Facts:
1. It is legal for MS to be a monopoly.
2. It is illegal for MS to abuse their monopoly power.
#1 is the result of consumer decisions; that's why it's legal. #2 is the result of MS decisions. So, to answer your question, it stops at the point when Microsoft stops illegally abusing their perfectly legal monopoly status.
Wrong. Lewis Carroll doesn't work here. Words don't mean exactly what the speaker means; they mean exactly what the hearer believes. When you say "I...[created] the internet" when you mean "I encouraged funding of the internet" then you are a moron. When you do not realize that "invent" and "create" are synonyms, you are a moron. And, [OT] when you spend eight years overseeing the world's largest democracy and fail to overhaul the voting system and then complain about your loss because you failed to create a new voting system, you are a moron.
Note also that, by your argument, Al Gore invented all of the following:
- interstate highways
- social security
- the national debt
- the U.S. military
- etc.
While he was in Congress, he voted for all of these. None of these would exist in their current form had it not been for his votes.
art and software/are/ different That's a matter of opinion. I disagree.
Assuming for a moment, though, that I do agree...I'd suggest that software is primarily utilitarian. It exists to accomplish a specific purpose. Come to think of it, so are most films...they exist to enrich the producers. That is their SOLE PURPOSE for existence. There are perhaps 2-3 commercial films in a year that transcend that.
How many copyright holders are going to agree to publishing their art in this bastardized format?
So...when it's software, then the rights of the user of copyrighted material are at least as important as the rights of the copyright holder. But when it's Art, that's different. I don't buy that. Either MY rights, my enshrined FAIR USE rights are as important as those of the creator...or they're not. Don't like what I do to great art? Fine...don't watch it. Do my edits offend you? You don't have to even know they exist.
Let's reclassify all racial epithets as compliments, too. And instead of calling children retarded, let's call them special...or disabled...or challenged...
Note that all these words have taken on the connotation of their referent. Calling a thing by a different name does not change the thing. The associations that people have with the thing will be associated with the new name.
Besides, why would I want to ruin a director's vision of what s/he would like the audience to see?
Gee, what a great attitude! Let's apply it to software.
"Why would I want to ruin a developer's vision of what s/he would like the user to see?"
Possibly because the developer is not omniscient and can't decide what all users will want to see. Possibly because the developer's vision is flawed. (Phantom Menace 1.1, anyone?) Possibly for reasons I can't begin to imagine but which will become obvious once the device is on the market.
In all seriousness, if a config file says "show from A to B but skip from B to C", then it would be trivial to reverse this. You might not be able to add more nudity, but you could see only nudity.
But then: why feel embarassed about this, and not when you're caught watching 'real life cop shootouts XXVI'? I guess the difference between you and a reasonable human being is that a reasonable human being WOULD feel embarassed. Watching "Real Life Cop Shootouts XXIV" ranks right up there with belching contests, empty gunracks in your pickup truck, and owning 14 hound dogs:)
We are all cleverer than our parents, our kids are cleverer than us - they can handle more than we could.
Exactly. This is why, we have to worry about nukes in the hands of any semi-technological nation, while our parents only had to worry about nukes from two nations, and their parents only had to worry about aerially dropped conventional explosives, and their parents only had to worry about machine guns, and their parents only had to worry about repeating shotguns...
You are not significantly smarter than the human beings who preceeded you. It only appears that way because you haven't yet stumbled onto the fact that the world is much more complex than it seems to a child.
Don't mess with the kids. Good point, that one. In any battle between the aged and the young, side with the young. Time is on their side, and Time is an unbeatable ally.
you should change the community standards Yes. And if you think violence is bad, you should convince all the violent people not to hurt each other. And if you think war is bad, you should get all the warmongers in the world to hold hands and sing "Give peace a chance." And if you think Microsoft is bad, you should convince everyone not to buy Microsoft products.
the bit that was removed is not needed to understand the movie (then why did the director put it in?)
Apparently you live in a world where all directors are ascetic celibates. However, in my world, directors often add nude scenes because they like to see live nude girls doing what they tell them to do. About Basic Instinct, the American writer gave some song and dance about the artistic necessity of the nudity and sexual situations in the film...the Dutch director was much more straightforward. He liked looking at naked women. I doubt that you disapprove of his opinions. Why then do you disapprove of the opinions of people who DON'T want to look at naked women?
What this thing produces are censored versions of movies. The word is "expurgated." You apparently live in a world where if a person denies anything to themself, then Big Brother won't let them watch it. (Censorship is editing by others). If someone else wants to avoid hearing profanity, or vulgarity, or obscenity, why not let them? If you have the right to hear those words in a movie, why should someone else not have the right to NOT hear those words?
