that they chose a GPL-incompatible license because they didn't want to help Linux, but I think they overlooked the fact that Linux has a lot more to offer Solaris than vice versa.
The areas where Solaris is better than Linux are down in the guts of the kernel, and will almost certainly require so much re-writing to adapt to Linux that a re-implementation from scratch will probably be easier, even if Sun hadn't left that as the only option. On the other hand, most of the Linux drivers are full of HW-specific code that could probably have been adapted to Solaris without TOO much work if Sun hadn't decided to go into paranoid mode.
The end result, I suspect, is that Linux is barely any worse off, while Solaris is much worse off, as a result of Sun's decision.
the Open Source Initiative decided it was "Open". It's not "Free" by the Free Software Foundation.
What, the CDDL? Is too Free! The FSF has it listed as a free software license right here. "This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. [...]" CDDL is free and open source. It's just incompatible (at a source-code merging level) with 60-80% of the software on a typical Linux distribution. Including the huge reperetoire of drivers that Linux comes with. Solaris is going to have a lot of fun re-inventing all those wheels. But oh well, that's life.
Wow, same trick works for "trigdell". Google is amazing. Of course, since I just misspelled McVoy in another post, I guess I shouldn't be casting stones.:)
While I basically agree with Bruce completely on this particular issue, there's something a bit ironic about Bruce, who has quite a reputation as a hothead himself, telling the usually unperturbable Mr. Torvalds to "cool it".
Ever since Larry McAvoy pulled kernel dev (and former Debian Project Leader) Ben Collins' license I've been waiting for this thing to blow up. It's been obvious that it was a matter of when, not whether. And it seems pretty obvious to me that Tridge merely provided the excuse Larry has been looking for.
Linus is a smart guy, and I'm sure he'll get over his little snit before long. But in the meantime, my god, being told to cool it by Bruce Perens is like having RMS tell you not to worry so much about whether the software is really free or not!:)
(Not to dis Bruce, who I really like. And, as a person of Irish descent, I understand the temper thing. But still....wow!:)
I'm impressed that the article mentioned rogue! (And you should all be impressed that I at least skimmed TFA.:)
But by the standards they used for choosing the other games, I would have to say that Nethack really defines the genre that rogue started. More so even than Diablo.
I did like this, though:
"Best game ever - Nethack" -John Root, id Software
Re:Zork, you insensitive yougins!
on
Genre-Defining Games?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The Grue comes from Zork, but the twisty passages comes from the real grandaddy of all adventure games, the game named, simply, "adventure" (still available as part of the base BSD gamepack).
~ $ adventure
Welcome to Adventure!! Would you like instructions? n
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. e
You are inside a building, a well house for a large spring.
Why it made the front page is that it says, "Judge Denies SCO's..." something. Doesn't matter what. The "editors" thought we might all want to crow about the fact that the judge said "no" to SCO about something. Of course, the fact that everyone promptly shouted "HUH?" instead of "YAY!" gives me hope for the slashdot crowd.:)
(And actually, SCO is still trying to ask for more delay. What this particular ruling means is that they cannot delay the discussion about whether they get more delay. This forestalls any attempt they might make to delay the decision on whether they can delay the decision on whether they can get more delay. HTH.:)
The actual trial doesn't start until the jury is selected. Even though both sides have asked for a jury trial, it's still possible for the case to be resolved before it ever gets to trial.
We're currently in the "discovery" phase, where both sides are supposed to show each other their evidence and take depositions and whatnot. This is where SCOG is balking, since they apparently have no evidence.
Once discovery is over, there will be a period where both sides continue examining the evidence they've received and prepare for trial. This is also where both sides bring up motions for summary judgement on points where they think the evidence is indisputably in their favor. Look for IBM to gut SCOG's case during this period. Look for SCOG to continue everything they can think of to delay the start of this phase.
Finally, if there's anything left of the case, the trial proper will start. Look for IBM's patent claims against SCOG, and possibly their GPL claims as well, to be resolved here. Look for the people in charge of SCOG's bankruptcy proceedings to be managing the defense.:)
Finally, as a former customer of the Santa Cruz Operation, I would like to remind people that the company currently called The SCO Group bears no relation. The company suing IBM is a Linux company that was named "Caldera" until a couple of years ago. There's a charming irony there, since "Caldera" basically means, "a smoking hole in the ground," which is what we expect Caldera/SCOG to be fairly soon.:)
How many times does it have to be explained that copyright infringement is a different offence to theft?
I don't know - how many times will it take until the people who claim that "it's not theft" learn English?
