What if I created a web browser (or an extension fore Firefox, etc) that displayed the HTML source rather than interpreting it and rendering the marked-up content?
What if I telnet to port 80 on their webserver and issue the HTTP commands myself?
Mind you, years ago I worked on a site for a customer, and happened to skim through their Ts and Cs page. One of the things they explicitly disallowed was caching of content, including by proxy servers.
As another poster pointed out, he most likely knew that he couldn't create the sort of look he wanted, which is precisely why he hired you.
For my part, I can do HTML, JS, CSS, etc; but I'm a programmer, not a designer. You want functional, I'm your man. You want stylish, good looking - go talk to someone else. I'll happily do the back end, and integrate the finished HTML page to make it function, but you'll be wanting someone else to do the artistic stuff.
A Linux distro can never distribute software that requires royalties
Not true, there are a number of options: 1) Charge for the version of the distro that includes the software, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code 2) Give the distro away for free, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code 3) Reimplement the required code, distribute only in countries with a more enlightened attitude towards software patents (eg the EU)
Lucky for you, there is Ogg Vorbis, which is technically superior to MP3 anyway, in terms of quality per byte.
Superior or not, that doesn't help me with all the music I have in mp3 (and no, I'm not about to re-rip it). The OP's point is valid - the experience is not as good out of the box as that of OS X or Windows, with regards to music playing.
That's all true, and I wouldn't want Google (or any other company wholly unrelated to my actual health) to have my medical records.
However the Roomba + (Google) search idea is *fascinating*. Shove an RFID into/onto everything (car keys, books, CDs, clothes, paper, *everything*), have a mobile scanning device, and you need never misplace anything again.
Not entirely practical (especially for random bits of paper, which is what I lose most often), but an intriguing idea nonetheless.
You are never required to contribute changes you make to a GPLed piece of code. At most, if you distribute the modified code you must make the source available. The GPL says nothing at all about contributing patches or even providing the code as-is to the project maintainers/original authors.
Using a GPLed library doesn't change this; you only have to make available the source of the code that uses the library if you distribute the binary.
I think I'm arguing semantics, but "contribute" to me means "give the source or (preferably) patches to the project's maintainer(s)/original author(s)" which is not the case with the GPL. Some projects may have licences that require that, but that's over and above the requirements of the GPL.
I remember back when the PS2 (I think) came out, there was a story of someone buying a box and receipt. There was nothing outright fraudulent about the auction, it listed exactly what it was selling - a PS2 box and receipt. Easy to miss the fine detail and allow yourself to assumed that you were buying a PS2 *with* box and receipt.
I also remember a few years ago a rather more deceptive auction for some brand new, must-have model of phone. Lots of pictures, lots of description, huge great dense paragraph of text detailing the phone's specs... and right at the very end a line saying something like "Note you are only buying a picture of the phone". Sure, it said it right there on the page - but buried where very few people would have read it.
There is no reasonable explanation for it except that THEY are checking what YOU are doing with YOUR computer.
That explanation is even less reasonable, if only because it should no more run out of memory reporting on your activities than performing the file copy itself.
So you would reuse a buffer for copy files, but not for phoning home, yet claim 25 years as a programmer?
The staggering amount of processing power required for this though, is surprising. Either Google has some monstrous server farm somewhere
Surely that's a given though - this is Google we're talking about. How many web pages does their search engine index, and how quickly are the results of a search returned?
I appreciate that they're not the same problem, but YouTube must involve a large number of servers which are relatively doing very little beyond grabbing content and streaming it out. They currently need gobs of bandwidth, and probably have gobs of processing power sat around more or less idle as a result.
But it's the copyright holder's responsibility to notify Google that the infringement is taking place. Google is under no legal obligation to screen everything.
As this auction clearly demonstrates, a low UID proves nothing.
Mine is in the top 1% of UIDs, numerically speaking (given we broke the million barrier some time ago). How old am I? How long have I been on the site? How long have I been involved in IT? Or did I buy this account on eBay a week ago?
Just a note to anyone else currently at work - the picture that accompanies the linked-to article (naked woman, kneeling, sat on her heels, viewed from behind) may not be appropriate for your office environment. YMMV, this has been a public service announcement, etc.
Of course you realise that every single one of those economies started out by vigorously ignoring IP, especially that of other nations, until such time as it had some of its own to protect and only then implemented its own IP-related laws, don't you?
You do also realise that there are many other factors in why the US and Europe, Japan, etc are more prosperous than third world countries, don't you, and that blaming it all on a lack of IP laws is simplistic almost beyond belief?
Why not? Pulp Fiction may have been full of violence and swearing, but at least it didn't graphically portray a man being tortured by having the flesh flayed from his back like Passion of the Christ did. Pulp Fiction's violence was over-stated but quick and almost incidental, unlike the almost loving close-ups and dwelling on details of PotC.