It's great that directors can do anything they want to with their films. Fair use lets other people do anything they want with those films, as long as it's for their own use. What do you have against fair use? What do you have against people deciding for themselves what to see and what to hear?
Most importantly, what do you have against a device that COMPLETELY takes the wind out of the sails of anyone who wants to censor movies "for the children"? Don't want your kids to see Pocahontas's cleavage? Download the anti-cleavage config file and pop the DVD in. Want to share Star Wars with your kids but don't like the word "damn"? Download the anti-swearing config file and have at it. The only people who'll be able to complain about the content of movies now will be demonstrably bad parents - ie, ones who refuse to manage the content their children are exposed to.
P.S. If you don't think parents should manage what their kids are exposed to, then I encourage you to take your two- and three-year old to a slasher flick. Several sleepless nights will ensue and you'll learn the hard way.
And you call yourself a geek! It is obvious to the rest of us that both AMD and MS are trying to ride the coattails of D&D, where the goal is to accumulate as many XPs as possible. I've almost got enough to reach second level, which means more HPs and another spell. It's a good thing CDRs are so cheap these days...
This doesn't surprise me a bit. I work for a law firm who does a fair bit of work dealing Federal courts who REQUIRE electronic filings. You can't submit a brief or pleading on paper; you have to submit a.PDF file of the document to the court through their web site.
Guess what systems have been widely infected by Code Red. And Code Red II. And NIMDA. These are organizations who are expected to serve a public trust, and who are DEPENDENT on their web servers to stay up. Not only do they fail to keep up with security patches (Code Red), they fail to apply patches when it becomes obvious they've failed to do so (Code Red II). They don't even apply patches or take servers offline when they've been rooted (NIMDA).
I couldn't figure out where all the Code Red etc. worms were still coming from until I discovered this while working with an attorney to file a brief with an infected court system. Your tax dollars at work.
Re:PayPal. Nice idea, but it has it's problems.
on
The PayPal Phenomenon
·
· Score: 1
Just because you're morally right, doesn't mean the system is going to back you up.
Oh my goodness, how right you are! NOW I've learnt the error of my ways. I shall never again fight injustice, nor implore others to do the same. I shall sit in my little veal stockade, moving three inches forward and back and two inches side to side. I will thank the farmer for the alfalfa hay, and silently bow my head when they bring the humane killer.
Not.
Look, I'm fully aware of the FACT that sometimes when you go up against the big boys, you lose and get bruised. You need to be aware of the FACT that your actions and inactions have repercussions beyond your own life. So forcing someone to acknowledgte that they're wrong is a hassle. Deal with it. The more you do so now, the less you (and others) will have to do so in the future.
Re:PayPal. Nice idea, but it has it's problems.
on
The PayPal Phenomenon
·
· Score: 3
So are you going to file a small-claims suit against them, or just whine? I have no patience with people who say "ABC corp ripped me off to the tune of $X" but who then sit there and take it. People like that are the reason the behavior continues. Get a judgement against them. Get evidence of wrongdoing into the public record. Create a FACTUAL web page detailing your experience and see to it that a search for "PayPal" turns up your page.
If you're unwilling to do this, I can only assume you're in the wrong.
The first thing you should do is ignore anyone who doesn't know the difference between copyright and trademark and who doesn't realize that there probably isn't a registered trademark at stake, since the original story mentions that the radio station is poor...
Of course, keeping it free will obviously be a concern of his, but it might not be his main concern.
AAACK! Here, sir, is a credit card, with no limit on it. I invite you to visit the clue store and purchase all you can. Alternatively, go to gnu.org and READ a bit of what RMS has written. I cannot believe that his concern will be anything BUT keeping it free. Freedom is more important than good, fast, or cheap to him...
A short synopsis might be: Eric spent from high school to present of his life creating this wonderful resource. One day he returns from lunch to find a contract which he signs without reading. Eric spends the next year learning several hard lessons about life. Finally, he admits that CRC owns his content and he has to pay them money to publish what he created.
It's sad. I don't fault him, but I wish he'd made better choices.
Slashdot Mirror
"Linux? Isn't that the program that terrorists use to hide from the FBI?"
Facts:
1. It is legal for MS to be a monopoly.
2. It is illegal for MS to abuse their monopoly power.
#1 is the result of consumer decisions; that's why it's legal. #2 is the result of MS decisions. So, to answer your question, it stops at the point when Microsoft stops illegally abusing their perfectly legal monopoly status.
