All songs I have tried were either 44KHz/192Kbps or 22Khz/32Kbps. No idea what the criteria are. Maybe they are in the process of replacing all songs with the same quality (and if that's the case, I guess it won't be 192Kbps...)
Even if kde developers decide to switch KHTML to LGPL v3, WebKit was forked from a earlier LGPL v2 copy of KHTML, so they would not be affected.
You're missing the point and are not replying to anything I said or implied. The post that started this subthread said that the whole point of the (L)GPL is about protecting the end users' freedom to tinker. The (L)GPLv2 indeed allows companies to get around this by using DRM in certain ways, and (L)GPLv3 intends to close that loophole.
However, that's besides the point, since the only thing I replied to was Chemisor's complaint about "jumping to conclusions" regarding the statement:
> The DRM architecture in the iPhone takes away your freedom as an end user to
> play around with FLOSS inside the firmware.
He basically said there is no indication whatsoever that Apple is taking away any user freedom, because there is no proof that the iPhone contains FLOSS in the first place. I simply indicated that there most certainly is proof (to the extent that a blog post by Apple engineers on the webkit blog can constitute proof) that the iPhone contains FLOSS, and that consequently Apple/is/ taking away the freedom of end users to modify certain pieces of FLOSS code on the iPhone.
This is completely separate from GPLv2 vs GPLv3 (it's about the philosophy of the GPL: guarantee freedom of the end-user), from lawsuits, from "show us the code", from who contributed what code to khtml (and whether the copyright of code submitted to khtml remains with the submitter or is transfered to someone else), and from any FUD you want to read in this.
There is no proof that there is any GPL software in the iPhone
No, but there is proof that there is LGPL code on it: WebKit. And the aspects this discussion is about (being able to upgrade the components under the (L)GPL) apply equally to the GPL and LGPL.
More likely they will simply continue making and using proprietary code. That's what I would do. Aside from really large projects like the Linux kernel, it is not that much more difficult to rewrite than it is to reuse.
/blockquote>
Yeah, it's really fairly easy to write a standards-compliant html rendering engine (not to mention one which at the same time also works with the large amount of badly written html out there).
There wouldn't be such a directive if Germany hadn't pushed this forward the whole way.
I doubt it, since this was mainly pushed through by the UK Presidency. And pretty much the only fundamental opposition came from Ireland. But guess what: not because they're against data retention (in fact, a framework decision on this topic was approved under Ireland's presidency of the Council), but because they don't think it's a third pillar competence (the data retention directive was a codecision procedure).
That's how you bypass national legislature in Europe nowadays.
I'll be the last to argue that the the EU Council of Ministers is working well according to democratic standards, but at the same time I don't see anything Germany-specific about this particular directive or law.
That's true, although it is quite "consistent" with the directive. One of our criticisms was that it is ridiculous to do what the directive requires because there are so many ways around it. Forcing ISPs to record all email from/to data can be worked around by using foreign email providers and tunnelling. Recording from/to data about IP-telephony can't be done without inspecting every single ip packet flowing through your network, and even then only if someone is using a documented protocol without encryption/obfuscation, etc.
Banning TOR, requiring foreign email providers to play by the rules of the directive etc are minimal requirements for implementing the directive in any "sensible" way, if you look at it from an data retention efficacy perspective.
So in the end, I am convinced it is perfectly correct to say that this is all because of that EU directive and the horrific combination of fascists and idiots that supported it "to save the children" and to "catch the terrorists".
Unlike what the summary suggests, this is not specific to Germany. It's the implementation of a European directive on data retention. And FWIW, the US is indeed less invasive than the EU at this point concerning data retention.
What if I have used the product in good faith? If I have legally acquired and used a product, surely I have the right to expect I'm not doing anything wrong after all?
Patents don't work that way. You probably will not be found guilty of "willful infringement" in that case, so you won't have to pay treble damages, but apart from that whether or not you knew that you were infringing of a patent is irrelevant. "I didn't know I was infringing" is not a valid defence against patent infringement. That's why some companies offer patent infringement indemnification to their customers. In fact, the US government often requires this via contractual obligations.
