I experienced the same ethical crisis as the poster. I have a shower radio/cd player that takes six (6) C-size batteries and drains them after 6 hours of radio usage or 3 hours of cd player usage.
Obviously my main problem is that this device makes horrible use of power (by comparison my Riovolt SP250 radio/cd/mp3 player lasts 15 hours on 2 AA batteries). I was bothered by the number of batteries I was throwing out and the cost of continually refueling the player (bad for the environment and for me).
I decided to try rechargeable batteries. I bought 3 packs of Energizer NiMH rechargeable C-size batteries and an Energizer battery charger. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the fine print on the batteries -- the voltage is only 1.2V (instead of the alkaline's 1.5V). When you add up the voltage from all six batteries, you only get 7.2V for NiMH vs. 9V for alkaline. And the CD player needs the 9V to drive the Vcc on the amplifiers.
I was going to try rechargeable alkaline batteries, but judging by some of the comments here it sounds like other people's experiences with them are not so great.
The reason they only support rm or wma is because they want to enforce digital restrictions management. This is also the same reason they only support Windows. They put a self-destruct in the movies you d/l so you don't get to keep it or make backup copies.
Re:FSF's interpretation are not very relevant
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LGPL is Viral for Java
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· Score: 0, Troll
The FSF's interpretation of the LGPL only applies to software owned by the FSF. If I had a different interpretation of the LGPL (which is certainly possible -- many parts are quite vague), that interpretation would apply to my software, and the FSF can do nothing about it.
Technically, when you "LGPL" your code, you sign away license rights for that software release to the FSF. That is why if someone violates the license of your GPL'ed program, the FSF can step in (with their lawyers) to defend your licensing rights. You are still the program's copyright owner, and you can reissue your program under another license if you like (though you can't "retract" your original release).
This all only applies if you do not modify the GPL or LGPL text in your distribution. Once you modify the text, it is no longer a GPL or LGPL, and the FSF cannot and will not defend your licensing rights. So while you are certainly free to add the requirement that someone "Buys you a beer next time they're in Boston," to your license, you should understand that this means your license is no longer GPL or LGPL and the FSF cannot protect it.
Another real-world example is Pine. Early versions of Pine had a BSD-like license, which allows "modification and distribution". The University of Waterloo interpreted this to mean that you could modify Pine, or distribute an unmodified Pine, but not distribute a modified Pine. This was contrary to everybody else's interpretation, but they owned the copyright so they got to decide. (More recent versions have a different license).
Actually it's the University of Washington (not Waterloo) that wrote Pine (from Mutt which was licensed under BSD). And I am very familiar with the restrictions on distributing modified binaries.:) There are certain sticky areas surrounding Pine's license. I am not allowed to "check-in" modified pine source files in CVS (only the diff's). I am not allowed to distribute RPMs. But I can distribute the unmodified Pine source and the patches (along with a GUI to automatically patch the source for the user and compile it on their machine). I've spoken with their computer dept. and cleared this all with them. As you said, it's their code and their copyright. So I need to be sure to play by their rules.
4 other lanes? WTF are you talking about 4 other lanes?
I-5 south of the downtown and north of Northgate -- 4 unrestricted lanes, 1 lane of HOV. South of Northgate and north of Beacon Hill there are NO HOV lanes. There are "express lanes" but these are not restricted to high occupancy vehicles, they just offer limited exits.
Going through downtown Seattle there are 4 HOV lanes...
...and part of I-5 is constricted down to 2 lanes for a time.
Yes, "part of a time" = between 2 downtown exits (i.e. 1/10th of a mile). Why? Because Capitol Hill is already chopped off from Downtown. Do you want to tell the people in West Capitol Hill or in East Downtown that they have to give up there homes so you can go 5mph faster for 1/10th of a mile?
I for one am sure not happy about paying extra taxes so that other people can use their "elite" lanes...
