There's one clause in the anti-DRM section that's necessary, but it's not related to DRM, but rather to using DRM to undermine the GPL.
If you distribute software under the GPL linked against DRM components, and someone uses the GPLed software to bypass the DRM, they could be liable under the DMCA. The anti-DRM section in GPLv3 should limit this. Now, I'm inclined to believe that the GPLv2 strictly read might have the same effect... but I'm not sure.
The rest of the section is either potentially dangerous, or irrelevant (the definition of common source covers the access-to-keys part, for example). But this clause is worth keeping.
I can't push ">>" because the click-wheel is so sensitive I have to keep it locked all the time. I unlock it, but... whoops... I changed the volume by brushing it, so I go to change the volume back, but now I've bumped something else, so I'm changing the selected song by tweaking the click-wheel... without knowing where I am in the user interface I don't know what's going to happen when I do anything.
I tried it with a "real" iPod, then bought Apple's iPod remote to try and solve the problem. The shuffle just worked better.
And they're all songs I like, they may not all just be songs I want to listen to right then.
I would guess a significant number of cellphones could manage MP3 playing for far longer than [12 hours].Back in the old days a typical cellphone was a 4 inch bar and a significant portion of that was battery, and you could leave it on standby a week between charges... but these days they're already hard pressed to maintain the 72 hours of standby (a long weekend) I consider a bare minimum as it is. The advertised standby times seem to be measured next to a tower so they can run their radio at an absolute minimum level, at any rate their listed averages are way off my experience.
So, yeh, I suspect the cellphone could manage 12 hours of music playing, but not if it's also being actively used as a phone, and not without seriously compromising standby time.
"No, don't call me on that number, that's my mp3 player, my real phone's at..."
I don't simply download illegal music without discretion so I have countless songs I have never heard of by artists I am not familiar with. All the music on my iPod is legit and payed for and known.
I have lots of music from artists I'm not familiar with. I frequent mp3blogs and visit artist's websites and download half a dozen demo songs at a time, then just stick them in iTunes like tiny time-bombs set to go off randomly in my Party Shuffle. I also buy used CDs and sometimes even cheap mix CDs from gas stations, and toss them in as well... so I never know what I'm going to hear.
Even on my iPod Shuffle.
But that's OK, I'll hear it again soon enough when iTunes gets around to playing it. If I like it, a quick trip to the iTunes Music Store gets me another half dozen time-bombs to add to my supply.
Life is random.
Long before mp3blogs and the iPod Shuffle I used to buy cheap mix CDs
i guess some of the shuffle's use could be replaced by cell phones.
Not really. At best a cellphone has poor battery life, and you really don't want to get into the "I can't make a call because I flattened my battery playing music" space.:)
(unlike the $40 battery and removal tool I had to buy for my daughter's iPod Mini, which isn't holding it's charge after six months)
If your daughter's Mini quit holding its charge after six months, it should have been replaced under warranty. Mine was, after eleven months.
That said, I agree with your comment on software. My daughter's previous MP3 player was a generic flash device very much like the iPod Shuffle... at least two years before the Shuffle came out. She broke the USB connector three times, and I was only able to repair it twice, so she upgraded to a mini. It worked like a flash drive, and it was very easy to create a random playlist just the size of the device and drag it to its folder on the desktop to download.
And it had a rechargable battery, not an AAA cell. Non-rechargable batteries are a real pain for teenagers, apparently, and rechargable AAA cells have lousy life even when new.
If you are in China, you have access to google.cn, but not google.com. This is because the Great Firewall blocks access to google.com.
If you are outside China, you have access to google.com as well as google.cn. So far as I know, google is not blocking anyone from reaching google.com and forcing them to view google.cn.
So... the censorship that restricts people from receiving full search results from Google is based on the country of residence... not the domain: if you are at a site inside the Great Firewall with a.com domain, you still won't be able to access google.com, you'll have to use google.cn.
So, I don't get what the visibility of google.cn outside China has to do with it. Would you prefer that Google hid what it was doing, and redirected requests to google.cn from outside China to google.com? That would make it more like what Microsoft's policy says they'll do, but it's clearly less desirable from a human rights viewpoint.
The Explorer "Quick Tabs" seems to be inspired by the "Tab Exposé" feature that's been a part of the the Shiira web browser on the Mac since last April (it was introduced in one of the 0.9.* releases).
Shiira is an open source browser that's based, like Safari, on Apple's KHTML port (the Webkit framework on OS X 10.3 and later)... which is also open source.