The only possible safeguard for private persons is that at least in Europe, patents can only be infringed in a commercial environment (so private not for profit use is never an infringement). I don't know whether this is the case in the US as well though.
Here are a couple of consequences of the text as voted by the EP. This directive was not and has never been about piracy (although some lobby organisations have tried to hijack it for that purpose). It is only about EU competence extension.
And fwiw, it does not exclude private users from criminal sanctions. The approved amendment reads:
(b) "infringements on a commercial scale" means any infringement of an intellectual property right committed to obtain a commercial advantage; this excludes acts carried out by private users for personal and not-for-profit purposes;
So it says it's on a commercial scale (one of the conditions for an infringement to be in the scope of this directive) if it is "to obtain a commercial advantage". It goes on to say that this "excludes" private users, but that is simply not true. This extra sentence about private users is not phrased as an explicit exclusion, but as an statement which supposedly explains what the first part achieves. However, "obtaining a commercial advantage" can be interpreted as "spending less money". For example when someone illegally downloads a song from the Internet, that person has a commercial advantage.
The Greens had tabled an amendment to actually exclude private users properly, but it was not carried. It read:
(b)For the purpose of this directive "on a commercial scale" means a large number of repeated infringements committed in pursuit of a direct pecuniary gain, excluding in particular any act carried out by a private person not intended to earn a profit.
As you see, here the private use is explicitly excluded, rather than just in a supposedly explanatory statement. And "direct pecuniary gain" and "earning a profit" are quite more strict than "obtaining a commercial advantage".
Imagine a solid structure being put under pressure, as the pressure increased a tiny fraction of the material is turned into liquid, my immediate idea is that this would weaken the structure increasing the risk of a collapse.
I'm not sure. If nothing can liquify, then the high pressure will make everything crumble. A pile of sand, so to speak, doesn't have much structural integrity. Conversely, if part of the pressurised solids convert to liquid and thereby keep the rest of the solid material whole, I would think overall integrity would be stronger since the pressure which caused the liquifying in the first place also keeps everything pressed together. And once the pressure stops the liquids solidify again, thereby reinforcing the building's own structural integrity again in the absence of external pressure.
but I don't think they have a choice but to go after the people violating copyright
They sure do have a choice. Unlike trademarks, copyright does not become suddenly void because you did not prosecute infringements (except possibly in some fringe situations, but in this case there's definitely no danger of that happening).
I think you'll find that the labels are the ones that have set the regional limits and pricing standards. Apple is bound by the contracts the labels were willing to negotiate, and the labels didn't want to negotiate liberal contracts when the iTunes stores were first being set up.
The coverage by the Belgian/Flemish national news service says indeed that the price differences are reportedly required by the labels, and that (according to the Financial Times) the probe specifically targets EMI, Sony and Warner, who have two months to formulate an answer. And if the Commission doesn't like their answer, it reserves the right to confiscate 10% of the labels' revenue (from Internet sales, presumably). It doesn't say anything about sanctions against Apple.
Patents are only rights to exclude others from doing something (namely what is claimed by the patent). "Donating" a patent to someone is therefore very unlikely to help someone build a business around it, unless that business is threatening to sue the hell out of everyone else who has ignored that patent until now (because the owner clearly decided not to enforce it). The reason is that it almost never happens that a product is only covered by a single (or even a couple of) patents, except sometimes with pharmaceuticals or so (but those patents are very unlikely to be dormant).
In this case, pretty much all individual member states sounded almost like the current American government, toting the "think of the children" and "be afraid of the terrorist" lines. This directive was not primarily a result of haggling among member states (and yes, I did follow this directive from nearby).
This is clear that the EU is *not* trying to implement this it's the *individual governments* that are going the draconian route - so your argument goes out of the window completely.
No, it doesn't. These laws are merely the implementation of a European directive which was approved earlier on. Further, the article is plain wrong when it claims that the Netherlands is going further than what the directive requires by recording where you are during a mobile phone call, because that's literally required by the directive.
The German proposal could be interpreted as going further, although the directive does say that the sender and recipient of all emails must be logged, and what good does this logging do if you can't identify these people? It's therefore very much "in the spirit" of the directive.