Right, these lanes are so bourgeois. You need to drive with ONE other person in order to use them. Jeez, talk about high society. And unless you slept through referrendum 51 it's quite apparent that the transportation budget is only being used for widening. Not for 31337 drivers with their aristocratic carpooling.
The problem is our transit infrastructure is *atrocious*.
I love it when people criticize public transit because it's too poor to meet their needs while simultaneously crying foul when someone suggests increasing funding to improve the transit system. So many people in Seattle seem to chortle at the idea that a new, expanded monorail could be built; but then they turn around and vociferously oppose any initiatives to build one.
Carpooling is a poor answer as well. The timing issues are very difficult to work out. You have two people heading in to work, and say one person has to work late.
Are you familiar with King County's carpooling program at all? Do you know about "guaranteed ride home?" Or do you just dismiss the idea outright and not bother looking into it at all? Do you work with anyone else who happens to live in the same area? I work with at least 3 other people who live in my neighborhood -- and we all pretty much keep the same hours.
Of course, the REAL answer is - people should live near where they work.
On this, I agree. I live in Queen Anne and work in Downtown. I can take Metro or the monorail or I can bike. But this isn't an option for a lot of people, and car/vanpooling offers a real solution. I see too many cars on the freeway with just 1 person in them. And I guarantee that 90% of those people make the same trip at the same time and from similar origins and destinations as at least one other person on the road.
Single passenger vehicles have NO business in the HOV lane. That's why it's called HOV: High Occupancy Vehicle (though "high occupancy" apparently means 2 here in Washington). If you want to drive in the HOV lane, get a passenger. Otherwise, use the 4 OTHER LANES!!
Seriously, I think it's quite obvious there's more than one person commuting from Kent to Seattle every morning and evening so you'd have no problem finding a carpool partner. If you need to run errands during the day, use the bus tunnel -- it's free.
I remember growing up and getting the kid's magazine "3-2-1 Contact!" in the mail every month. It would always come with a new BASIC program (always a simple game) and I would rush to my TI-99/4A and type in the program to play the game. Of course the BASIC programs were written for the Apple II so they wouldn't always work (though I learned to "port" them rather quickly). A big motivator was that you had to connect the TI to the television, so it was always fun to see your programs running on the t.v. (at least it was when I was 7;).
Once one company gets their employees to go along with a heath care cost increase or a salary cut, the other companies will rush to offer just as low pay and benefits. They call this "competitive" compensation. So if the jobs can be outsourced for cheaper, then the majority of businesses will all race to find where that is. It happened with manufacturing jobs, it is happening with service jobs. I don't really know what (if any) jobs are "safe."
Also, don't think this automatically translates into lower prices. It doesn't make the products better or less expensive, just cheaper to make. How much in lower prices do you pay for your Nike tennis shoes made in Burma?
Has anyone been on the Hypersonic XLC at King's Dominion in Richmond, VA? I've only seen videos (including the one on the site). I've been anticipating its opening for some time now, but I moved to the west coast, so I haven't been back to King's Dominion in quite a while.
i am personally too lazy to figure out where i have to go, and generally don't like standing in long lines to fill out archaic forms.
I have to say, the prospect of someone like you voting scares the living shit out of me. You don't want to be bothered with figuring out how to vote and you don't want to make any time sacrifice to go vote -- so it's likely you don't want to be bothered with reading the voter's guide or paying attention to all the issues at stake. I would feel much more comfortable if all voters made fully informed decisions. Of course I know that this doesn't always happen, but by making the process slightly inconvenient it helps weed out the people who don't care enough to participate anyway. Please don't take personal offense at this, I'm sure you're a very nice person.
This is precisely one of the problems with online voting. If you're not willing to exert the effort to go to a polling place, you shouldn't be voting anyway.
Another problem with online voting is the digital divide. A new study found that 42% of Americans aren't online. That's doesn't necessarily correspond to 42% of registered voters, but a number that large shows that online voting won't benefit a significant number of people.
