For the bulbs in your house, the best way to go (right now, anyway) is compact fluorescent bulbs. The light they produce is nearly indistinguishable from that of incandescent bulbs, but they're about 4X as efficient. (13W is equivalent to 60W) They cost from $15 to $30, and last from 5 to 12 years, depending on brand. You can buy dimmable, R30 and R40, bulb-shaped, 3-way, etc... and you can get them at normal stores (i got a lot of mine at Meijer). By the time they burn out, LEDs ought to be affordable and more widely available. I cut more than 10% off my electric bill by replacing all my bulbs. As to the amortization problem, I saved all the crappy old ones to put back in when I move out. They're coming with me, all right!
You're right about colored LED's being more efficient than the white ones. You can also get colored LED replacement bulbs for your flashlights at www.theledlight.com. Their prices and stats are unusual too-- they have white LEDs at 18,000mcd, green at 30,000, and blue at 9,000. Additionally, the white, blue, and green LED replacement bulbs they sell cost exactly the same ($24.35). I know that at your local electronics shop they will charge you an arm and a leg for blue LEDs-- these are possibly (although I couldn't find the info he mentioned) blue LEDs with some sort of coating on them. Anybody got more info?
As I understand it, Russia has a "none of the above" choice in their voting system. If NOTA wins, then new candidates must be found and the whole thing run again. This, plus one of the two better voting systems (ranking the candidates like the ICANN process, or giving one vote for each candidate you feel is qualified) would greatly improve our chances to get a good president elected.
are available from www.theledlight.com. They make single and multi LED bulb replacements that fit into standard flashlight bulb sockets. Get 10X the battery life, plus ridiculously long bulb life (100,000 hrs). They will even fit maglites. I have no idea why companies are still making flashlights with traditional bulbs-- there doesn't seem to be any downside at all! (These bulbs cost $20 more than other bulbs, but if you've ever used a maglite regularly, you know how often the bulbs burn out-- why else would they have a spare in the handle? You'll get your money's worth by saving on batteries and replacement bulbs.)
Motorola's timeport and talkabout have the same configuration as the StarTAC, with the antenna pointed away from the head extending from the lower half of the flip. (in fact, they seem to be the same phone in a shiny new case) But those phones (along with another starTAC model) fared significantly worse (they made the 10 worst chart) than the StarTAC. Anybody know why?
There are two types of region-free players-- those that have their region permanently hard-wired to the "no-region" region, (I can't remember which one that is... sorry) and those that are "region selectable", like the Apex AD-600A. Region selectable players won't have a problem with anything that they can do to the DVD without breaking compatibility. Good ones (or well-modified ones) are even selectable via the remote. Once you pick a region, the player *is* region-specific player for the region you have chosen. Problem solved.
This slashdot article in YRO the other day seems to indicate that Rijndael is not all that secure. Perhaps all the speculative posts about the NSA liking it for less-than-noble (like reading my email) reasons are true.
The simple solution: use something else. For those stuck with it, (is there somebody who is required to use AES?) you could always encrypt with something else first.
Today, in a major coup for international governments, a treaty ratified by the EU and the US (among others) officially makes everything illegal. Under the section innocently labelled "hacking devices", such obvious implements such as computers, modems and network cards are naturally banned, but so are so-called "social hacking" tools, such as telephones, pieces of paper (which may be used to write down passwords, clothing (which may be used to disguise someone), cars (which allow criminals to move to the scene of the hacking). Now that everything is illegal, everyone who is alive has been asked to report to jail, where you will be put to work as cheap slave labor for the super-mega-international-government-corporation producing inexpensive T-shirts for resale in parts of the universe that have more money.
This reporter, for one, is glad that he no longer has to worry about breaking the law-- it is with complete certainty that I can now say "No matter what I am doing, it is definitely illegal."
I don't think Gnutella is dead quite yet, but you make a good point.
The idea of pre-categorizing the Gnutella network by file type makes good sense. Split the system into Gnutella for mp3s, Gnutella for software, Gnutella for trolls, Gnutella for pictures, etc...
