I'm not too sure either; I wanted to make sure that somebody make clear that distributing GPL software as the firmware BIOS for something is just as much distrobution as putting it onto a CD and shelving it as a Linux distrobution.
ease of use is a big issue, and I think that it's still safe to say that crown belongs to Microsoft.
Every time I see this line of thought, I laugh. I've had it up to here {gestures about 3 feet over head} with the inconsistency of the Microsoft UI.
The "big secret" to being easy to use is consistency. When you see a round doorknob, you expect to turn it, not pull. But Windows has to have the most inconsistent UI design I've ever seen; the following two things are the most blantant breakage of consistency that I've ever seen in any UI.
Drag & Drop: Open an Explorer Window and (without a modifier key) drag each of the following onto the desktop: a hard drive, a (document-only) folder on the main drive (the one with the WINDOWS\ or WINNT\ folder) and a folder from a network drive. In order, this should create a shortcut, move the folder, and copy the folder. Wow, real consistent interface there -- one command that can do three different things, with little to no clue as to how it selects which operation it wishes to perform.
I'm a "bilingual" user, with two keyboard layouts. (I put bilingual in quotes as my two languages are just layout dialects: QWERTY and Dvorak.) However, I do know several people who must use their computer in a bilingual form, and they and I suffer from the worst UI inconsistency in Windows: keboard layout is dictated on a per-application basis. Furthermore, system prompts always use the default layout -- so if you are typing a letter in the non-default layout and a system prompt requests your attention, it takes an act of will to shift mental gears and select the proper "shortcut key" to respond (Y/N/C to a yes/no/cancel message).
Windows doesn't have a "easy" interface -- for the greater part, it has a dumb one; Microsoft's attempts to "smarten up" their UI has make it impossible for me to work with (without much swearing and cursing and wasted time).
Yeeeess, and if they embed it into some hardware device which I bought, they provided me a binary. Or are you suggesting that maybe hardware devices are deliberately shipped with blank EEPROMS?
No, the problem is that we have declared a natural phenomonon to be divisible and parceled as "property" despite the fact that there is no failsafe way to defend your rights to a patch of spectrum. You can't make ownership of a radio interception device illegal, because with open source software defined radio any piece of 50' wire (plus some very basic circuitry) becomes the hardware required to intercept any radio transmission (antenna) -- all processing is done in software. (What, you'll make the software illegal? Good luck -- just look at DeCSS for what will happen under that idea.) You can easily track down broadcasters, but how do you defend a patch of the radio spectrum from observers???
First off he refers to "war driving" and "war chalking" without ever once spelling out Wireless Access Reconnaissance even though he finds the space to define WEP. Makes it sound a bit aggressive, and not by accident.
My understanding was that the two terms are derived from the practice of "war dialing", which got its' name from the movie "Wargames". After all, they aren't all that different -- the blind search for previously unknown computer networks -- its' just that one search occurs in a "virtual space" (set of phone numbers) while the other occurs in "meat space" (physical locality).
Companies could demand and get agreements for monthly billings, and once that's in place, the door is wide open for rampant trickery to modify those agreements.
Isn't this what Microsoft's Licensing 6 plan was all about?
That's why whenever I speak with telemarketers, I do two things:
Make them give their pitch as soon as possible.
Always give a specific answer to a question: "I can hear you", "That information is correct", etc. avoiding general words of assent.
I knew the scummy ones would edit tapes, and mentally prepared myself ahead of time. If you find it's too much work to do this, you have two options: record the call yourself as well (less work but still work), or take another posters' suggestion and go all cellular. (Number portability-- which I assume will be compatible with land line number portability-- begins before the end of this year.)
Sorry - I didn't mean for that to taken seriously (more as a social commentary on all the times Hollywood actors make similarly stupid statements)... I should have included a to make myself clear.
By the way, I do agree with what you just said: no matter how unfair the rulings seem they are still my government. However, I like to also keep in mind that the second amendment was intended to allow for a second revolution, if it ever became necessary. (It's not required... not yet.)
