Easy, deny them this software. Trust me, since it isn't actually that hard the "average user" will learn how to dd a disk if they want copies and have a computer.
The MPAA doesn't get what we all know and say over and over again. Casual copying is for the most part legal. Illegal casual copying for the most part *increases* sales. If you can output it you can copy it. And here's the biggy:
People want to be able to copy.
They will stick to a format that allows it, or they will learn how to do it in the new format.
Hey MPAA guys, why don't you just find a business plan that coordinates with reality? Then we can all go back to work, ok? And remember, the customer is always right, because the customer controls the flow of money from *their* pocket to *yours.*
to point out that killing people isn't illegal in the US. Murder is. A fine distinction, I know, but an important one nonetheless.
There are those who are trying to make killing people illegal, and for the most part I applaud their efforts, but they're losing at the moment.
Nor are people the only things guns are used for killing. Many in the US still use them for killing something called "dinner."
In large areas of the US ( which is *not* like a great big Holland or NYC carried out ad infinitum)guns are often still necessary to prevent people from *becoming* dinner. An average of 14 people a year are killed by wild lions. The figures for bears are considerably higher.
People who never leave LA, NYC or Western Europe sometimes have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that over much of the North American continent (which actually includes Canada, believe it or not, where guns are ubiquitous but murder is not)guns still play the same day to day role that they did 400 years ago, and are just as necessary in that role.
in fact the most banned book in the world. All Quiet on the Western Front ( more literally translated as Nothing Happening on the Western Front)is the most banned book in the USA. It seems it has too much sex and not enough killing in it. How's that for irony?
should be distributed *unregulated* is indeed disturbing. Particularly in America. Congress should act immediately by passing laws forbiding the publication of certain works, particularly those which might incite violence.
I mean, really, what would Adams and Jefferson think of such unregulated published works?
And there was no WWW. Back then they were not only easy to use but the only game in town for the average Joe. They provided the sort of service to the average home user that would be expected of an internet account, and did it without UNIX, archie, gopher, telnet and all that other arcane crap.
But times change. Now the hardest part of setting up a DHCP account is typing in the names of your ISP's mail and news servers and your ISP will usually be glad to do this *for* a new account.
AOL exists at all now on the pure inertia of already existing. But there's this thing called friction. ..
And this case serves as a good example of why RMS can get bent out of ahape by people naming their project "GNU/Foo," when they aren't actually connected with GNU.
KFG
I see this mostly as a "parental revenge" device
on
Robocoaster
·
· Score: 2
Calling it a coaster is a bit much, as many, many posts here already indicate.
What they *should* have done is stuck a little fiberglass horsey to the end of the arm. Then when "Little Timmy" just won't quit whining at the Supermarket because he just *has* to ride the pretty little pony -- let him.
Well, pretty much since GNU defined what free software is and devised the GPL actually.
This is what resulted in the RMS/ESR - Free/Open schism in the first place.
What GNU is doing here isn't defining what Free software is, it's demanding that Open software change its license to be Free. That's a bit of a different kettle of fish. It smacks of fascism, not freedom.
"My understanding is that if Apple does not actively protect and police its trade secrets, then its innovative goods and ideas no longer receive protection as trade secrets"
Weeeeeeeeeeell, yeah, that's kind of the point. A trade secret is protected because it's, a secret. Once someone tells it then it's, ummmmmmm, not a secret anymore.
That's the only protection a trade secret has. There's no secret registry of secrets where you can secretly tell someone your secrets to keep them secret. That would kinda go against the "secret" part of trade secret.
Once a secret isn't secret anymore suing anyone is completely pointless in terms of protection of that secret, in fact, Slashdot story as case in point, suing kinda "spreads the news around."
You're confusing trade secrets with trade*marks*, which are the only IP a business is required by law to actively protect in order to maintain their IP.
This saying applies even if your "friend" is otherwise your enemy. In fact, that's largely the point of the saying. "Friend" and "enemy" are, for the most part, simply relative terms, not absolutes.
Think FDR vs Stalin during WWII.
Matsushita and Sony may be bitter "hometown rivals," but there is a foreign enemy, far across the Pacific Ocean, in the new land of capitalist barbarians.
First secure the homefront. THEN cut your neighbor to ribbons. It's traditional.
weren't insured in the first place, and of those that were most of them are of little or no actual salvage value.