This would drastically reduce the size of each network subsection, and would help keep things to a reasonable size for searches. Plus, your results would be more likely to be relevant, due to the fact that everything on that particular network section is at least of the type you are looking for.
I was part-shopping for a new machine, and found a Creative Labs 6X on pricewatch for $67. Unfortunately, I think that DVD hardware makers are still required to pay the DVD-CCA. Which sucks. The best way to go (and the way I chose) was to hit ebay, and buy a used DVD drive that is old enough to not have the new RPC-2 region controls in it. (check out www.dvdutils.com for a list of which drive models are region free) With a used model, none of your money will go to support more lawsuits to kill your fair-use rights.
I spent less than $50, got a DVD-ROM, and didn't pay "the man" a cent. Sounds good to me!
The Prism will have 16-bit color screen generating 65,536 colors and will be pushed as a game player. It will be bundled with at least one game.
While i have a couple of games on my Palm, the controls are HORRIBLE. Why palm didn't put an old-NES-style 4-way rocker on one side of the unit always baffled me. At the very least, they could have arranged 4 buttons in a diamond pattern so that reasonable directional control was possible! (the middle up/down thing and the two buttons near it are too far apart, and you have to switch your hands back and forth to use the outside two buttons.)
So... is visor going to give us better controls since its going to be marketed as a gaming machine? If so... bye bye Palm!!
I have a cuecat. It was handed to me at radio shack with no mention of a license agreement, and in fact, the salesman said they were "giving them away for free". I have not installed the software, or even taken the software out of its sleeve. I wrote a javascript decoder for it. I can just as easily write the decoder without having a cuecat, so I want to tell digital convergence i do not accept their EULA. How does one officially do this? Mail it back? Take it back to the RS I got it at?
I expect that the power diminishes somewhat, but I don't know how it varies inside the "near field" distance? I would also imagine it depends on the particular antenna's shape. Is there a place on the web I could find more info about this?
In any event, the law holds for larger distances (a foot or so)... so get a headset and put your phone on the desk or the passenger seat in your car, and you'll cut the radiation you absorb by an enormous factor.
DVD-ROM drives made before Jan 1st were not required to do hardware enforcement of the region codes. Which drives had or didn't have region code enforcement can be found at places like www.dvdutils.com. At that time, the only region enforcement was in software, and of course patches have been written for every software player under the sun to disable this
New (RPC-2) DVD-ROM drives have "hardware" region code support (meaning the drive does it-- not just the software). Some of these drives can be "patched" with a modified firmware upgrade. Some can't.
Digital cell phones typically output much less power. My Motorola Timeport has a max power output of 0.2 watts when operating in digital mode. My old analog Nokia 252, by contrast had either a.5 or.6 watt maximum power. So right from the start, digital phones emit half or less of the power that analog phones do.
Second, the distance from the cell tower is going to affect the amount of power needed to transmit. Newer cell phones will probably adjust their transmission power to the minimum needed in order to maximize their battery life. As the number of cells increases to handle more traffic, the cells will get smaller, and help cut down on phone emissions.
Third, the phone's design is going to have some effect on the amount of radiation actually absorbed by your brain. A straight-up-and-down phone with the antenna right next to your head is going to fare MUCH worse than something like a StarTAC, where the antenna is angled away from your head by a couple of inches and, in fact, your head is shielded somewhat by the "flip-up" that blocks the antenna. Since the radiation obeys an inverse-square law with respect to distance, even a slight increase in antenna distance from the head drastically cuts the radiation your brain absorbs. It doesn't take much if the antenna is half an inch from your head! At 1", you'll see a quarter the radiation. At 1.5", 9X less, at 2", 16X less. And so on.
PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on any of this! If I'm an idiot, I need to know so I don't do it again.:)
I don't really have "a lot of contact" with my congress person-- my letters seem to vanish into a black hole with the exception of the email autoresponder that the staff uses to thank me for my email. My written letters usually get a generic "thank you" form letter about a month and a half after I send them.
I am going to start looking into the volunteer thing, as you (and many other posters) have suggested-- it seems to be the best way to get some influence. I don't like it, and it smacks of immorality and a corrupt political system, but if it's the way it must be done-- so be it.