That said, you can't just blame this on "the EU" either, since one of the reasons the directive is so bad as it is, is because the Council of Ministers (which consists of ministers of the various national governments) pushed through the adopted "compromise" text (which was not a compromise at all) through Parliament (together with the leadership of the EP's Socialist and Christian Democrat groups).
Strange, Amazon says otherwise. Of course the law always trumps this sort of notices, but in my experience with Belgian shops their terms of service are usually in compliance with the law.
Other part is that Holland pays the most contribution, granted it is a rich nation, but we also get less and less to say.
The EU is indeed not a publicly traded company where the country which "invests" most has the most to say. And every country gets less power as the EU expands, that's logical.
That said, you're absolutely right that the EU has a huge democratic deficit, and that the NO's in the referenda on the constitution were a serious wake-up call to the member states which they are ignoring because they have no answers to them.
But on the other hand you are over-generalising. At least in my experience, the EP is not "corrupt to the very core of its existence". There quite a lot honest, well-meaning and hardworking people there, ranging from administration to actual Members of the EP (MEPs). In many cases (though certainly not in all, just look at e.g. the data retention directive), misguided decisions however do not come from corruption or malevolence, but from lack of hearing contravening viewpoints (or not hearing them from enough people with different backgrounds).
And while you can blame everything on the press and on politicians, a very big problem is that most people consider that after they have cast their ballot, they have done their democratic duty and are finished for the next 5 years in case of European elections (but this problem is by no means limited to European politics). At least I thought that way before I got involved in the FFII and software patents directive. The problems with this attitude are that
politicians do not work in a vacuum, and most do not want to take decisions from an ivory tower
large companies and other interest groups know this very well, and spoon feed politicians with whatever kind of information they want
And if a politician never hears any contravening viewpoints and the arguments of the interest groups look sound at first sight, they will follow it most of the time. After all, nobody is an expert in all things. A very nice example is someone pretty high up in the Commission who said in relation to the software patents directive that everything seemed so simple before the FFII appeared on the scene, and that now they don't know what is good anymore and what isn't. Of course most weren't intentionally trying to disadvantage small companies, they just didn't realise it. They simply thought they were helping the EU IT industry to compete better with its US competitors.
And as the FFII proved in the software patents case, you actually can make a difference. The EU is not some kind of machine or computer with a predetermined program; just like the rest of society it's made up out of a lot of different people and exactly because it is so huge, you're always bound to find a few people inside the system who agree with you and which can help you get started. And once you are in (e.g., you can get in the EP to talk to people there), it's just a matter of doing lots of work.
Slashdot Mirror
FWIW, FPC supports exit(somevalue); for this purpose (and return somevalue; in MacPas mode, because that's what Metrowerks Pascal supported).
All songs I have tried were either 44KHz/192Kbps or 22Khz/32Kbps. No idea what the criteria are. Maybe they are in the process of replacing all songs with the same quality (and if that's the case, I guess it won't be 192Kbps...)
Obligatory IBM v. Sun.
gcc going gplv3 would not affect anything built with gcc in any way (and that includes Mac OS X).
The FSF, nor the post that started this subthread, said so.
You're missing the point and are not replying to anything I said or implied. The post that started this subthread said that the whole point of the (L)GPL is about protecting the end users' freedom to tinker. The (L)GPLv2 indeed allows companies to get around this by using DRM in certain ways, and (L)GPLv3 intends to close that loophole.
However, that's besides the point, since the only thing I replied to was Chemisor's complaint about "jumping to conclusions" regarding the statement:
He basically said there is no indication whatsoever that Apple is taking away any user freedom, because there is no proof that the iPhone contains FLOSS in the first place. I simply indicated that there most certainly is proof (to the extent that a blog post by Apple engineers on the webkit blog can constitute proof) that the iPhone contains FLOSS, and that consequently Apple /is/ taking away the freedom of end users to modify certain pieces of FLOSS code on the iPhone.