Actually I think I've come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the different viewpoints. People are condemning Google's slide towards the evil of censorship and praising Microsoft's reduction in the evil of censorship.
I understand that viewpoint, but what I'm talking about are the many many postings arguing that Google should somehow learn something from Microsoft here. And they don't seem to be made in the vein of honest cynical bastardry, either.
Not only that, but I'm slightly less inclined to see Google's service as "doing evil" as a result of this discussion. Which is amusing.
Google only censors the search results of google.cn, which is physically located in China.
Aha! Thank you, I asked that question earlier (where is google.cn located) and got no response.
This is really beginning to sound like the people who got all gaga about Microsoft releasing limited parts of their source code under NDA and went off wibbling about "open source Windows".
And seeing as MS is the first large tech company to have such a policy, therefore setting the bar, it is good.
I still don't get it.
If censoring the view from China is wrong, then making that an official policy and setting a precedent that censoring the view prom China is appropriate can't possibly be good.
Please, don't keep telling me that Google is being evil. Explain why Microsoft's actions are somehow not also evil.
Yeh, this is the real question. I asked it too, and got fuzzy analogies I didn't understand and a pointer to Google's china-specific site, as if making the implemenmtation visible to the rest of the world so everyone can see how the censorship happens is somehow worse than censoring in the first place.
It's like people have a need to "reward" Microsoft for making any kind of positive steps, however reluctant or stumbling. Which is all very well from a behaviouralist perspective but it's really distorting the public debate to make the "reward" part of the debate itself.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with an American company attempting to impose American values in China. It may be ineffective, given that the Great Firewall exists, but it's not wrong... any more than Chinese companies attempting to impose Chinese values in America (I was utterly charmed and bemused when I visited a lovely little Chinese store in the US that was using quotes from the thoughts of Chairman Mao to promote their goods), or Japanese companies attempting to impose Japanese values (which is considered laudable when they're automotive companies).
And where is google.cn located? What about msn.cn? Is there an msn.cn? No, there isn't. What would Microsoft do if there was, do you suppose? What does the Chinese text at the google.cn site say?
Please, no analogies. They don't illuminate the issue any. I can honestly say I'm no better informed about what the difference is by your message after reading it and puzzling over it.
Can you try again in simple, direct, clear and explicit terms and explain why the same action is good if Microsoft does it but bad if Google does it...?
Microsoft took a blog down. They got flamed about it. They changed their policies so they'd only "take blogs down" for the country that requested it. The blog in question would still have been censored if the current policy was in effect. Result: Microsoft is applying special filters for China.
Which is exactly what Google is doing.
How is this good when Microsoft does it, and evil when Google does it?
I mean, people aren't going "well, Microsoft's expected to be evil, so this is par for the course", people are actually arguing that this is "not evil". It's less evil than blocking sites/searches that the Chinese government requested everywhere, perhaps, but Google wasn't doing that and nobody ever suggested that they might... and Microsoft was.
Microsoft isn't "sticking it to censorship" here. The blog that Microsoft removed that caused all the fuss would still have been censored under the new policy.
They're just restricting the censorship to requests from one country.
Mobile phones, not PDA's or bulky laptops are most probable ones to become personal devices of the future. Connect them with display or keyboard and you will get a classical computer.
I've been there. Phones that are even as powerful as high-end handhelds are going to remain a geek toy until there's some breakthrough in battery technology. That's the real sticking point.
But, also... "Connect them with display or keyboard and you will get a classical computer?" The display and keyboard aren't going to be any smaller than a "bulky" laptop, because today's laptops are pretty much the size they are because they can't be any smaller and have full-sized displays and keyboards. Ultrasmall laptops simply haven't caught on, and using handhelds (whether PDAs or phones) as laptop-replacements have all the same problems.
Lousy battery life when you use it as a computer, lousy interface unless you juggle a keyboard and screen that make it as big as a laptop, and they cost almost as much as laptops once you account for the subsidies. No thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
There's one clause in the anti-DRM section that's necessary, but it's not related to DRM, but rather to using DRM to undermine the GPL.
If you distribute software under the GPL linked against DRM components, and someone uses the GPLed software to bypass the DRM, they could be liable under the DMCA. The anti-DRM section in GPLv3 should limit this. Now, I'm inclined to believe that the GPLv2 strictly read might have the same effect... but I'm not sure.
The rest of the section is either potentially dangerous, or irrelevant (the definition of common source covers the access-to-keys part, for example). But this clause is worth keeping.
During the report, she said that Google could do so without using DRM, an anti-hacker technology.