Probably the single best way to improve voter participation is to move elections to Sunday. Almost everyone in the country either has Sunday off or they don't have to work normal polling hours on Sunday (7 AM to 7 PM). Many countries around the world have elections on Sundays, I can't believe we still use Tuesdays.
its only using some network transparent model optimized for terminals on a mainframe....
Psssshht! I mean really! Who wants to setup a thin-client model at their business anyway? I mean saving millions of dollars? What's up with that?!
and it has ugly ass fonts....
Damn straight! Anyone who has zero knowledge about X knows that the fonts are hard coded into the display manager. And that there's no way you can add new fonts to it.
and it has shit write to hardware through TCP ports...
Like, I'm saying, yo! There ain't no client/server interface. When you be sending them X packets to the other computer, you're talking directly to the hardware! That's why every X command is "add ax,bx" and sh*t like that! It's pure assembly, bro!
Everyone knows that the only way to do it is to build a gigantic motherf*cking graphics subsystem into the kernel so that your system resources are halved and your OS crashes every week. Like, that's the ONLY way it should be.
Did anyone here actually *read* A Brief History of Time? Hawking described how the gravity of the universe may be so intense that it causes the universe to wrap around into a spherical shape. Of course this was just a theory back when he wrote the book.
Remember, in this age of trusted computing, you can't be trusted to manage your BIOS by yourself anyway. Only terrorists would want to choose their own operating system and BIOS. If you want to upgrade your BIOS, you need to buy a new, MPAA-sanctioned computer.
Just like the AMI Guy said about the TCPA, "Woohoo! Over here! Look the other way for a minute! We're not taking away your freedoms! Trust me."
So after reading the whole thread it looks like the final outcome can be one of two possibilities:
Either MPlayer adjusts its code and licenses to conform to Debian's rules in order to be added to the Debian distribution
Or MPlayer doesn't change anything and they don't get included in the distro
So why the flame war? It's Debian's distro, they can set the rules as they like. Likewise it's entirely MPlayer's decision to conform or break Debian's distro rules. And if MPlayer doesn't want to be included in Debian, nothing stops users from compiling MPlayer by source and adding it to their system, right? It's not the end of the world if a program isn't available by apt-get.
Obviously if someone wants to fork MPlayer and create a version that is "Debian-able" they are certainly allowed to do that under the terms of the GPL. So I'm not quite sure why everyone's up in arms.
Perhaps Mr. Kling hasn't ready anything on the Creative Commons project. I think one of the best features the Creative Commons offers is simplifications of user agreements.
Essentially all the parts of a user agreement are reduced to a set of easily recognizable icons/keywords (from a set of 10) which detail what copyrights and licenses and granted and reserved under the agreement. So when you visit a website or buy a software package, instead of reading 30 pages of EULA's (which no one does anyway) and clicking "I Agree," you will see a set of Icons/Keywords which abbreviate the agreement so you can Agree/Decline. The legal elements represented by the agreement icons/keywords are universal -- so the icons ($), (=), etc means the same thing for every user agreement regardless of content provider. Providers can customize their agreements by choosing a set of icons which best represents what licenses they want to reserve and which ones they want to grant. Users benefit because they only need to read the text of the 10 possible licenses for a possible infinite number of service/content providers.
The argument, "Sure I clicked agree, but I didn't read it," is becoming more and more compelling to courts and shrink wrap licenses are becoming endangered of being ruled invalid because they are not easily accessible. By following the creative commons model, providers can be protected because they follow a universal license model that can be easily recognized and understood by users. Likewise, users can know everything they are agreeing to because the provider can't sneak spying provisions into the CC licenses and still represent the license with the CC icons.
Btw, I love it when some sniveling, little Reagan-ite calls constitutionally guaranteed freedom and liberty "60's era" or "naive." What they're really saying is "Sure, liberty sounds good...But facism and elitism just make more sense in modern society."
That's how lots of companies do business with OSS.
They write the code, give the program away for free and charge for tech support. I'm failing to see the outrage here. If you don't want to support the company by purchasing the documentation you can always read the source code.
