Well, the standard "this is GPLv3" text is "This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." (with the version number replaced with whichever one is being used). Note that it does NOT say "or any prior version". This quite obviously means that, while the licenses are at least forward-compatible, they are not equivelent.
Huh? They've got L4D2, still relatively recent, they have even more TF2 updates, and Portal 2 coming out in a few weeks. Sure, Episode 3 is still barely more than a rumor, but it certainly doesn't seem like "hasn't made a game in four years" is an apt description.
Quoth Wikipedia: "Another cause for the uprising has been attributed to the inability of the Tunisian government from being able to censor information from reaching the Tunisian people, such as information from WikiLeaks describing rampant corruption in the Tunisian government."
Main cause? No. Contributing factor? Yes. At the very least, it seems like it was the spark that brought all the other factors into focus.
Well, a Wikileak (that's the term for something Wikileaks leaks, right?) was one of the things that started the Tunisian revolution, which led to the revolt in Egypt, and protests in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain, and it seems to be spreading further, as far away as Iran, and Jordan. Add the fact that some pretty major corporations are also being attacked (), and this could be on the scale of 1848. I'm willing to bet that this chain of uprisings won't stop before it reaches Russia and Italy, and I'm hoping it goes all the way to the US.
We all know that America (hell, most of the world) has needed a major change in government for years now. Decades, even. It isn't bad enough that we need to start lining people against a wall, but at the very least, we need some changes that are big enough that the status quo would be upset.
The problems REALLY start when they patent an alteration to a gene, because that invariably comes with DRM that makes SecuROM look nice. Go look up Monsanto some time - if the people in charge there were in charge of the RIAA, "copy file" would be considered illegal, and merely owning a computer would require you to pay them a license, since you could accidentally pirate something.
Thus why it's an extremely bad idea to allow ANY gene patents.
While I can't actually speak for him, I have a pretty good guess at what he's doing.
He's establishing his DNA as "prior art".
Anyone who tries to patent some element of DNA (and there's plenty who will try to) now has a rather significant obstacle to overcome, especially since at least 99% of DNA is the same between people.
Unfortunately, this isn't exactly the case. Sure, if isoHunt simply provided a searchable index of torrents, they should be able to claim ignorance of any wrongdoing, with the whole "safe harbor" argument, but there's a flaw in that: they did more. Several times when I visited, they had an "editor's pick" or something like that, which was invariably something pirated (and blatantly so), with a description that pretty much shouted "this file is illegal!". That's not just "refusing to take down pirated material", that goes into "actively distributing". You could probably get a conviction for conspiracy based on that.
Of course, if the Canadian MAFIIA is anything like the American one (word-of-mouth is that it's actually worse), I'd have to side with isoHunt simply out of spite.
Just for one example, I have yet to find a single published, post-ratings video game (discounting free flash games and the like) that would qualify as "hardcore pornography". Anything made in the US (or the West, for that matter) generally stops at PG-13, maybe R if they think they can use the media outrage to boost sales, material - even the Playboy game never went past toplessness. Anything made in Japan has enough blur/pixelation/censor bars to meet the oddly stringent censorship laws.
Pretty soon, we'll be seeing stuff like "most violent blogs of all time" and "webcomics are destroying our youth". Just as soon as the mainstream media catches up with this decade.
I would say "there's always the PC", but even that has problems. Almost no retailers will carry an AO game, and I doubt Steam or other digital distributors do so, either. Not only that, but out of the 24 games that have actually been given an AO rating, the majority of them are Japanese imports, which seems to indicate that nobody in America is really interested in making AO games.
Only necessary when there is a greater evil. In an ideal (read "theoretical") world, the government would keep only those secrets that are necessary, and Wikileaks has demonstrated that they are very bad at filtering out "things that ought to be kept secret" from their releases. For the time being, that is merely the "cost of doing business" - inevitable collateral damage. Eventually, the damage that does will exceed the good done by releasing proper leaks, at which point I will stop supporting Wikileaks.
Yes, I know, I'm a Slashdot Heretic for saying that not all information wants to be free. But there are certain things any government needs to keep the details of secret. They don't need to publish the Secret Service defensive preparations, battle plans for all the wars that could happen, etc. Yes, the secrecy laws are massively abused, but that does not mean that there is no point to them.
That quote is only true if you're the "good guys" - the very act of fighting a visibly "good" group exposes one as "evil", directly causing defeat.
This is not such a case. The Wikileaks/Governments fight isn't "good versus evil", it's "chaotic evil versus lawful evil". For varying magnitudes of "evil".
That is not to say that I disagree with what Wikileaks is doing. They're definitely the lesses of two evils, but that's still an evil.
No, you're thinking of "Unices", or perhaps "Unixen". I have never seen "Unxis" as the plural of "Unix", although it sort of looks like the negation of "axis".
And the MAFIAA claims tens of thousands of dollars in damages for a CD or movie I can buy at Wal-Mart for $12. Market price has no effect on damages anymore.