Additionally, I will be talking to the EFF about starting a local chapter. I'm in Indianapolis, if anyone is interested in working with me. People in other cities and states should pursue this route as well.
Good luck.
I want to help, what can I do?!
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 2
I'm a good geek. I send checks to the EFF and am renewing my membership with IEEE after discovering that they will be fighting UCITA (and after a long email from their Intellectual Property Comittee chair that shows a pretty good track record on all of the issues that seem to be confounding us recently.) I wrote a cuecat barcode decoder. I bought both DeCSS T-Shirts. I mail the FCC, the LOC, my senators and representatives several times a week about some right or another that is being taken away. I vote, but nobody even knows who stands which way on these issues. I wrote 12-page comments for the LOC in regards to seciton 1201 of the DMCA.
But this stuff is not enough. I want to do more, but I am just a geek. I've never run a campaign, nor do I know how to get the necessary zillions of geeks all together in an organization like this. Additionally, I'm not a lawyer, and although I'm capable of good, logical argument (as anyone who programs is to some degree)-- normal people aren't interested/don't understand and apparently what seems valid to me is not valid to a judge.
My questions, then:
1. What else can I do?
2. Who could head up an "internet users association" like we need? (possibly someone at the EFF? IEEE? ACM? A friendly lawyer you know?)
3. What do we have to do to get this person (or people) to work on our behalf?
4. How do we get enough members to join?
5. Once we get members, how do we become an unstoppable juggernaut lobby like the NRA?
I wrote a reply addressing the comments of the large media organizations with specific real-world examples and counterarguments that is not there, either.
Is this the same set of comments that were requested months ago?
I submitted a very carefully written 12-page comment that painstakingly addressed in simple, easy-to-understand terms with carefully documented real-world examples that is also not there. A friend of mine submitted a comment that is also not there. Are these the same comments? Because there were more than 100 comments there before! Where did they all go?!?!
Are you serious? "Hard Working Americans", with the exception of the Native Americans that my rather dishonorable and shameful ancestors here hunted down, are all descended from IMMIGRANTS. Yep, every last one of us. (again, except the N.A.s) Do you remember hearing about America "The Melting Pot" in grade school? Or how about the statue of Liberty-- "Bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses" (please forgive me if I misquote!). That is how this country is built. As an american, I say let 'em all in, dammit! Anybody who wants in! Make this country really FREE again! And let it work the other way, too-- because with all the stupid laws here, I'm thinking about leaving.
I may be a descendant of a lot of conquering buttheads, but I am most certainly descended from immigrant stock. And so are you. (Assuming you're not a native american)
There is some truth in what you say, but you miss some important points. First-- developers like myself are paid by salary, not through some enormously complex royalty scheme like the record industry. I am paid the same as long as I do my job. There is no need for me to produce a "hit", and hence no need for a gigantic internet-programmer-record-label system to promote my work to the masses. Why don't musicians get paid salary? Why are they allowed to collect money from their works a zillion years after they die while my work as a programmer is of no use to me after I write it in most cases? I do not depend on copyright for income. Nor does my company. We depend on the ability to sell our custom software services to other people.
Second, most of my work is web programming that is quite easily available for download and study against the wishes of my company already. That's how the web design works-- my DHTML, javascript, etc... are all right there in your browser whether my company likes it or not.
Should we sue browser makers for including a "view source" button? All of our pages are copyrighted! What about the "save image to file" button? Or the ability to save the web page source to your hard drive? We are a profitable and quickly growing web company with hundreds of employees and 5 or 6 offices (I can never remember), yet our copyrighted works sit freely downloadable for the entire world.
Your argument that wages depend on copyright does hold some merit, but our copyrighted works are totally unprotected and my mom could "pirate" them with a mouse click, yet we have a very successful business model.
It's been said before, but in the great tradition of slashdot, I will say it again. This is stupid! I will never pay for a book that is tied to my hardware configuration, OS version, or a single player of any type! If I buy a paperback, I can take it anywhere, period. It goes wherever the heck I want it to, can be sold to someone else when I'm done, or loaned to a friend for a while. I can give it as a gift, quote bits of it, or make a huge pile of xerox copies of it and keep them in my closet. An ebook that removes a substantial portion of these rights without a drastically reduced cost will never fly. People may purchase these at first, but just imagine for a second how confused a non-computer-expert would be if they tried to read their book at work, or had a new harddrive installed at Best Buy (complete with data transfer...)-- and their book quit working? After the first round of public acceptance, there will be public outrage at the ridiculous restrictions.
