OK, I have to ask: what's the metaphor here? Do you eat something as large as your body once every couple of weeks, and fast the rest of the time? Can you unhinge your jaw? Do you vomit up a compressed mass of the bones and hair from your meals? I've heard of "eating like a bird", but what's eating like a snake?
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That would be great - if you could just drive off everyone who thinks that ".com" == "Internet", then the rest of us could have it back for what we originally used it for. Oops, except now you have to get ".biz" too...
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Whoa - hang on there. 2600 is being sued by Ford, not by GM, and the suit is on the grounds of trademark tarnishment of the Ford name, not on the basis of trademark infringement of "general motors". They are two very different issues.
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I think there's rhetoric coming from the President too - the other day he was comparing the current situation to the energy embargoes of the '70s. I agree with you that things aren't that bad, which means that the President is exaggerating things. The reasons for his statements I'll leave to the cynics in the audience to explain:)
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Despite what information theorists tell them, the music industry presses ahead with schemes for encryption destined for
failure. It's a classic case of "I know you told me it's impossible, but we'll show you by just going ahead and doing it!"
I don't think it's just simple denial - there's real fraud being perpetrated against the RIAA and other content producers. No, not by "pirates", but by the SDMI technologists, the DVDCCA, etc. They've totally sold the content industry on their methods, knowing full well that they'd never stand for long. Their only problem is that they've been cracked before they could get the content industry totally bought into their plans. Otherwise they'd be sipping coconut-flavored drinks on a Caribbean island with lax banking laws at this point.
There's denial going on, but you'll know the worm has really turned when the MPAA finally starts lashing out at the technologists that promised the sky and delivered - for a while.
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Wow, Scott McNealy was right - we really don't have anonymity any more (I know, he said privacy, but it's close enough). This boggles the mind - the Klansmen out burning crosses at midnight or bank robbers with ski masks aren't going to obey the law anyway, so all this does is clamp down on anonymous political speech in the public arena. Even the founding fathers used pseudonyms; what do you think they'd feel about these dumb laws?
We could get rid of the KKK by performing random house-to-house searches for white supremacist literature too, but you don't see any states adopting that policy, do you? Wait, I better stop before I give people ideas:)
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Re:Mixed Response on This One
on
Congress@Work
·
· Score: 1
The Constitution doesn't guarantee anonymity, which is why Windoze and I are looking after that issue ourselves:)
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This is different than the slashback - that was about the caravan to the trial that was going to be formed, this is about the NYT article providing more info on the trial
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This is the same society who practically rode a guy out of town on a rail for saying "niggardly", which isn't even a racial epithet at all. PC-ness is bad, but ignorant PC-ness is a whole lot worse:)
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Re:So this guy wants to be taken serious?
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 1
I don't see the problem:
this case has nothing to do with illegal cracking
this case directly involves how linking/DNS redirection is a First Amendment issue
any actions in this case are probably inadmissible in the DeCSS case, and vice versa.
Maybe this was a dumb idea, but I don't think it's for any of the reasons you listed.
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Re:Lets look at another angle here shall we
on
2600 v. Ford Motors
·
· Score: 2
If Ford doesn't want me to use their bandwidth, why don't they just not send me the page? It's silly for them to respond to my request for a web page, and then claim that it was an "unauthorized" access. How can it be unauthorized if it required specific action on their part before it could happen?
The slander argument is more reasonable, and I could even see Ford winning out on that one. But right now Ford's essentially giving away their bandwidth; they can't complain if they've uncapped the fire hydrant and more kids showed up to play than they expected. If you're going to take the trouble to track someone down in your logs, why don't you just save yourself the trouble by blocking the accesses you don't like in the first place?
Who wants to drink from the FIRE HOSE?
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On the contrary, the use of Ford's bandwidth is entirely and explicitly authorized by Ford. How do I know? Simple: when I requested "fuckgeneralmotors.com", the request went to Ford.com and one of their machines decided that it was OK to send me the page.
If they don't want to serve me web pages, they don't have to, but it's not my fault (or Mr. Goldstein's) that Ford can't make up it's mind about whether I'm authorized or not. It's fine with me if they even want to make a distinction based on my IP address or the referring page, but it's not my fault if they don't.
As an aside, I often wonder if Mr. Corley is annoyed that news organizations are using his real name so much. I mean, if I had a cool nick like "Emmanuel Goldstein", I'd be pretty unhappy to just be called "Eric Corley", which you have to admit just doesn't have the same ring to it (or the same literary allusion either). I sympathize because my real-life monicker is much lamer than "ethereal".
