I dont use Mac hardware, but Ive had about the exact opposite experince.
Some CPU intensive stuff I have been unable to play in anything but mplayer. (xin e and others couldnt keep up)
futhermore, its the only thing ive been able to play matroska files in, so its the only choice really. if not for those things i would prefers xine's ui.
This is a very big problem: major distros cannot include mplayer because of potential patent suits.
Just because noone has filed suit yet means nothing.
If you want desktop linux to have a chance there have to be popular patent-free multimedia formats that it can use.
There really is no point in promulgating any more mental-prison ware than strictly necessary. When new codecs are being developed, it only makes sense to throw your support behind the free ones when you have a choice.
(iow, Dirac + ogg in an mkv container could save your soul;P )
Yes, but it doesnt encode directly into the latest Xvid/Ogg/MKv format does it?
I dont think there's much point in putting such rapidly changing things such as video codecs into hardware, when you can economically buy a fast enough processor with high memory bandwidth, like an athlon64.
It amazes me to no end how many people talk about "Linux apps" and Linux. We have the BSDs (which aren't encumbered by the GPL), we have other OSs
There is a reason for that, those other OS's dont have the GPL, linux's "secret sauce" which makes it advanace so much faster than other free os's.
You'll cease being "amazed" and start to grok the situation better when you realize its not so much "burdened" with the GPL as it is "blessed" with it.
"...builds on the characters established in that series..."
"the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series"
What part of that connection are you failing to understand?
All work is derivative at some level Oligonicella. Do you think rowling made up goblins, trolls, wizards, witches, wands, flying brooms, England, and everything thing else in her books? Clearly not, I'm willing to bet she has an extensive list of inspiritaions.
Where you draw the line between derivitive work (changing one word in a book) and inspiration (an original story in the world of harry potter) is ARBITRARY. And thats exactly the point.
but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.
This is not true: try to make a piece of fan art than builds on the characters established in that series and will will be found in violation of copyright.
The definition of "derivitive work" is vague and allows copyright to be very stifling.
Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.
Most software IS already made this way. Unless you are talking about Microsoft's version of "innovation", nothing of significance would be lost.
The right to be extends to authors. If I have published something, I have a right to not have that thing be constantly changed and altered by the world at large.
You have no such right.
Anyone anywhere can infer that you said X or claimed Y, and no amount of legislation can prevent that. The fundamental process of thought is one that involves taking the thoughts of others as a base for which to build new ideas. In any universe in which you are not the only person your wish is impossible.
If you want people to get your exact message without the slightest alteration, then take responsibility and cryptographically sign it.
On a Mac, you are expected to navigate the file system to access what you need (if you want to open an App for example, you open the Finder, go to the Applications folder and then open your app).
That sounds really unscalable- just as soon as you have more than a handful of "applications". Since it clearly cannot list every single installed program, it must only list commonly run gui applications. So it is in fact a menu stuffed into the filesystem.
A user shouldnt ever have to deal with the filesystem outside of their home directory.
If you want to push an agenda, then use huge pile of legalese that is the GPL.
Umm, yeah, because that explains why the GPL is far and away the most successful free software license out there: because we are all legalese-pushers.
Many free software contributors that I know are reluctant to participate in any non-GPL project. And they wouldnt even consider releasing their own projects as anything but GPL. Not because they are blowhards: they just want their work to survive. (And not become counter productive by contributing to proprietary code bases.)
Are you just sour because you were thwarted in a attempt to close some source down perhaps?
If you are downloading individual packeages then you are doing it wrong. There is a reason there is no association for.rpm files: your not supposed to deal with them.
Learn to use yum or apt, and you may be surprised by just how easy it is to get things installed.
First of all, the question itself is ridiculous. I can quite genuinely say that Windows XP has never crashed for me or been broken into. However, Linux has frozen up on me several times, and it has had kernel exploits in the past. But that doesn't make Linux less secure or less stable.
I use win2k at work for cross compiling embedded code. It blue screens about 2 times a month on average. Otoh, my linux box has never crashed. Ive had X lockup a few times, but its a simple matter of killing and restarting X. I never had a linux system become completely unusable yet, and Ive never seen a kernel panic even with kernels Ive been myself. (may be doing some loadable object driver devel in the near future- so I may get the chance to soon)
Maybe your experience is different, but in general Ive noticed that is a good idea to reboot windows boxes every now and then, because they work best after a fresh reboot.
A linux box seems to run best after its been up for a few months. (I have a rh9 desktop thats never gone down except for a kernel upgrade and one sustained power outage.)
> I have no love for MS, but I have to disagree. For the >average user Windows is much easier to use.
The average windows box has 28 pieces of spyware, a handful of viruses, and untold gobs of privacy invading proprietary gunk on it (such as DRM ware etc).
On top of that they have to run an obnoxious firewall system and memory and resource hogging virus scanner- just to prevent their computer from self-destructing.
