Copyright would be the claim of 100% ownership over the code. A patent is even less open, since you aren't even allowed to re-implement the software, even if you write it entirely yourself without ever seeing any of the source code of the original implementation.
Thank you for the distinction, that is an excellent point.
Why don't they consult someone from tech before making such a rash decision, though? Why not make a quick phone call, be like "Hey Bob, I heard one of these iPods just exploded, what's the deal with that?", instead of being like "OMGWTF DON'T TELL ANYONE OR WE WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN" right away? I think part of having good business sense would involve knowing when to trust the expertise of others and knowing not to try to act on things you don't understand. But I guess I am just projecting my logical and reasonable mindset onto others, it is easy to forget how out of vogue that is these days.
"I can guarantee you that the person whose job it is to dispense the legal boilerplate is not up on the Streisand effect or any other Slashdot memes"
Why aren't they? The Streisand effect is only a Slashdot meme in name, it is fairly common sense that this sort of thing would happen in an age where information travels as rapidly as it does. Why doesn't anyone at the legal team think about things a little bit before they act? It would be in everyone's (yes, even the lawyers') best interest to use a bit of common sense in these sorts of things.
GPL is certainly not the end-all be-all of openness, but we need to define our terms somewhere. When defining static terms in a non-static world, the line is always going to be arbitrary and cases that are close to that line will always highlight this fact readily. Microsoft, however, does not even approach the line, no matter how one defines the term. If you are going to retain patents on your software, it is not open. Period. End of story. There is no legitimate argument that can be made here, the patent in and of itself proudly claims 100% ownership over the code in question, which is the antithesis of openness under any standard. The GPL has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this case.
"Toy weapons were banned as carry-ons before 9/11."
But does anyone ever stop to ask... WHY?? Seriously, why do we allow people to push us around with arbitrary regulations like this? What has gone wrong in our society where we think that this is OK? I mean, if the airlines were behind it I would say that it is stupid, but when we have the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (TSA) involved it ceases being a silly rule and becomes a violation of our civil rights. I mean, carrying a toy gun is not an essential civil liberty, but that is not the point. The point is that the GOVERNMENT is telling me that I cannot do something without providing any reason. If the government is going to tell us what we can and cannot do, we need to demand that they give us a DAMN good reason for it. This no longer happens, which is very apparent in airline security, drug laws, and many other facets of our modern society. Wake up, people. Ask questions, demand liberty.
Why not publicly give the girl a refund and then reiterate the fact that this can happen with ANY Lithium Ion battery, and that the odds of it happening to you are about 1 in 11 million, and even less if you use a modicum of care. Instead they get to meet the Streisand effect, drawing huge amounts of attention to a COMPLETE non-issue, making themselves look like (Godwin alert) Nazis and making the minor tech failure seem like a huge catastrophic problem, surely hurting sales. It really blows my mind that a tech savvy company like Apple can still honestly think that it is possible to hide knowledge in this information age. iDiots...
Agreed -- I would just like to expound on you argument here and state that a properly executed plot twist (Memento, Usual Suspects, etc.) will often encourage repeat viewings, especially when you were blindsided by it the first time, to see what sort of clues are left to the viewer as to the eventual twist. I know the Usual Suspects in particular demands many repeat viewings to pick up on all the subtleties.
You don't have to hate someone to ridicule them, and Segway riders are certainly worthy of ridicule. The thing was hyped up beyond belief, and now that they are out there they are one of the most useless pieces of crap I have ever seen. The stupid thing costs AT LEAST 10 times more than a really nice bicycle, and can go about half the speed. For some reason, Segways get to be on the sidewalk and interfere with slower pedestrians, but bicycles do not. The Segway is big and heavy, and needs to be recharged, which a bicycle does not. This is not to mention that Americans are fat and lazy enough as it is -- do we really need to be giving people more of an excuse to not walk and ride bikes? If you were to see a young guy driving around a motorized wheel chair, simply because he did not want to walk, the ONLY appropriate response would be "Wow, what a douche". The Segway is expensive, impractical, and unnecessary tech. If you own one, you are an idiot at best, a self-aggrandized douche bag idiot at worst. None of this is to say that I hate the Segway, but it is definitely ridiculous.
