If Lucas's copyright expired right now, then it means I would not have to pay again when the DVD's come out for something I already own 2 nearly-identical copies of.
Why on earth are you going to buy it again, if not to support them with your $$$? (Which would be rather strange, given that he's not exactly strapped for cash.) Nobody's forcing you to buy the DVDs.
Yeah, I think that the copyright should have expired by this point, but you can stop the "giganto corporations are FORCING ME TO WASTE MY MONEY" stuff. I've never bought any star wars merchandise of any kind, and Lucas' secret police has yet to knock on my door.
So when I'm forty, I no longer have the rights to something I wrote when I was twenty? How is that a logical, financially viable, and potentially useful solution?
The whole point behind copyright is to grant a 'limited monopoly' of sorts on the work, to give people an incentive to create things. However, it seems to me that endless copyrights undermine that; why bother to create something new which might compete with something you made 20 years ago?
I think that a 20 year -- or possibly less; I think that maybe 10 years + a possible 10 year renewal might work -- window to have complete ownership over your work is reasonable. No one should expect to make a living off what they created back in 1970.
You're right, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki. A great example of "accuracy" in the news we get. Perhaps this is an attempt to rewrite history? 1984?
"Never blame on maliciousness that which can be explained away by stupidity." And trust me, there's more than enough stupidity in this world to go around.
If you ever expect a patch, upgrade, new version, new products, enhancements, customer service, etc. then motivations are important.
It seems to me that all of these contribute to the merit of the product. Patches, upgrades, new versions, etc. add value to the original product, even if they don't come in the same box.
Again, I really don't care if someone provides good support because they like their customers or because they want my money tomorrow. What difference does it make?
And if all that the volume of messages measured was "how many people who wrote like/dislike Windows?", then of what real use would the call for comments be? What meaning is there to all the Linux zealots who copied one of the form letters from slashdot, or the Windows users who... well, I assume did the same, although I didn't see any pro-Microsoft letters posted here.
It seems to me that the volume of letters shouldn't be considered much more than an interesting statistic. It's a actual quality of the arguments that should count, whether there were 15,000 or 15.
Isn't it currently under a MIT-style (or similar) license? Various people in this discussion have claimed that it's moving from GPL to LGPL, but this sure doesn't look like the GPL to me.
I thought that they knew what the ramifications of the license they chose were, but apparently I was wrong; the authors didn't really want their code available under the conditions that they had set forth. I prefer MIT to GPL or LGPL, but it's their business to choose a license that gives them the protection they want. (From which you can see that I'm rather opposed to RMS' "all your license are belong to me" world as well.)
Of course, since the code has been released under the current license, Lindows/Transgaming/whoever we're talking about is still free to use the current codebase to do what they want, right? The new license will only come into play if they want to use newer versions of wine, as far as I understand things.
You think that an open system will immediately lead to tons of awesome games, that everyone can get for free? If so, where are all of the awesome free games for Linux/Windows/etc?
(Yep, there's a few great games out there, but I'd hardly say tons. And the good games that are freely available are rarely anything like console games -- think nethack, etc.)
Although I probably can't speak much, as I'm still going to school, I will anyway, in the honored/. tradition of talking about things you don't know.
I decided to pursue a Physics major, because it's something I find really interesting. Although I used to toss around the idea of becoming a CS major while I was in high school, I quickly realized that I would hate the schooling. And, after all, college isn't just to prepare you for the "rest of your life." It's four years (or thereabouts) out of your life; you might as well get as much out of it as possible.
What employers really seem to want is experience, not a specific degree. If you want to do something like this, jsut make sure you get some experience before finishing college. Having a major in another field will only increase the number of things you can do. And employers like that.
Device drivers aren't the only things developed for *NIX platforms -- that just happens to be what I did. Even if you're set on programming, there are lots of things that need to be done for those systems, and a lot of jobs. If you're not, then there are even more. (We've had several stories on/. lately of businesses that have moved from Windows to Linux. You might try one of them.)
If you only spend a few minutes hunting, of course you won't find much. Glancing at your newspaper and not finding one immediately is no proof that the jobs don't exist. It's simply proof that you give up too easily. Why not call some of these places and ask if they might have other jobs available? Same with the school -- just because the one you're at requires Windows doesn't mean all of them do.
As far as "whether I would quit my job" goes -- I'm not the one complaining about the evil M$ monopoly. I might quit, I might not. However, if I didn't, I would realize that it was my choice to stay, rather than trying to convince everyone that Microsoft is the ultimate evil. You, on the other hand, keep on asserting that it's "Use M$ or nothing" -- an obvious fallacy.
My last job was developing (and doing other work with) device drivers; primarily working with Linux, Solaris, and AIX. The group I was with did do Windows as well, but I wasn't a part of that. The only thing I ever used my Windows workstation for was to open up telnet sessions to the lab... and usually I didn't even bother to use my workstation. I certainly didn't need training in M$ operating systems to do that, and was I inclined to do so, I could have simply not used my Windows machine. So the jobs definately exist, though you might not be looking hard enough.