Having your computer be that much of a hassle is not my definition of easy. Not to mention that XP and win2k systems still seem to lockup or blue screen quite regularly despite the much touted "stability improvements"...
Without copyright you can just walk off with it, start some closed-source company
As I said above: there would be no incentive to create said closed-source company. Since anyone could legally copy, reverse engineer, and unravel anything you came up with- then distribute it for free on the 'net.
(companies which go to great lengths to obscure the origin of code can still get away with it with copyright around)
In reality, the only "control" you have over ideas is whether or not to share them with someone else. And as soon as you do, you lose said control over that idea. Eliminating copyright would only be a concession to reality.
Copyleft is a great antidote to Copyright. But without the disease, the cure becomes redundant.
Wrong! Free and Open Source Software absolutely relies on a strong notion of copyright because of the need to protect (in this case preserve the freedom to modify) the software itself. Without copyright you have no way to actually license the software to someone else, and hence impose your specific licensing requirements (e.g. GPL).
OTOH, free and open source software could survive just fine in a would without copyright restrictions or DCMA type laws. Proprietary software could not. So in that sense, copyright is not mandatory for the existence of free software.
The GPL would be absolutely unnecessary without copyright law. (the incentive to hide source code would be gone, since anyone could freely copy and distribute your binaries, and freely reverse engineer them.)
In fact, it was designed to fly in the face of copyright. Thus it is called "copyleft".
Because you dont normally go to jail for *civil* offenses, its kindof hard. Inviting the RIAA to sue you generally doesnt get the emotional response of having the government jail you over something trivial.
So casual civil disobedience is still the best method.
Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.
Using alternate spellings does not in any way make the word unintelligble, but it does make it more resitant to automated censorship.
So, personally, I dont have any problem with the practice.
Slashdot Mirror
I dont use Mac hardware, but Ive had about the exact opposite experince.
Some CPU intensive stuff I have been unable to play in anything but mplayer. (xin e and others couldnt keep up)
futhermore, its the only thing ive been able to play matroska files in, so its the only choice really. if not for those things i would prefers xine's ui.
The fart that they intend to release it undor the GPL means that so long as you keep your derived code under the GPL youre fine.
This is a very big problem: major distros cannot include mplayer because of potential patent suits.
;P )
Just because noone has filed suit yet means nothing.
If you want desktop linux to have a chance there have to be popular patent-free multimedia formats that it can use.
There really is no point in promulgating any more mental-prison ware than strictly necessary. When new codecs are being developed, it only makes sense to throw your support behind the free ones when you have a choice.
(iow, Dirac + ogg in an mkv container could save your soul
Yes, but it doesnt encode directly into the latest Xvid/Ogg/MKv format does it?
I dont think there's much point in putting such rapidly changing things such as video codecs into hardware, when you can economically buy a fast enough processor with high memory bandwidth, like an athlon64.
It amazes me to no end how many people talk about "Linux apps" and Linux. We have the BSDs (which aren't encumbered by the GPL), we have other OSs
There is a reason for that, those other OS's dont have the GPL, linux's "secret sauce" which makes it advanace so much faster than other free os's.
You'll cease being "amazed" and start to grok the situation better when you realize its not so much "burdened" with the GPL as it is "blessed" with it.
because, well, apparently having a penis made me really, really smart
Are you saying it doesnt?
Maybe yours is defective...
"...builds on the characters established in that series..."
"the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series"
What part of that connection are you failing to understand?
All work is derivative at some level Oligonicella. Do you think rowling made up goblins, trolls, wizards, witches, wands, flying brooms, England, and everything thing else in her books? Clearly not, I'm willing to bet she has an extensive list of inspiritaions.
Where you draw the line between derivitive work (changing one word in a book) and inspiration (an original story in the world of harry potter) is ARBITRARY. And thats exactly the point.
but the particular expression which is the Harry Potter series is protected.
This is not true: try to make a piece of fan art than builds on the characters established in that series and will will be found in violation of copyright.
The definition of "derivitive work" is vague and allows copyright to be very stifling.
Application to software, then: if a company spends thousands or millions of $CURRENCY developing a product, and then the first person they sell it to can make as many copies as they want and sell them on for half the price, that person will make more profit per copy, because they didn't have the overheads, and will sell more copies to boot. The only way to avoid this is to sell it to that person for the price of developing, which means that there will only be incentive for a company to write software if it's in-house or built-to-order. There goes company innovation.
Most software IS already made this way. Unless you are talking about Microsoft's version of "innovation", nothing of significance would be lost.
The right to be extends to authors. If I have published something, I have a right to not have that thing be constantly changed and altered by the world at large.
You have no such right.
Anyone anywhere can infer that you said X or claimed Y, and no amount of legislation can prevent that. The fundamental process of thought is one that involves taking the thoughts of others as a base for which to build new ideas. In any universe in which you are not the only person your wish is impossible.
If you want people to get your exact message without the slightest alteration, then take responsibility and cryptographically sign it.
There's always shared directory trees, and they're never in home directory.