Meh -- after Titanic I lost all my faith in James Cameron. I don't want to let him near the Alien franchise again, Ridley Scott has yet to let me down, though. I always thought Alien was better, anyway, but that is just my opinion.
Well, then I hope Skype dies so that the OSS alternative can take its place. I hate Skype, but am kind of stuck with it since everyone I know uses it, but it is filled with so much bloatware, it could be far superior if it were open source and some of the fat could get trimmed back.
Wrong. Not to be rude, but this is not even my opinion, you are just objectively wrong. Open source has proved time and again to increase security by increasing the amount of eyes on the code. The way Skype is now, only a small team of Skype devs can see the source code. I am sure that it is riddled with vulnerabilities. If they were to open source Skype, they would immediately give access to millions of nerds who can then find all of the vulnerabilities and report them, as to close all the holes in the software long before they can be exploited. This is why Linux is 1,534%* more secure than Windows.
*Number pulled out of my ass for dramatic effect, but there is certainly no doubt that the Linux kernel is far more secure than Windoze.
A real patriot would think that we ought to give as little money to the thieves who have stolen our free country away from us and covertly enslaved us.
"Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?"
The government is not even in the pocket of big business anymore, big business has assimilated the government, Borg-style. It is not that business has undue influence of government, its that they are simply one and the same entity. The Fed is a private bank, the media controls all of our political decisions, election coverage is directed to the lowest common denominator, through the polarized and biased corporate media. Because of the "us vs. them" mentality, the people refuse to see how bad their guy is fscking them, blaming the other side instead. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, '[Guy 1]I think the puppet on the left best represents my views. [Guy 2]Well I find the puppet on the right more to my liking. [Guy 3]Hey there's one guy holding both puppets! [Gov't] Go back to sleep America... your government is in control.' The people just get fat and stupid, caring more about the how the local sports team is performing (most are even stupid enough to think that this team represents them, failing to notice that the sports team in question is simply another monolithic corporate entity that happens to bear the name of the nearest metropolis) than what is really happening to them. They fail to question the fact that our federal income tax is unconstitutional (and not even on the books!) and enforced by an illegal terrorist organization. They fail to question it when the government decides to tell them that they can be locked in a cell for YEARS for possession a PLANT THAT GROWS IN THE GROUND. They continue listening to what is told to them by the TV, to be good little consumers and to keep buying shit they don't need. A long, rambling post that will probably be modded down, but is that a good enough answer as to why Americans don't stand up to big corporations?
Umm.. how is any of this applicable in a foreign court? Does this mean that a Japanese court can just send me a summons for tomorrow and I somehow need to figure out how to get there? This is just beyond bizarre. What about national sovereignty? By this standard every single site on the web will need to obey every single local ordinance IN THE WORLD. This would, obviously, make the Internet impossible, as almost anything you do is going to be illegal somewhere. This would make it illegal to lambaste jeebus on an American site, due to Irish anti-blasphemy laws. It would effectively illegalize pornography. I really hope that this is not valid, or the Web as we know it will cease to be.
Why should you have to pay a premium for a non-DRM'ed copy? It costs EXTRA to put the DRM on there in the first place! It should be cheaper to get it without the DRM.
Being somewhat devils advocatish - what about all those people who find that their CDs stop working after a few years due to small scratches? Should they be allowed to demand free replacement in perpetuity?
