The grounds used to deny the FOIA request were 5 USC 552(b)(1), which states (bolded for emphasis):
(b) This section does not apply to matters that are--
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
People interpreted that as meaning national security, but it clearly means foreign policy in this instance.
It's not national security as such. Here's the relevant excerpt from a statement from the USTR in response to the article (from the Wired article linked from TFA):
The Administration also recognizes that confidentiality in international negotiations among sovereign entities is the standard practice to enable officials to engage in frank exchanges of views, positions, and specific negotiating proposals, and thereby facilitate the negotiation and compromise that are necessary to reach agreement on complex issues. A unilateral release of text by one trading partner would risk breaching the mutual trust that is important to successful trade negotiations.
International politics is an insanely complex and yet dreadfully boring game played by suits behind closed doors. I'm not personally advocating secrecy, but welcome to the status quo.
It would be clearer to say that most such licenses grant permission to use the software and place conditions upon distribution of the software. If the licenses did not grant permission, each user would need to get permission from the copyright holder.
It doesn't matter what license you're talking about. No person needs permission under a license to use software. An end-user could decline the GPL completely if he so desired, and still be completely fine by copyright law if he ran the associated program.
The GPL grants, under limited circumstances, some extra privileges not available under standard copyright. You're free to take that deal or leave it if you want, but it doesn't cover usage at all.
Clearer but still incorrect, according to 17 USC 117:
(a) Making of additional copy or adaptation by owner of copy. Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 [17 USC 106], it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
Eh, he was listing his bad experiences, which had a legitimate explanation that wasn't his fault. I think that's fair. He wasn't saying "X can't do this", but rather "for my particular unspecified case, I couldn't get X to do this".
Does that mean his experiences are typical and indicative of serious problems in X? No, of course not. But he has a point that it's not foolproof and not quite ready for Aunt Tillie. There's still improvements to be made in HAL, RANDR, etc, to get all this working without manual tweaks to xorg.conf. We're on the right road but not done yet.
The idea that external function calls need to be license-compatible has always struck me as a bit obscene. There's a clear delineation between your work and theirs, so the suggestion that the combination is a derivative work is questionable in my mind (but settled as far as the law is concerned, if I understand correctly). Especially when so many *other* mechanisms for using someone else's work *don't* result in a derivative work: communication via dbus, pipes, files, and sockets. Libraries should be LGPLed, the case for GPL libraries is almost entirely political, has almost nothing to do with wanting to keep their own code open (LGPL does that fine).
But if what you're talking about is lifting innards from someone else's complex project, using their actual code in your code, I think it's fair to accept their licensing restrictions, I don't think the GPL is necessarily BS there. You have an opportunity here to provide a service, to realize that this functionality is something many people may find useful, and to write it yourself in a clean, simple library rather than as part of an end-project, and release it with a liberal license.
The virtual desktop in X is up to the driver to implement, it may or may not be software. In the case of the drivers for the intel 915/945 chips, there's a hardware limitation that prevents the virtual screen size from being greater than 2048x2048 (try it yourself). If I'm reading the bug reports right, newer drivers may work around this.
This. Welcome to the ugly side of proprietary drivers. nVidia wrote their driver in a really misbehaving way, they circumvent most of the X architecture. Don't expect it to play nice with... anything (does it even support XRANDR?) Long story short, you can use the nVidia card alone, and then use their tools to set up the dual head display on it, or you can use the Intel card alone and expect all your built-in tools to play fine. Never the twain shall meet. The fact that you got even independent X sessions working on it I find nothing short of miraculous (I would be curious to see glxinfo on each display).
"Stealing" (avoiding the strict semantic issue for now) in my mind implies non-consent from the rights-holder. If a legally licensed distributor offers you something for $5 then that's their problem how they do or don't make a profit from them. It's no more immoral to take that deal than it is to download Creative Commons works for free.
You're missing the bigger picture: this isn't about indies, at least not for Nintendo. This is about the vast number of carts already shipping from major studios. If they don't need to license with Nintendo to legally produce those carts, they won't, and the slice of the pie Nintendo gets is severely diminished.
The iPhone development model might be a profitable direction to go, which we've seen with downloadable content systems on the consoles like XBLA and Virtual Console on the Wii. Nintendo and Microsoft are *trying* to court indie developers with those programs, so I don't think there's any resistance to the idea on their part. It's just about making sure it doesn't cut into their core business with the big studios.
The DSi is a good experiment in this regard. We'll see how well this plays out.