So then the [GPL] contradicts itself. Wouldn't the later provision override the previous one? That is, assuming the court doesn't decide to interpret the seeming contradiction to mean that running the program is not restricted, but installing or loading it into memory is.
IANAL... but my understanding of contract law and copyright contradict you in two different ways.
Contracts (such as an EULA or the GPL) are typically written from the "most broad" restrictions down: e.g. later clauses rarely countermand an earlier one (they are intended to refine and further narrow what was originally a broad statement). Therefore, if the first clause of the GPL says you do not need to agree to that document in order to run the program, later ambiguous or contrary statements (of equal or lesser legal strength) are "overriden" into having a meaning which complies with the prior clauses. [I wish take this time to repeat: I AM NOT A LAWYER, NOR AM I A LEGAL STUDENT. Do not treat this opinion piece as hard fact, but as a general outsider's observation of the application of law. Furthermore, contradictory clauses make for the "exciting" contract violation cases. In case of doubt, seek a professional's opinion. However, even with this firm disclaimer, it should be noted that the head legal councel for the FSF sharesthis interpretation of the GPL.]
End users have the fair use right to "space shift" and "format shift" media they have legally aquired (as decided by the RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia court case). In the absense of non-copyright based restrictions (such as the clauses of a standard EULA), that right remains; therefore, the acts of installing or running a program (as space and format shifting actions, respectively) do not form copyright violations (which would require agreeing to the GPL).
I would hazard a guess that your confusion may arise from the fact that GPL-based programs distributed with a standard installer (which mandates agreement with an EULA) insert the GPL into the EULA box. This does not imply that consent to the GPL is required to run GPL programs, only that the distributor was very lazy. Any other questions?
No, it says if you modify, copy, or distribute it you must follow these rules. I'd like to see you run software without modifying or copying it.
Nice way to imply that agreeing to the GPL is required to run a GPL'd program... but it explicitly excludes that case from itself. From paragraph 0: [emphasis added]
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope.
The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
While IANAL I would go into the courthouse with the argument that Fair Use is a right, expressed within the Constitution's Copyright clause.
The entire clause that grants Congress the power to determine copyright is framed by the clause "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Therefore, I would argue that even though the phrasing states a grant of "exclusive rights" to the originator, those rights must fall within the promotion requirement.
As copyright currently exists in the US, it is the commercialization of a work that fulfills the promotion requirement. With information, since copying does not deprive either party of the use of that information; certain forms of copying -- for example, space, time, and format shifting -- do not hamper the commercialization of a work and should therefore be excluded from the "exclusive rights" of a copyright holder.
In my mind, the fair use provisions of US Law (Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107) as well as the other exclusions (sections 108-112) codify exactly which forms of copying are considered to be counteractive to the promotion requirement.
Re:WINE is also not a properly licensed MS OS.
on
Catching up with Wine
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· Score: 5, Insightful
IANAL, but I do keep up with court cases; AFAIK there are very few valid EULAs (which appear solely online, BTW). Since the license is not presented to me until after the exchange of money for product, the doctrine of "First Sale" trumps many of the onerous "can't do that" clauses in EULAs. (See Softman v. Adobe.) When the fair use copying (to include space-shifting) is included, one can argue that an EULA is not required for use of software, despite the fact that copying or stated agreement-implying actions may take place. Since I bought the product to use it, my use of the product is not consent to an agreement (likewise, my exercise of fair use space shifting does not imply consent); therefore, since I have neither clearly stated an agreement to the license nor do I believe the EULA listed by boxed software (neither print nor digital) is valid, I do not feel bound by their conditions. (My actions are instead regulated by traditional copyright law, which still forbids redistrobution, modification, and multiple simultanious users.)
Even were the above false, VFP is produced by Microsoft. I would argue that this clause represents illegal (monopolistic) tying of the application product to Microsoft's operating systems.
In fact, it probably costs them more dollars for their lawyers to draft various emails and notices than it would if a few Linux nerds run MS software. In fact, the latter probably costs them zip.