This is completely separate from GPLv2 vs GPLv3 (it's about the philosophy of the GPL: guarantee freedom of the end-user), from lawsuits, from "show us the code", from who contributed what code to khtml (and whether the copyright of code submitted to khtml remains with the submitter or is transfered to someone else), and from any FUD you want to read in this.
No, but there is proof that there is LGPL code on it: WebKit. And the aspects this discussion is about (being able to upgrade the components under the (L)GPL) apply equally to the GPL and LGPL.
As someone once said, albeit in a different context: "That's not even wrong!" :)
I doubt it, since this was mainly pushed through by the UK Presidency. And pretty much the only fundamental opposition came from Ireland. But guess what: not because they're against data retention (in fact, a framework decision on this topic was approved under Ireland's presidency of the Council), but because they don't think it's a third pillar competence (the data retention directive was a codecision procedure).
I'll be the last to argue that the the EU Council of Ministers is working well according to democratic standards, but at the same time I don't see anything Germany-specific about this particular directive or law.
That's true, although it is quite "consistent" with the directive. One of our criticisms was that it is ridiculous to do what the directive requires because there are so many ways around it. Forcing ISPs to record all email from/to data can be worked around by using foreign email providers and tunnelling. Recording from/to data about IP-telephony can't be done without inspecting every single ip packet flowing through your network, and even then only if someone is using a documented protocol without encryption/obfuscation, etc.
Banning TOR, requiring foreign email providers to play by the rules of the directive etc are minimal requirements for implementing the directive in any "sensible" way, if you look at it from an data retention efficacy perspective.
So in the end, I am convinced it is perfectly correct to say that this is all because of that EU directive and the horrific combination of fascists and idiots that supported it "to save the children" and to "catch the terrorists".
Unlike what the summary suggests, this is not specific to Germany. It's the implementation of a European directive on data retention. And FWIW, the US is indeed less invasive than the EU at this point concerning data retention.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Slashdot is teh best site evar. Go back to Fark if you can't appreciate the editor quality we have here.
Additionally, they are also in favour of spam and software patents. They're not pro-market, they're pro-big business.
Patents don't work that way. You probably will not be found guilty of "willful infringement" in that case, so you won't have to pay treble damages, but apart from that whether or not you knew that you were infringing of a patent is irrelevant. "I didn't know I was infringing" is not a valid defence against patent infringement. That's why some companies offer patent infringement indemnification to their customers. In fact, the US government often requires this via contractual obligations.
The only possible safeguard for private persons is that at least in Europe, patents can only be infringed in a commercial environment (so private not for profit use is never an infringement). I don't know whether this is the case in the US as well though.
The Goonies!
Here are a couple of consequences of the text as voted by the EP. This directive was not and has never been about piracy (although some lobby organisations have tried to hijack it for that purpose). It is only about EU competence extension.
And fwiw, it does not exclude private users from criminal sanctions. The approved amendment reads:
So it says it's on a commercial scale (one of the conditions for an infringement to be in the scope of this directive) if it is "to obtain a commercial advantage". It goes on to say that this "excludes" private users, but that is simply not true. This extra sentence about private users is not phrased as an explicit exclusion, but as an statement which supposedly explains what the first part achieves. However, "obtaining a commercial advantage" can be interpreted as "spending less money". For example when someone illegally downloads a song from the Internet, that person has a commercial advantage.
The Greens had tabled an amendment to actually exclude private users properly, but it was not carried. It read:
As you see, here the private use is explicitly excluded, rather than just in a supposedly explanatory statement. And "direct pecuniary gain" and "earning a profit" are quite more strict than "obtaining a commercial advantage".
I'm not sure. If nothing can liquify, then the high pressure will make everything crumble. A pile of sand, so to speak, doesn't have much structural integrity. Conversely, if part of the pressurised solids convert to liquid and thereby keep the rest of the solid material whole, I would think overall integrity would be stronger since the pressure which caused the liquifying in the first place also keeps everything pressed together. And once the pressure stops the liquids solidify again, thereby reinforcing the building's own structural integrity again in the absence of external pressure.
They sure do have a choice. Unlike trademarks, copyright does not become suddenly void because you did not prosecute infringements (except possibly in some fringe situations, but in this case there's definitely no danger of that happening).