We aren't talking huge Spanish Galleons loaded with Inca gold here, nor are we, as some other poster suggested, talking about anything worth salvaging for a barge full of steel. Albany is no "El Dorado." Trust me, I know. And Coxsackie is pretty dipshit NOW, let alone 200 years ago.
For the most part we aren't even talking "ships" in the modern sense, but rather "boats," and wooden ones at that. A few odd "pleasure" vessels maybe, but mostly small trade "ships" ( such as the 90 foot wooden sloop Clearwater) and military vessels of the smaller kind such as might have patroled the river during the Revolutionary War period.
Most of the trade vessels were carrying cargo such as the average upstate NY farmer of over one hundred years ago might want if they were heading upriver, and food stores if they were heading down. Bolts of cloth, hoes and rakes, pumpkins, things of that nature.
For all practical purposes no part of these vessels or their cargos would be worth a damn to a salvager or insurer for financial gain, and the military vessels could already be claimed to be the property of the government.
No, what's valuable on these vessels is simply the information examining the vessels themselves might provide. Like how they were built. How people lived on them. What kind of farm tools and fabric went up the river when, and what kind of food came back down.
The only "salvage" here, for the most part, is historical knowledge. However, one guy rooting around in SCUBA gear ( and for the most part any of these wrecks would be accessable to an amatuer diver in SCUBA gear, no huge "recovery platform" needed. It's just a river bottom) looking for an 18th century button or something that he can put in a parts drawer and forget about could completely destroy an archeological site beyond recovery by the experts.
This is what they're worried about, not someone dragging up a 20 year old oil tanker's anchor and selling it for scrap.
"Usage Note: The traditional rule states that the whole comprises the parts and the parts compose the whole. In strict usage: The Union comprises 50 states. Fifty states compose (or constitute or make up) the Union. Even though careful writers often maintain this distinction, comprise is increasingly used in place of compose, especially in the passive: The Union is comprised of 50 states. Our surveys show that opposition to this usage is abating. In the 1960s, 53 percent of the Usage Panel found this usage unacceptable; in 1996, only 35 percent objected."
I guess that means if you say something is "comprised of" 14 elements you're 35% incorrect? Only 4.9 of the elements are actually "comprised of" and the remaining 9.1 are composed of.
Can't the editors get anything right?
KFG
Cool. That means I should be able to get . . .
on
The Vanishing HailStorm
·
· Score: 5, Funny
And frankly Otto is my personal 'hero' of early flight, not the Wrights.
But the person who noted Newton also has a point.
My personal hero of early physics is Galileo, not Newton. Were it not fot Galileo and Kepler there would have been no Newton, which Newton realized and acknowledged in his famous qoute. Newton is still the one who wrapped the package up and put the pretty little bow on it.
The Wrights too acknowledged the shoulder of the giant they stood upon.
For that matter the Wrights themselves flew long before they 'flew.' In gliders rather than powered planes.
Pearse's plane seems to have been something more than a mere glider, but less than a true airplane, which the article in question seems to say Pearse himself fully realized.
What perhaps Pearse didn't realize is that the Wrights were no more 'schooled' then he was, one of the facts that led many to deny the Wrights had actually flown. I mean really, just who were these upstart bicycle mechanics from *Ohio* who claimed to have accomplished that which those who the world acknowledged as having the best engineering minds had failed at, time and again?
Unlike Pearse though, the Wrights were highly scientifc and methodical in their approach. Taking every step slowly. Testing, testing, and then testing some more. Working up the final product in careful measured steps.
The true legacy of the Wrights wasn't the first flight. Just as Tesla left little for anyone else to do other than refinement in the world of electricity, the Wrights left little for others to do in the theoretical field of subsonic aeronautics. Some of their theoretical principles were so advanced that they weren't commonly accepted as true until after WWII.
It doesn't really matter who 'flew' first. The Wrights gave us the *field* of flight.
All that having been said Pearse certainly sounds like the sort of 'loon' I could spend a happy lifetime hanging out with.
KFG
Yeah, well, hot chicks dig guys who don't . . .
on
Googling For Dates?
·
· Score: 1
hide things about themselves or lie to impress them. They *like* guys to just 'be themselves.'
So if you're really desperately hot for a particular chick and can fake casual sincerity you've got it made.
They really *love* guys who can do that.
KFG
And you sir, are a prime example of. . .
on
Googling For Dates?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
the impossibilty of seperating the 'victims' of Megan's law from its intended 'perps.'