In the meantime, thank god for Project Gutenberg, a source of free, unrestricted ebooks.
I don't think that open-source developers really "seem to feel they can do whatever they please", as you state. In fact, I don't think any of the developers of these drivers at any point considered copying the hardware design for the cuecat and selling or giving it away or giving away illegal copies of their software. What the driver authors did (as suggested by earlier posters) is similar to taking a car apart to write a manual about it. But in reality, the software developers are even nicer than that-- it would be like driving a car around a little bit to write a manual about it. AFAIK, disassembly of the devices was not required to write the drivers.
None of the developers are attempting to take IP from the company. It's been asked before and I'll ask it again-- what IP are we talking about? The hardware? Designs for that have not been published. The software? It is not being illegally distributed, nor was it used in the production of the drivers. The central server softwar? Not only not copied or distributed illegally, but also not used at all by the drivers. Reverse engineering is and has been legal for quite some time.
No one is doing "whatever they please" in a way that violates a law I'm aware of. Nobody is being screwed or trampled. How does this driver screw or trample anyone, and how was anyone screwed or trampled in its production? IP is valuable to OSS developers. OSS developers protect their IP with just as much zeal as closed-source developers, and have a full understanding that not everything can be free. However, until there is a law that takes away the right to make your own software (that in no way infringes on IP)-- there will always be people who out of the goodness of their hearts provide free software to make our lives a little better.
Sorry about the link tag-- I was in a hurry and screwed up, but it is at that URL. I just verified it by clicking on the link myself. Xoom is incredibly slow-- so be patient. The JavaScript decoder is here. Hit reload if it doesn't go through the first time.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been running it for 3 days on a Duron 700/Abit KT7 (KT133 chipset) with no problems.
For the bulbs in your house, the best way to go (right now, anyway) is compact fluorescent bulbs. The light they produce is nearly indistinguishable from that of incandescent bulbs, but they're about 4X as efficient. (13W is equivalent to 60W) They cost from $15 to $30, and last from 5 to 12 years, depending on brand. You can buy dimmable, R30 and R40, bulb-shaped, 3-way, etc... and you can get them at normal stores (i got a lot of mine at Meijer). By the time they burn out, LEDs ought to be affordable and more widely available. I cut more than 10% off my electric bill by replacing all my bulbs. As to the amortization problem, I saved all the crappy old ones to put back in when I move out. They're coming with me, all right!
You're right about colored LED's being more efficient than the white ones. You can also get colored LED replacement bulbs for your flashlights at www.theledlight.com. Their prices and stats are unusual too-- they have white LEDs at 18,000mcd, green at 30,000, and blue at 9,000. Additionally, the white, blue, and green LED replacement bulbs they sell cost exactly the same ($24.35). I know that at your local electronics shop they will charge you an arm and a leg for blue LEDs-- these are possibly (although I couldn't find the info he mentioned) blue LEDs with some sort of coating on them. Anybody got more info?
As I understand it, Russia has a "none of the above" choice in their voting system. If NOTA wins, then new candidates must be found and the whole thing run again. This, plus one of the two better voting systems (ranking the candidates like the ICANN process, or giving one vote for each candidate you feel is qualified) would greatly improve our chances to get a good president elected.
are available from www.theledlight.com. They make single and multi LED bulb replacements that fit into standard flashlight bulb sockets. Get 10X the battery life, plus ridiculously long bulb life (100,000 hrs). They will even fit maglites. I have no idea why companies are still making flashlights with traditional bulbs-- there doesn't seem to be any downside at all! (These bulbs cost $20 more than other bulbs, but if you've ever used a maglite regularly, you know how often the bulbs burn out-- why else would they have a spare in the handle? You'll get your money's worth by saving on batteries and replacement bulbs.)