Not all theft is illegal or even wrong. "Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal," as some great artist once wrote. Shakespeare stole the plot for Romeo and Juliet from some Italian writer. Block and Adler stole the plot of Forbidden Planet from Shakespeare. None of them did anything wrong; in fact both of them made the world a better place, IMO.
Copyright infringement is a form of theft that (like plot-stealing) doesn't involve any physical loss on the original owner's part. Nevertheless (unlike plot-stealing), it's a form of theft that is illegal.
I understand what you're trying to say, and even more or less agree with it. But I'm sick of people mangling the English language for political ends, even when I agree with the politics. "Theft" is not just limited to physical property. A girl stole my heart once, but I wasn't even slightly tempted to have her arrested for it!:)
I, for one, welcome our new Russian Mathemetician overlords!
No, seriously - it can't be worse than being faced with another choice between cookie-cutter Republocrat/Demican candidates who differ (if at all) only in the question of which corporations they've been bought by, and who spend so much time talking out of their asses that you can't tell whether they're coming or going.
Former or current Russian leaders I would object to (strongly), but Russian mathematicians? That could be interesting. Heck, I bet they could figure out how to pronounce "nuclear", and I don't think this country has had a leader who could do that since the fifties!:)
when making a PBJ, the J seeps through the bread. To solve that problem, Smuckers put PB on BOTH pieces of bread.
Gee, when I was a kid, my mom taught me to put regular butter on the jam side for exactly that reason. If only we'd known it was such an "innovative" idea, I'd be the son of a millionaire right now!:)
Or maybe it's the use of peanut butter instead of regular butter that makes it quite so new and innovative and inobvious? Yeah, substituting peanut butter for butter on a PBJ - nobody would *ever* think of that!
Anyway, I just had myself a patent-violating sandwich to, er, celebrate.:)
> I can see how homeless people would find this an effective use of their time, but other than that....
I dunno, sounds like a better/more entertaining use of my time than, say, watching the latest incarnation of Survivor. Or standing in line to see Star Wars episode 3. Or filling in little boxes in my web browser with text in order to debate the effective uses of my time with anonymous cowards on slashdot.:)
> Consider the fact that here in New Jersey, a Rapist gets out in 3 years with good behavior.
You're comparing apples and oranges here. Time-sentenced is not the same as time-served - the two are very, very different. A sentence of nine years may very well translate to as little as a year of actual time served (with good behavior)!
> It's silly to throw someone in jail in a country where we already have an overcrowded jail system.
That's a separate issue, and I definitely agree with you there. But I see no reason why a criminal spammer should be treated differently from any other sort of non-violent criminal, even while I may agree with you that non-violent criminals should, in general, be treated differently than they are.
> Have The Allman brothers (Who i'm not familiar with at all)...
God, you're making me feel old. The Allmans were monsters of guitar rock with a string of huge hits in the early seventies. Duane Allman was killed in a vehicle accident (and band broke up for about a decade) but he was recently voted as the second greatest guitar player of all time - after Jimi Hendrix - by Rolling Stone Magazine (I know, I know - consider the source). He also played on one of Clapton's best-known albums, Layla. His brother Greg is probably best known for having once, briefly, married Cher.:)
>...given a reason for the line between digital and analog recordings?
It's not between digital and analog (most analog devices are electronic, y'know). They allow one-on-one trading, but no electronic trading or mass distribution. What they want, I think, is to keep the tapes in the hands of fans only, and out of the hands of professional bootleggers, and off eBay. But I admit that their policy, as stated, is a bit ambiguous and confusing.
Hmm, I consider myself less geeky than someone who thinks the Geek Hierarchy chart needs new entries for "Real RPGer" -> "D&Der" -> "LARPer".
On the other hand, I'm also in the category of people who have played board games with Lore (creator of the chart), which may push my geek quotient back over the top.:)
I'm not familiar with EZT, but I've frequently heard it compared to SharingtheGroove, a now-defunct site that I was familiar with. Indeed, the SharingtheGroove admins had many of the same rules you cite: no official releases, no Allman Brothers, etc. The Allman Brothers are taper-friendly, but have a strict no-electronic-trading policy, and tapers don't want to risk the former by breaking the latter, and STG went along with that. Which is good. But at the same time, STG had no hesitation whatsoever about allowing shows by actively taper-hostile acts like Bob Dylan and David Byrne. It was only the taper-friendly artists like the Allmans whose wishes they respected.
Everything you said in defense of EZT could have been said about STG. However, while they had strong moral standards about what was and wasn't ok, and they took great pains to comply with those moral standards, they didn't actually pay much attention to the law (distributing Bob Dylan recordings without Bob Dylan's permission is illegal). So nothing you said has persuaded me that EZT actually did, as you claim, "take great pains to comply with the law." Tell me they didn't allow Allman Bros, and I'm just going to assume they're part of the same community that created STG. Tell me they didn't allow Bob Dylan or the Talking Heads, then maybe I'll start to believe what you say.