Wrong. Lewis Carroll doesn't work here. Words don't mean exactly what the speaker means; they mean exactly what the hearer believes. When you say "I...[created] the internet" when you mean "I encouraged funding of the internet" then you are a moron. When you do not realize that "invent" and "create" are synonyms, you are a moron. And, [OT] when you spend eight years overseeing the world's largest democracy and fail to overhaul the voting system and then complain about your loss because you failed to create a new voting system, you are a moron.
Note also that, by your argument, Al Gore invented all of the following:
- interstate highways
- social security
- the national debt
- the U.S. military
- etc.
While he was in Congress, he voted for all of these. None of these would exist in their current form had it not been for his votes.
Drilling for petroleum is inherently stupid when you've got those giant balls of petrochemicals orbiting the sun.
art and software /are/ different
That's a matter of opinion. I disagree.
Assuming for a moment, though, that I do agree...I'd suggest that software is primarily utilitarian. It exists to accomplish a specific purpose. Come to think of it, so are most films...they exist to enrich the producers. That is their SOLE PURPOSE for existence. There are perhaps 2-3 commercial films in a year that transcend that.
How many copyright holders are going to agree to publishing their art in this bastardized format?
So...when it's software, then the rights of the user of copyrighted material are at least as important as the rights of the copyright holder. But when it's Art, that's different. I don't buy that. Either MY rights, my enshrined FAIR USE rights are as important as those of the creator...or they're not. Don't like what I do to great art? Fine...don't watch it. Do my edits offend you? You don't have to even know they exist.
Let's reclassify all racial epithets as compliments, too. And instead of calling children retarded, let's call them special...or disabled...or challenged...
Note that all these words have taken on the connotation of their referent. Calling a thing by a different name does not change the thing. The associations that people have with the thing will be associated with the new name.
Besides, why would I want to ruin a director's vision of what s/he would like the audience to see?
Gee, what a great attitude! Let's apply it to software.
"Why would I want to ruin a developer's vision of what s/he would like the user to see?"
Possibly because the developer is not omniscient and can't decide what all users will want to see. Possibly because the developer's vision is flawed. (Phantom Menace 1.1, anyone?) Possibly for reasons I can't begin to imagine but which will become obvious once the device is on the market.
In all seriousness, if a config file says "show from A to B but skip from B to C", then it would be trivial to reverse this. You might not be able to add more nudity, but you could see only nudity.
But then: why feel embarassed about this, and not when you're caught watching 'real life cop shootouts XXVI'? :)
I guess the difference between you and a reasonable human being is that a reasonable human being WOULD feel embarassed. Watching "Real Life Cop Shootouts XXIV" ranks right up there with belching contests, empty gunracks in your pickup truck, and owning 14 hound dogs
We are all cleverer than our parents, our kids are cleverer than us - they can handle more than we could.
Exactly. This is why, we have to worry about nukes in the hands of any semi-technological nation, while our parents only had to worry about nukes from two nations, and their parents only had to worry about aerially dropped conventional explosives, and their parents only had to worry about machine guns, and their parents only had to worry about repeating shotguns...
You are not significantly smarter than the human beings who preceeded you. It only appears that way because you haven't yet stumbled onto the fact that the world is much more complex than it seems to a child.
Don't mess with the kids.
Good point, that one. In any battle between the aged and the young, side with the young. Time is on their side, and Time is an unbeatable ally.
you should change the community standards
Yes. And if you think violence is bad, you should convince all the violent people not to hurt each other. And if you think war is bad, you should get all the warmongers in the world to hold hands and sing "Give peace a chance." And if you think Microsoft is bad, you should convince everyone not to buy Microsoft products.
I think we've solved all the problems now.
By the way, I'm being sarcastic.
the bit that was removed is not needed to understand the movie (then why did the director put it in?)
Apparently you live in a world where all directors are ascetic celibates. However, in my world, directors often add nude scenes because they like to see live nude girls doing what they tell them to do. About Basic Instinct, the American writer gave some song and dance about the artistic necessity of the nudity and sexual situations in the film...the Dutch director was much more straightforward. He liked looking at naked women. I doubt that you disapprove of his opinions. Why then do you disapprove of the opinions of people who DON'T want to look at naked women?
What this thing produces are censored versions of movies.
The word is "expurgated." You apparently live in a world where if a person denies anything to themself, then Big Brother won't let them watch it. (Censorship is editing by others). If someone else wants to avoid hearing profanity, or vulgarity, or obscenity, why not let them? If you have the right to hear those words in a movie, why should someone else not have the right to NOT hear those words?
