As far as I'm concerned having a 128k mp3 of a song you didn't buy isn't piracy. Having 480kb VBR is.
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Personally, I can't really hear the difference, and would be perfectly happy with the 128kbit files. I suspect that I am by no means alone in that.
Is it still not piracy when a significant proportion of people are happy with files of a quality that you personally consider to be inferior?
But I'd wager that their standards for "big uploaders" are getting looser and looser and if the continue to see success with their current strategy, before long their standards will point to the "average joe P2P user." What happens then?
At a guess, I'd say that "average joe P2P user" gets to find out that they're infringing copyright law the hard way.
Unauthorised distribution of a copyrighted work is just that. You may get hit harder if you're doing it on purpose, or if you're distributing lots of works, but even just one, as a consequence of the software you're using, is an infringement. Then it's up to the courts to decide if it's reasonable to consider that you knew what you were doing.
I don't know about other P2P apps, but eMule clearly shows you what you're uploading. It would be very hard to convincingly argue that you didn't realise what was going on, I think.
Of *course* we want to believe it - eye candy is important to most gamers (as is good gameplay, etc, of course, but it's eye candy that makes that all-important lasting first impression, and gameplay is very hard to see in screenshots).
That doesn't necessarily mean that we all *do* believe it, though.
Now that's something I'd like to see MS do - separate out the API from the implementation, and allow the actual rendering engine provider to be configurable. That would allow you to use an API-compliant engine instead of mshtml.dll.
It would also probably mean the death of IE, of course, as probably most technically competent people would swap mshtml.dll out for a compliant Gecko or similar...
If you remove IE - specifically, if you remove MSHTML.dll - all sorts of things will break. In XP at least (if not 2k) Windows Explorer will break. SQL Enterprise Manager (v7 was the last I used, I believe) will break. The Help Centre will break.
Lots of stuff, both MS and third party, uses mshtml.dll for rendering of HTML because it is guaranteed to exist.
What could be useful is the ability to return IE to an "official" condition, eg base OS install, SP 1, etc, in a single step. That would either require a read-only medium, or some particularly impressive voodoo magic to ensure the integrity of the installation files (whether cached or redownloaded).
Never forget that a machine infested with spyware is compromised. If you're sufficiently paranoid, you can't trust *any* data or executable on it any more.
This might amaze you, but some of us drink wine because we like it, not because we're trying to appear sophisticated. Yes, there are some people like that, but you get idiots in all walks of life.
My guess is that it simply wouldn't work. If raising and lowering the gun is jump/crouch, how do you aim up and down? Not to mention the sheer physicality of holding it up and waggling it about for extended periods - maybe it would be ok for a few minutes at a time, but an hour or two? That's before we get on to the technical problems, of course, like that it simply won't work with an LCD.
Quite often, if you're sat wondering "how come no-one has done $foo?", it's becuse someone tried $foo and it just didn't work out. (That shouldn't necessarily stop you from trying yourself, of course)
you don't develop open source code with a closed source language. It defeats the purpose of it being open. Linus found out the hardway
Linus used Java in the kernel?! There I was thinking it was getting faster, and it was because he was rewriting Java code in C all along!
Seriously, the BitKeeper debate has nothing to do with this. He was given a free licence, which was then revoked, as was allowed by the terms of the licence. How is that like Java? If Sun went belly-up tomorrow and/or abandoned Java, I still have my current JVM installs and permission to use them.
Don't go after the people who merely voice support for... killing abortion doctors.
In many places, incitement to commit (serious) crimes is itself a crime.
I do believe in free speech, but I also believe in taking responsibilty for the things that I say. If I encourage someone to break a law, and they do so, then I am partly responsible and should face the consequences.
Note that that's different to "prevent people from giving that encouragement in the first place".
How is this harming the network? If it works as should be intended, it'll only target copyrighted materials that the copyright holders haven't authorised for distribution in this manner.
Saying that that harms the network is like trying to argue that making murder illegal, and lockingup murderers, harms gun sales...