Motorola's timeport and talkabout have the same configuration as the StarTAC, with the antenna pointed away from the head extending from the lower half of the flip. (in fact, they seem to be the same phone in a shiny new case) But those phones (along with another starTAC model) fared significantly worse (they made the 10 worst chart) than the StarTAC. Anybody know why?
Here's the numbers from the chart (digital only):
StarTAC 7860: 0.24
StarTAC 7867: 1.38
Talkabout T8167: 1.38
Timeport P8167: 1.38
There are two types of region-free players-- those that have their region permanently hard-wired to the "no-region" region, (I can't remember which one that is... sorry) and those that are "region selectable", like the Apex AD-600A. Region selectable players won't have a problem with anything that they can do to the DVD without breaking compatibility. Good ones (or well-modified ones) are even selectable via the remote. Once you pick a region, the player *is* region-specific player for the region you have chosen. Problem solved.
This slashdot article in YRO the other day seems to indicate that Rijndael is not all that secure. Perhaps all the speculative posts about the NSA liking it for less-than-noble (like reading my email) reasons are true.
The simple solution: use something else. For those stuck with it, (is there somebody who is required to use AES?) you could always encrypt with something else first.
Today, in a major coup for international governments, a treaty ratified by the EU and the US (among others) officially makes everything illegal. Under the section innocently labelled "hacking devices", such obvious implements such as computers, modems and network cards are naturally banned, but so are so-called "social hacking" tools, such as telephones, pieces of paper (which may be used to write down passwords, clothing (which may be used to disguise someone), cars (which allow criminals to move to the scene of the hacking). Now that everything is illegal, everyone who is alive has been asked to report to jail, where you will be put to work as cheap slave labor for the super-mega-international-government-corporation producing inexpensive T-shirts for resale in parts of the universe that have more money.
This reporter, for one, is glad that he no longer has to worry about breaking the law-- it is with complete certainty that I can now say "No matter what I am doing, it is definitely illegal."
I don't think Gnutella is dead quite yet, but you make a good point.
The idea of pre-categorizing the Gnutella network by file type makes good sense. Split the system into Gnutella for mp3s, Gnutella for software, Gnutella for trolls, Gnutella for pictures, etc...
This would drastically reduce the size of each network subsection, and would help keep things to a reasonable size for searches. Plus, your results would be more likely to be relevant, due to the fact that everything on that particular network section is at least of the type you are looking for.
I was part-shopping for a new machine, and found a Creative Labs 6X on pricewatch for $67. Unfortunately, I think that DVD hardware makers are still required to pay the DVD-CCA. Which sucks. The best way to go (and the way I chose) was to hit ebay, and buy a used DVD drive that is old enough to not have the new RPC-2 region controls in it. (check out www.dvdutils.com for a list of which drive models are region free) With a used model, none of your money will go to support more lawsuits to kill your fair-use rights.
I spent less than $50, got a DVD-ROM, and didn't pay "the man" a cent. Sounds good to me!
While i have a couple of games on my Palm, the controls are HORRIBLE. Why palm didn't put an old-NES-style 4-way rocker on one side of the unit always baffled me. At the very least, they could have arranged 4 buttons in a diamond pattern so that reasonable directional control was possible! (the middle up/down thing and the two buttons near it are too far apart, and you have to switch your hands back and forth to use the outside two buttons.)
So... is visor going to give us better controls since its going to be marketed as a gaming machine? If so... bye bye Palm!!
I have a cuecat. It was handed to me at radio shack with no mention of a license agreement, and in fact, the salesman said they were "giving them away for free". I have not installed the software, or even taken the software out of its sleeve. I wrote a javascript decoder for it. I can just as easily write the decoder without having a cuecat, so I want to tell digital convergence i do not accept their EULA. How does one officially do this? Mail it back? Take it back to the RS I got it at?
I expect that the power diminishes somewhat, but I don't know how it varies inside the "near field" distance? I would also imagine it depends on the particular antenna's shape. Is there a place on the web I could find more info about this?
In any event, the law holds for larger distances (a foot or so)... so get a headset and put your phone on the desk or the passenger seat in your car, and you'll cut the radiation you absorb by an enormous factor.