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I'm not sure. It has something to do with running a Linux company into the ground the same way you'd run an old-fashioned commercial software company into the ground, but the distinction seems to be the sheer amount of confusion that occurs whenever Mr. Love opens his mouth. As far as I can tell it's not a very successful business model:)
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Re:Commercial software: A drain on the world econo
on
Mundie Responds
·
· Score: 1
I think there might be more of a gain than a loss - since no one's making any profit off of free software, businesses can implement only the features they need, or use them as implemented by other businesses. The money saved could be used either to improve the free software more, to expand business operations, or to do research and development. The developers would still be employed, but rather than reimplementing stuff that's already been done before (Oracle DB versus Microsoft DB, IBM web stuff versus Sun web stuff) they could be building on each other's work and creating more value for their employers and the community as a whole.
Overall, with free software you can either spend less than $175 billion worldwide to get the same results that commercial software has provided, or you can spend the whole $175 billion and get more value than commercial software would have provided you. The only caveat is that you have to have critical mass of businesses for this to start working. That ball has only just started rolling; but it's picking up speed...
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Redhat
may not command the same capital as microsoft...
IIRC, that's by design. Rather than have a small chunk of a large software market, RedHat has stated they'd rather maintain their absolute market share and decrease the size of the entire market by commoditizing the OS. This is what Microsoft is really afraid of - you can't charge monopoly profits on something people come to think of as free and common.
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The funny part is that Ransom Love doesn't really support Mundie's position! The quote was:
Ransom Love,
CEO of Caldera Systems...said he thinks Microsoft was right in its claim that the GPL doesn't make much
business sense.
This is taken entirely out of context. The GPL doesn't make much business sense to Caldera, since they can't figure out how to make money selling it. For the 99% of companies whose business doesn't involve trying to find a profitable way to distribute GPL'd code, GPL'd code makes perfect sense when used as part of their IT environment, development systems, Internet services, etc.
Mundie's trying to trick his customers into mistaking Microsoft's interests for their own. It's in the interest of IT purchasers worldwide that it be just barely profitable to distribute GPL'd software - that means that customers aren't getting reamed by monopoly profits and channel control. It's just not in the interest of the software industry (i.e. Microsoft).
He's mistaking a means for an end - heightened economic productivity and all the great things that the Internet has brought are a result of using software to make life better, not a result of some company in Redmond charging for it.
Sure, innovation is necessary in the software world, but open source innovation comes from the customers who use it, not from the business that's pushing it. When you look at it from the customer perspective, how many of Microsoft's innovations are just tricks to extend their business model, rather than really responding to customer needs? By definition, open source innovation is for the users, by the users - you get exactly as much innovation as you need, and you get what you pay for. There's no profit skimmed off by Microsoft, and no paying for features you don't want. This leaves the customer with more money to spend on the core parts of their business, which in the end is better for the economy, not worse.
OK, maybe it's worse for Microsoft. It sounds to me like Mr. Mundie's found himself in a commodity market all of the sudden, and it seems he doesn't like it too much:)
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Sorry to rake you over the coals, I was in a bad mood before:)
But seriously, the developers chose to use that license, so I don't see how it's so bad that anyone can use it. If you wanted to write an OS and not stay poor, you could easily use an industry-standard license, or even a variant of the MPL, etc. In some cases, Linux developers have profited from their work - Linus, Alan, Ted T'so, etc. are all employed more-or-less directly because of their Linux kernel development work. For whatever reason, open source/free software developers are apparently OK with the potential for others to use their software without reimbursement.
I admit it's a different story if you're starting a new project with your own ideas, rather than submitting patches to someone else's creation. But in the long run, I don't think Linux would be nearly this big if it wasn't so easy for everyone to make use of. Linus chose to gamble for marketshare and take the chance of losing out on any potential profit, but as it's worked out he's gained both the market share and some reasonable amount of profit. Presumeably he's happy with the proportion of those who only take from the community versus those who give back.
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That sounds like a great restriction to place on WildBeastix - I totally agree and I'm going to switch over from Linux to your OS right now. We'll show those money-grubbing capitalist running dog lackeys, won't we!
[looks around on sunsite]
[looks around on ftp.gnu.org]
[searches Google and AV]
[tries wildbeastix.org]
Hmmm, it appears you haven't written a free operating system, and so I'm unable to make use of it in the manner that we both agree is correct. Do let us know when you've written it, and we'll immediately begin using it to shaft motion picture studios. Until then, kindly refrain from bitching about what Linus lets people do with his OS under the terms he selected. Thanks!