No, geeks cost Microsoft big dollars -- and not when you apply *AA style piracy maths. When Microsoft begins their push to.NET based application servers where you don't own a copy but instead pay "rent" for the software (monthly? Hourly? Per use? All of the above?), every user of Open Source will be a lost stream of revenue. Under such a scheme (where you pay constant fees for using MS software but OSS/Linux remains free=beer), I know a whole bunch of people who would find it very favorable to switch to Linux purely for that financial aspect (as it is a problem of a completely different magnitude to forge a valid server login versus pirating standalone programs).
Also as people become less capable of performing their own system maintainence thanks to Digital Rights Manglement and Palladium protection of the OS (ever performed a 1:1 hard drive swap or motherboard upgrade under Windows XP?), they will find more and more value in the free=speech (libris) aspect of OSS as well. Yes, we Linux geeks don't cost Microsoft any money at all... except in lost sales of upgrade packages (and in the future, lost rent on their software). And that sum of money, according to the *AA piracy maths, is vast indeed (why, I myself must have cost them $1B thanks to my own non-MS use and advocacy thereof!).
The dangers of this are entirely in the disturbing broadness in the definitions, and the "everything not permitted is forbidden" catch. I much prefer the "everything not forbidden is permitted" way of things.
IANAL, but my understanding of the Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution is that it frames a "everything not forbidden is protected" slant on US law. I am sure that (even if this is not strictly true) one could make a convincing argument that this law imposes Too Much Control over the citizen (aka "consumer") in that their actions must be approved by an outside organization, and that such controls (even if not by the government) are against an unspoken right expressed in the Ninth Amendment.
Certainly if you drop my sentence cold without any context even human listeners have dificulties with rapid understanding. However, putting that sentence (or any other convoluted one) into a constructive context allows most people to understand it well enough without skipping a beat while a computer will not improve by a similar amount. The difference lies in the contextual cues (and tone of voice) that humans find so vital in decyphering such convoluted sentences.
Likewise, have you ever tried punning to a speech dictation program? (I have, and I found it an excercise in futility.) Try this one: "When the NY Friar's Club dined out on the docks, that evening's main course was Port Roast." Dollars to doughnuts every continuous speech dictation program you use is going to insist on fixing the punchline into "pork roast", unless you enunciate unusually clearly. Yet people hear that sentence accurately enough the first time they groan at the horror of the pun. Where is the difference? Context and tone, two things even the current generation of text dictation programs don't fully realize.
The point I was trying to make was that modeling algorythms (such as those used to process speech, filter spam, or manage traffic lights) often work better the "simpler" they are (I trust naieve Bayesian filters to handle spam, and that essentially decomposes to a little text processing and one math equation). Essentially, I'm arguing that Occam's Razor should be applied to the algorythms. But how to properly pare text processing with the Razor is a question I do not yet have a handle upon.
Does their logic system fail (or degrade) gracefully?
My tastes in music are varied wildly, and I often will select a small set of my MP3s based on mood; will this system be able to determine that when I code I like to listen to classical but when playing games, alternative music is the thing? Or will it just play it all at once, unaware of the correlative patterns that would link the timing of music selection -- just mashing everything together into one massive playlist? (Given that nothing, not even time of day, can help determine what I want to hear, I have some serious doubts their system can handle my preferences as well as I do.)
Truly "smart" programs often aren't really; the defining line I draw is how well they handle pathological cases. For example, have your dictation software transcribe the following sentence: "The village yeoman, Hugh, hewed two yews to use in the upcoming archery contest". I'm not guaranteeing it will choke, but it sure won't be pleased with you, despite the grammatical perfection of the sentence. However, any human hearing that will immediately make sense of it. Unsurprisingly, it is the simple algorythms (like naieve Bayesian statistics for spam filtering) that seem to best manage the complexity of real life while still failing gracefully.
If you're talking the hardcore gamer -- the kind who subscribes to six gaming magazines, builds his(/her) own $4,000 box and argues over the merits of a higher framerate vs. higher screen resolution -- then yes, if Linux doesn't run $Big_Name_Game then they won't want to deal with it. But for Joe SixPack, who doesn't have a single gaming magazine subscription, it doesn't matter if they have Hoyle Solitaire, Spider Solitaire or PySol, just so long as it works. For that segment of the market, there is nothing wrong with Linux's native game support (it's the desktop experience, in my experience, that scares them away).