:)
Well, by the OLD definition of hacker, she'd be right.
I can't push ">>" because the click-wheel is so sensitive I have to keep it locked all the time. I unlock it, but... whoops... I changed the volume by brushing it, so I go to change the volume back, but now I've bumped something else, so I'm changing the selected song by tweaking the click-wheel... without knowing where I am in the user interface I don't know what's going to happen when I do anything.
I tried it with a "real" iPod, then bought Apple's iPod remote to try and solve the problem. The shuffle just worked better.
And they're all songs I like, they may not all just be songs I want to listen to right then.
The screen and larger capacity might not be an impediment, but the less rugged design and more finicky controls are.
I would guess a significant number of cellphones could manage MP3 playing for far longer than [12 hours].Back in the old days a typical cellphone was a 4 inch bar and a significant portion of that was battery, and you could leave it on standby a week between charges... but these days they're already hard pressed to maintain the 72 hours of standby (a long weekend) I consider a bare minimum as it is. The advertised standby times seem to be measured next to a tower so they can run their radio at an absolute minimum level, at any rate their listed averages are way off my experience.
So, yeh, I suspect the cellphone could manage 12 hours of music playing, but not if it's also being actively used as a phone, and not without seriously compromising standby time.
"No, don't call me on that number, that's my mp3 player, my real phone's at..."
I don't simply download illegal music without discretion so I have countless songs I have never heard of by artists I am not familiar with. All the music on my iPod is legit and payed for and known.
I have lots of music from artists I'm not familiar with. I frequent mp3blogs and visit artist's websites and download half a dozen demo songs at a time, then just stick them in iTunes like tiny time-bombs set to go off randomly in my Party Shuffle. I also buy used CDs and sometimes even cheap mix CDs from gas stations, and toss them in as well... so I never know what I'm going to hear.
Even on my iPod Shuffle.
But that's OK, I'll hear it again soon enough when iTunes gets around to playing it. If I like it, a quick trip to the iTunes Music Store gets me another half dozen time-bombs to add to my supply.
Life is random.
Long before mp3blogs and the iPod Shuffle I used to buy cheap mix CDs
i guess some of the shuffle's use could be replaced by cell phones.
:)
Not really. At best a cellphone has poor battery life, and you really don't want to get into the "I can't make a call because I flattened my battery playing music" space.
(unlike the $40 battery and removal tool I had to buy for my daughter's iPod Mini, which isn't holding it's charge after six months)
... at least two years before the Shuffle came out. She broke the USB connector three times, and I was only able to repair it twice, so she upgraded to a mini. It worked like a flash drive, and it was very easy to create a random playlist just the size of the device and drag it to its folder on the desktop to download.
If your daughter's Mini quit holding its charge after six months, it should have been replaced under warranty. Mine was, after eleven months.
That said, I agree with your comment on software. My daughter's previous MP3 player was a generic flash device very much like the iPod Shuffle
And it had a rechargable battery, not an AAA cell. Non-rechargable batteries are a real pain for teenagers, apparently, and rechargable AAA cells have lousy life even when new.
If they get rid of the shuffle my next MP3 player won't be an iPod.
Even if the Nano-nano is the same price as the shuffle.
The biggest advantage of the shuffle, for me, is that I can easily do all operations by feel.
That's not true for any device with the never-sufficiently-damned click-wheel.
Errr...
I remember reading a warning about hearing loss when I unpacked my iPod.
Maybe you should have to prove you can read before you buy one?
Send him an olive-loaf. It's a dual-purpose weapon, you can use it on mimes as well.
And We Who Will Be Google don't like being bored.
If you are in China, you have access to google.cn, but not google.com. This is because the Great Firewall blocks access to google.com.
.com domain, you still won't be able to access google.com, you'll have to use google.cn.
If you are outside China, you have access to google.com as well as google.cn. So far as I know, google is not blocking anyone from reaching google.com and forcing them to view google.cn.
So... the censorship that restricts people from receiving full search results from Google is based on the country of residence... not the domain: if you are at a site inside the Great Firewall with a
So, I don't get what the visibility of google.cn outside China has to do with it. Would you prefer that Google hid what it was doing, and redirected requests to google.cn from outside China to google.com? That would make it more like what Microsoft's policy says they'll do, but it's clearly less desirable from a human rights viewpoint.
Google is censoring the entire Internet?
I had no idea they were that powerful. No wonder thay have an insane market cap.
The Explorer "Quick Tabs" seems to be inspired by the "Tab Exposé" feature that's been a part of the the Shiira web browser on the Mac since last April (it was introduced in one of the 0.9.* releases).