You could argue that my right to life ends the moment I am convicted of a crime that carries the death penalty. You could argue that my rights to freedom, to freedom of association, to freedom of speech, etc end the moment I'm convicted of a crime that warrants imprisonment (and start again when I'm released).
Even inalienable rights are not irrevocable, and can indeed be revoked and suspended as the law sees fit.
The law confers certain rights to copyright holders, limited in time and in scope but rights nevertheless. You can play all the word games you like, but that won't change the legal reality of the situation.
Now if you don't like small business, fair enough, but then remember that the alternative is large conglomerates like Microsoft.
Nice false dichotomy there; obviously between small businesses (a handful of employees, maybe a few dozen) and ones the size of MS (tens of thousands of employees worldwide) there's a great big barren land in which no business exists or can exist.
If the PS3 ever surpasses the Xbox in sales (I know, not terribly likely at this time)
You can say that again. I've not looked for a couple of months, but the last time I checked prices here in the UK I could be an XBox 360 *and* a Wii for less than I could get a PS3. I know cost isn't everything, but *damn*.
I'm being pedantic and arguing semantics, but assuming you questioned them accurately and they replied accurately and truthfully, they're an accurate sample. The question is whether or not they're a representative sample.
No no no - if they're stolen then it's possession whether you know it or not. The difference is that if you can convince the police (or a court) that you didn't know, then you don't get prosecuted (or fined/imprisoned).
Other than that, I agree - just because someone gives you something it doesn't necessarily mean that you get to keep it. Even assuming there are no laws preventing you from owning the thing in the first place (eg endangered or dangerous animals), the person who gave it to you had to have the legal right to do so.
Hardly - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, for example, cannot be downloaded for free except as an evaluation copy, good for 60 days with an option to extend your evaluation period for a further 60 days *once*.
If you're using it past that date, you need to pay for it. I'm sure SUSE isn't the only pay-for-only distro.
There's nothing in the GPL that prevents you from charging for a distro, and besides, every distro packages software of their own with it (management tools, etc). These tools are often not under the GPL and may well be under a commercial, closed source licence. Even if they are under an open source licence, that doesn't automatically mean that they're under a Free Software licence.
Slashdot Mirror
What if I created a web browser (or an extension fore Firefox, etc) that displayed the HTML source rather than interpreting it and rendering the marked-up content?
What if I telnet to port 80 on their webserver and issue the HTTP commands myself?
Mind you, years ago I worked on a site for a customer, and happened to skim through their Ts and Cs page. One of the things they explicitly disallowed was caching of content, including by proxy servers.
As another poster pointed out, he most likely knew that he couldn't create the sort of look he wanted, which is precisely why he hired you.
For my part, I can do HTML, JS, CSS, etc; but I'm a programmer, not a designer. You want functional, I'm your man. You want stylish, good looking - go talk to someone else. I'll happily do the back end, and integrate the finished HTML page to make it function, but you'll be wanting someone else to do the artistic stuff.
1) Charge for the version of the distro that includes the software, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code
2) Give the distro away for free, pay the licence fee to the licensor, disallow redistribution of the licensed code
3) Reimplement the required code, distribute only in countries with a more enlightened attitude towards software patents (eg the EU)Superior or not, that doesn't help me with all the music I have in mp3 (and no, I'm not about to re-rip it).
The OP's point is valid - the experience is not as good out of the box as that of OS X or Windows, with regards to music playing.
That's all true, and I wouldn't want Google (or any other company wholly unrelated to my actual health) to have my medical records.
However the Roomba + (Google) search idea is *fascinating*. Shove an RFID into/onto everything (car keys, books, CDs, clothes, paper, *everything*), have a mobile scanning device, and you need never misplace anything again.
Not entirely practical (especially for random bits of paper, which is what I lose most often), but an intriguing idea nonetheless.
It also devalues the meaning of "inexpensive" if you ask me...
So it should be moderated "Wrong" not "Troll".
Oh wait, there isn't a "Wrong" moderation, you're supposed to reply if something is wrong not just mod it down.
You are never required to contribute changes you make to a GPLed piece of code. At most, if you distribute the modified code you must make the source available. The GPL says nothing at all about contributing patches or even providing the code as-is to the project maintainers/original authors.
Using a GPLed library doesn't change this; you only have to make available the source of the code that uses the library if you distribute the binary.
I think I'm arguing semantics, but "contribute" to me means "give the source or (preferably) patches to the project's maintainer(s)/original author(s)" which is not the case with the GPL. Some projects may have licences that require that, but that's over and above the requirements of the GPL.
I remember back when the PS2 (I think) came out, there was a story of someone buying a box and receipt. There was nothing outright fraudulent about the auction, it listed exactly what it was selling - a PS2 box and receipt. Easy to miss the fine detail and allow yourself to assumed that you were buying a PS2 *with* box and receipt.