I have never been required to use Windows, for anything, at the school I am attending... in fact, the only times I have used Windows in the last several months have been to use my roommate's computer a few times in order to print something, because I don't have a printer hooked up to mine. Again, should I have chosen to do so, I could have avoided it completely.
Not everything can go your way. You've got lots of choices; the fact is that some of those choices lead to specific consequences. The education and career path you chose to follow has Microsoft's software in it. If you cared all that much about it, you would have made different choices, rather than just complaining about how unfair life is.
(This is exactly what an AC said, but he's right. He's also at Score: 0, and that's not going to change, so I'll repeat what he said:)
That's completely untrue. Only a minority of jobs, and of college programs, require you to buy Microsoft software. The vast majority of the time, you never even have to touch the stuff.
The truth of the matter is that you went to a stupid school (where they require you to use M$ products), entered a degree program (for which the aforementioned stupid school required the use of M$ products), and then took a job (again, one where you have to use M$ products.) Any of these could have been avoided, had you a desire to do so rather than whine about being 'forced' to use software you don't like. Even if you're dead-set on pursuing a CS degree or something where you're going to have to work with Microsoft software to some degree, you can use the school resources available. There's absolutely no excuse for paying good money for something you think is useless, unless you're just a glutton for punishment.
It largely depends on where you are sending to/from -- apparently, a few of the local post offices have some problems. However, with a few (localized) exceptions, the USPS does an amazing job. Mail generally takes 3-4 days to cross the country, and next-day delivery is normal within the same state. Even if they were to double their prices, it would be well worth it.
Re:Why are we seeing these boring Ask Slashdot top
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 2
My Ask Slashdot exactly! Of course, I didn't bother taking the time to submit it, because we all know that the editors would hate to allow something like that to make it into the main news areas of their site.
I'm curious -- has anyone been able to metamod some of the moderations on the thread in question? Given that there have probably been more mod points expended on that thread than probably any other story, ever, it seems a bit fishy that at least I haven't seen anything about it. It might make the editors see things a little better if they got metamodded into oblivion.
After I saw this happen, I started doing what I should have done awhile ago -- depriving/. of the money they make off of me.
A trip to junkbusters will remove the banner ads (or many other ways, of course -- that's the best solution I've found for opera.) Just let them know that we'll start allowing their ads back in after the editors clean up their act. Even a public statement admitting to censorship and abuse of editorial mod points would at least gain them a little respect in my eyes.
Sweet, soon I'll be waiting for these newbies to write some slick 3D drivers.
Well, remember, every last person who has written a slick 3d driver was a newbie at some point. Sure, most of the people who say they wanna learn C won't turn out much before getting bored and quitting, but there are always a few.
I second this. I, for one, absolutely cannot understand why there is not a single functional, stable, semi-standards-compliant browser in existance. (For Linux, Windows, or any other OS. IE is relatively decent, although it fails on the last two.)
Hey, I'd even settle for just stable. In fact, I use lynx a lot, because I've only managed to crash it once or twice, but it seems rather silly to me that I'm stuck using a text browser in this day and age, because none of the graphical browsers work correctly. Can someone explain to me exactly why stable browsers just don't exist?
(For the record, I'm using Opera now. It's somewhat more reliable than Mozilla & friends, and is faster and works with more pages. However, it's not good by a long shot.)
You can build just about everything you might want to enable/disable in a kernel as a module. And it's easily possible to install a set of kernels that cover the choices that cannot go in as a module (optimizations or whatnot.)
I don't really know if there are any tools that gather it all into one place. However, there certainly can be, so if anything, your claim has nothing to do with the kernel itself, and rather with some simple userspace tools that may/may not be written at this time.
Slashdot Mirror
The version that was out 160 days ago sure wasn't. Although I have yet to crash the most recent one (35 days on my system).
Well, there's an idea. If we got everyone bitching about linux usability on slashdot to actually try using it, maybe they would stop.
Yeah, right.
Why on earth are you going to buy it again, if not to support them with your $$$? (Which would be rather strange, given that he's not exactly strapped for cash.) Nobody's forcing you to buy the DVDs.
Yeah, I think that the copyright should have expired by this point, but you can stop the "giganto corporations are FORCING ME TO WASTE MY MONEY" stuff. I've never bought any star wars merchandise of any kind, and Lucas' secret police has yet to knock on my door.
The whole point behind copyright is to grant a 'limited monopoly' of sorts on the work, to give people an incentive to create things. However, it seems to me that endless copyrights undermine that; why bother to create something new which might compete with something you made 20 years ago?
I think that a 20 year -- or possibly less; I think that maybe 10 years + a possible 10 year renewal might work -- window to have complete ownership over your work is reasonable. No one should expect to make a living off what they created back in 1970.
"Never blame on maliciousness that which can be explained away by stupidity." And trust me, there's more than enough stupidity in this world to go around.
It seems to me that all of these contribute to the merit of the product. Patches, upgrades, new versions, etc. add value to the original product, even if they don't come in the same box.
Again, I really don't care if someone provides good support because they like their customers or because they want my money tomorrow. What difference does it make?
What does that have to do with anything? Do you judge products on the motivations of the creator, or on their actual merit?
I don't quite understand the moral of your story ... did you eventually find the pr0n?