Perl works on a similar model. Larry Wall gets paid by O'Reilly & Assoc. to maintain perl. He adds new features, releases the code for free, and everyone's happy. The only stipulation is that O'Reilly gets first crack at the new documentation for their Perl books. I own several O'Reilly books and they're worth their weight in gold. I'm also happy to know that by purchasing these books, I'm supporting OSS coders.
When you think about it, Linux really is the best operating system for comp. sci students. It offers open source access to the kernel, so you can see the actual code for the operating system and how it interacts with many different types of hardware. Also you have low level access to many devices through the dev. tree so you can teach device programming methods. Not to mention the fact that the primary unix networking protocol (TCP/IP) is the same protocol that runs the internet. What better way to gain an understanding of packet based protocols than by experimenting with BSD sockets? "The Unix Time Sharing System" by Dennis Richie is one of the most elegant descriptions of an operating system that I have ever read. And by working with the text and the operating system together, students can gain a fundamental understanding of many basic low level concepts in modern computers.
If all you want is to be an MCSE, then why waste you time with college? You can take a weekend course for a few hundred bucks (instead of 4+ years for several thousand dollars). This quote from the article by Dr. Chris McDonald of UWA pretty much sums it up:
"Personally, I think that just showing students how to use operating systems tools and networking tools, is more training than education.
Exactly. Showing someone how to point and click isn't teaching them anything. It's only training them how to use someone else's tools (and there are books that can teach you that in 24 hours). Real computer science education, where you gain a fundamental understanding of both high and low level concepts of the computer requires more than just clicking a start button.
Yes I believe Open Source will become mainstream, but no it will not under the direct developer->user model.
I believe it will be the companies which package the software and pretty-up the UI and features who will deliver it to the consumers (think IBM, RedHat, The Kompany, etc).
I think it's unrealistic to think that everyday computer users will become more computer savvy (why should they?). So don't expect to see grandma checking out freshmeat.net any time soon. But now that Walmart is selling Linux preinstalled on lost cost computers the doors for exposing non-technical people to open source are open.
The use of published, universally accessible standards are exactly what makes open technology flourish over proprietary systems. Think VHS vs. Betamax. Think Internet vs. Novell. Think 8086 vs. Macintosh. Free and open standards always beat proprietary technology.
RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away FreeMusic
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Congress Passes SWSA
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Having Linux and open source as a crucial part of studio operations may help executives rethink their corporate position on open source and Linux issues.
Step One for rethinking open source issues: Drop all CSS related lawsuits.
Why does the NSA have to ask for a line between safety and liberty? Why can't we have both?
I know that violating people's civil liberties including taking away their right to speech, privacy and due process makes it easier for law enforcement, but aside from being unconstitutional, it's also bad policework.
If you racially profile your suspects, then the Timothy McVeighs slip through. If you tap everyone's phone, then you become bogged down in terabytes of data -- most of which is useless. If you suppress the speech of the hate mongers and racists, then you don't know who is a hate monger or racist.
Civil liberties aren't just respectful of constitutional and human rights, they also help law enforcement do their job right. So don't ask for a line to be drawn. Try playing by the rules instead.
By tomorrow most people will have forgotten about it,
No, actually I think the mainstream media will pick up on this one tomorrow. C-Net and Ziff-Davis are a little slow on the uptake. Give 'em a day, it'll be smeared all over the print and online mags. Give the New York Times and the Washington Post a little bit more time on this one. They'll get around to it (incidently, did anyone see the slashdot article in the NY Times today?). But no, Microsoft doesn't get to let this one "disappear." They tried to be clever (though it was pretty suspect from the beginning) and they found themselves caught in a lie. I think this is just the sort of thing that everyone needs to know.
except the thousands of slashdot users that will make references to it anytime a MS article is posted for the next 2 years.
Damn straight. Just like the bit about the USS Yorktown. It's called upfront disclosure. Microsoft calls it the price they pay for being #1. Don't think slashdot will let them skip out on the check.