I rather suspect that you weren't exactly treated in a real 'innocent until proven guilty' manner either. As you say, "fun night."
*All* laws that seek to 'preempt' crime create a class of innocent vitims. Some of them have their lives ruined beyond repair. Be greatful it was only your night that was 'fun.'
I'd go so far as to state that preemptive laws create many, many more innocent 'victims' of law than they save actual vitims of crime.
Have you read the so called "Patriot" Act? Hell, from now on it doesn't even necessarily *matter* if you're innocent or guilty.
KFG
I've said so much stuff I regret. . .
on
Googling For Dates?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
both on and *off* the web that I'm not about to start worrying about it now. More to the point, I 've said a good deal that a prospective date or employer will take offense at that *I don't regret at all.*
As my sweet, little old granny used to say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
If things I've written are going to deny me a particular date/job as far as I'm concerned better finding out now than later. It saves us all a lot of unneeded pain and suffering in the long run.
I'm dead serious and I'm not about to go about my life worrying about what some future unnamed and unknowable personage is going to think about me because of something I believed or said once upon a time.
Like me or dislike me. I don't really care in particular. *Someone* likes me. I'll go hang out with them.
Hell, there are even people who like RMS. Go figure.
KFG
I manufacture my own transportation as well
on
Decentralization
·
· Score: 1
Although I rely on the afore- mentioned miners to produce the materials for me.
And I produce code for them. Other things as well. You'll find no rant against trade in my writting, nor will you find any in Throreau who was a sucessful inventor and businessman as well as an author.
In fact, he managed to lecture and write Walden, all while living primarily off his own self produced food. Hoeing peas and cogitating are compatible, not incompatible. Coding while weaving and sewing make both endeavors more enjoyable.
If *you* do not find it so then I heartily advise you not to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy, deny them this software. Trust me, since it isn't actually that hard the "average user" will learn how to dd a disk if they want copies and have a computer.
The MPAA doesn't get what we all know and say over and over again. Casual copying is for the most part legal. Illegal casual copying for the most part *increases* sales. If you can output it you can copy it. And here's the biggy:
People want to be able to copy.
They will stick to a format that allows it, or they will learn how to do it in the new format.
Hey MPAA guys, why don't you just find a business plan that coordinates with reality? Then we can all go back to work, ok? And remember, the customer is always right, because the customer controls the flow of money from *their* pocket to *yours.*
KFG
to point out that killing people isn't illegal in the US. Murder is. A fine distinction, I know, but an important one nonetheless.
There are those who are trying to make killing people illegal, and for the most part I applaud their efforts, but they're losing at the moment.
Nor are people the only things guns are used for killing. Many in the US still use them for killing something called "dinner."
In large areas of the US ( which is *not* like a great big Holland or NYC carried out ad infinitum)guns are often still necessary to prevent people from *becoming* dinner. An average of 14 people a year are killed by wild lions. The figures for bears are considerably higher.
People who never leave LA, NYC or Western Europe sometimes have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that over much of the North American continent (which actually includes Canada, believe it or not, where guns are ubiquitous but murder is not)guns still play the same day to day role that they did 400 years ago, and are just as necessary in that role.
KFG
in fact the most banned book in the world. All Quiet on the Western Front ( more literally translated as Nothing Happening on the Western Front)is the most banned book in the USA. It seems it has too much sex and not enough killing in it. How's that for irony?
KFG
uazAge wUd bee RewenIng peep's abIlatY tw0 uZZ the LagNguaGGe as WeL aadN yU donut see TAHT! do yU????!!!!!!?????
KFG
should be distributed *unregulated* is indeed disturbing. Particularly in America. Congress should act immediately by passing laws forbiding the publication of certain works, particularly those which might incite violence.
I mean, really, what would Adams and Jefferson think of such unregulated published works?
KFG
And there was no WWW. Back then they were not only easy to use but the only game in town for the average Joe. They provided the sort of service to the average home user that would be expected of an internet account, and did it without UNIX, archie, gopher, telnet and all that other arcane crap.
.
But times change. Now the hardest part of setting up a DHCP account is typing in the names of your ISP's mail and news servers and your ISP will usually be glad to do this *for* a new account.
AOL exists at all now on the pure inertia of already existing. But there's this thing called friction. .
KFG
Most people wanted the alpha so badly they payed forty bucks for it.