Now only Macrovision will be allowed to try and spoof hashes, etc. So P2P freedom fighters need only bankrupt/hijack 1 corporation!...except that they may well license the technology to third parties, and if bankrupted, would certainly sell it (or be forced to sell it) to cover debts, etc.
At best, it means that you only have to fight one company at a time.
I should probably have mentioned that we do server-side web app development. Even if that happened, we could happily continue using whatever version was current at the time, while planning a migration to whatever replacement technology seemed suitable.
Yes, I've been doing Java a long time, but I was a C/C++ programmer before that, Fortran before that, assembler before, BASIC before that... I'm not so wed to Java that I wouldn't use something else if there was a reason to do so.
I've been a professional Java developer for 5 years now, and I completely agree. I have never, not once thought "if only Java were open source!". (For comparison, I first started using Linux nearly 8 years ago)
I have no desire or need to change or add features, I have no desire or need to run it on unsupported OSes, and I have no desire or need to distribute it to third parties. I have no desire or, as far as I can see, need for Java to be open sourced.
Your mileage my vary, of course, but for myself, I see no value in it.
It's hard enough to get users to adjust the sandbox that they're already using so that it's as complete as possible, even though doing so imposes very little invenvenience.
But it requires more knowledge than most users currently possess. Education is a huge problem... MS has made it easy for anyone to own and use a computer. That's good, in that anyone can, but bad in that "anyone" *does*.
Tivo allows personal time-shifting of a broadcast program so you can watch it at a more convenient time. BitTorrent allows distribution of programs to others.
IANAL, but I suspect that fair use allows for the former but not the latter. In either case, the difference should be clear, in both intent and in practice.
Shush - this is slashdot! We have always been at war with MS. MS has always been the largest software company on earth, and have always bullied other companies by virtue of their size and money.
They were never just an idea, never just getting started - got that?
Your hypothetical old lady has a better chance with Ubuntu than with Windows of opening that recipe, since Word does not come with Windows XP.
But XP *does* come with Wordpad, which can render Word documents. You lose the more advanced features (macros, some fancy formatting, etc), but the text is generally perfectly readable and well presented.
Software requirements apply to everyone. With Windows, our hypothetical old lady has to make sure that she buys for the right Windows version, and that it's not a Mac application.
I've not had any trouble running anything on XP, although I have had to set compatability mode for a few old apps, which may well be beyond our little old lady.
2) Churchill (Dresdon Germany)
Hitler could only dream of the cruelity.
The razing of Dresden was a terrible event, but still only accounts for a small fraction of the number of Jews and Gypsies that were killed during the Holocaust. Don't forget too that London suffered greatly during The Blitz, with 3000 people being killed on the final night alone.
Besids, you're missing the point, I think. The "death" of a few pieces of software pale into utter insignificance besides the Holocaust (and everything else you mention). You really can't compare the discontinuation of an office suite with even a single human death, let alone millions.
Regarding your sale of the copy of Windows, I don't see a big conspiracy there. *Of course* they don't want you to sell it on, that's one less sale for them. So they misadvised you; they're under no *legal* obligation to advise you correctly. (Morally, they are, but then the person you spoke to probably wasn't actually lying, that's what they've been *told* is the situation and they know no better)
I imagine next if things continue like this commercial software will have the legal right to demand 1 install per purchase ( no reinstallation , on a repair install).
It already does - you can put whatever terms you want to in an EULA. They may or may not stand up in court if challenged, of course, but there's an even easier solution - just don't buy any software from a company that's that unfriendly. If you buy software with a clause like that, return it, and make sure that they know *why* you're returning it.
Seriously, I know it's common here to allow paranoia a somewhat free reign, but companies can only push so far before people tell them where to stick it.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I'm concerned having a 128k mp3 of a song you didn't buy isn't piracy. Having 480kb VBR is.
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. Personally, I can't really hear the difference, and would be perfectly happy with the 128kbit files. I suspect that I am by no means alone in that.
Is it still not piracy when a significant proportion of people are happy with files of a quality that you personally consider to be inferior?
But I'd wager that their standards for "big uploaders" are getting looser and looser and if the continue to see success with their current strategy, before long their standards will point to the "average joe P2P user." What happens then?