This logic just does not follow -- in the case of the user's CD being damaged, it is the user's fault that the CD is no longer working, it is a completely unreasonable expectation that CDs ought to be indestructible, and steps can be taken to ensure that this is not an issue (ie, rip the CD as FLAC and keep the backup, or just burn the disc and keep the original in a safe place.). With DRM, however, the vendor is the one doing the breaking. They can break your music arbitrarily and without warning. For a serious (and stupid) music collector, this could put them out thousands of dollars worth of music instantly. This is like the store owner coming into your house, scratching all your CDs, taking a dump on your living room floor, then just giving you the finger and walking out the front door. Okay, the taking a dump on your floor part was for dramatic effect, but you get the point. These are totally different situations, you aren't even really comparing apples and oranges, its more like Apples and third-world dictators (which, come to think of it, are fairly similar).
Record sales are slowing down, and you are trying to cash in on the digital economy. How do you go about it? Well, if you're the RIAA, you publicly come out and announce to everyone that you are going to sell them a product that can arbitrarily stop working. Ugh, I really hope that the RIAA is not long for this world. Oh, and if they start getting bailout money I am leaving the country, mark my words. They have undermined their own business and they deserve to fail.
IANAL -- but this seems pretty insane that a foreign court can demand that you appear and then begin assessing damages against you. Can someone more knowledgeable please clarify, this seems really bizarre and has staggering implications (websites being liable to obey every single local law across the globe).
Agreed -- I was going to leave that can-o-worms with the safety seal intact for the time being but I certainly see no reason why pot (or any drug really) should be against the law. Especially when there is stuff like this going on to worry about.
"Terrorist actions?" WTF are you talking about? The term is completely meaningless as it is, but then to apply it to someone painting something on a roof? That is called 'vandalism'. This sort of thinking is well on its way to being the downfall of our society -- people like you have sacrificed more of our freedoms on the altar of safety in the past 8 years than the past 3 generations combined. So, please, give the terrorism thing a rest. The rational world thanks you.
"As another registered patent person (agent), I would point out that this is slashdot, and any discussion of patents (or intellectual property in general) here is usually 180 degrees from reality:"
There is a difference between the way things are and another person's opinion of the way things ought to be. I feel that current patent and trademark law are obscenely restrictive and draconian to the point where yes, they are a violation of free speech. If anything is 180 degrees from reality it is the fools who think that copyright stimulates creativity and is for the benefit of the artist.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for the distinction, that is an excellent point.
Why don't they consult someone from tech before making such a rash decision, though? Why not make a quick phone call, be like "Hey Bob, I heard one of these iPods just exploded, what's the deal with that?", instead of being like "OMGWTF DON'T TELL ANYONE OR WE WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN" right away? I think part of having good business sense would involve knowing when to trust the expertise of others and knowing not to try to act on things you don't understand. But I guess I am just projecting my logical and reasonable mindset onto others, it is easy to forget how out of vogue that is these days.
"I can guarantee you that the person whose job it is to dispense the legal boilerplate is not up on the Streisand effect or any other Slashdot memes"
Why aren't they? The Streisand effect is only a Slashdot meme in name, it is fairly common sense that this sort of thing would happen in an age where information travels as rapidly as it does. Why doesn't anyone at the legal team think about things a little bit before they act? It would be in everyone's (yes, even the lawyers') best interest to use a bit of common sense in these sorts of things.
GPL is certainly not the end-all be-all of openness, but we need to define our terms somewhere. When defining static terms in a non-static world, the line is always going to be arbitrary and cases that are close to that line will always highlight this fact readily. Microsoft, however, does not even approach the line, no matter how one defines the term. If you are going to retain patents on your software, it is not open. Period. End of story. There is no legitimate argument that can be made here, the patent in and of itself proudly claims 100% ownership over the code in question, which is the antithesis of openness under any standard. The GPL has absolutely nothing to do with anything in this case.
YES! I like it -- I was going to say food for the homeless, but that will work as well.
"Toy weapons were banned as carry-ons before 9/11."