DVD-ROM drives made before Jan 1st were not required to do hardware enforcement of the region codes. Which drives had or didn't have region code enforcement can be found at places like www.dvdutils.com. At that time, the only region enforcement was in software, and of course patches have been written for every software player under the sun to disable this
New (RPC-2) DVD-ROM drives have "hardware" region code support (meaning the drive does it-- not just the software). Some of these drives can be "patched" with a modified firmware upgrade. Some can't.
Digital cell phones typically output much less power. My Motorola Timeport has a max power output of 0.2 watts when operating in digital mode. My old analog Nokia 252, by contrast had either a .5 or .6 watt maximum power. So right from the start, digital phones emit half or less of the power that analog phones do.
:)
Second, the distance from the cell tower is going to affect the amount of power needed to transmit. Newer cell phones will probably adjust their transmission power to the minimum needed in order to maximize their battery life. As the number of cells increases to handle more traffic, the cells will get smaller, and help cut down on phone emissions.
Third, the phone's design is going to have some effect on the amount of radiation actually absorbed by your brain. A straight-up-and-down phone with the antenna right next to your head is going to fare MUCH worse than something like a StarTAC, where the antenna is angled away from your head by a couple of inches and, in fact, your head is shielded somewhat by the "flip-up" that blocks the antenna. Since the radiation obeys an inverse-square law with respect to distance, even a slight increase in antenna distance from the head drastically cuts the radiation your brain absorbs. It doesn't take much if the antenna is half an inch from your head! At 1", you'll see a quarter the radiation. At 1.5", 9X less, at 2", 16X less. And so on.
PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on any of this! If I'm an idiot, I need to know so I don't do it again.
I don't really have "a lot of contact" with my congress person-- my letters seem to vanish into a black hole with the exception of the email autoresponder that the staff uses to thank me for my email. My written letters usually get a generic "thank you" form letter about a month and a half after I send them.
I am going to start looking into the volunteer thing, as you (and many other posters) have suggested-- it seems to be the best way to get some influence. I don't like it, and it smacks of immorality and a corrupt political system, but if it's the way it must be done-- so be it.
Additionally, I will be talking to the EFF about starting a local chapter. I'm in Indianapolis, if anyone is interested in working with me. People in other cities and states should pursue this route as well.
Good luck.
I'm a good geek. I send checks to the EFF and am renewing my membership with IEEE after discovering that they will be fighting UCITA (and after a long email from their Intellectual Property Comittee chair that shows a pretty good track record on all of the issues that seem to be confounding us recently.) I wrote a cuecat barcode decoder. I bought both DeCSS T-Shirts. I mail the FCC, the LOC, my senators and representatives several times a week about some right or another that is being taken away. I vote, but nobody even knows who stands which way on these issues. I wrote 12-page comments for the LOC in regards to seciton 1201 of the DMCA.
But this stuff is not enough. I want to do more, but I am just a geek. I've never run a campaign, nor do I know how to get the necessary zillions of geeks all together in an organization like this. Additionally, I'm not a lawyer, and although I'm capable of good, logical argument (as anyone who programs is to some degree)-- normal people aren't interested/don't understand and apparently what seems valid to me is not valid to a judge.
My questions, then:
1. What else can I do?
2. Who could head up an "internet users association" like we need? (possibly someone at the EFF? IEEE? ACM? A friendly lawyer you know?)
3. What do we have to do to get this person (or people) to work on our behalf?
4. How do we get enough members to join?
5. Once we get members, how do we become an unstoppable juggernaut lobby like the NRA?
I wrote a reply addressing the comments of the large media organizations with specific real-world examples and counterarguments that is not there, either.
Is this the same set of comments that were requested months ago?
I submitted a very carefully written 12-page comment that painstakingly addressed in simple, easy-to-understand terms with carefully documented real-world examples that is also not there. A friend of mine submitted a comment that is also not there. Are these the same comments? Because there were more than 100 comments there before! Where did they all go?!?!