Also, as a practical matter, I find many people who whine about open source really just want to not pay for software, but won't admit that is their main motivation easily.
You're kidding me, right? How can you be on Slashdot in 2009 and not at least be peripherally aware of the positives of open source beyond cost? I won't deny that cost arguments exist, but to call that the mainstream motivation for open source is a little beyond plausibility. If you just want something for free, pirate it already, the consequences are usually slim to none in the end-user world.
There are real, practical benefits to open source for the end user. Heck, I'm a programmer by trade but even I don't have the time to muck about with the source to the everyday apps I use. But the point is someone does, and everyone can download the results. Quicker bug-fixes, more compatibility and less vendor lock-in, niche features that wouldn't be profitable to implement otherwise. Just look at game engines, for one slice of the sw world, you see better and prettier versions of the Quake engines that run on every OS, you get projects like ScummVM that let you run a butt-ton of your old games.
I'm aware open source has let to some epic fails of software, and that it's not the only choice (or even the best choice) for a business trying to make a profit, but it is sincerely disingenuous to claim that just because you don't have the know-how to directly tinker with something you won't benefit from those who do.
Yeah you'll find this with any language dynamically typed.
Python? Dynamic typing does not necessarily mean weak typing. You can have a language that carries type information with the variable but still loudly complains when non-sensical operations are attempted.
The Constitution only prevents that in government actions. What prevents private discrimination of recognized classes is primarily the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
ACTA is a wide umbrella. Until we see text (all that Geist has released is his interpretation of one chapter of a draft), anyone's guess is as good as another. From documents provided by the Office of the US Trade Representative:
The ACTA initiative aims to establish international standards for enforcing intellectual property rights in order to fight more efficiently the growing problem of counterfeiting and piracy.
I suppose it's different in parliamentary systems, but in the US, I vote for the President to represent me, and to lead the executive branch. The President has subordinates, his Cabinet members, each of which has a Department of such-and-such with employees and a budget, passed by Congress. That makes him a leader in the same way any manager or CEO is, but he doesn't lead *me*, I'm just a (very small) shareholder.
Unlike natural persons, there's nothing that stops a company from shifting everything that makes them who they are into a different company. CEOs can jump ship, subsidiaries can be spun off, assets can be transfered, etc, leaving only a shell to answer for the liabilities, and eventually collapse under its own weight. The analogy of corporations to people only makes sense in limited circumstances.
Which is in fact a large segment that this treaty is targeting. Hence the title "Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement." You may recall the hubbub earlier when Louis-Vuitton, et al, sued Ebay for hosting listings of knock-off goods.
Repeat offender provisions are in many parts of the law, that's not what the discussion of "3-strikes" laws in IP is about. The problem is the lack of due process, the fact that judgments of guilt are declared and punishment is handed out without the involvement of a court of law.
The US by no means has exclusive domain over this madness, the content industry exploits corruption wherever it is. Witness the 3-strikes law, which we don't even have yet in the US.
This isn't about expanding any one country's paradigm, it's about imposing the worst-common-denominator.
1. Separate the ISPs into separate entities. Phone service in one company, internet service in another, television in a third.
2. Separate the ownership of the infrastructure into another company
I agree with (2) but why (1)? It's all data delivery, whether from a phone to a phone, or a satellite to a set-top-box, or Facebook to your browser. The distinction is becoming increasingly artificial these days.
The figure includes fees that were "permitted to be collected". Explain to me the difference between that and the base monthly fee, other than advertising. It's what the market will bear, not a government hand-out.
The nice thing about desktop components is that they are often independent programs from the window manager. You can mix and match. If you like Compiz, you can run it in GNOME instead of Metacity. If you like Nautilus, you can run it in E instead of MC. Feel free to poke around and find out what it is that's actually responsible for the things you like in your system.
As for GL, as a sibling mentioned, that's X's responsibility. E won't affect that, and neither will the presence or lack of compositing.
There's a problem, though, that there's no difference between a user interactively and his processes (well, Windows has an interesting hack for UAC). Trying to prevent my programs from doing something ends up being inseparable from trying to prevent ME from doing something. Any such method (signed whitelists) ends up being DRM, and that sounds just as bad when it's done for my protection, since you've done it without my permission. And then if there were a way to let me turn it off, my processes could do that too. You see the dilemma.
Ultimately, you have to trust the OS permission model and give the user the power to fuck up everything he has rights to. More ideally, we start using OSes with capability-based security systems and properly sandbox apps.