It's great that directors can do anything they want to with their films. Fair use lets other people do anything they want with those films, as long as it's for their own use. What do you have against fair use? What do you have against people deciding for themselves what to see and what to hear?
Most importantly, what do you have against a device that COMPLETELY takes the wind out of the sails of anyone who wants to censor movies "for the children"? Don't want your kids to see Pocahontas's cleavage? Download the anti-cleavage config file and pop the DVD in. Want to share Star Wars with your kids but don't like the word "damn"? Download the anti-swearing config file and have at it. The only people who'll be able to complain about the content of movies now will be demonstrably bad parents - ie, ones who refuse to manage the content their children are exposed to.
P.S. If you don't think parents should manage what their kids are exposed to, then I encourage you to take your two- and three-year old to a slasher flick. Several sleepless nights will ensue and you'll learn the hard way.
Real men use their tongue to gauge voltages...
1. Discover the vulnerability.
2. Write code to exploit the vulnerability.
3. Arrange with an industry journalist to demonstrate the exploit.
Then it comes down to MS PR vs. journalistic integrity.
P.S. Don't even THINK about doing this unless you're cool with MS buying all the trade rags...
And you call yourself a geek! It is obvious to the rest of us that both AMD and MS are trying to ride the coattails of D&D, where the goal is to accumulate as many XPs as possible. I've almost got enough to reach second level, which means more HPs and another spell. It's a good thing CDRs are so cheap these days...
Hmmm...so there were no terrorists in the flight path armed with SAMs?
This doesn't surprise me a bit. I work for a law firm who does a fair bit of work dealing Federal courts who REQUIRE electronic filings. You can't submit a brief or pleading on paper; you have to submit a .PDF file of the document to the court through their web site.
Guess what systems have been widely infected by Code Red. And Code Red II. And NIMDA. These are organizations who are expected to serve a public trust, and who are DEPENDENT on their web servers to stay up. Not only do they fail to keep up with security patches (Code Red), they fail to apply patches when it becomes obvious they've failed to do so (Code Red II). They don't even apply patches or take servers offline when they've been rooted (NIMDA).
I couldn't figure out where all the Code Red etc. worms were still coming from until I discovered this while working with an attorney to file a brief with an infected court system. Your tax dollars at work.
Just because you're morally right, doesn't mean the system is going to back you up.
Oh my goodness, how right you are! NOW I've learnt the error of my ways. I shall never again fight injustice, nor implore others to do the same. I shall sit in my little veal stockade, moving three inches forward and back and two inches side to side. I will thank the farmer for the alfalfa hay, and silently bow my head when they bring the humane killer.
Not.
Look, I'm fully aware of the FACT that sometimes when you go up against the big boys, you lose and get bruised. You need to be aware of the FACT that your actions and inactions have repercussions beyond your own life. So forcing someone to acknowledgte that they're wrong is a hassle. Deal with it. The more you do so now, the less you (and others) will have to do so in the future.
So are you going to file a small-claims suit against them, or just whine? I have no patience with people who say "ABC corp ripped me off to the tune of $X" but who then sit there and take it. People like that are the reason the behavior continues. Get a judgement against them. Get evidence of wrongdoing into the public record. Create a FACTUAL web page detailing your experience and see to it that a search for "PayPal" turns up your page.
If you're unwilling to do this, I can only assume you're in the wrong.
First they came for the terrorists...
Then they came for the murders...
Then the rapists...
The burglars,
the shoplifters,
traffic violators.
Of course, keeping it free will obviously be a concern of his, but it might not be his main concern.
You don't appear to have read his writings. Check out the philosophy section of GNU.
The first thing you should do is ignore anyone who doesn't know the difference between copyright and trademark and who doesn't realize that there probably isn't a registered trademark at stake, since the original story mentions that the radio station is poor...
Of course, keeping it free will obviously be a concern of his, but it might not be his main concern.
AAACK! Here, sir, is a credit card, with no limit on it. I invite you to visit the clue store and purchase all you can. Alternatively, go to gnu.org and READ a bit of what RMS has written. I cannot believe that his concern will be anything BUT keeping it free. Freedom is more important than good, fast, or cheap to him...
A short synopsis might be: Eric spent from high school to present of his life creating this wonderful resource. One day he returns from lunch to find a contract which he signs without reading. Eric spends the next year learning several hard lessons about life. Finally, he admits that CRC owns his content and he has to pay them money to publish what he created.
It's sad. I don't fault him, but I wish he'd made better choices.