But does anyone ever stop to ask... WHY?? Seriously, why do we allow people to push us around with arbitrary regulations like this? What has gone wrong in our society where we think that this is OK? I mean, if the airlines were behind it I would say that it is stupid, but when we have the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (TSA) involved it ceases being a silly rule and becomes a violation of our civil rights. I mean, carrying a toy gun is not an essential civil liberty, but that is not the point. The point is that the GOVERNMENT is telling me that I cannot do something without providing any reason. If the government is going to tell us what we can and cannot do, we need to demand that they give us a DAMN good reason for it. This no longer happens, which is very apparent in airline security, drug laws, and many other facets of our modern society. Wake up, people. Ask questions, demand liberty.
Why not publicly give the girl a refund and then reiterate the fact that this can happen with ANY Lithium Ion battery, and that the odds of it happening to you are about 1 in 11 million, and even less if you use a modicum of care. Instead they get to meet the Streisand effect, drawing huge amounts of attention to a COMPLETE non-issue, making themselves look like (Godwin alert) Nazis and making the minor tech failure seem like a huge catastrophic problem, surely hurting sales. It really blows my mind that a tech savvy company like Apple can still honestly think that it is possible to hide knowledge in this information age. iDiots...
Agreed -- I would just like to expound on you argument here and state that a properly executed plot twist (Memento, Usual Suspects, etc.) will often encourage repeat viewings, especially when you were blindsided by it the first time, to see what sort of clues are left to the viewer as to the eventual twist. I know the Usual Suspects in particular demands many repeat viewings to pick up on all the subtleties.
You don't have to hate someone to ridicule them, and Segway riders are certainly worthy of ridicule. The thing was hyped up beyond belief, and now that they are out there they are one of the most useless pieces of crap I have ever seen. The stupid thing costs AT LEAST 10 times more than a really nice bicycle, and can go about half the speed. For some reason, Segways get to be on the sidewalk and interfere with slower pedestrians, but bicycles do not. The Segway is big and heavy, and needs to be recharged, which a bicycle does not. This is not to mention that Americans are fat and lazy enough as it is -- do we really need to be giving people more of an excuse to not walk and ride bikes? If you were to see a young guy driving around a motorized wheel chair, simply because he did not want to walk, the ONLY appropriate response would be "Wow, what a douche". The Segway is expensive, impractical, and unnecessary tech. If you own one, you are an idiot at best, a self-aggrandized douche bag idiot at worst. None of this is to say that I hate the Segway, but it is definitely ridiculous.
Meh -- after Titanic I lost all my faith in James Cameron. I don't want to let him near the Alien franchise again, Ridley Scott has yet to let me down, though. I always thought Alien was better, anyway, but that is just my opinion.
One would hope not -- those movies were worse than AIDS.
Well, then I hope Skype dies so that the OSS alternative can take its place. I hate Skype, but am kind of stuck with it since everyone I know uses it, but it is filled with so much bloatware, it could be far superior if it were open source and some of the fat could get trimmed back.
Wrong. Not to be rude, but this is not even my opinion, you are just objectively wrong. Open source has proved time and again to increase security by increasing the amount of eyes on the code. The way Skype is now, only a small team of Skype devs can see the source code. I am sure that it is riddled with vulnerabilities. If they were to open source Skype, they would immediately give access to millions of nerds who can then find all of the vulnerabilities and report them, as to close all the holes in the software long before they can be exploited. This is why Linux is 1,534%* more secure than Windows.
*Number pulled out of my ass for dramatic effect, but there is certainly no doubt that the Linux kernel is far more secure than Windoze.
A real patriot would think that we ought to give as little money to the thieves who have stolen our free country away from us and covertly enslaved us.
"Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?"
