A few things: 1) I have NEVER voted for the party in power, yet they get to decide what I can and cannot do. That's democracy for you, I guess, but democracy is little more than legalised mob rule. 2) I can't remember the last time a law was repealed. Indeed, the only things that seem to be happening now are laws making more and more things illegal. When was the last time something was made legal?
I'm not advocating civil disobedience, though. I was simply using it as an example of a case where people will do different things based on the context of the situation.
One thing I would advocate civil disobedience for, though, is the DeCSS fiasco. Get 10,000 people to go to the police and confess to playing a DVD they bought on an unlicensed player in violation of the EUCD.
Another poing to consider; people do not always follow the law consistently. The poll tax was repealed because the people simply refused to accept it and the civil disobedience that ensued caused chaos. However, according to the argument that sparked my original comment, you should either accept any law the government brings in or you should accept none. Things simply aren't that black and white.
Ah, the old "I'll over-simplify the arguments so it'll look like I'm right" argument. Well, first of all, there is no one Slashdot stance. If there was, there wouldn't be anywhere near the number of flame wars that there are.
Second, your over-simplification doesn't take into account the goals of the various parties. There are people who believe in strongly enforcing the GPL because it's geared towards helping the community/society, whereas the licenses for films and music are intended purely to make as much money as possible for the companies/machines that are extending and corrupting copyright.
So what you're saying is that Firefox 1.0PR, which installs on Win9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3, is a 10 times smaller download than IE6SP and is around 20% smaller than IE3's installer?
RaLink's Linux drivers have a serious bug in 2.6 that was fixed by end users. Just think, if the source code wasn't available, it couldn't have been fixed.
I myself once delved into the Mozilla source code to help Daniel Glazman out, simply because I had a couple of hours free. I also hacked at Dia when I desperately needed a diagram object that it didn't support.
Several of my friends have fixed/extended/enhanced a number of open source projects over the past few years.
minion.de had a set of patches to make NVIDIA's drivers work on 2.5/2.6 kernels long before NVIDIA officially supported anything other than 2.4.
In conclusion, while most people don't look at the source code, some of us *do*. So, ultimately, having the source code available *has* helped me and several people I know.
The cluelessness is strong in this one. Take a look at what Jabber really is and then come back and tell me it's nothing but a copy of the other instant messenger systems.
"The cryptographic hashes are broken. The world is going to fall apart." You've got two separate statements there. Because of the full stop, you can't tell if the second statement was caused by the first.
"The cryptographic hashes are broken; the world is going to fall apart." This implies causality. Thus, the world is going to fall apart *because* the cryptographic hashes are broken.
"The cryptographic hashes are broken, and the world is going to fall apart." I was told to never put "and" after a comma, so I'm not sure this sentance *is* legal English. As with the first sentance, you again can't be certain of the causality of the statements.
However, you are right in your general statement, the first and last sentances have the same meaning.
I'm not disagreeing with you, my own website uses IE7 and is all div-based. However, it's all too easy to make a layout that you think is logically sound but completely screws up in IE.
The DX would work fine on FPM and EDO RAM, IIRC. The 386SX was the chip that had a 16-bit external bus. SX and DX in terms of the 486 only meant whether or not it had an enabled FPU.
A ''derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a ''derivative work''.
I'd say that using an API makes your work "based upon one or more preexisting works." The only time I can see a grey area is when there's a GPL implementation and a non-GPL implementation, whereby both are binary compatible.
Slashdot Mirror
You are so wrong it's not funny. Gtk+ is actually LGPL.
Have you considered the possibility that the US is doing lots of bad things and that the BBC is simply reporting them?
A few things:
1) I have NEVER voted for the party in power, yet they get to decide what I can and cannot do. That's democracy for you, I guess, but democracy is little more than legalised mob rule.
2) I can't remember the last time a law was repealed. Indeed, the only things that seem to be happening now are laws making more and more things illegal. When was the last time something was made legal?
I'm not advocating civil disobedience, though. I was simply using it as an example of a case where people will do different things based on the context of the situation.
One thing I would advocate civil disobedience for, though, is the DeCSS fiasco. Get 10,000 people to go to the police and confess to playing a DVD they bought on an unlicensed player in violation of the EUCD.