Shiira is an open source browser that's based, like Safari, on Apple's KHTML port (the Webkit framework on OS X 10.3 and later)... which is also open source.
Tab Exposé screenshot
Tab Exposé movie
Shiira English home page
Actually I think I've come up with a reasonable sounding explanation for the different viewpoints. People are condemning Google's slide towards the evil of censorship and praising Microsoft's reduction in the evil of censorship.
I understand that viewpoint, but what I'm talking about are the many many postings arguing that Google should somehow learn something from Microsoft here. And they don't seem to be made in the vein of honest cynical bastardry, either.
Not only that, but I'm slightly less inclined to see Google's service as "doing evil" as a result of this discussion. Which is amusing.
Google only censors the search results of google.cn, which is physically located in China.
Aha! Thank you, I asked that question earlier (where is google.cn located) and got no response.
This is really beginning to sound like the people who got all gaga about Microsoft releasing limited parts of their source code under NDA and went off wibbling about "open source Windows".
OK... I'm doing a really bad job of communicating here, so let me try again.
I'm not asking "why is selectively filtering information to different countries bad?"
I'm asking "why is this good when Microsoft does it, and bad when Google does it?"
And seeing as MS is the first large tech company to have such a policy, therefore setting the bar, it is good.
I still don't get it.
If censoring the view from China is wrong, then making that an official policy and setting a precedent that censoring the view prom China is appropriate can't possibly be good.
Please, don't keep telling me that Google is being evil. Explain why Microsoft's actions are somehow not also evil.
Yeh, this is the real question. I asked it too, and got fuzzy analogies I didn't understand and a pointer to Google's china-specific site, as if making the implemenmtation visible to the rest of the world so everyone can see how the censorship happens is somehow worse than censoring in the first place.
It's like people have a need to "reward" Microsoft for making any kind of positive steps, however reluctant or stumbling. Which is all very well from a behaviouralist perspective but it's really distorting the public debate to make the "reward" part of the debate itself.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with an American company attempting to impose American values in China. It may be ineffective, given that the Great Firewall exists, but it's not wrong... any more than Chinese companies attempting to impose Chinese values in America (I was utterly charmed and bemused when I visited a lovely little Chinese store in the US that was using quotes from the thoughts of Chairman Mao to promote their goods), or Japanese companies attempting to impose Japanese values (which is considered laudable when they're automotive companies).
And where is google.cn located? What about msn.cn? Is there an msn.cn? No, there isn't. What would Microsoft do if there was, do you suppose? What does the Chinese text at the google.cn site say?
Please, no analogies. They don't illuminate the issue any. I can honestly say I'm no better informed about what the difference is by your message after reading it and puzzling over it.
Can you try again in simple, direct, clear and explicit terms and explain why the same action is good if Microsoft does it but bad if Google does it...?
...exactly what the difference is.
Microsoft took a blog down. They got flamed about it. They changed their policies so they'd only "take blogs down" for the country that requested it. The blog in question would still have been censored if the current policy was in effect. Result: Microsoft is applying special filters for China.
Which is exactly what Google is doing.
How is this good when Microsoft does it, and evil when Google does it?
I mean, people aren't going "well, Microsoft's expected to be evil, so this is par for the course", people are actually arguing that this is "not evil". It's less evil than blocking sites/searches that the Chinese government requested everywhere, perhaps, but Google wasn't doing that and nobody ever suggested that they might... and Microsoft was.
Microsoft isn't "sticking it to censorship" here. The blog that Microsoft removed that caused all the fuss would still have been censored under the new policy.
They're just restricting the censorship to requests from one country.
Just like Google.
Mobile phones, not PDA's or bulky laptops are most probable ones to become personal devices of the future. Connect them with display or keyboard and you will get a classical computer.
I've been there. Phones that are even as powerful as high-end handhelds are going to remain a geek toy until there's some breakthrough in battery technology. That's the real sticking point.
But, also... "Connect them with display or keyboard and you will get a classical computer?" The display and keyboard aren't going to be any smaller than a "bulky" laptop, because today's laptops are pretty much the size they are because they can't be any smaller and have full-sized displays and keyboards. Ultrasmall laptops simply haven't caught on, and using handhelds (whether PDAs or phones) as laptop-replacements have all the same problems.
Lousy battery life when you use it as a computer, lousy interface unless you juggle a keyboard and screen that make it as big as a laptop, and they cost almost as much as laptops once you account for the subsidies. No thanks.