This is the sort of thing that's Good For Everyone(TM).
It's good for AOL because they don't have to kowtow to Microsoft for placement on the desktop (though they shouldn't anyway, but MS frequently abuses it's monopoly power to prevent OEMs from making custom changes to the desktop). AOL can advance subscribership by promoting an easy to use Internet/Bulletin Board service on a low cost, easy to use computer. If they want custom modifications to better support their online service, they don't have to "ask permission," they can just make them on their own.
It's good for consumers because now they have a real choice for low cost computer systems. I'm not saying that Lindows is the high holy of operating systems, but it's geared toward ease of use for non-technical desktop users (people who don't want to recompile a kernel). Before, there never really was a choice for low cost systems -- you had to go with Windows. Sure you could buy a Mac, but you had to shell out an extra thousand bucks. While many people like how user friendly Macs are, they can't justify that much a price difference. Lindows gives consumers a low cost alternative.
It's good for Linux because it increases the Linux user base. Obviously, the people using these systems aren't going to go out and start coding custom kernel modules, but the software manufacturers are going to start noticing the increasing presence of Linux in the marketplace. This means there will start to be more consumer applications available for Linux as an untapped consumer market like this cannot be ignored. This means more games, more office software, more of the general desktop software that many people say is missing from Linux.
And lastly, this is good for technology (obviously). For the same reasons that Eric S. Raymond penned (or typed I guess;) in his editorial on "Total World Domination." Total world domination by Linux means no domination by anyone. Linux can be modified by anyone, it can be modified to suit your purposes (whatever they may be) and you will always have the freedom to make those changes because no one can own Linux. No one can lock it up and keep you from looking inside. Coders will still be able to code and make custom changes to their system, and consumers can still click away not knowing what's going on behind the scenes. It's good for technology because by giving consumers a choice, it promotes consumer freedom.
Wow, always good to see a post of mine generating 18 responses (so far).;)
Anyway, to be clear:
I know that MySQL 4.0 has subselects but I was hoping for the feature to move into production.
When I say you can fake transactions with LOCKs, I am not talking about running a bank. And I didn't mean to start a SQL-DB holy war by suggesting that. I was just saying that for my limited purposes, I can approximate transactions with LOCKs, but LEFT JOINs don't always cut it when sometimes I really need a SUB-SELECT.
Creating temporary tables to simulate a subselect doesn't always work -- especially when you have a user account on the DB which doesn't have permission to create tables or insert data.
Don't get me wrong, the price for MySQL is right. And the lack of a few features doesn't come close to the price-performance ratio. I am very happy with MySQL.
Finally, the transaction flamers just need to calm down -- because transactions are being implemented. I was ranking my personal priority for MySQL features.
Forget transactions -- you can fake that with LOCKs. But when are subselects coming to MySQL? It's not about poorly written queries, there are just some things you cannot do without subselects.
I can understand why IBM would bash MySQL, though. After all, they are selling DB2 -- so they have to compete with a free SQL db. Remember to keep in mind that both IBM and MS are primarily interested in keeping up revenues from their commercial DB products when reading their complaints on MySQL.
Most people confuse "Free as in Speech" with "Free as in Beer." The GNU Project makes software that is "Free as in Speech." But this doesn't necessarily mean that the software is free of charge. In fact, GNU has an order form on their website for corporations and individuals to purchase their software (and printed manuals). It really depends on the honor system, and on people with honor.
Likewise, some people don't fully understand the GPL. They think that if someone is selling GPL'd software, then they must give the source code away to everyone for free. Really, all GPL requires the seller to do is provide a copy of source code to their customers. Sure, the customer can then turn around and give that source code away to anyone for free, but the seller is under no obligation to do so, because they're only providing software to the buyer. The GPL is not about giving away all your rights as a software manufacturer or retailer, it's about preserving the rights of the buyer.