Slashdot Mirror
(b) This section does not apply to matters that are--
(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
People interpreted that as meaning national security, but it clearly means foreign policy in this instance.
The Administration also recognizes that confidentiality in international negotiations among sovereign entities is the standard practice to enable officials to engage in frank exchanges of views, positions, and specific negotiating proposals, and thereby facilitate the negotiation and compromise that are necessary to reach agreement on complex issues. A unilateral release of text by one trading partner would risk breaching the mutual trust that is important to successful trade negotiations.
International politics is an insanely complex and yet dreadfully boring game played by suits behind closed doors. I'm not personally advocating secrecy, but welcome to the status quo.
It would be clearer to say that most such licenses grant permission to use the software and place conditions upon distribution of the software. If the licenses did not grant permission, each user would need to get permission from the copyright holder.
It doesn't matter what license you're talking about. No person needs permission under a license to use software. An end-user could decline the GPL completely if he so desired, and still be completely fine by copyright law if he ran the associated program.
The GPL grants, under limited circumstances, some extra privileges not available under standard copyright. You're free to take that deal or leave it if you want, but it doesn't cover usage at all.
(a) Making of additional copy or adaptation by owner of copy. Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 [17 USC 106], it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner
http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/117.html
Eh, he was listing his bad experiences, which had a legitimate explanation that wasn't his fault. I think that's fair. He wasn't saying "X can't do this", but rather "for my particular unspecified case, I couldn't get X to do this".
Does that mean his experiences are typical and indicative of serious problems in X? No, of course not. But he has a point that it's not foolproof and not quite ready for Aunt Tillie. There's still improvements to be made in HAL, RANDR, etc, to get all this working without manual tweaks to xorg.conf. We're on the right road but not done yet.
The idea that external function calls need to be license-compatible has always struck me as a bit obscene. There's a clear delineation between your work and theirs, so the suggestion that the combination is a derivative work is questionable in my mind (but settled as far as the law is concerned, if I understand correctly). Especially when so many *other* mechanisms for using someone else's work *don't* result in a derivative work: communication via dbus, pipes, files, and sockets. Libraries should be LGPLed, the case for GPL libraries is almost entirely political, has almost nothing to do with wanting to keep their own code open (LGPL does that fine).
But if what you're talking about is lifting innards from someone else's complex project, using their actual code in your code, I think it's fair to accept their licensing restrictions, I don't think the GPL is necessarily BS there. You have an opportunity here to provide a service, to realize that this functionality is something many people may find useful, and to write it yourself in a clean, simple library rather than as part of an end-project, and release it with a liberal license.
The virtual desktop in X is up to the driver to implement, it may or may not be software. In the case of the drivers for the intel 915/945 chips, there's a hardware limitation that prevents the virtual screen size from being greater than 2048x2048 (try it yourself). If I'm reading the bug reports right, newer drivers may work around this.
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2009-July/046683.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/383345
He didn't explicitly say he was using the same hardware for each example. Intel cards at one point (still?) have that limitation.
This. Welcome to the ugly side of proprietary drivers. nVidia wrote their driver in a really misbehaving way, they circumvent most of the X architecture. Don't expect it to play nice with... anything (does it even support XRANDR?) Long story short, you can use the nVidia card alone, and then use their tools to set up the dual head display on it, or you can use the Intel card alone and expect all your built-in tools to play fine. Never the twain shall meet. The fact that you got even independent X sessions working on it I find nothing short of miraculous (I would be curious to see glxinfo on each display).
"Stealing" (avoiding the strict semantic issue for now) in my mind implies non-consent from the rights-holder. If a legally licensed distributor offers you something for $5 then that's their problem how they do or don't make a profit from them. It's no more immoral to take that deal than it is to download Creative Commons works for free.
You're missing the bigger picture: this isn't about indies, at least not for Nintendo. This is about the vast number of carts already shipping from major studios. If they don't need to license with Nintendo to legally produce those carts, they won't, and the slice of the pie Nintendo gets is severely diminished.
The iPhone development model might be a profitable direction to go, which we've seen with downloadable content systems on the consoles like XBLA and Virtual Console on the Wii. Nintendo and Microsoft are *trying* to court indie developers with those programs, so I don't think there's any resistance to the idea on their part. It's just about making sure it doesn't cut into their core business with the big studios.
The DSi is a good experiment in this regard. We'll see how well this plays out.
Also, as a practical matter, I find many people who whine about open source really just want to not pay for software, but won't admit that is their main motivation easily.