Are you serious? "Hard Working Americans", with the exception of the Native Americans that my rather dishonorable and shameful ancestors here hunted down, are all descended from IMMIGRANTS. Yep, every last one of us. (again, except the N.A.s) Do you remember hearing about America "The Melting Pot" in grade school? Or how about the statue of Liberty-- "Bring us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses" (please forgive me if I misquote!). That is how this country is built. As an american, I say let 'em all in, dammit! Anybody who wants in! Make this country really FREE again! And let it work the other way, too-- because with all the stupid laws here, I'm thinking about leaving.
I may be a descendant of a lot of conquering buttheads, but I am most certainly descended from immigrant stock. And so are you. (Assuming you're not a native american)
There is some truth in what you say, but you miss some important points. First-- developers like myself are paid by salary, not through some enormously complex royalty scheme like the record industry. I am paid the same as long as I do my job. There is no need for me to produce a "hit", and hence no need for a gigantic internet-programmer-record-label system to promote my work to the masses. Why don't musicians get paid salary? Why are they allowed to collect money from their works a zillion years after they die while my work as a programmer is of no use to me after I write it in most cases? I do not depend on copyright for income. Nor does my company. We depend on the ability to sell our custom software services to other people.
Second, most of my work is web programming that is quite easily available for download and study against the wishes of my company already. That's how the web design works-- my DHTML, javascript, etc... are all right there in your browser whether my company likes it or not.
Should we sue browser makers for including a "view source" button? All of our pages are copyrighted! What about the "save image to file" button? Or the ability to save the web page source to your hard drive? We are a profitable and quickly growing web company with hundreds of employees and 5 or 6 offices (I can never remember), yet our copyrighted works sit freely downloadable for the entire world.
Your argument that wages depend on copyright does hold some merit, but our copyrighted works are totally unprotected and my mom could "pirate" them with a mouse click, yet we have a very successful business model.
It's been said before, but in the great tradition of slashdot, I will say it again. This is stupid! I will never pay for a book that is tied to my hardware configuration, OS version, or a single player of any type! If I buy a paperback, I can take it anywhere, period. It goes wherever the heck I want it to, can be sold to someone else when I'm done, or loaned to a friend for a while. I can give it as a gift, quote bits of it, or make a huge pile of xerox copies of it and keep them in my closet. An ebook that removes a substantial portion of these rights without a drastically reduced cost will never fly. People may purchase these at first, but just imagine for a second how confused a non-computer-expert would be if they tried to read their book at work, or had a new harddrive installed at Best Buy (complete with data transfer...)-- and their book quit working? After the first round of public acceptance, there will be public outrage at the ridiculous restrictions.
In the meantime, thank god for Project Gutenberg, a source of free, unrestricted ebooks.
I don't think that open-source developers really "seem to feel they can do whatever they please", as you state. In fact, I don't think any of the developers of these drivers at any point considered copying the hardware design for the cuecat and selling or giving it away or giving away illegal copies of their software. What the driver authors did (as suggested by earlier posters) is similar to taking a car apart to write a manual about it. But in reality, the software developers are even nicer than that-- it would be like driving a car around a little bit to write a manual about it. AFAIK, disassembly of the devices was not required to write the drivers.
None of the developers are attempting to take IP from the company. It's been asked before and I'll ask it again-- what IP are we talking about? The hardware? Designs for that have not been published. The software? It is not being illegally distributed, nor was it used in the production of the drivers. The central server softwar? Not only not copied or distributed illegally, but also not used at all by the drivers. Reverse engineering is and has been legal for quite some time.
No one is doing "whatever they please" in a way that violates a law I'm aware of. Nobody is being screwed or trampled. How does this driver screw or trample anyone, and how was anyone screwed or trampled in its production? IP is valuable to OSS developers. OSS developers protect their IP with just as much zeal as closed-source developers, and have a full understanding that not everything can be free. However, until there is a law that takes away the right to make your own software (that in no way infringes on IP)-- there will always be people who out of the goodness of their hearts provide free software to make our lives a little better.
Sorry about the link tag-- I was in a hurry and screwed up, but it is at that URL. I just verified it by clicking on the link myself. Xoom is incredibly slow-- so be patient. The JavaScript decoder is here. Hit reload if it doesn't go through the first time.