I also remember a few years ago a rather more deceptive auction for some brand new, must-have model of phone. Lots of pictures, lots of description, huge great dense paragraph of text detailing the phone's specs... and right at the very end a line saying something like "Note you are only buying a picture of the phone". Sure, it said it right there on the page - but buried where very few people would have read it.
There is no reasonable explanation for it except that THEY are checking what YOU are doing with YOUR computer.
That explanation is even less reasonable, if only because it should no more run out of memory reporting on your activities than performing the file copy itself.
So you would reuse a buffer for copy files, but not for phoning home, yet claim 25 years as a programmer?
Your bias is burning so bright it's blinding you.
The staggering amount of processing power required for this though, is surprising. Either Google has some monstrous server farm somewhere
Surely that's a given though - this is Google we're talking about. How many web pages does their search engine index, and how quickly are the results of a search returned?
I appreciate that they're not the same problem, but YouTube must involve a large number of servers which are relatively doing very little beyond grabbing content and streaming it out. They currently need gobs of bandwidth, and probably have gobs of processing power sat around more or less idle as a result.
But it's the copyright holder's responsibility to notify Google that the infringement is taking place. Google is under no legal obligation to screen everything.
Quiet newbie!
As this auction clearly demonstrates, a low UID proves nothing.
Mine is in the top 1% of UIDs, numerically speaking (given we broke the million barrier some time ago). How old am I? How long have I been on the site? How long have I been involved in IT? Or did I buy this account on eBay a week ago?
Who knows? Who cares?
Just a note to anyone else currently at work - the picture that accompanies the linked-to article (naked woman, kneeling, sat on her heels, viewed from behind) may not be appropriate for your office environment. YMMV, this has been a public service announcement, etc.
Of course you realise that every single one of those economies started out by vigorously ignoring IP, especially that of other nations, until such time as it had some of its own to protect and only then implemented its own IP-related laws, don't you?
You do also realise that there are many other factors in why the US and Europe, Japan, etc are more prosperous than third world countries, don't you, and that blaming it all on a lack of IP laws is simplistic almost beyond belief?
Why not? Pulp Fiction may have been full of violence and swearing, but at least it didn't graphically portray a man being tortured by having the flesh flayed from his back like Passion of the Christ did. Pulp Fiction's violence was over-stated but quick and almost incidental, unlike the almost loving close-ups and dwelling on details of PotC.
You could argue that my right to life ends the moment I am convicted of a crime that carries the death penalty. You could argue that my rights to freedom, to freedom of association, to freedom of speech, etc end the moment I'm convicted of a crime that warrants imprisonment (and start again when I'm released).
Even inalienable rights are not irrevocable, and can indeed be revoked and suspended as the law sees fit.
The law confers certain rights to copyright holders, limited in time and in scope but rights nevertheless. You can play all the word games you like, but that won't change the legal reality of the situation.
Now if you don't like small business, fair enough, but then remember that the alternative is large conglomerates like Microsoft.
Nice false dichotomy there; obviously between small businesses (a handful of employees, maybe a few dozen) and ones the size of MS (tens of thousands of employees worldwide) there's a great big barren land in which no business exists or can exist.
If the PS3 ever surpasses the Xbox in sales (I know, not terribly likely at this time)
You can say that again. I've not looked for a couple of months, but the last time I checked prices here in the UK I could be an XBox 360 *and* a Wii for less than I could get a PS3. I know cost isn't everything, but *damn*.
Some non-political example is slashdot versus digg. Moderation is required.
Actually that's a pretty good example; it even covers the fact that slashdot, while better than digg, is itself pretty far from perfect.
I'm being pedantic and arguing semantics, but assuming you questioned them accurately and they replied accurately and truthfully, they're an accurate sample. The question is whether or not they're a representative sample.
No no no - if they're stolen then it's possession whether you know it or not. The difference is that if you can convince the police (or a court) that you didn't know, then you don't get prosecuted (or fined/imprisoned).
Other than that, I agree - just because someone gives you something it doesn't necessarily mean that you get to keep it. Even assuming there are no laws preventing you from owning the thing in the first place (eg endangered or dangerous animals), the person who gave it to you had to have the legal right to do so.
Given that methane is odourless, no.
Hardly - SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, for example, cannot be downloaded for free except as an evaluation copy, good for 60 days with an option to extend your evaluation period for a further 60 days *once*.
If you're using it past that date, you need to pay for it. I'm sure SUSE isn't the only pay-for-only distro.
There's nothing in the GPL that prevents you from charging for a distro, and besides, every distro packages software of their own with it (management tools, etc). These tools are often not under the GPL and may well be under a commercial, closed source licence. Even if they are under an open source licence, that doesn't automatically mean that they're under a Free Software licence.
Who would want any desktop OS on a server, let alone a Windows one?
I'm all for (appropriate) MS bashing, but c'mon guys, this is starting to get really, really old...