They might as well say "watching too much TV makes you fat"
I would find your indignation more compelling if studies/ the media didn't already constantly point out that watching tv makes you fat. For example, pretty much all of the flood of articles about the "obesity epidemic" among American children (partially) blame television.
Remember the Dreamcast. I have nothing against the GameCube (I don't own any next-gen systems), but it is a wierd conclusion to draw.
With whom are you arguing? No one is drawing any conclusions based on the fact that they are hard to find in stores. The conclusion that the gamecube is selling well is based on the fact that the article explicitly says that "January hardware sales were up 60 percent year-over-year". He was just explaining that a result of this is that they are hard to find. We already know the cause, and he's pointing out one effect. You claiming that we are reasoning from the effect back to the cause is ridiculous and is probably why the parent was moderated troll.
Allowing ideas to flow freely is NOT bad for society
Ok, I'd agree with that. But stopping people from sharing ideas is not the same as stopping them from copying movies, albums, etc. Just because you should be able to freely discuss and share the ideas contained in a film or book doesn't mean you need to be able to freely copy the specific expression of those ideas that is the book or film itself. Ideally, intellectual property would protect books, movies, software, etc., but not "ideas". No one should be able to own an idea (in my opinion) or stop others from discussing it.
If the law said that everything you invented belonged to your employer, that would be hard to justify. But it doesn't say that at all. They own your inventions by virtue of an employment contract you willingly signed that explicitly gave them that ownership. If you don't like it, you shouldn't have signed the contract. But they are compensating you with salary and benefits if you do. Those of us who view this as a fair deal should not be legally prevented from doing taking it, even if you think we are making a mistake.
Strictly controlling your works when you are a new outfit doesn't get you ANYWHERE!
Fine. So don't strictly control your works. The law doesn't require you do so, it only lets you if you want to. If you would rather give away your music and literature, go ahead. That doesn't mean you have the right to stop people who produce music and literature and don't want to give it away for free. Even if you think that they would be better off doing so, that's their decision, not yours.
The problem with intellectual property is that it is a fallacy. Property is derived from scarcity, but an idea is scarce only so long as no one else knows it.
There's no fallacy here. The value of property is derived from its scarcity. Thus, it is necessary to impose scarcity on things that do not naturally have it, otherwise they would have no economic value. Intellectual property laws serve this function. Without them, everything could be copied freely and would have no value, which would mean to incentive to product it, which ultimately is bad for society.
But there's a glitch along the lines of pausing after setting off the first one, which lets you get 5 off in a short time. It lets you bomb jump slightly higher, and lets you reach the areas that were supposed to be just out of reach of bomb jumping. In the PAL version, some of those ledges were made slightly higher so that this trick wouldn't work.
Why would they do that rather just fixing the glitch?!
You can see where this leads when a developer hears criticism of the UI - they designed it, so of course they understand it. Stupid users! Of course it's their fault.
So the problem is that developers are developing things for people like themselves rather than for ordinary people. This is a very reasonable critique of open source software, but it seems a little hollow coming from the man (I'm talking about esr, not bilestoad) who has long proclaimed that the reason open source is better is that the software comes from developers writing software to "scratch their own itch," rather than based on what marketing wants (e.g., rather than what has been researched to be appealing to the average, non-developer user). Guess he's now finding out what the rest of the world already knew-- that this methodolgy is a double-edged sword.
1GB upload hurts a bit on certain legal filesharing. (I used to upload foreign movies that had no distribution rights in the US).
Is this really legal? I imagine that if is extremely unlikely that you'll get sued given that the movie has no distribution in the US, but are you really allowed to distribute it? Doesn't the US respect foreign copyrights?
If this guy can find out what exchange rates will be in the future, the obvious solution is to make a killing the currencies market with his information and use it to buy new cables (and some toys for the cat).
By chewing on cables? The cat is just bored and is playing because he is curious and that's what cat's do. It's possible that if he gets another cat, that will keep the first cat from chewing on the cables, but I don't agree that the cat "is trying to say" anything. He's just playing/ exploring, not actively trying to communicate something.