If the German government is the sole customer of the Kroupware program, then the developers of that program are under no obligation to put up an anonymous access FTP site and say, "Free Downloads for Everyone!" They are only obligated to provide the source code to their buyer. The German government could then distribute it for free to all German citizens, but the citizens could then likewise distribute it for free to the rest of the world. The GPL is not about restricting rights; it's about preserving them.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously my main problem is that this device makes horrible use of power (by comparison my Riovolt SP250 radio/cd/mp3 player lasts 15 hours on 2 AA batteries). I was bothered by the number of batteries I was throwing out and the cost of continually refueling the player (bad for the environment and for me).
I decided to try rechargeable batteries. I bought 3 packs of Energizer NiMH rechargeable C-size batteries and an Energizer battery charger. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to the fine print on the batteries -- the voltage is only 1.2V (instead of the alkaline's 1.5V). When you add up the voltage from all six batteries, you only get 7.2V for NiMH vs. 9V for alkaline. And the CD player needs the 9V to drive the Vcc on the amplifiers.
I was going to try rechargeable alkaline batteries, but judging by some of the comments here it sounds like other people's experiences with them are not so great.
The reason they only support rm or wma is because they want to enforce digital restrictions management. This is also the same reason they only support Windows. They put a self-destruct in the movies you d/l so you don't get to keep it or make backup copies.
This all only applies if you do not modify the GPL or LGPL text in your distribution. Once you modify the text, it is no longer a GPL or LGPL, and the FSF cannot and will not defend your licensing rights. So while you are certainly free to add the requirement that someone "Buys you a beer next time they're in Boston," to your license, you should understand that this means your license is no longer GPL or LGPL and the FSF cannot protect it.
Actually it's the University of Washington (not Waterloo) that wrote Pine (from Mutt which was licensed under BSD). And I am very familiar with the restrictions on distributing modified binaries.Seriously, I think it's quite obvious there's more than one person commuting from Kent to Seattle every morning and evening so you'd have no problem finding a carpool partner. If you need to run errands during the day, use the bus tunnel -- it's free.
I remember growing up and getting the kid's magazine "3-2-1 Contact!" in the mail every month. It would always come with a new BASIC program (always a simple game) and I would rush to my TI-99/4A and type in the program to play the game. Of course the BASIC programs were written for the Apple II so they wouldn't always work (though I learned to "port" them rather quickly). A big motivator was that you had to connect the TI to the television, so it was always fun to see your programs running on the t.v. (at least it was when I was 7 ;).
Once one company gets their employees to go along with a heath care cost increase or a salary cut, the other companies will rush to offer just as low pay and benefits. They call this "competitive" compensation. So if the jobs can be outsourced for cheaper, then the majority of businesses will all race to find where that is. It happened with manufacturing jobs, it is happening with service jobs. I don't really know what (if any) jobs are "safe."
Also, don't think this automatically translates into lower prices. It doesn't make the products better or less expensive, just cheaper to make. How much in lower prices do you pay for your Nike tennis shoes made in Burma?
Has anyone been on the Hypersonic XLC at King's Dominion in Richmond, VA? I've only seen videos (including the one on the site). I've been anticipating its opening for some time now, but I moved to the west coast, so I haven't been back to King's Dominion in quite a while.
This is precisely one of the problems with online voting. If you're not willing to exert the effort to go to a polling place, you shouldn't be voting anyway.
Another problem with online voting is the digital divide. A new study found that 42% of Americans aren't online. That's doesn't necessarily correspond to 42% of registered voters, but a number that large shows that online voting won't benefit a significant number of people.
Probably the single best way to improve voter participation is to move elections to Sunday. Almost everyone in the country either has Sunday off or they don't have to work normal polling hours on Sunday (7 AM to 7 PM). Many countries around the world have elections on Sundays, I can't believe we still use Tuesdays.
Psssshht! I mean really! Who wants to setup a thin-client model at their business anyway? I mean saving millions of dollars? What's up with that?!
and it has ugly ass fonts....
