If I say in an interview "I think it is likely Ektanoor is a criminal" then I've commited libel unless I can make a case for that. Infringing a patent is a criminal act.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but the law steps in when that opinion is framed or stated in certain ways. It is true that a judge might require that a retraction is issued rather than a fine, if s/he feels that the opinion is not forcefully put.
However, although IANAL, I would say that making a statement in an interview which will be read by other members of the industry which makes activities such as raising funding harder for OV is not something which will automatically be taken lightly. It's not like he was down the pub, got drunk, and mouthed off in front of someone who happened to be a reporter. These words were spoken in the knowledge that they would see print in a medium where it is reasonable to believe they would damage OV's reputation and/or ability to continue their business, which in turn could quite easily constitute material damage.
Thompson is libeling the authors of Vorbis. Could the EFF be talked into taking them to court, rather than waiting for Thompson to make a claim of patent infringement? Attack is the best form of defence.
Making groundless statements in order to sabotage a company's prospects is a serious crime, at least in the UK, and the fines are unlimited. Since the code is open the CEO or whoever it was has no defense: he should have known whether the patents were infringed or not before opening his mouth.
as the No Honor Among Thieves bit, reminding me of that little picture somewhere in the old books I played from oh-so-long-ago.
It's been about 6 years since I opened it but I remember that illo too, it was in the Dungeon Master's Guide. It was by Dave Trampier who has since disappeared. Really. Even his brother in law (the great Tom Wham who designed Awful Green Things From Outer Space) who worked with him a lot doen't know where he is.
You're right: when articles are posted by the great minds on/. the rest of us should refrain from making any comment unless it is to the effect of "Gosh, wow. I wish I'd thought of that".
It has been a humbling experience to realise that I, and my opinions, are as dust on the feet of you, the Master of Sarcasm.
Until now I had little regard for the sort of people that spend 3 years carving models of Ben Franklin from talc, or adding another shitty Windows feature to KDGnomE.
I had thought that Andy Warhol was a toss-pot with a photo-copier and some poster-paints but now I realise that the fault lies - no, laid - within me. For you have opened my eyes and exposed the invalidity of my view-point. Nevermore shall I pour scorn on people doing pointless tasks for no reason. I might even move to Venezuela, in order to seek out more wisdom.
The guy who got Linux running on a Dreamcast was actually doing something useful ($99 computer with a decent OS, processor and net connection), but this is a total waste of 3 months of time.
What is the point of replacing a crap desktop with a worse one?
Wise up and go work out how to get better printer support into StarOffice (Word docs rarely print to my Postscript pronter) or expanding the number of motherboards we can use, or a decent file manager, better write access in MySQL, or faster process switching, or anything else which people need!
There are lots of interesting, technically challanging open source projects that could be handled before crud like this.
Apparantly you have to pay
them money to be able to print such lists.
No, they want people to pay and they're trying to force them with threats, but in fact there is no circumstances under UK law where the information "Arsenal is playing QPR on Friday the 12th" can be copyrighted. None. They're just trying it on.
Dude, that was sweet: the way you took a million boring old 'net cliched put-downs and made them into just another boring old cliched 'net put-down. Hope you make it to your teens without someone kicking your face in, man.
Dude, Windows was the SAME PRICE before they included IE as it was AFTER they included IE, so don't try to claim that "you
paid for windows" means "you paid for IE"
Dude, this year's Ford Fiesta is cheaper than last year's and it has a CD player as standard. By your logic this means that Ford pays you for the CD player. Sober up.
It can be done well or it can be done badly. I doubt most people mind that their car has the maker's badge on the steering wheel, for example. It depends on how Opera do it. Apparently the ads in question are changed once per week rather than being downloaded for every page and seem to appear in the top menu bar area, although it's not clear from their site.
But for CT to just assume that ads==privacy violation seemed a bit much.
Oh, no it isn't! Just because your bill isn't itemised does not mean you were not charged.
So why the hell is Opera $50?
Because it's a real company rather than a cross-subsidised bloat-factory off-shoot of AOL or M$. They actually have to try to make a quality product and make money off it, unlike IE and NS. Mozilla doesn't appear to feel it has to even produce a product more than once every four years.
Opera 4beta3 on Linux is very close to beating Netscape 4.7 (still some forms problems) and is already far better than Netscape 6. Mozilla is bloat-o-matic and I just don't care anymore - they've had their chance and they blew it years ago.