At a guess, I'd say that "average joe P2P user" gets to find out that they're infringing copyright law the hard way.
Unauthorised distribution of a copyrighted work is just that. You may get hit harder if you're doing it on purpose, or if you're distributing lots of works, but even just one, as a consequence of the software you're using, is an infringement. Then it's up to the courts to decide if it's reasonable to consider that you knew what you were doing.
I don't know about other P2P apps, but eMule clearly shows you what you're uploading. It would be very hard to convincingly argue that you didn't realise what was going on, I think.
Congrats - my GeFore 3 Ti 200 didn't run Doom 3 particularly well. The GeForce 6800GT I upraded to did, though.
That said, lottery win notwithstanding, I would never drop a grand on a graphics card just to get more RAM on it.
So, potentially you'll be changing batteries every couple of weeks.
Of *course* we want to believe it - eye candy is important to most gamers (as is good gameplay, etc, of course, but it's eye candy that makes that all-important lasting first impression, and gameplay is very hard to see in screenshots).
That doesn't necessarily mean that we all *do* believe it, though.
Now that's something I'd like to see MS do - separate out the API from the implementation, and allow the actual rendering engine provider to be configurable. That would allow you to use an API-compliant engine instead of mshtml.dll.
It would also probably mean the death of IE, of course, as probably most technically competent people would swap mshtml.dll out for a compliant Gecko or similar...
If you remove IE - specifically, if you remove MSHTML.dll - all sorts of things will break. In XP at least (if not 2k) Windows Explorer will break. SQL Enterprise Manager (v7 was the last I used, I believe) will break. The Help Centre will break.
Lots of stuff, both MS and third party, uses mshtml.dll for rendering of HTML because it is guaranteed to exist.
What could be useful is the ability to return IE to an "official" condition, eg base OS install, SP 1, etc, in a single step. That would either require a read-only medium, or some particularly impressive voodoo magic to ensure the integrity of the installation files (whether cached or redownloaded).
Never forget that a machine infested with spyware is compromised. If you're sufficiently paranoid, you can't trust *any* data or executable on it any more.
they've already tried to have a 'man-made diamond' label stuck to all these rocks
So? They are man-made, after all.
This might amaze you, but some of us drink wine because we like it, not because we're trying to appear sophisticated. Yes, there are some people like that, but you get idiots in all walks of life.
My guess is that it simply wouldn't work. If raising and lowering the gun is jump/crouch, how do you aim up and down? Not to mention the sheer physicality of holding it up and waggling it about for extended periods - maybe it would be ok for a few minutes at a time, but an hour or two? That's before we get on to the technical problems, of course, like that it simply won't work with an LCD.
Quite often, if you're sat wondering "how come no-one has done $foo?", it's becuse someone tried $foo and it just didn't work out. (That shouldn't necessarily stop you from trying yourself, of course)
you don't develop open source code with a closed source language. It defeats the purpose of it being open. Linus found out the hardway
Linus used Java in the kernel?! There I was thinking it was getting faster, and it was because he was rewriting Java code in C all along!
Seriously, the BitKeeper debate has nothing to do with this. He was given a free licence, which was then revoked, as was allowed by the terms of the licence. How is that like Java? If Sun went belly-up tomorrow and/or abandoned Java, I still have my current JVM installs and permission to use them.
Is there possibly a portion of the group policy which would run an msi/executable update?
I'd imagine that you can set a script/batch file to run at logon, and just put whatever you need in that.
(That is, I *know* you can specify a logon batch script, just not whether or not that can be enforced or pushed out via group policy)
Don't go after the people who merely voice support for... killing abortion doctors.
In many places, incitement to commit (serious) crimes is itself a crime.
I do believe in free speech, but I also believe in taking responsibilty for the things that I say. If I encourage someone to break a law, and they do so, then I am partly responsible and should face the consequences.
Note that that's different to "prevent people from giving that encouragement in the first place".
The title of your comment is a complaint about that sort of comment. Telling him not to feel persecuted is a little rich, imho.
Other than that, I basically agree with you.
Who the fuck is Zonk?