P.S. Philosophical discussion: is it worse to use God to make money if you believe He exists, or if you believe he doesn't? What if the money you make goes back to religious causes? Discuss.
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Slashdot Mirror
It sounds sort of like I always imagined Engineering Hell - reporting to a PHB with a journalism degree from Indiana U. *shudder*
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OK, I have to ask: what's the metaphor here? Do you eat something as large as your body once every couple of weeks, and fast the rest of the time? Can you unhinge your jaw? Do you vomit up a compressed mass of the bones and hair from your meals? I've heard of "eating like a bird", but what's eating like a snake?
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
That would be great - if you could just drive off everyone who thinks that ".com" == "Internet", then the rest of us could have it back for what we originally used it for. Oops, except now you have to get ".biz" too...
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Whoa - hang on there. 2600 is being sued by Ford, not by GM, and the suit is on the grounds of trademark tarnishment of the Ford name, not on the basis of trademark infringement of "general motors". They are two very different issues.
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I think there's rhetoric coming from the President too - the other day he was comparing the current situation to the energy embargoes of the '70s. I agree with you that things aren't that bad, which means that the President is exaggerating things. The reasons for his statements I'll leave to the cynics in the audience to explain :)
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[OT, as seen on ESPN prior to last year's Fla/FSU game]
Remember, you can't spell "felon" without "Nole".
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I don't think it's just simple denial - there's real fraud being perpetrated against the RIAA and other content producers. No, not by "pirates", but by the SDMI technologists, the DVDCCA, etc. They've totally sold the content industry on their methods, knowing full well that they'd never stand for long. Their only problem is that they've been cracked before they could get the content industry totally bought into their plans. Otherwise they'd be sipping coconut-flavored drinks on a Caribbean island with lax banking laws at this point.
There's denial going on, but you'll know the worm has really turned when the MPAA finally starts lashing out at the technologists that promised the sky and delivered - for a while.
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Heck, you're not allowed to put DeCSS on your web page either, but I don't imagine that was your point :)
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Wow, Scott McNealy was right - we really don't have anonymity any more (I know, he said privacy, but it's close enough). This boggles the mind - the Klansmen out burning crosses at midnight or bank robbers with ski masks aren't going to obey the law anyway, so all this does is clamp down on anonymous political speech in the public arena. Even the founding fathers used pseudonyms; what do you think they'd feel about these dumb laws?
We could get rid of the KKK by performing random house-to-house searches for white supremacist literature too, but you don't see any states adopting that policy, do you? Wait, I better stop before I give people ideas :)
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
The Constitution doesn't guarantee anonymity, which is why Windoze and I are looking after that issue ourselves :)
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This is different than the slashback - that was about the caravan to the trial that was going to be formed, this is about the NYT article providing more info on the trial
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This is the same society who practically rode a guy out of town on a rail for saying "niggardly", which isn't even a racial epithet at all. PC-ness is bad, but ignorant PC-ness is a whole lot worse :)
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I don't see the problem:
Maybe this was a dumb idea, but I don't think it's for any of the reasons you listed.
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If Ford doesn't want me to use their bandwidth, why don't they just not send me the page? It's silly for them to respond to my request for a web page, and then claim that it was an "unauthorized" access. How can it be unauthorized if it required specific action on their part before it could happen?
The slander argument is more reasonable, and I could even see Ford winning out on that one. But right now Ford's essentially giving away their bandwidth; they can't complain if they've uncapped the fire hydrant and more kids showed up to play than they expected. If you're going to take the trouble to track someone down in your logs, why don't you just save yourself the trouble by blocking the accesses you don't like in the first place?
Who wants to drink from the FIRE HOSE?
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On the contrary, the use of Ford's bandwidth is entirely and explicitly authorized by Ford. How do I know? Simple: when I requested "fuckgeneralmotors.com", the request went to Ford.com and one of their machines decided that it was OK to send me the page.
If they don't want to serve me web pages, they don't have to, but it's not my fault (or Mr. Goldstein's) that Ford can't make up it's mind about whether I'm authorized or not. It's fine with me if they even want to make a distinction based on my IP address or the referring page, but it's not my fault if they don't.
As an aside, I often wonder if Mr. Corley is annoyed that news organizations are using his real name so much. I mean, if I had a cool nick like "Emmanuel Goldstein", I'd be pretty unhappy to just be called "Eric Corley", which you have to admit just doesn't have the same ring to it (or the same literary allusion either). I sympathize because my real-life monicker is much lamer than "ethereal".
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I'd hold out for a boomstick too, in case you run into anything more mobile than trees...