You're kidding me, right? How can you be on Slashdot in 2009 and not at least be peripherally aware of the positives of open source beyond cost? I won't deny that cost arguments exist, but to call that the mainstream motivation for open source is a little beyond plausibility. If you just want something for free, pirate it already, the consequences are usually slim to none in the end-user world.
There are real, practical benefits to open source for the end user. Heck, I'm a programmer by trade but even I don't have the time to muck about with the source to the everyday apps I use. But the point is someone does, and everyone can download the results. Quicker bug-fixes, more compatibility and less vendor lock-in, niche features that wouldn't be profitable to implement otherwise. Just look at game engines, for one slice of the sw world, you see better and prettier versions of the Quake engines that run on every OS, you get projects like ScummVM that let you run a butt-ton of your old games.
I'm aware open source has let to some epic fails of software, and that it's not the only choice (or even the best choice) for a business trying to make a profit, but it is sincerely disingenuous to claim that just because you don't have the know-how to directly tinker with something you won't benefit from those who do.
Yeah you'll find this with any language dynamically typed.
Python? Dynamic typing does not necessarily mean weak typing. You can have a language that carries type information with the variable but still loudly complains when non-sensical operations are attempted.
The Constitution only prevents that in government actions. What prevents private discrimination of recognized classes is primarily the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
The ACTA initiative aims to establish international standards for enforcing intellectual property rights in order to fight more efficiently the growing problem of counterfeiting and piracy.
http://www.ustr.gov/trade-topics/intellectual-property/anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-acta
http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/factsheets/2009/asset_upload_file917_15546.pdf
I suppose it's different in parliamentary systems, but in the US, I vote for the President to represent me, and to lead the executive branch. The President has subordinates, his Cabinet members, each of which has a Department of such-and-such with employees and a budget, passed by Congress. That makes him a leader in the same way any manager or CEO is, but he doesn't lead *me*, I'm just a (very small) shareholder.
Unlike natural persons, there's nothing that stops a company from shifting everything that makes them who they are into a different company. CEOs can jump ship, subsidiaries can be spun off, assets can be transfered, etc, leaving only a shell to answer for the liabilities, and eventually collapse under its own weight. The analogy of corporations to people only makes sense in limited circumstances.
Which is in fact a large segment that this treaty is targeting. Hence the title "Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement." You may recall the hubbub earlier when Louis-Vuitton, et al, sued Ebay for hosting listings of knock-off goods.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2290973.htm
Repeat offender provisions are in many parts of the law, that's not what the discussion of "3-strikes" laws in IP is about. The problem is the lack of due process, the fact that judgments of guilt are declared and punishment is handed out without the involvement of a court of law.
The US by no means has exclusive domain over this madness, the content industry exploits corruption wherever it is. Witness the 3-strikes law, which we don't even have yet in the US.
This isn't about expanding any one country's paradigm, it's about imposing the worst-common-denominator.
1. Separate the ISPs into separate entities. Phone service in one company, internet service in another, television in a third. 2. Separate the ownership of the infrastructure into another company
I agree with (2) but why (1)? It's all data delivery, whether from a phone to a phone, or a satellite to a set-top-box, or Facebook to your browser. The distinction is becoming increasingly artificial these days.
The figure includes fees that were "permitted to be collected". Explain to me the difference between that and the base monthly fee, other than advertising. It's what the market will bear, not a government hand-out.
The nice thing about desktop components is that they are often independent programs from the window manager. You can mix and match. If you like Compiz, you can run it in GNOME instead of Metacity. If you like Nautilus, you can run it in E instead of MC. Feel free to poke around and find out what it is that's actually responsible for the things you like in your system.
As for GL, as a sibling mentioned, that's X's responsibility. E won't affect that, and neither will the presence or lack of compositing.
He already had a Yoda computer model by then from the prequels, which is half the work done right there.
I agree with your point in general, but the remakes came out in 1997, two years before Episode 1.
There's a problem, though, that there's no difference between a user interactively and his processes (well, Windows has an interesting hack for UAC). Trying to prevent my programs from doing something ends up being inseparable from trying to prevent ME from doing something. Any such method (signed whitelists) ends up being DRM, and that sounds just as bad when it's done for my protection, since you've done it without my permission. And then if there were a way to let me turn it off, my processes could do that too. You see the dilemma.
Ultimately, you have to trust the OS permission model and give the user the power to fuck up everything he has rights to. More ideally, we start using OSes with capability-based security systems and properly sandbox apps.