Since I can state with certainty that casual gamers far outnumber the hardcore gamers, we can worry only about the casual gamers, and let market forces take care of moving the hardcore types to Linux.
Re:Native ports wont happen until
on
Winex 3.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
WineX will not run games on any non-x86 platform. WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator" and that statement is quite true: all it does is translate Windows API calls to Linux API calls. Since this does not alter or in any way affect the machine code of the game program itself, you cannot use Wine (or WineX) to play games on a different platform.
There are projectsoutthere that aim to provide a platform-independent method to produce commercial-quality games. There is no real reason that a company has to struggle with long, difficult ports of system-oriented code if they use the platform independent OpenGL (and other libraries) instead.
Now, how do you convince developers (or, more importantly, their managers) of the value of this approach? I don't know, because to a manager market flexibility is just Yet Another Buzzword (TM).
Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games. You needn't rely on software ports to attract gamers to Linux (although I will admit that it does make things easier).
Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?
on
Winex 3.0 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
WineX tackles the chicken and egg problem...
Actuallly, I thought Loki tackled the chicken & egg problem. From what I understood, it wasn't lack of market that sank the company but poor management.
It doesn't have PERFECT application support. That's why you want native ports.
That's why I phrased it as being "perfect" in quotes: I know there are faults with the program, and I know it will never be literally perfect. But when for the majority of programs the process is "good enough" and doesn't interfere with execution, then most people won't look for a better solution.
Besides, you are probably the only person who is willing to switch to another OS and throw away the thousands of dollars invested in software for win32.
Re:A full DirectX Win32 wrapper?
on
Winex 3.0 Released
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent. Without a visible need to port to Linux, developers will continue to release games that only support Windows.
You have a choice: emulate Windows (forever), or seek native software ports. I've chosennativeports, because I think that is the better long-term solution. But if you just can't stand to give over your EverCrack until they provide a Linux client... that is your choice. Just be aware I won't be sympathetic to complaints about the dearth of Linux game ports.
No, it makes perfect sense. We have a Drug Czar (John Walters) and a Terrorism Czar (Tom Ridge), both of whose jobs are to eradicate the things they are Czar "of". Therefore, the Prizacy Czar's job is to eradicate privacy. Ergo, the title makes perfect sense.
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I'm not too sure either; I wanted to make sure that somebody make clear that distributing GPL software as the firmware BIOS for something is just as much distrobution as putting it onto a CD and shelving it as a Linux distrobution.
Yeeeess, and if they embed it into some hardware device which I bought, they provided me a binary. Or are you suggesting that maybe hardware devices are deliberately shipped with blank EEPROMS?
- Make them give their pitch as soon as possible.
- Always give a specific answer to a question: "I can hear you", "That information is correct", etc. avoiding general words of assent.
I knew the scummy ones would edit tapes, and mentally prepared myself ahead of time. If you find it's too much work to do this, you have two options: record the call yourself as well (less work but still work), or take another posters' suggestion and go all cellular. (Number portability-- which I assume will be compatible with land line number portability-- begins before the end of this year.)Sorry - I didn't mean for that to taken seriously (more as a social commentary on all the times Hollywood actors make similarly stupid statements)... I should have included a to make myself clear.
... not yet.)
By the way, I do agree with what you just said: no matter how unfair the rulings seem they are still my government. However, I like to also keep in mind that the second amendment was intended to allow for a second revolution, if it ever became necessary. (It's not required
Dude, if they want to take my AK-47 they aren't "my government" anymore.