The link I gave in another comment (and orginally got from someone's comment on the k5 story) explains that ms works to make sure that all major apps don't break, even if this requires hacks. This is not just for tools used for and made by ms.
Speaking of sigs, that warning is supposed to come from a superman cape, not batman. Batman can't fly to begin with, so it's not funny that way. It's not a very worthwhile book anyway.
Doesn't this go against the various statements they have made in court - especially those regarding their secret APIs?
No. Their are hacks in their to fix any major application that would break. Just like the hacks to fix Office there are hacks to fix Borland software for example. The fact that Office was doing things in the wrong ways just like Borland (although maybe not in the same specific cases) strengthens Microsoft's argument that there was not coordination between the people developing the os and the people developing the apps at the company. The "secret APIs" claim is based on the belief that special APIs were provided for Office (or whomever within ms), which isn't the case if they were using terrible workaround hacks that broke when the os changed.
I'm not a software engineer, but it seems to me that the OS should offer a rigid set of services and functions to the programs that are supposed to run within the environment provided to them. Am I wrong about this?
You're right that this is how it should work. This is also more or less how it does. The operating system provide certain APIs that programs are supposed to use in the documented ways. They are not supposed to do anything else to communicate with the operating system. Microsoft specifically does not document the things that are subject to change because then apps will use them and break in the next version of the operating system.
The problem is that people write apps anyway that the APIs in ways that are undocumented. Worse, people who don't understand software design actually complain about the existence of undocumented APIs without understanding that documenting them would be equivalent to sanctioning their use, and thus breaking every application when the behavior changes (or never being able to change anything in the os since someone might be using it).
Here is a very very good explanation of the problems with "If the programs are misbehaving, the programs should be fixed, not the OS" that I found linked from one of the comments in the k5 story.
It would be more like Ford, being the only maker of automobiles, including an in-dash navigation system using their own GPS satelite network in order to kill the market for aftermarket navigation systems.
Yes, it would be like that. And a car company providing such a navigation system would be perfectly legal. Or here's another example: at one time, cars didn't come with cd players (since they didn't exist). Now, many cars do come with cd players. Should the federal government break up car companies that sell cars with cd players since they are hurting the market for anyone who wants to sell an "aftermarket" car cd player?
No, when your parent comment posted it, it was joke. When you posted, it was an explanation of his joke. When people explain jokes, it makes them less funny, which is why your comment was moderated down.
Slashdot Mirror
I would find your indignation more compelling if studies/ the media didn't already constantly point out that watching tv makes you fat. For example, pretty much all of the flood of articles about the "obesity epidemic" among American children (partially) blame television.
This spelling looks to me like a cross between koala and Kahlua.
With whom are you arguing? No one is drawing any conclusions based on the fact that they are hard to find in stores. The conclusion that the gamecube is selling well is based on the fact that the article explicitly says that "January hardware sales were up 60 percent year-over-year". He was just explaining that a result of this is that they are hard to find. We already know the cause, and he's pointing out one effect. You claiming that we are reasoning from the effect back to the cause is ridiculous and is probably why the parent was moderated troll.
Ok, I'd agree with that. But stopping people from sharing ideas is not the same as stopping them from copying movies, albums, etc. Just because you should be able to freely discuss and share the ideas contained in a film or book doesn't mean you need to be able to freely copy the specific expression of those ideas that is the book or film itself. Ideally, intellectual property would protect books, movies, software, etc., but not "ideas". No one should be able to own an idea (in my opinion) or stop others from discussing it.
If the law said that everything you invented belonged to your employer, that would be hard to justify. But it doesn't say that at all. They own your inventions by virtue of an employment contract you willingly signed that explicitly gave them that ownership. If you don't like it, you shouldn't have signed the contract. But they are compensating you with salary and benefits if you do. Those of us who view this as a fair deal should not be legally prevented from doing taking it, even if you think we are making a mistake.