An editor
How is this harming the network? If it works as should be intended, it'll only target copyrighted materials that the copyright holders haven't authorised for distribution in this manner.
Saying that that harms the network is like trying to argue that making murder illegal, and lockingup murderers, harms gun sales...
Now only Macrovision will be allowed to try and spoof hashes, etc. So P2P freedom fighters need only bankrupt/hijack 1 corporation! ...except that they may well license the technology to third parties, and if bankrupted, would certainly sell it (or be forced to sell it) to cover debts, etc.
At best, it means that you only have to fight one company at a time.
I should probably have mentioned that we do server-side web app development. Even if that happened, we could happily continue using whatever version was current at the time, while planning a migration to whatever replacement technology seemed suitable.
Yes, I've been doing Java a long time, but I was a C/C++ programmer before that, Fortran before that, assembler before, BASIC before that... I'm not so wed to Java that I wouldn't use something else if there was a reason to do so.
I've been a professional Java developer for 5 years now, and I completely agree. I have never, not once thought "if only Java were open source!". (For comparison, I first started using Linux nearly 8 years ago)
I have no desire or need to change or add features, I have no desire or need to run it on unsupported OSes, and I have no desire or need to distribute it to third parties. I have no desire or, as far as I can see, need for Java to be open sourced.
Your mileage my vary, of course, but for myself, I see no value in it.
It's hard enough to get users to adjust the sandbox that they're already using so that it's as complete as possible, even though doing so imposes very little invenvenience.
But it requires more knowledge than most users currently possess. Education is a huge problem... MS has made it easy for anyone to own and use a computer. That's good, in that anyone can, but bad in that "anyone" *does*.
Tivo allows personal time-shifting of a broadcast program so you can watch it at a more convenient time. BitTorrent allows distribution of programs to others.
IANAL, but I suspect that fair use allows for the former but not the latter. In either case, the difference should be clear, in both intent and in practice.
Shush - this is slashdot! We have always been at war with MS. MS has always been the largest software company on earth, and have always bullied other companies by virtue of their size and money.
They were never just an idea, never just getting started - got that?
Your hypothetical old lady has a better chance with Ubuntu than with Windows of opening that recipe, since Word does not come with Windows XP.
But XP *does* come with Wordpad, which can render Word documents. You lose the more advanced features (macros, some fancy formatting, etc), but the text is generally perfectly readable and well presented.
Software requirements apply to everyone. With Windows, our hypothetical old lady has to make sure that she buys for the right Windows version, and that it's not a Mac application.
I've not had any trouble running anything on XP, although I have had to set compatability mode for a few old apps, which may well be beyond our little old lady.
To go from non-existant to a serious contender in the server market makes it obvious that they are observing such practices.
You know, Windows once went from non-existant to a serious contender in the server market too...
2) Churchill (Dresdon Germany)
Hitler could only dream of the cruelity.
The razing of Dresden was a terrible event, but still only accounts for a small fraction of the number of Jews and Gypsies that were killed during the Holocaust. Don't forget too that London suffered greatly during The Blitz, with 3000 people being killed on the final night alone.
Besids, you're missing the point, I think. The "death" of a few pieces of software pale into utter insignificance besides the Holocaust (and everything else you mention). You really can't compare the discontinuation of an office suite with even a single human death, let alone millions.
Regarding your sale of the copy of Windows, I don't see a big conspiracy there. *Of course* they don't want you to sell it on, that's one less sale for them. So they misadvised you; they're under no *legal* obligation to advise you correctly. (Morally, they are, but then the person you spoke to probably wasn't actually lying, that's what they've been *told* is the situation and they know no better)
.
I imagine next if things continue like this commercial software will have the legal right to demand 1 install per purchase ( no reinstallation , on a repair install)
It already does - you can put whatever terms you want to in an EULA. They may or may not stand up in court if challenged, of course, but there's an even easier solution - just don't buy any software from a company that's that unfriendly. If you buy software with a clause like that, return it, and make sure that they know *why* you're returning it.
Seriously, I know it's common here to allow paranoia a somewhat free reign, but companies can only push so far before people tell them where to stick it.