I had not yet voted when this announcement went out. (I have now, however.) The main reason I took so long to get my vote in is that the number of candidates (and the number of new candidates, since the incumbent isn't running) is higher than it has been in recent years, and I needed extra time to figure out who they all were, and how I thought they should be ranked. The last few elections, I had a fairly good idea of how I was going to vote before I even started looking at the candidates in detail. This year, it was a really tough choice, and I had to spend a lot more time on it. So, I wouldn't read too much into the low turnout at this point.
While I think I mostly agree with what you say, imagine my complete and utter lack of sympathy for a yacht club that has to pay a little too much for their booze! Ooh, the poor little multimillionaires - my heart is bleeding.:)
Seriously, I think your point would have more impact if you used a slightly different example. As it is, I had to fight the urge to cheer for that distribution cartel you're complaining about.
> > How is that scary? He had the credit card that was just used a few hours ago.
> And how did they know he wasn't the one who stole it?
And what if he was? He's not trying to use it, he's trying to track down the actual owner, so he can...do what, exactly? What evil thing is it that you're afraid might have happened here? Is he going to get his revenge because the credit limit was so low? I don't see the problem, sorry.
> it's that kind of blind trust that...
We don't know if it was blind trust. Maybe they asked to see his ID, and he just neglected to mention that minor detail. But whether they did or not, I still don't see the danger. Maybe I'm just not paranoid enough (wouldn't be the first time).
Slashdot Mirror
So only us agnostics can steal this password? :)
I don't want to overload their servers! :)
"Despite what they've been repeatedly telling the press, they haven't claimed in court that Linux infringes on their Unix copyrights."
Not exactly true. Remember, tSCOg is involved in several cases. When Red Hat sued them (for, among other things, trade libel), they told that court (Delaware) that the copyright issues with respect to Linux would be sorted out in the Utah case (tSCOg v IBM). However, in the Utah courts, they told the judge that the case doesn't have anything to do with Linux copyrights. Which kind of suggests that they perjured themselves in Delaware, but that case is still on hold....
There's also the claims they made in the Autozone case in Nevada, which don't jibe with what they've said elsewhere, and none of it matches what they've said to the press....
HTH, HAND
But it's not going to work very well for that, either. Linux has a huge repository of drivers for all sorts of assorted devices. Solaris/x86 has a serious lack of HW drivers. By choosing a GPL-incompatible license, Sun has seriously hampered their ability to make a better Solaris.
Now don't get me wrong. I like Solaris. I've used it a lot, and hope to continue using it. But I think Sun really shot themselves in the foot over this one. I think you're right that they chose a GPL-incompatible license because they didn't want to help Linux, but I think they overlooked the fact that Linux has a lot more to offer Solaris than vice versa.
The areas where Solaris is better than Linux are down in the guts of the kernel, and will almost certainly require so much re-writing to adapt to Linux that a re-implementation from scratch will probably be easier, even if Sun hadn't left that as the only option. On the other hand, most of the Linux drivers are full of HW-specific code that could probably have been adapted to Solaris without TOO much work if Sun hadn't decided to go into paranoid mode.
The end result, I suspect, is that Linux is barely any worse off, while Solaris is much worse off, as a result of Sun's decision.
the Open Source Initiative decided it was "Open". It's not "Free" by the Free Software Foundation.
What, the CDDL? Is too Free! The FSF has it listed as a free software license right here. "This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft; it has some complex restrictions that make it incompatible with the GNU GPL. [...]" CDDL is free and open source. It's just incompatible (at a source-code merging level) with 60-80% of the software on a typical Linux distribution. Including the huge reperetoire of drivers that Linux comes with. Solaris is going to have a lot of fun re-inventing all those wheels. But oh well, that's life.
Wow, same trick works for "trigdell". Google is amazing. Of course, since I just misspelled McVoy in another post, I guess I shouldn't be casting stones. :)
While I basically agree with Bruce completely on this particular issue, there's something a bit ironic about Bruce, who has quite a reputation as a hothead himself, telling the usually unperturbable Mr. Torvalds to "cool it".
:)
:)
Ever since Larry McAvoy pulled kernel dev (and former Debian Project Leader) Ben Collins' license I've been waiting for this thing to blow up. It's been obvious that it was a matter of when, not whether. And it seems pretty obvious to me that Tridge merely provided the excuse Larry has been looking for.