Fine. So don't strictly control your works. The law doesn't require you do so, it only lets you if you want to. If you would rather give away your music and literature, go ahead. That doesn't mean you have the right to stop people who produce music and literature and don't want to give it away for free. Even if you think that they would be better off doing so, that's their decision, not yours.
There's no fallacy here. The value of property is derived from its scarcity. Thus, it is necessary to impose scarcity on things that do not naturally have it, otherwise they would have no economic value. Intellectual property laws serve this function. Without them, everything could be copied freely and would have no value, which would mean to incentive to product it, which ultimately is bad for society.
Why would they do that rather just fixing the glitch?!
Isn't that the whole point of an april fools joke? To actually fool people?
So the problem is that developers are developing things for people like themselves rather than for ordinary people. This is a very reasonable critique of open source software, but it seems a little hollow coming from the man (I'm talking about esr, not bilestoad) who has long proclaimed that the reason open source is better is that the software comes from developers writing software to "scratch their own itch," rather than based on what marketing wants (e.g., rather than what has been researched to be appealing to the average, non-developer user). Guess he's now finding out what the rest of the world already knew-- that this methodolgy is a double-edged sword.
Funny, I would consider doing things that your competitors can't to be one of the qualifications for being "better".
It makes sense to me. What's your problem with it?
Is this really legal? I imagine that if is extremely unlikely that you'll get sued given that the movie has no distribution in the US, but are you really allowed to distribute it? Doesn't the US respect foreign copyrights?
Yes, but we didn't learn about the ones where it is more than a day and a half ahead of the date/time here.
I think you missed the part where he said that they can't run as admin or install software.
If this guy can find out what exchange rates will be in the future, the obvious solution is to make a killing the currencies market with his information and use it to buy new cables (and some toys for the cat).
No. I imagine the fact that they did this means that doing so isn't harmful? Why not?
By chewing on cables? The cat is just bored and is playing because he is curious and that's what cat's do. It's possible that if he gets another cat, that will keep the first cat from chewing on the cables, but I don't agree that the cat "is trying to say" anything. He's just playing/ exploring, not actively trying to communicate something.
The link I gave in another comment (and orginally got from someone's comment on the k5 story) explains that ms works to make sure that all major apps don't break, even if this requires hacks. This is not just for tools used for and made by ms.
Speaking of sigs, that warning is supposed to come from a superman cape, not batman. Batman can't fly to begin with, so it's not funny that way. It's not a very worthwhile book anyway.
I thought it was pretty funny.
No. Their are hacks in their to fix any major application that would break. Just like the hacks to fix Office there are hacks to fix Borland software for example. The fact that Office was doing things in the wrong ways just like Borland (although maybe not in the same specific cases) strengthens Microsoft's argument that there was not coordination between the people developing the os and the people developing the apps at the company. The "secret APIs" claim is based on the belief that special APIs were provided for Office (or whomever within ms), which isn't the case if they were using terrible workaround hacks that broke when the os changed.
You're right that this is how it should work. This is also more or less how it does. The operating system provide certain APIs that programs are supposed to use in the documented ways. They are not supposed to do anything else to communicate with the operating system. Microsoft specifically does not document the things that are subject to change because then apps will use them and break in the next version of the operating system.
The problem is that people write apps anyway that the APIs in ways that are undocumented. Worse, people who don't understand software design actually complain about the existence of undocumented APIs without understanding that documenting them would be equivalent to sanctioning their use, and thus breaking every application when the behavior changes (or never being able to change anything in the os since someone might be using it).
Here is a very very good explanation of the problems with "If the programs are misbehaving, the programs should be fixed, not the OS" that I found linked from one of the comments in the k5 story.
Yes, it would be like that. And a car company providing such a navigation system would be perfectly legal. Or here's another example: at one time, cars didn't come with cd players (since they didn't exist). Now, many cars do come with cd players. Should the federal government break up car companies that sell cars with cd players since they are hurting the market for anyone who wants to sell an "aftermarket" car cd player?
No, when your parent comment posted it, it was joke. When you posted, it was an explanation of his joke. When people explain jokes, it makes them less funny, which is why your comment was moderated down.