Opera works, is fast, and it's small. Unless you want to go down the text-only route there is no other browser on Linux that delivers those three items together. Once the final release is done I'm stumping up the cash.
You do realise that the control strip is NOT a file/application manager?
On the Mac, yes. On the others I mentioned they are mainly that. Either way I dislike anything which uses screen space without giving me a choice in the matter. The minimised version is like a thin hair hanging down in front of your face; just enough to irritate.
No, I really am sick of seeing huge amounts of time and energy put into copying aspects of other GUIs which are of dubious value while ignoring things like getting a small, fast, efficient file manager working which is at least as good as that on my antique Atari (Neodesk, not the built in DR thing).
I use various machines with speeds from 100 to 500MHz and memory from 64 to 92Mb and KDE/Gnome kill all of them and yet what do they give me? A bizzarly organised list of some of the applications on the machine, and a second rate file manager which is actually harder to use than the Windows one. Associating file types with applications is a hideous experience, particularly in KDE (I've not tried 2.0 yet).
Fortunately(?) I'm facing unemployment in the new year and I might then have time to do it myself.
Try using the "Control Strip" control panel. Click on "Hide Control Strip."
Gnome/KDE have no substitute for the control strip so it's even worse without it.
In the end, I just use Windowmaker, it is just as lacking in terms of a real file manager but at least it's fast and doesn't require swap-thrashing when I do start an appliction.
With (super-bloated) Star Office letting me at least have a stab at interacting with the Windows-dominated world outside, a good file manager is the only thing I miss in Linux on a day-to-day basis.
I remember the first time I used a Mac with one of those bloody control strips. I spent an hour trying to switch it off. I defies use. Like the Windows Start menu and the Gnome/KDE strips it take up space and is a half-arsed replacement for a decent file/application manager.
Is bloat and loss of control. TeX is easier to learn and easier to use but LaTeX, due to the lack of control it gives the user, is used in a lot of journals where the editors want the article writer to stick to a particular style.
So, TeX is better (much better) for your own work when you only need to produce a good looking document to your own design, LaTeX is better if you need to keep someone else happy.
Personally, if LaTeX ever suited what I need I'd probably just use Word instead.
You also have a very out-moded vision of HTML as a classification language. That is what it should be but the last 4 years of effort in HTML has been to move it to a layout language, which is a shame but there it is.
It works fine with me and is actually fast on my machine after the initial load.
On a P100 (which runs NS4.7 and Opera4-beta3 just fine, speed-wise) there is a small but detectable delay between typing a character into a textbox and it appearing on the screen, and cursor movement is like treacle. Pages as "complex" as/. take an age to render. This is not a good browser. It is not even a poor browser.
At the moment Netscape 6 is the worst browser available for Linux that is not labeled "beta". In fact it's worse than many that are.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but the law steps in when that opinion is framed or stated in certain ways. It is true that a judge might require that a retraction is issued rather than a fine, if s/he feels that the opinion is not forcefully put.
However, although IANAL, I would say that making a statement in an interview which will be read by other members of the industry which makes activities such as raising funding harder for OV is not something which will automatically be taken lightly. It's not like he was down the pub, got drunk, and mouthed off in front of someone who happened to be a reporter. These words were spoken in the knowledge that they would see print in a medium where it is reasonable to believe they would damage OV's reputation and/or ability to continue their business, which in turn could quite easily constitute material damage.
TWW
Making groundless statements in order to sabotage a company's prospects is a serious crime, at least in the UK, and the fines are unlimited. Since the code is open the CEO or whoever it was has no defense: he should have known whether the patents were infringed or not before opening his mouth.
TWW
It's been about 6 years since I opened it but I remember that illo too, it was in the Dungeon Master's Guide. It was by Dave Trampier who has since disappeared. Really. Even his brother in law (the great Tom Wham who designed Awful Green Things From Outer Space) who worked with him a lot doen't know where he is.
TWW
It has been a humbling experience to realise that I, and my opinions, are as dust on the feet of you, the Master of Sarcasm.
Until now I had little regard for the sort of people that spend 3 years carving models of Ben Franklin from talc, or adding another shitty Windows feature to KDGnomE.
I had thought that Andy Warhol was a toss-pot with a photo-copier and some poster-paints but now I realise that the fault lies - no, laid - within me. For you have opened my eyes and exposed the invalidity of my view-point. Nevermore shall I pour scorn on people doing pointless tasks for no reason. I might even move to Venezuela, in order to seek out more wisdom.