Damn straight! Anyone who has zero knowledge about X knows that the fonts are hard coded into the display manager. And that there's no way you can add new fonts to it.
and it has shit write to hardware through TCP ports...
Like, I'm saying, yo! There ain't no client/server interface. When you be sending them X packets to the other computer, you're talking directly to the hardware! That's why every X command is "add ax,bx" and sh*t like that! It's pure assembly, bro!
Everyone knows that the only way to do it is to build a gigantic motherf*cking graphics subsystem into the kernel so that your system resources are halved and your OS crashes every week. Like, that's the ONLY way it should be.
Did anyone here actually *read* A Brief History of Time? Hawking described how the gravity of the universe may be so intense that it causes the universe to wrap around into a spherical shape. Of course this was just a theory back when he wrote the book.
Just like the AMI Guy said about the TCPA, "Woohoo! Over here! Look the other way for a minute! We're not taking away your freedoms! Trust me."
- Either MPlayer adjusts its code and licenses to conform to Debian's rules in order to be added to the Debian distribution
- Or MPlayer doesn't change anything and they don't get included in the distro
So why the flame war? It's Debian's distro, they can set the rules as they like. Likewise it's entirely MPlayer's decision to conform or break Debian's distro rules. And if MPlayer doesn't want to be included in Debian, nothing stops users from compiling MPlayer by source and adding it to their system, right? It's not the end of the world if a program isn't available by apt-get.Obviously if someone wants to fork MPlayer and create a version that is "Debian-able" they are certainly allowed to do that under the terms of the GPL. So I'm not quite sure why everyone's up in arms.
Essentially all the parts of a user agreement are reduced to a set of easily recognizable icons/keywords (from a set of 10) which detail what copyrights and licenses and granted and reserved under the agreement. So when you visit a website or buy a software package, instead of reading 30 pages of EULA's (which no one does anyway) and clicking "I Agree," you will see a set of Icons/Keywords which abbreviate the agreement so you can Agree/Decline. The legal elements represented by the agreement icons/keywords are universal -- so the icons ($), (=), etc means the same thing for every user agreement regardless of content provider. Providers can customize their agreements by choosing a set of icons which best represents what licenses they want to reserve and which ones they want to grant. Users benefit because they only need to read the text of the 10 possible licenses for a possible infinite number of service/content providers.
The argument, "Sure I clicked agree, but I didn't read it," is becoming more and more compelling to courts and shrink wrap licenses are becoming endangered of being ruled invalid because they are not easily accessible. By following the creative commons model, providers can be protected because they follow a universal license model that can be easily recognized and understood by users. Likewise, users can know everything they are agreeing to because the provider can't sneak spying provisions into the CC licenses and still represent the license with the CC icons.
Btw, I love it when some sniveling, little Reagan-ite calls constitutionally guaranteed freedom and liberty "60's era" or "naive." What they're really saying is "Sure, liberty sounds good...But facism and elitism just make more sense in modern society."
Perl works on a similar model. Larry Wall gets paid by O'Reilly & Assoc. to maintain perl. He adds new features, releases the code for free, and everyone's happy. The only stipulation is that O'Reilly gets first crack at the new documentation for their Perl books. I own several O'Reilly books and they're worth their weight in gold. I'm also happy to know that by purchasing these books, I'm supporting OSS coders.
If all you want is to be an MCSE, then why waste you time with college? You can take a weekend course for a few hundred bucks (instead of 4+ years for several thousand dollars). This quote from the article by Dr. Chris McDonald of UWA pretty much sums it up:
Exactly. Showing someone how to point and click isn't teaching them anything. It's only training them how to use someone else's tools (and there are books that can teach you that in 24 hours). Real computer science education, where you gain a fundamental understanding of both high and low level concepts of the computer requires more than just clicking a start button.I believe it will be the companies which package the software and pretty-up the UI and features who will deliver it to the consumers (think IBM, RedHat, The Kompany, etc).