Of course what they ended up getting was the *pre*alpha. Yeah, most people would love to be able to download an actual alpha version.
KFG
||||*
Which was, like, pong for people without any friends.
KFG
And this case serves as a good example of why RMS can get bent out of ahape by people naming their project "GNU/Foo," when they aren't actually connected with GNU.
KFG
Calling it a coaster is a bit much, as many, many posts here already indicate.
What they *should* have done is stuck a little fiberglass horsey to the end of the arm. Then when "Little Timmy" just won't quit whining at the Supermarket because he just *has* to ride the pretty little pony -- let him.
I bet he won't do *that* again.
KFG
Well, pretty much since GNU defined what free software is and devised the GPL actually.
This is what resulted in the RMS/ESR - Free/Open schism in the first place.
What GNU is doing here isn't defining what Free software is, it's demanding that Open software change its license to be Free. That's a bit of a different kettle of fish. It smacks of fascism, not freedom.
KFG
"My understanding is that if Apple does not actively protect and police its trade secrets, then its innovative goods and ideas no longer receive protection as trade secrets"
Weeeeeeeeeeell, yeah, that's kind of the point. A trade secret is protected because it's, a secret. Once someone tells it then it's, ummmmmmm, not a secret anymore.
That's the only protection a trade secret has. There's no secret registry of secrets where you can secretly tell someone your secrets to keep them secret. That would kinda go against the "secret" part of trade secret.
Once a secret isn't secret anymore suing anyone is completely pointless in terms of protection of that secret, in fact, Slashdot story as case in point, suing kinda "spreads the news around."
You're confusing trade secrets with trade*marks*, which are the only IP a business is required by law to actively protect in order to maintain their IP.
KFG
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
This saying applies even if your "friend" is otherwise your enemy. In fact, that's largely the point of the saying. "Friend" and "enemy" are, for the most part, simply relative terms, not absolutes.
Think FDR vs Stalin during WWII.
Matsushita and Sony may be bitter "hometown rivals," but there is a foreign enemy, far across the Pacific Ocean, in the new land of capitalist barbarians.
First secure the homefront. THEN cut your neighbor to ribbons. It's traditional.
KFG
weren't insured in the first place, and of those that were most of them are of little or no actual salvage value.
We aren't talking huge Spanish Galleons loaded with Inca gold here, nor are we, as some other poster suggested, talking about anything worth salvaging for a barge full of steel. Albany is no "El Dorado." Trust me, I know. And Coxsackie is pretty dipshit NOW, let alone 200 years ago.
For the most part we aren't even talking "ships" in the modern sense, but rather "boats," and wooden ones at that. A few odd "pleasure" vessels maybe, but mostly small trade "ships" ( such as the 90 foot wooden sloop Clearwater) and military vessels of the smaller kind such as might have patroled the river during the Revolutionary War period.
Most of the trade vessels were carrying cargo such as the average upstate NY farmer of over one hundred years ago might want if they were heading upriver, and food stores if they were heading down. Bolts of cloth, hoes and rakes, pumpkins, things of that nature.
For all practical purposes no part of these vessels or their cargos would be worth a damn to a salvager or insurer for financial gain, and the military vessels could already be claimed to be the property of the government.
No, what's valuable on these vessels is simply the information examining the vessels themselves might provide. Like how they were built. How people lived on them. What kind of farm tools and fabric went up the river when, and what kind of food came back down.
The only "salvage" here, for the most part, is historical knowledge. However, one guy rooting around in SCUBA gear ( and for the most part any of these wrecks would be accessable to an amatuer diver in SCUBA gear, no huge "recovery platform" needed. It's just a river bottom) looking for an 18th century button or something that he can put in a parts drawer and forget about could completely destroy an archeological site beyond recovery by the experts.
This is what they're worried about, not someone dragging up a 20 year old oil tanker's anchor and selling it for scrap.
KFG
(Slashdot Lexical Patrol)
This addendum may interest members:
"Usage Note: The traditional rule states that the whole comprises the parts and the parts compose the whole. In strict usage: The Union comprises 50 states. Fifty states compose (or constitute or make up) the Union. Even though careful writers often maintain this distinction, comprise is increasingly used in place of compose, especially in the passive: The Union is comprised of 50 states. Our surveys show that opposition to this usage is abating. In the 1960s, 53 percent of the Usage Panel found this usage unacceptable; in 1996, only 35 percent objected."