Ah, collaboration done wrong: a shared directory tree.
Do yourself a favor: learn about version control.
On a Mac, you are expected to navigate the file system to access what you need (if you want to open an App for example, you open the Finder, go to the Applications folder and then open your app).
That sounds really unscalable- just as soon as you have more than a handful of "applications". Since it clearly cannot list every single installed program, it must only list commonly run gui applications. So it is in fact a menu stuffed into the filesystem.
A user shouldnt ever have to deal with the filesystem outside of their home directory.
If you want to push an agenda, then use huge pile of legalese that is the GPL.
Umm, yeah, because that explains why the GPL is far and away the most successful free software license out there: because we are all legalese-pushers.
Many free software contributors that I know are reluctant to participate in any non-GPL project. And they wouldnt even consider releasing their own projects as anything but GPL. Not because they are blowhards: they just want their work to survive. (And not become counter productive by contributing to proprietary code bases.)
Are you just sour because you were thwarted in a attempt to close some source down perhaps?
If you are downloading individual packeages then you are doing it wrong. There is a reason there is no association for
Learn to use yum or apt, and you may be surprised by just how easy it is to get things installed.
First of all, the question itself is ridiculous. I can quite genuinely say that Windows XP has never crashed for me or been broken into. However, Linux has frozen up on me several times, and it has had kernel exploits in the past. But that doesn't make Linux less secure or less stable.
I use win2k at work for cross compiling embedded code. It blue screens about 2 times a month on average. Otoh, my linux box has never crashed. Ive had X lockup a few times, but its a simple matter of killing and restarting X. I never had a linux system become completely unusable yet, and Ive never seen a kernel panic even with kernels Ive been myself. (may be doing some loadable object driver devel in the near future- so I may get the chance to soon)
Maybe your experience is different, but in general Ive noticed that is a good idea to reboot windows boxes every now and then, because they work best after a fresh reboot.
A linux box seems to run best after its been up for a few months. (I have a rh9 desktop thats never gone down except for a kernel upgrade and one sustained power outage.)
> I have no love for MS, but I have to disagree. For the
>average user Windows is much easier to use.
The average windows box has 28 pieces of spyware, a handful of viruses, and untold gobs of privacy invading proprietary gunk on it (such as DRM ware etc).
On top of that they have to run an obnoxious firewall system and memory and resource hogging virus scanner- just to prevent their computer from self-destructing.
Having your computer be that much of a hassle is not my definition of easy. Not to mention that XP and win2k systems still seem to lockup or blue screen quite regularly despite the much touted "stability improvements"...
Without copyright you can just walk off with it, start some closed-source company
As I said above: there would be no incentive to create said closed-source company. Since anyone could legally copy, reverse engineer, and unravel anything you came up with- then distribute it for free on the 'net.
(companies which go to great lengths to obscure the origin of code can still get away with it with copyright around)
In reality, the only "control" you have over ideas is whether or not to share them with someone else. And as soon as you do, you lose said control over that idea. Eliminating copyright would only be a concession to reality.
Copyleft is a great antidote to Copyright. But without the disease, the cure becomes redundant.
OTOH, free and open source software could survive just fine in a would without copyright restrictions or DCMA type laws. Proprietary software could not. So in that sense, copyright is not mandatory for the existence of free software.
>Its really funny to hear people give the same
>arguments against Java and C# that are
>word-for-word the same as what was said about C.
Not really: if java is going to replace c/c++ the way c/c++ replaced assembly for systems programming, then everyone would already be using lisp.
If java and the like are going to replace anything, its going to be vb/pascal and friends.
Wow, 60 gigs or FLAC files.
;P
But you must really get tired of listening to the same song over and over
She can pay them out of her cut.
Nope, thats exactly the point.
You do it, your friends do it, pretty soon everybody is doing it.
Then it becomes a question change of whether to the law, change the interpretation fair use, or else sue the entire population of the country.
The GPL would be absolutely unnecessary without copyright law. (the incentive to hide source code would be gone, since anyone could freely copy and distribute your binaries, and freely reverse engineer them.)
In fact, it was designed to fly in the face of copyright. Thus it is called "copyleft".
Because you dont normally go to jail for *civil* offenses, its kindof hard. Inviting the RIAA to sue you generally doesnt get the emotional response of having the government jail you over something trivial.
So casual civil disobedience is still the best method.
Civil disobedience is when you violate an immoral law.
If you consider copyright to be immoral, then its natural that you would consider a copyleft to be moral.
So supporting copyleft while opposing copyright is a perfectly consistent moral position.
(The fact that copyleft is enforced by laws designed to protect copyright is but a technicality. )
Many sites (slashdot excluded) and certain types of client filtering software implement a naive filtering algorithm which block out easily recognized profanities ("fuck", "shit", etc)- perhaps even blocking the whole page or post.
Using alternate spellings does not in any way make the word unintelligble, but it does make it more resitant to automated censorship.
So, personally, I dont have any problem with the practice.