Linus is a smart guy, and I'm sure he'll get over his little snit before long. But in the meantime, my god, being told to cool it by Bruce Perens is like having RMS tell you not to worry so much about whether the software is really free or not!
(Not to dis Bruce, who I really like. And, as a person of Irish descent, I understand the temper thing. But still....wow!
I'm impressed that the article mentioned rogue! (And you should all be impressed that I at least skimmed TFA.:)
But by the standards they used for choosing the other games, I would have to say that Nethack really defines the genre that rogue started. More so even than Diablo.
I did like this, though:
"Best game ever - Nethack"
-John Root, id Software
Don't have a cow, man!
Why it made the front page is that it says, "Judge Denies SCO's..." something. Doesn't matter what. The "editors" thought we might all want to crow about the fact that the judge said "no" to SCO about something. Of course, the fact that everyone promptly shouted "HUH?" instead of "YAY!" gives me hope for the slashdot crowd. :)
(And actually, SCO is still trying to ask for more delay. What this particular ruling means is that they cannot delay the discussion about whether they get more delay. This forestalls any attempt they might make to delay the decision on whether they can delay the decision on whether they can get more delay. HTH.:)
The actual trial doesn't start until the jury is selected. Even though both sides have asked for a jury trial, it's still possible for the case to be resolved before it ever gets to trial.
:)
:)
We're currently in the "discovery" phase, where both sides are supposed to show each other their evidence and take depositions and whatnot. This is where SCOG is balking, since they apparently have no evidence.
Once discovery is over, there will be a period where both sides continue examining the evidence they've received and prepare for trial. This is also where both sides bring up motions for summary judgement on points where they think the evidence is indisputably in their favor. Look for IBM to gut SCOG's case during this period. Look for SCOG to continue everything they can think of to delay the start of this phase.
Finally, if there's anything left of the case, the trial proper will start. Look for IBM's patent claims against SCOG, and possibly their GPL claims as well, to be resolved here. Look for the people in charge of SCOG's bankruptcy proceedings to be managing the defense.
Finally, as a former customer of the Santa Cruz Operation, I would like to remind people that the company currently called The SCO Group bears no relation. The company suing IBM is a Linux company that was named "Caldera" until a couple of years ago. There's a charming irony there, since "Caldera" basically means, "a smoking hole in the ground," which is what we expect Caldera/SCOG to be fairly soon.
How many times does it have to be explained that copyright infringement is a different offence to theft?
:)
I don't know - how many times will it take until the people who claim that "it's not theft" learn English?
Not all theft is illegal or even wrong. "Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal," as some great artist once wrote. Shakespeare stole the plot for Romeo and Juliet from some Italian writer. Block and Adler stole the plot of Forbidden Planet from Shakespeare. None of them did anything wrong; in fact both of them made the world a better place, IMO.
Copyright infringement is a form of theft that (like plot-stealing) doesn't involve any physical loss on the original owner's part. Nevertheless (unlike plot-stealing), it's a form of theft that is illegal.
I understand what you're trying to say, and even more or less agree with it. But I'm sick of people mangling the English language for political ends, even when I agree with the politics. "Theft" is not just limited to physical property. A girl stole my heart once, but I wasn't even slightly tempted to have her arrested for it!
I, for one, welcome our new Russian Mathemetician overlords!
:)
No, seriously - it can't be worse than being faced with another choice between cookie-cutter Republocrat/Demican candidates who differ (if at all) only in the question of which corporations they've been bought by, and who spend so much time talking out of their asses that you can't tell whether they're coming or going.
Former or current Russian leaders I would object to (strongly), but Russian mathematicians? That could be interesting. Heck, I bet they could figure out how to pronounce "nuclear", and I don't think this country has had a leader who could do that since the fifties!
when making a PBJ, the J seeps through the bread. To solve that problem, Smuckers put PB on BOTH pieces of bread.
:)
:)
Gee, when I was a kid, my mom taught me to put regular butter on the jam side for exactly that reason. If only we'd known it was such an "innovative" idea, I'd be the son of a millionaire right now!
Or maybe it's the use of peanut butter instead of regular butter that makes it quite so new and innovative and inobvious? Yeah, substituting peanut butter for butter on a PBJ - nobody would *ever* think of that!
Anyway, I just had myself a patent-violating sandwich to, er, celebrate.
> I can see how homeless people would find this an effective use of their time, but other than that....
:)
I dunno, sounds like a better/more entertaining use of my time than, say, watching the latest incarnation of Survivor. Or standing in line to see Star Wars episode 3. Or filling in little boxes in my web browser with text in order to debate the effective uses of my time with anonymous cowards on slashdot.