That's $750 per "work", which the RIAA has argued (and the courts accepted) is a single song, not an album. Average album size is ten songs. 750 * 10 == 7500.
Yes, but NetGear's stock doesn't plummet every time its CEO takes a leave. Apple may have been a good investment years ago, but at this very moment, their stock has reached a very rocky plateau.
Now, having not actually RTFA yet, I can't comment on the merits of the case.
However, the sum he's suing for is relatively small, compared to most of the crazy lawsuits I've seen - usually, they seek at least $10M, sometimes much, much more, all the way into the trillions. That itself says something about the case - it may be more about actual justice than profiteering.
PS: The guy is claiming a friendship is worth $1,500. Minimum statutory damages for "pirating" a single album is $7,500, or five friends. That alone says much about the US judicial system and this case.
Wrong federal agency. The FBI is (approximately) the federal-level police force - they're completely powerless outside the US borders. The CIA is the agency responsible for espionage and counter-espionage (as well as parts of the State Department and the NSA).
"Citizen Kane", which is the current most popular pick for "best movie ever", was received rather poorly on release. It was nominated as an "arty" film, not a broadly-appealing one. It wasn't really until decades later that it was considered a masterpiece. The same could happen this year, as with any.
I would place this under the "Stuff That Matters" category. These awards, while not important on the long-term grand scheme of things, are at least important enough that people will be talking about them for a week or so, and will possibly be discussed years from now by film students (I know for a fact that "Citizen Kane lost at the Oscars" still pops up in film history books, and if one of this year's picks ends up as "the greatest movie ever", the same could happen).
I would say that this is because of capitalism, not state control. The media doesn't make much money by upsetting the status quo, especially since the media is owned by the status quo. If you follow the same pattern of reporting everyone else does, you still get stories run, still get paid, but you don't scare off advertisers. Even Fox sticks to the same topics as every other news organization, it just puts a different spin on it. The only news organization that strays from "America's current hot subject" is NPR, and they never report on anything really important.
Of course, even the web isn't immune to this. Slashdot talks about the same things as every other tech news site - right now, it seems to be the Google CEO changeup, a few days ago it was the iPhone screw "controversy". Even the periodic activity of DRM protests seems to be coordinated between all the sites. There's really no difference in actual news content anymore - the only reason to pick one over another is the spin, or (for websites) the comments.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the standard "this is GPLv3" text is "This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." (with the version number replaced with whichever one is being used). Note that it does NOT say "or any prior version". This quite obviously means that, while the licenses are at least forward-compatible, they are not equivelent.
Huh? They've got L4D2, still relatively recent, they have even more TF2 updates, and Portal 2 coming out in a few weeks. Sure, Episode 3 is still barely more than a rumor, but it certainly doesn't seem like "hasn't made a game in four years" is an apt description.
Quoth Wikipedia: "Another cause for the uprising has been attributed to the inability of the Tunisian government from being able to censor information from reaching the Tunisian people, such as information from WikiLeaks describing rampant corruption in the Tunisian government."
Main cause? No. Contributing factor? Yes. At the very least, it seems like it was the spark that brought all the other factors into focus.
Well, a Wikileak (that's the term for something Wikileaks leaks, right?) was one of the things that started the Tunisian revolution, which led to the revolt in Egypt, and protests in Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain, and it seems to be spreading further, as far away as Iran, and Jordan. Add the fact that some pretty major corporations are also being attacked (), and this could be on the scale of 1848. I'm willing to bet that this chain of uprisings won't stop before it reaches Russia and Italy, and I'm hoping it goes all the way to the US.
We all know that America (hell, most of the world) has needed a major change in government for years now. Decades, even. It isn't bad enough that we need to start lining people against a wall, but at the very least, we need some changes that are big enough that the status quo would be upset.
Except the government eventually shut down Umbrella. No such luck with Monsanto.
The problems REALLY start when they patent an alteration to a gene, because that invariably comes with DRM that makes SecuROM look nice. Go look up Monsanto some time - if the people in charge there were in charge of the RIAA, "copy file" would be considered illegal, and merely owning a computer would require you to pay them a license, since you could accidentally pirate something.
Thus why it's an extremely bad idea to allow ANY gene patents.
While I can't actually speak for him, I have a pretty good guess at what he's doing.
He's establishing his DNA as "prior art".
Anyone who tries to patent some element of DNA (and there's plenty who will try to) now has a rather significant obstacle to overcome, especially since at least 99% of DNA is the same between people.
In other words, Glenn Beck is a professional troll?
Unfortunately, this isn't exactly the case. Sure, if isoHunt simply provided a searchable index of torrents, they should be able to claim ignorance of any wrongdoing, with the whole "safe harbor" argument, but there's a flaw in that: they did more. Several times when I visited, they had an "editor's pick" or something like that, which was invariably something pirated (and blatantly so), with a description that pretty much shouted "this file is illegal!". That's not just "refusing to take down pirated material", that goes into "actively distributing". You could probably get a conviction for conspiracy based on that.