I think it's unrealistic to think that everyday computer users will become more computer savvy (why should they?). So don't expect to see grandma checking out freshmeat.net any time soon. But now that Walmart is selling Linux preinstalled on lost cost computers the doors for exposing non-technical people to open source are open.
The use of published, universally accessible standards are exactly what makes open technology flourish over proprietary systems. Think VHS vs. Betamax. Think Internet vs. Novell. Think 8086 vs. Macintosh. Free and open standards always beat proprietary technology.
Too bad The Onion took down this article, I think it explains the hypocrisy pretty well. At least Google still has the cache: RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music
Drop all CSS related lawsuits.
I know that violating people's civil liberties including taking away their right to speech, privacy and due process makes it easier for law enforcement, but aside from being unconstitutional, it's also bad policework.
If you racially profile your suspects, then the Timothy McVeighs slip through. If you tap everyone's phone, then you become bogged down in terabytes of data -- most of which is useless. If you suppress the speech of the hate mongers and racists, then you don't know who is a hate monger or racist.
Civil liberties aren't just respectful of constitutional and human rights, they also help law enforcement do their job right. So don't ask for a line to be drawn. Try playing by the rules instead.
It's good for AOL because they don't have to kowtow to Microsoft for placement on the desktop (though they shouldn't anyway, but MS frequently abuses it's monopoly power to prevent OEMs from making custom changes to the desktop). AOL can advance subscribership by promoting an easy to use Internet/Bulletin Board service on a low cost, easy to use computer. If they want custom modifications to better support their online service, they don't have to "ask permission," they can just make them on their own.
It's good for consumers because now they have a real choice for low cost computer systems. I'm not saying that Lindows is the high holy of operating systems, but it's geared toward ease of use for non-technical desktop users (people who don't want to recompile a kernel). Before, there never really was a choice for low cost systems -- you had to go with Windows. Sure you could buy a Mac, but you had to shell out an extra thousand bucks. While many people like how user friendly Macs are, they can't justify that much a price difference. Lindows gives consumers a low cost alternative.
It's good for Linux because it increases the Linux user base. Obviously, the people using these systems aren't going to go out and start coding custom kernel modules, but the software manufacturers are going to start noticing the increasing presence of Linux in the marketplace. This means there will start to be more consumer applications available for Linux as an untapped consumer market like this cannot be ignored. This means more games, more office software, more of the general desktop software that many people say is missing from Linux.
And lastly, this is good for technology (obviously). For the same reasons that Eric S. Raymond penned (or typed I guess ;) in his editorial on "Total World Domination." Total world domination by Linux means no domination by anyone. Linux can be modified by anyone, it can be modified to suit your purposes (whatever they may be) and you will always have the freedom to make those changes because no one can own Linux. No one can lock it up and keep you from looking inside. Coders will still be able to code and make custom changes to their system, and consumers can still click away not knowing what's going on behind the scenes. It's good for technology because by giving consumers a choice, it promotes consumer freedom.
Anyway, to be clear:
I can understand why IBM would bash MySQL, though. After all, they are selling DB2 -- so they have to compete with a free SQL db. Remember to keep in mind that both IBM and MS are primarily interested in keeping up revenues from their commercial DB products when reading their complaints on MySQL.
Likewise, some people don't fully understand the GPL. They think that if someone is selling GPL'd software, then they must give the source code away to everyone for free. Really, all GPL requires the seller to do is provide a copy of source code to their customers. Sure, the customer can then turn around and give that source code away to anyone for free, but the seller is under no obligation to do so, because they're only providing software to the buyer. The GPL is not about giving away all your rights as a software manufacturer or retailer, it's about preserving the rights of the buyer.
If the German government is the sole customer of the Kroupware program, then the developers of that program are under no obligation to put up an anonymous access FTP site and say, "Free Downloads for Everyone!" They are only obligated to provide the source code to their buyer. The German government could then distribute it for free to all German citizens, but the citizens could then likewise distribute it for free to the rest of the world. The GPL is not about restricting rights; it's about preserving them.