> Consider the fact that here in New Jersey, a Rapist gets out in 3 years with good behavior.
You're comparing apples and oranges here. Time-sentenced is not the same as time-served - the two are very, very different. A sentence of nine years may very well translate to as little as a year of actual time served (with good behavior)!
> It's silly to throw someone in jail in a country where we already have an overcrowded jail system.
That's a separate issue, and I definitely agree with you there. But I see no reason why a criminal spammer should be treated differently from any other sort of non-violent criminal, even while I may agree with you that non-violent criminals should, in general, be treated differently than they are.
> I'm curious about the logic of that statement.
:)
...
:)
...given a reason for the line between digital and analog recordings?
Yeah, me too, a bit.
> Have The Allman brothers (Who i'm not familiar with at all)
God, you're making me feel old. The Allmans were monsters of guitar rock with a string of huge hits in the early seventies. Duane Allman was killed in a vehicle accident (and band broke up for about a decade) but he was recently voted as the second greatest guitar player of all time - after Jimi Hendrix - by Rolling Stone Magazine (I know, I know - consider the source). He also played on one of Clapton's best-known albums, Layla. His brother Greg is probably best known for having once, briefly, married Cher.
>
It's not between digital and analog (most analog devices are electronic, y'know). They allow one-on-one trading, but no electronic trading or mass distribution. What they want, I think, is to keep the tapes in the hands of fans only, and out of the hands of professional bootleggers, and off eBay. But I admit that their policy, as stated, is a bit ambiguous and confusing.
Hmm, I consider myself less geeky than someone who thinks the Geek Hierarchy chart needs new entries for "Real RPGer" -> "D&Der" -> "LARPer".
:)
On the other hand, I'm also in the category of people who have played board games with Lore (creator of the chart), which may push my geek quotient back over the top.
I'm not familiar with EZT, but I've frequently heard it compared to SharingtheGroove, a now-defunct site that I was familiar with. Indeed, the SharingtheGroove admins had many of the same rules you cite: no official releases, no Allman Brothers, etc. The Allman Brothers are taper-friendly, but have a strict no-electronic-trading policy, and tapers don't want to risk the former by breaking the latter, and STG went along with that. Which is good. But at the same time, STG had no hesitation whatsoever about allowing shows by actively taper-hostile acts like Bob Dylan and David Byrne. It was only the taper-friendly artists like the Allmans whose wishes they respected.
Everything you said in defense of EZT could have been said about STG. However, while they had strong moral standards about what was and wasn't ok, and they took great pains to comply with those moral standards, they didn't actually pay much attention to the law (distributing Bob Dylan recordings without Bob Dylan's permission is illegal). So nothing you said has persuaded me that EZT actually did, as you claim, "take great pains to comply with the law." Tell me they didn't allow Allman Bros, and I'm just going to assume they're part of the same community that created STG. Tell me they didn't allow Bob Dylan or the Talking Heads, then maybe I'll start to believe what you say.
I had not yet voted when this announcement went out. (I have now, however.) The main reason I took so long to get my vote in is that the number of candidates (and the number of new candidates, since the incumbent isn't running) is higher than it has been in recent years, and I needed extra time to figure out who they all were, and how I thought they should be ranked. The last few elections, I had a fairly good idea of how I was going to vote before I even started looking at the candidates in detail. This year, it was a really tough choice, and I had to spend a lot more time on it. So, I wouldn't read too much into the low turnout at this point.
While I think I mostly agree with what you say, imagine my complete and utter lack of sympathy for a yacht club that has to pay a little too much for their booze! Ooh, the poor little multimillionaires - my heart is bleeding. :)
Seriously, I think your point would have more impact if you used a slightly different example. As it is, I had to fight the urge to cheer for that distribution cartel you're complaining about.
English is not Greek, and, like it or not, "octopuses" and "octopi" are both listed in dictionaries of the English language, but "octopodes" are not.
:)
Octopi here, but no octopodes.
Or to put it another way, I'm sympathetic to your argument, but I still disagree with you.
> > How is that scary? He had the credit card that was just used a few hours ago.
> And how did they know he wasn't the one who stole it?
And what if he was? He's not trying to use it, he's trying to track down the actual owner, so he can...do what, exactly? What evil thing is it that you're afraid might have happened here? Is he going to get his revenge because the credit limit was so low? I don't see the problem, sorry.
> it's that kind of blind trust that...
We don't know if it was blind trust. Maybe they asked to see his ID, and he just neglected to mention that minor detail. But whether they did or not, I still don't see the danger. Maybe I'm just not paranoid enough (wouldn't be the first time).