Of course, if the Canadian MAFIIA is anything like the American one (word-of-mouth is that it's actually worse), I'd have to side with isoHunt simply out of spite.
You've obviously never been to America.
Just for one example, I have yet to find a single published, post-ratings video game (discounting free flash games and the like) that would qualify as "hardcore pornography". Anything made in the US (or the West, for that matter) generally stops at PG-13, maybe R if they think they can use the media outrage to boost sales, material - even the Playboy game never went past toplessness. Anything made in Japan has enough blur/pixelation/censor bars to meet the oddly stringent censorship laws.
Pretty soon, we'll be seeing stuff like "most violent blogs of all time" and "webcomics are destroying our youth". Just as soon as the mainstream media catches up with this decade.
I would say "there's always the PC", but even that has problems. Almost no retailers will carry an AO game, and I doubt Steam or other digital distributors do so, either. Not only that, but out of the 24 games that have actually been given an AO rating, the majority of them are Japanese imports, which seems to indicate that nobody in America is really interested in making AO games.
Only necessary when there is a greater evil. In an ideal (read "theoretical") world, the government would keep only those secrets that are necessary, and Wikileaks has demonstrated that they are very bad at filtering out "things that ought to be kept secret" from their releases. For the time being, that is merely the "cost of doing business" - inevitable collateral damage. Eventually, the damage that does will exceed the good done by releasing proper leaks, at which point I will stop supporting Wikileaks.
Yes, I know, I'm a Slashdot Heretic for saying that not all information wants to be free. But there are certain things any government needs to keep the details of secret. They don't need to publish the Secret Service defensive preparations, battle plans for all the wars that could happen, etc. Yes, the secrecy laws are massively abused, but that does not mean that there is no point to them.
That quote is only true if you're the "good guys" - the very act of fighting a visibly "good" group exposes one as "evil", directly causing defeat.
This is not such a case. The Wikileaks/Governments fight isn't "good versus evil", it's "chaotic evil versus lawful evil". For varying magnitudes of "evil".
That is not to say that I disagree with what Wikileaks is doing. They're definitely the lesses of two evils, but that's still an evil.
Recruiting ads are not PSYOPS.
No, you're thinking of "Unices", or perhaps "Unixen". I have never seen "Unxis" as the plural of "Unix", although it sort of looks like the negation of "axis".
And the MAFIAA claims tens of thousands of dollars in damages for a CD or movie I can buy at Wal-Mart for $12. Market price has no effect on damages anymore.
That's $750 per "work", which the RIAA has argued (and the courts accepted) is a single song, not an album. Average album size is ten songs. 750 * 10 == 7500.
Yes, but NetGear's stock doesn't plummet every time its CEO takes a leave. Apple may have been a good investment years ago, but at this very moment, their stock has reached a very rocky plateau.
Now, having not actually RTFA yet, I can't comment on the merits of the case.
However, the sum he's suing for is relatively small, compared to most of the crazy lawsuits I've seen - usually, they seek at least $10M, sometimes much, much more, all the way into the trillions. That itself says something about the case - it may be more about actual justice than profiteering.
PS: The guy is claiming a friendship is worth $1,500. Minimum statutory damages for "pirating" a single album is $7,500, or five friends. That alone says much about the US judicial system and this case.
Wrong federal agency. The FBI is (approximately) the federal-level police force - they're completely powerless outside the US borders. The CIA is the agency responsible for espionage and counter-espionage (as well as parts of the State Department and the NSA).
"Citizen Kane", which is the current most popular pick for "best movie ever", was received rather poorly on release. It was nominated as an "arty" film, not a broadly-appealing one. It wasn't really until decades later that it was considered a masterpiece. The same could happen this year, as with any.
I would place this under the "Stuff That Matters" category. These awards, while not important on the long-term grand scheme of things, are at least important enough that people will be talking about them for a week or so, and will possibly be discussed years from now by film students (I know for a fact that "Citizen Kane lost at the Oscars" still pops up in film history books, and if one of this year's picks ends up as "the greatest movie ever", the same could happen).
I would say that this is because of capitalism, not state control. The media doesn't make much money by upsetting the status quo, especially since the media is owned by the status quo. If you follow the same pattern of reporting everyone else does, you still get stories run, still get paid, but you don't scare off advertisers. Even Fox sticks to the same topics as every other news organization, it just puts a different spin on it. The only news organization that strays from "America's current hot subject" is NPR, and they never report on anything really important.
Of course, even the web isn't immune to this. Slashdot talks about the same things as every other tech news site - right now, it seems to be the Google CEO changeup, a few days ago it was the iPhone screw "controversy". Even the periodic activity of DRM protests seems to be coordinated between all the sites. There's really no difference in actual news content anymore - the only reason to pick one over another is the spin, or (for websites) the comments.