Another poing to consider; people do not always follow the law consistently. The poll tax was repealed because the people simply refused to accept it and the civil disobedience that ensued caused chaos. However, according to the argument that sparked my original comment, you should either accept any law the government brings in or you should accept none. Things simply aren't that black and white.
Life is a God-given/human right. Copyright is something granted by the people. There is a fundamental difference there.
"Cant have it one way but not the other."
If the law doesn't match up to what rights the person thinks the author should have, then of course you can.
Ah, the old "I'll over-simplify the arguments so it'll look like I'm right" argument. Well, first of all, there is no one Slashdot stance. If there was, there wouldn't be anywhere near the number of flame wars that there are.
Second, your over-simplification doesn't take into account the goals of the various parties. There are people who believe in strongly enforcing the GPL because it's geared towards helping the community/society, whereas the licenses for films and music are intended purely to make as much money as possible for the companies/machines that are extending and corrupting copyright.
The ".app" system has a serious flaw; duplicated libraries. Look what happened when a flaw was discovered in GDI+'s JPEG code.
No, the Half-Life engine is a heavily modded Quake ONE engine.
So what you're saying is that Firefox 1.0PR, which installs on Win9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3, is a 10 times smaller download than IE6SP and is around 20% smaller than IE3's installer?
RaLink's Linux drivers have a serious bug in 2.6 that was fixed by end users. Just think, if the source code wasn't available, it couldn't have been fixed.
I myself once delved into the Mozilla source code to help Daniel Glazman out, simply because I had a couple of hours free. I also hacked at Dia when I desperately needed a diagram object that it didn't support.
Several of my friends have fixed/extended/enhanced a number of open source projects over the past few years.
minion.de had a set of patches to make NVIDIA's drivers work on 2.5/2.6 kernels long before NVIDIA officially supported anything other than 2.4.
In conclusion, while most people don't look at the source code, some of us *do*. So, ultimately, having the source code available *has* helped me and several people I know.
When IE 6.0 was released, how big was the download again?
The cluelessness is strong in this one. Take a look at what Jabber really is and then come back and tell me it's nothing but a copy of the other instant messenger systems.
I'm not sure you're entirely right there.
"The cryptographic hashes are broken. The world is going to fall apart."
You've got two separate statements there. Because of the full stop, you can't tell if the second statement was caused by the first.
"The cryptographic hashes are broken; the world is going to fall apart."
This implies causality. Thus, the world is going to fall apart *because* the cryptographic hashes are broken.
"The cryptographic hashes are broken, and the world is going to fall apart."
I was told to never put "and" after a comma, so I'm not sure this sentance *is* legal English. As with the first sentance, you again can't be certain of the causality of the statements.
However, you are right in your general statement, the first and last sentances have the same meaning.
The way it works is by refusing to allow the window.open() method to execute until *after* the body.onload() event has finished executing.
Hell, even TurboLinux have licensed WMA...
Would it really be that hard to say "Because I don't have it turned off all the time?"
I'm not disagreeing with you, my own website uses IE7 and is all div-based. However, it's all too easy to make a layout that you think is logically sound but completely screws up in IE.
Hmm...look at this:
div#foo {
position: absolute;
top: 100px;
left: 100px;
right: 100px;
}
What do you think it will do? What does IE6 do? That's some pretty basic CSS that IE screws up.
Say what?! Have you seen the difference in the wattage an Athlon 64 uses compared to an equivalent Prescott?!
The DX would work fine on FPM and EDO RAM, IIRC. The 386SX was the chip that had a 16-bit external bus. SX and DX in terms of the 486 only meant whether or not it had an enabled FPU.
Eh?! They added delegates, for one thing.
If, by "subscriber," you mean "someone with a means of viewing digital TV." There are no subscription charges for BBC3 or BBC4.
Taken from an earlier post...
A ''derivative work'' is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a ''derivative work''.
I'd say that using an API makes your work "based upon one or more preexisting works." The only time I can see a grey area is when there's a GPL implementation and a non-GPL implementation, whereby both are binary compatible.