The government is not even in the pocket of big business anymore, big business has assimilated the government, Borg-style. It is not that business has undue influence of government, its that they are simply one and the same entity. The Fed is a private bank, the media controls all of our political decisions, election coverage is directed to the lowest common denominator, through the polarized and biased corporate media. Because of the "us vs. them" mentality, the people refuse to see how bad their guy is fscking them, blaming the other side instead. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, '[Guy 1]I think the puppet on the left best represents my views. [Guy 2]Well I find the puppet on the right more to my liking. [Guy 3]Hey there's one guy holding both puppets! [Gov't] Go back to sleep America... your government is in control.' The people just get fat and stupid, caring more about the how the local sports team is performing (most are even stupid enough to think that this team represents them, failing to notice that the sports team in question is simply another monolithic corporate entity that happens to bear the name of the nearest metropolis) than what is really happening to them. They fail to question the fact that our federal income tax is unconstitutional (and not even on the books!) and enforced by an illegal terrorist organization. They fail to question it when the government decides to tell them that they can be locked in a cell for YEARS for possession a PLANT THAT GROWS IN THE GROUND. They continue listening to what is told to them by the TV, to be good little consumers and to keep buying shit they don't need. A long, rambling post that will probably be modded down, but is that a good enough answer as to why Americans don't stand up to big corporations?
Umm.. how is any of this applicable in a foreign court? Does this mean that a Japanese court can just send me a summons for tomorrow and I somehow need to figure out how to get there? This is just beyond bizarre. What about national sovereignty? By this standard every single site on the web will need to obey every single local ordinance IN THE WORLD. This would, obviously, make the Internet impossible, as almost anything you do is going to be illegal somewhere. This would make it illegal to lambaste jeebus on an American site, due to Irish anti-blasphemy laws. It would effectively illegalize pornography. I really hope that this is not valid, or the Web as we know it will cease to be.
Why should you have to pay a premium for a non-DRM'ed copy? It costs EXTRA to put the DRM on there in the first place! It should be cheaper to get it without the DRM.
Brilliantly said! Someone mod parent up please, I can't imagine a better or more succinct way to put it.
This logic just does not follow -- in the case of the user's CD being damaged, it is the user's fault that the CD is no longer working, it is a completely unreasonable expectation that CDs ought to be indestructible, and steps can be taken to ensure that this is not an issue (ie, rip the CD as FLAC and keep the backup, or just burn the disc and keep the original in a safe place.). With DRM, however, the vendor is the one doing the breaking. They can break your music arbitrarily and without warning. For a serious (and stupid) music collector, this could put them out thousands of dollars worth of music instantly. This is like the store owner coming into your house, scratching all your CDs, taking a dump on your living room floor, then just giving you the finger and walking out the front door. Okay, the taking a dump on your floor part was for dramatic effect, but you get the point. These are totally different situations, you aren't even really comparing apples and oranges, its more like Apples and third-world dictators (which, come to think of it, are fairly similar).
I think you mean MAFIAA
Record sales are slowing down, and you are trying to cash in on the digital economy. How do you go about it? Well, if you're the RIAA, you publicly come out and announce to everyone that you are going to sell them a product that can arbitrarily stop working. Ugh, I really hope that the RIAA is not long for this world. Oh, and if they start getting bailout money I am leaving the country, mark my words. They have undermined their own business and they deserve to fail.
IANAL -- but this seems pretty insane that a foreign court can demand that you appear and then begin assessing damages against you. Can someone more knowledgeable please clarify, this seems really bizarre and has staggering implications (websites being liable to obey every single local law across the globe).
Agreed -- I was going to leave that can-o-worms with the safety seal intact for the time being but I certainly see no reason why pot (or any drug really) should be against the law. Especially when there is stuff like this going on to worry about.
"Terrorist actions?" WTF are you talking about? The term is completely meaningless as it is, but then to apply it to someone painting something on a roof? That is called 'vandalism'. This sort of thinking is well on its way to being the downfall of our society -- people like you have sacrificed more of our freedoms on the altar of safety in the past 8 years than the past 3 generations combined. So, please, give the terrorism thing a rest. The rational world thanks you.
"As another registered patent person (agent), I would point out that this is slashdot, and any discussion of patents (or intellectual property in general) here is usually 180 degrees from reality:"
There is a difference between the way things are and another person's opinion of the way things ought to be. I feel that current patent and trademark law are obscenely restrictive and draconian to the point where yes, they are a violation of free speech. If anything is 180 degrees from reality it is the fools who think that copyright stimulates creativity and is for the benefit of the artist.