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I'm not sure. It has something to do with running a Linux company into the ground the same way you'd run an old-fashioned commercial software company into the ground, but the distinction seems to be the sheer amount of confusion that occurs whenever Mr. Love opens his mouth. As far as I can tell it's not a very successful business model :)
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[slight Jamaican accent]
thank you it was cold down there on the floor
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I think there might be more of a gain than a loss - since no one's making any profit off of free software, businesses can implement only the features they need, or use them as implemented by other businesses. The money saved could be used either to improve the free software more, to expand business operations, or to do research and development. The developers would still be employed, but rather than reimplementing stuff that's already been done before (Oracle DB versus Microsoft DB, IBM web stuff versus Sun web stuff) they could be building on each other's work and creating more value for their employers and the community as a whole.
Overall, with free software you can either spend less than $175 billion worldwide to get the same results that commercial software has provided, or you can spend the whole $175 billion and get more value than commercial software would have provided you. The only caveat is that you have to have critical mass of businesses for this to start working. That ball has only just started rolling; but it's picking up speed...
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IIRC, that's by design. Rather than have a small chunk of a large software market, RedHat has stated they'd rather maintain their absolute market share and decrease the size of the entire market by commoditizing the OS. This is what Microsoft is really afraid of - you can't charge monopoly profits on something people come to think of as free and common.
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...as long as they're all painted black.
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The funny part is that Ransom Love doesn't really support Mundie's position! The quote was:
This is taken entirely out of context. The GPL doesn't make much business sense to Caldera, since they can't figure out how to make money selling it. For the 99% of companies whose business doesn't involve trying to find a profitable way to distribute GPL'd code, GPL'd code makes perfect sense when used as part of their IT environment, development systems, Internet services, etc.
Mundie's trying to trick his customers into mistaking Microsoft's interests for their own. It's in the interest of IT purchasers worldwide that it be just barely profitable to distribute GPL'd software - that means that customers aren't getting reamed by monopoly profits and channel control. It's just not in the interest of the software industry (i.e. Microsoft).
He's mistaking a means for an end - heightened economic productivity and all the great things that the Internet has brought are a result of using software to make life better, not a result of some company in Redmond charging for it.
Sure, innovation is necessary in the software world, but open source innovation comes from the customers who use it, not from the business that's pushing it. When you look at it from the customer perspective, how many of Microsoft's innovations are just tricks to extend their business model, rather than really responding to customer needs? By definition, open source innovation is for the users, by the users - you get exactly as much innovation as you need, and you get what you pay for. There's no profit skimmed off by Microsoft, and no paying for features you don't want. This leaves the customer with more money to spend on the core parts of their business, which in the end is better for the economy, not worse.
OK, maybe it's worse for Microsoft. It sounds to me like Mr. Mundie's found himself in a commodity market all of the sudden, and it seems he doesn't like it too much :)
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Sorry to rake you over the coals, I was in a bad mood before :)
But seriously, the developers chose to use that license, so I don't see how it's so bad that anyone can use it. If you wanted to write an OS and not stay poor, you could easily use an industry-standard license, or even a variant of the MPL, etc. In some cases, Linux developers have profited from their work - Linus, Alan, Ted T'so, etc. are all employed more-or-less directly because of their Linux kernel development work. For whatever reason, open source/free software developers are apparently OK with the potential for others to use their software without reimbursement.
I admit it's a different story if you're starting a new project with your own ideas, rather than submitting patches to someone else's creation. But in the long run, I don't think Linux would be nearly this big if it wasn't so easy for everyone to make use of. Linus chose to gamble for marketshare and take the chance of losing out on any potential profit, but as it's worked out he's gained both the market share and some reasonable amount of profit. Presumeably he's happy with the proportion of those who only take from the community versus those who give back.
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That sounds like a great restriction to place on WildBeastix - I totally agree and I'm going to switch over from Linux to your OS right now. We'll show those money-grubbing capitalist running dog lackeys, won't we!
[looks around on sunsite]
[looks around on ftp.gnu.org]
[searches Google and AV]
[tries wildbeastix.org]
Hmmm, it appears you haven't written a free operating system, and so I'm unable to make use of it in the manner that we both agree is correct. Do let us know when you've written it, and we'll immediately begin using it to shaft motion picture studios. Until then, kindly refrain from bitching about what Linus lets people do with his OS under the terms he selected. Thanks!
P.S. Philosophical discussion: is it worse to use God to make money if you believe He exists, or if you believe he doesn't? What if the money you make goes back to religious causes? Discuss.
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It's a good idea, but if the judge won't allow your context into court in the first place, they might as well just not allow your disclaimer too.
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