I guess that means if you say something is "comprised of" 14 elements you're 35% incorrect? Only 4.9 of the elements are actually "comprised of" and the remaining 9.1 are composed of.
Can't the editors get anything right?
KFG
.NET "My Bob" any day now.
KFG
And frankly Otto is my personal 'hero' of early flight, not the Wrights.
But the person who noted Newton also has a point.
My personal hero of early physics is Galileo, not Newton. Were it not fot Galileo and Kepler there would have been no Newton, which Newton realized and acknowledged in his famous qoute. Newton is still the one who wrapped the package up and put the pretty little bow on it.
The Wrights too acknowledged the shoulder of the giant they stood upon.
KFG
I agree with you. In my defense I can only say I was responding in context to someone who said he *only* wants to code.
I'd guess there's a 'template' or two more than that in his bag of tricks.
KFG
that's Robert Heilein hasn't been paying attention.
I may have been unbearably rude to elements of my audience, but I didn't treat them like idiots.
KFG
I hit "submit." Preview doesn't help if your brain is simply out to lunch. Perhaps I need an editor.
Book authors don't typically have this problem because they've got people to tell them they're being a "doofus" *before* they publish.
KFG
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/WrBr/inventors/Li lienthal.html
For that matter the Wrights themselves flew long before they 'flew.' In gliders rather than powered planes.
Pearse's plane seems to have been something more than a mere glider, but less than a true airplane, which the article in question seems to say Pearse himself fully realized.
What perhaps Pearse didn't realize is that the Wrights were no more 'schooled' then he was, one of the facts that led many to deny the Wrights had actually flown. I mean really, just who were these upstart bicycle mechanics from *Ohio* who claimed to have accomplished that which those who the world acknowledged as having the best engineering minds had failed at, time and again?
Unlike Pearse though, the Wrights were highly scientifc and methodical in their approach. Taking every step slowly. Testing, testing, and then testing some more. Working up the final product in careful measured steps.
The true legacy of the Wrights wasn't the first flight. Just as Tesla left little for anyone else to do other than refinement in the world of electricity, the Wrights left little for others to do in the theoretical field of subsonic aeronautics. Some of their theoretical principles were so advanced that they weren't commonly accepted as true until after WWII.
It doesn't really matter who 'flew' first. The Wrights gave us the *field* of flight.
All that having been said Pearse certainly sounds like the sort of 'loon' I could spend a happy lifetime hanging out with.
KFG
hide things about themselves or lie to impress them. They *like* guys to just 'be themselves.'
So if you're really desperately hot for a particular chick and can fake casual sincerity you've got it made.
They really *love* guys who can do that.
KFG
the impossibilty of seperating the 'victims' of Megan's law from its intended 'perps.'
I rather suspect that you weren't exactly treated in a real 'innocent until proven guilty' manner either. As you say, "fun night."
*All* laws that seek to 'preempt' crime create a class of innocent vitims. Some of them have their lives ruined beyond repair. Be greatful it was only your night that was 'fun.'
I'd go so far as to state that preemptive laws create many, many more innocent 'victims' of law than they save actual vitims of crime.
Have you read the so called "Patriot" Act? Hell, from now on it doesn't even necessarily *matter* if you're innocent or guilty.
KFG
both on and *off* the web that I'm not about to start worrying about it now. More to the point, I 've said a good deal that a prospective date or employer will take offense at that *I don't regret at all.*
As my sweet, little old granny used to say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
If things I've written are going to deny me a particular date/job as far as I'm concerned better finding out now than later. It saves us all a lot of unneeded pain and suffering in the long run.
I'm dead serious and I'm not about to go about my life worrying about what some future unnamed and unknowable personage is going to think about me because of something I believed or said once upon a time.
Like me or dislike me. I don't really care in particular. *Someone* likes me. I'll go hang out with them.
Hell, there are even people who like RMS. Go figure.
KFG
Although I rely on the afore- mentioned miners to produce the materials for me.
And I produce code for them. Other things as well. You'll find no rant against trade in my writting, nor will you find any in Throreau who was a sucessful inventor and businessman as well as an author.
In fact, he managed to lecture and write Walden, all while living primarily off his own self produced food. Hoeing peas and cogitating are compatible, not incompatible. Coding while weaving and sewing make both endeavors more enjoyable.
If *you* do not find it so then I heartily advise you not to do it.
KFG