TWW
The guy who got Linux running on a Dreamcast was actually doing something useful ($99 computer with a decent OS, processor and net connection), but this is a total waste of 3 months of time.
What is the point of replacing a crap desktop with a worse one?
Wise up and go work out how to get better printer support into StarOffice (Word docs rarely print to my Postscript pronter) or expanding the number of motherboards we can use, or a decent file manager, better write access in MySQL, or faster process switching, or anything else which people need!
There are lots of interesting, technically challanging open source projects that could be handled before crud like this.
TWW
Could you pay the legal fees to stop them?
TWW
No, they want people to pay and they're trying to force them with threats, but in fact there is no circumstances under UK law where the information "Arsenal is playing QPR on Friday the 12th" can be copyrighted. None. They're just trying it on.
TWW
It's never happened to me in 3-4 years of heavy use. Perhaps the problem is on the other side of the keyboard?
TWW
No, you'll have to keep looking.
TWW
Dude, this year's Ford Fiesta is cheaper than last year's and it has a CD player as standard. By your logic this means that Ford pays you for the CD player. Sober up.
TWW
And software houses that are going head to head with M$ run on air?
TWW
But for CT to just assume that ads==privacy violation seemed a bit much.
TWW
That was my point. The rest of my reply was an attempt to fish out some relevance to the topic.
It's not brain surgery.
Apparently it is.
TWW
Oh, no it isn't! Just because your bill isn't itemised does not mean you were not charged.
So why the hell is Opera $50?
Because it's a real company rather than a cross-subsidised bloat-factory off-shoot of AOL or M$. They actually have to try to make a quality product and make money off it, unlike IE and NS. Mozilla doesn't appear to feel it has to even produce a product more than once every four years.
TWW
Does this mean that CT will be "sticking to" kuro5hin?
Spare us the hypocrisy, please.
TWW
Define "irrational", because I can give you a dozen rational reasons to dislike BG. Without getting personal.
TWW
This topic is about Opera. You don't have to leave Window Maker to use Opera, or run KDE. Or did you just feel like having a go at KDE?
TWW
Opera works, is fast, and it's small. Unless you want to go down the text-only route there is no other browser on Linux that delivers those three items together. Once the final release is done I'm stumping up the cash.
TWW
On the Mac, yes. On the others I mentioned they are mainly that. Either way I dislike anything which uses screen space without giving me a choice in the matter. The minimised version is like a thin hair hanging down in front of your face; just enough to irritate.
TWW
No, I really am sick of seeing huge amounts of time and energy put into copying aspects of other GUIs which are of dubious value while ignoring things like getting a small, fast, efficient file manager working which is at least as good as that on my antique Atari (Neodesk, not the built in DR thing).
I use various machines with speeds from 100 to 500MHz and memory from 64 to 92Mb and KDE/Gnome kill all of them and yet what do they give me? A bizzarly organised list of some of the applications on the machine, and a second rate file manager which is actually harder to use than the Windows one. Associating file types with applications is a hideous experience, particularly in KDE (I've not tried 2.0 yet).
Fortunately(?) I'm facing unemployment in the new year and I might then have time to do it myself.
Try using the "Control Strip" control panel. Click on "Hide Control Strip."
Gnome/KDE have no substitute for the control strip so it's even worse without it.
In the end, I just use Windowmaker, it is just as lacking in terms of a real file manager but at least it's fast and doesn't require swap-thrashing when I do start an appliction.
With (super-bloated) Star Office letting me at least have a stab at interacting with the Windows-dominated world outside, a good file manager is the only thing I miss in Linux on a day-to-day basis.
TWW
TWW
So, TeX is better (much better) for your own work when you only need to produce a good looking document to your own design, LaTeX is better if you need to keep someone else happy.
Personally, if LaTeX ever suited what I need I'd probably just use Word instead.
You also have a very out-moded vision of HTML as a classification language. That is what it should be but the last 4 years of effort in HTML has been to move it to a layout language, which is a shame but there it is.
TWW
TWW
On a P100 (which runs NS4.7 and Opera4-beta3 just fine, speed-wise) there is a small but detectable delay between typing a character into a textbox and it appearing on the screen, and cursor movement is like treacle. Pages as "complex" as /. take an age to render. This is not a good browser. It is not even a poor browser.
At the moment Netscape 6 is the worst browser available for Linux that is not labeled "beta". In fact it's worse than many that are.
TWW (using NS6)