Well, of course. This is slashdot. We probably were talking about it yesterday.
It seems to me that the volume of letters shouldn't be considered much more than an interesting statistic. It's a actual quality of the arguments that should count, whether there were 15,000 or 15.
Isn't it currently under a MIT-style (or similar) license? Various people in this discussion have claimed that it's moving from GPL to LGPL, but this sure doesn't look like the GPL to me.
I thought that they knew what the ramifications of the license they chose were, but apparently I was wrong; the authors didn't really want their code available under the conditions that they had set forth. I prefer MIT to GPL or LGPL, but it's their business to choose a license that gives them the protection they want. (From which you can see that I'm rather opposed to RMS' "all your license are belong to me" world as well.)
Of course, since the code has been released under the current license, Lindows/Transgaming/whoever we're talking about is still free to use the current codebase to do what they want, right? The new license will only come into play if they want to use newer versions of wine, as far as I understand things.
(Yep, there's a few great games out there, but I'd hardly say tons. And the good games that are freely available are rarely anything like console games -- think nethack, etc.)
Well, of course. By the time you and I get in to space, the rules will have to have been changed. Otherwise we wouldn't be there. See?
I decided to pursue a Physics major, because it's something I find really interesting. Although I used to toss around the idea of becoming a CS major while I was in high school, I quickly realized that I would hate the schooling. And, after all, college isn't just to prepare you for the "rest of your life." It's four years (or thereabouts) out of your life; you might as well get as much out of it as possible.
What employers really seem to want is experience, not a specific degree. If you want to do something like this, jsut make sure you get some experience before finishing college. Having a major in another field will only increase the number of things you can do. And employers like that.
If you only spend a few minutes hunting, of course you won't find much. Glancing at your newspaper and not finding one immediately is no proof that the jobs don't exist. It's simply proof that you give up too easily. Why not call some of these places and ask if they might have other jobs available? Same with the school -- just because the one you're at requires Windows doesn't mean all of them do.
As far as "whether I would quit my job" goes -- I'm not the one complaining about the evil M$ monopoly. I might quit, I might not. However, if I didn't, I would realize that it was my choice to stay, rather than trying to convince everyone that Microsoft is the ultimate evil. You, on the other hand, keep on asserting that it's "Use M$ or nothing" -- an obvious fallacy.
My last job was developing (and doing other work with) device drivers; primarily working with Linux, Solaris, and AIX. The group I was with did do Windows as well, but I wasn't a part of that. The only thing I ever used my Windows workstation for was to open up telnet sessions to the lab
I have never been required to use Windows, for anything, at the school I am attending
Not everything can go your way. You've got lots of choices; the fact is that some of those choices lead to specific consequences. The education and career path you chose to follow has Microsoft's software in it. If you cared all that much about it, you would have made different choices, rather than just complaining about how unfair life is.
That's completely untrue. Only a minority of jobs, and of college programs, require you to buy Microsoft software. The vast majority of the time, you never even have to touch the stuff.
The truth of the matter is that you went to a stupid school (where they require you to use M$ products), entered a degree program (for which the aforementioned stupid school required the use of M$ products), and then took a job (again, one where you have to use M$ products.) Any of these could have been avoided, had you a desire to do so rather than whine about being 'forced' to use software you don't like. Even if you're dead-set on pursuing a CS degree or something where you're going to have to work with Microsoft software to some degree, you can use the school resources available. There's absolutely no excuse for paying good money for something you think is useless, unless you're just a glutton for punishment.
That's what you think; you've obviously never had any.
It largely depends on where you are sending to/from -- apparently, a few of the local post offices have some problems. However, with a few (localized) exceptions, the USPS does an amazing job. Mail generally takes 3-4 days to cross the country, and next-day delivery is normal within the same state. Even if they were to double their prices, it would be well worth it.
I'm curious -- has anyone been able to metamod some of the moderations on the thread in question? Given that there have probably been more mod points expended on that thread than probably any other story, ever, it seems a bit fishy that at least I haven't seen anything about it. It might make the editors see things a little better if they got metamodded into oblivion.
A trip to junkbusters will remove the banner ads (or many other ways, of course -- that's the best solution I've found for opera.) Just let them know that we'll start allowing their ads back in after the editors clean up their act. Even a public statement admitting to censorship and abuse of editorial mod points would at least gain them a little respect in my eyes.
Well, remember, every last person who has written a slick 3d driver was a newbie at some point. Sure, most of the people who say they wanna learn C won't turn out much before getting bored and quitting, but there are always a few.
Hey, I'd even settle for just stable. In fact, I use lynx a lot, because I've only managed to crash it once or twice, but it seems rather silly to me that I'm stuck using a text browser in this day and age, because none of the graphical browsers work correctly. Can someone explain to me exactly why stable browsers just don't exist?
(For the record, I'm using Opera now. It's somewhat more reliable than Mozilla & friends, and is faster and works with more pages. However, it's not good by a long shot.)
I don't really know if there are any tools that gather it all into one place. However, there certainly can be, so if anything, your claim has nothing to do with the kernel itself, and rather with some simple userspace tools that may/may not be written at this time.