The coverage by the Belgian/Flemish national news service says indeed that the price differences are reportedly required by the labels, and that (according to the Financial Times) the probe specifically targets EMI, Sony and Warner, who have two months to formulate an answer. And if the Commission doesn't like their answer, it reserves the right to confiscate 10% of the labels' revenue (from Internet sales, presumably). It doesn't say anything about sanctions against Apple.
The Free Pascal Compiler is indeed only about the non-GUI stuff. All the GUI stuff (including the forms unit) is handled by the Lazarus team.
Patents are only rights to exclude others from doing something (namely what is claimed by the patent). "Donating" a patent to someone is therefore very unlikely to help someone build a business around it, unless that business is threatening to sue the hell out of everyone else who has ignored that patent until now (because the owner clearly decided not to enforce it). The reason is that it almost never happens that a product is only covered by a single (or even a couple of) patents, except sometimes with pharmaceuticals or so (but those patents are very unlikely to be dormant).
... can they also predict dupes?
In this case, pretty much all individual member states sounded almost like the current American government, toting the "think of the children" and "be afraid of the terrorist" lines. This directive was not primarily a result of haggling among member states (and yes, I did follow this directive from nearby).
No, it doesn't. These laws are merely the implementation of a European directive which was approved earlier on. Further, the article is plain wrong when it claims that the Netherlands is going further than what the directive requires by recording where you are during a mobile phone call, because that's literally required by the directive.
The German proposal could be interpreted as going further, although the directive does say that the sender and recipient of all emails must be logged, and what good does this logging do if you can't identify these people? It's therefore very much "in the spirit" of the directive.
That said, you can't just blame this on "the EU" either, since one of the reasons the directive is so bad as it is, is because the Council of Ministers (which consists of ministers of the various national governments) pushed through the adopted "compromise" text (which was not a compromise at all) through Parliament (together with the leadership of the EP's Socialist and Christian Democrat groups).
Strange, Amazon says otherwise. Of course the law always trumps this sort of notices, but in my experience with Belgian shops their terms of service are usually in compliance with the law.
The EU is indeed not a publicly traded company where the country which "invests" most has the most to say. And every country gets less power as the EU expands, that's logical.
That said, you're absolutely right that the EU has a huge democratic deficit, and that the NO's in the referenda on the constitution were a serious wake-up call to the member states which they are ignoring because they have no answers to them.
But on the other hand you are over-generalising. At least in my experience, the EP is not "corrupt to the very core of its existence". There quite a lot honest, well-meaning and hardworking people there, ranging from administration to actual Members of the EP (MEPs). In many cases (though certainly not in all, just look at e.g. the data retention directive), misguided decisions however do not come from corruption or malevolence, but from lack of hearing contravening viewpoints (or not hearing them from enough people with different backgrounds).
And while you can blame everything on the press and on politicians, a very big problem is that most people consider that after they have cast their ballot, they have done their democratic duty and are finished for the next 5 years in case of European elections (but this problem is by no means limited to European politics). At least I thought that way before I got involved in the FFII and software patents directive. The problems with this attitude are that
politicians do not work in a vacuum, and most do not want to take decisions from an ivory tower
large companies and other interest groups know this very well, and spoon feed politicians with whatever kind of information they want
And if a politician never hears any contravening viewpoints and the arguments of the interest groups look sound at first sight, they will follow it most of the time. After all, nobody is an expert in all things. A very nice example is someone pretty high up in the Commission who said in relation to the software patents directive that everything seemed so simple before the FFII appeared on the scene, and that now they don't know what is good anymore and what isn't. Of course most weren't intentionally trying to disadvantage small companies, they just didn't realise it. They simply thought they were helping the EU IT industry to compete better with its US competitors.
And as the FFII proved in the software patents case, you actually can make a difference. The EU is not some kind of machine or computer with a predetermined program; just like the rest of society it's made up out of a lot of different people and exactly because it is so huge, you're always bound to find a few people inside the system who agree with you and which can help you get started. And once you are in (e.g., you can get in the EP to talk to people there), it's just a matter of doing lots of work.