- Contracts (such as an EULA or the GPL) are typically written from the "most broad" restrictions down: e.g. later clauses rarely countermand an earlier one (they are intended to refine and further narrow what was originally a broad statement). Therefore, if the first clause of the GPL says you do not need to agree to that document in order to run the program, later ambiguous or contrary statements (of equal or lesser legal strength) are "overriden" into having a meaning which complies with the prior clauses. [I wish take this time to repeat: I AM NOT A LAWYER, NOR AM I A LEGAL STUDENT. Do not treat this opinion piece as hard fact, but as a general outsider's observation of the application of law. Furthermore, contradictory clauses make for the "exciting" contract violation cases. In case of doubt, seek a professional's opinion. However, even with this firm disclaimer, it should be noted that the head legal councel for the FSF shares this interpretation of the GPL.]
- End users have the fair use right to "space shift" and "format shift" media they have legally aquired (as decided by the RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia court case). In the absense of non-copyright based restrictions (such as the clauses of a standard EULA), that right remains; therefore, the acts of installing or running a program (as space and format shifting actions, respectively) do not form copyright violations (which would require agreeing to the GPL).
I would hazard a guess that your confusion may arise from the fact that GPL-based programs distributed with a standard installer (which mandates agreement with an EULA) insert the GPL into the EULA box. This does not imply that consent to the GPL is required to run GPL programs, only that the distributor was very lazy. Any other questions?While IANAL I would go into the courthouse with the argument that Fair Use is a right, expressed within the Constitution's Copyright clause.
The entire clause that grants Congress the power to determine copyright is framed by the clause "To promote the progress of science and useful arts". Therefore, I would argue that even though the phrasing states a grant of "exclusive rights" to the originator, those rights must fall within the promotion requirement.
As copyright currently exists in the US, it is the commercialization of a work that fulfills the promotion requirement. With information, since copying does not deprive either party of the use of that information; certain forms of copying -- for example, space, time, and format shifting -- do not hamper the commercialization of a work and should therefore be excluded from the "exclusive rights" of a copyright holder.
In my mind, the fair use provisions of US Law (Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107) as well as the other exclusions (sections 108-112) codify exactly which forms of copying are considered to be counteractive to the promotion requirement.
IANAL, but I do keep up with court cases; AFAIK there are very few valid EULAs (which appear solely online, BTW). Since the license is not presented to me until after the exchange of money for product, the doctrine of "First Sale" trumps many of the onerous "can't do that" clauses in EULAs. (See Softman v. Adobe.) When the fair use copying (to include space-shifting) is included, one can argue that an EULA is not required for use of software, despite the fact that copying or stated agreement-implying actions may take place. Since I bought the product to use it, my use of the product is not consent to an agreement (likewise, my exercise of fair use space shifting does not imply consent); therefore, since I have neither clearly stated an agreement to the license nor do I believe the EULA listed by boxed software (neither print nor digital) is valid, I do not feel bound by their conditions. (My actions are instead regulated by traditional copyright law, which still forbids redistrobution, modification, and multiple simultanious users.)
Even were the above false, VFP is produced by Microsoft. I would argue that this clause represents illegal (monopolistic) tying of the application product to Microsoft's operating systems.
Also as people become less capable of performing their own system maintainence thanks to Digital Rights Manglement and Palladium protection of the OS (ever performed a 1:1 hard drive swap or motherboard upgrade under Windows XP?), they will find more and more value in the free=speech (libris) aspect of OSS as well. Yes, we Linux geeks don't cost Microsoft any money at all... except in lost sales of upgrade packages (and in the future, lost rent on their software). And that sum of money, according to the *AA piracy maths, is vast indeed (why, I myself must have cost them $1B thanks to my own non-MS use and advocacy thereof!).
Certainly if you drop my sentence cold without any context even human listeners have dificulties with rapid understanding. However, putting that sentence (or any other convoluted one) into a constructive context allows most people to understand it well enough without skipping a beat while a computer will not improve by a similar amount. The difference lies in the contextual cues (and tone of voice) that humans find so vital in decyphering such convoluted sentences.
Likewise, have you ever tried punning to a speech dictation program? (I have, and I found it an excercise in futility.) Try this one: "When the NY Friar's Club dined out on the docks, that evening's main course was Port Roast." Dollars to doughnuts every continuous speech dictation program you use is going to insist on fixing the punchline into "pork roast", unless you enunciate unusually clearly. Yet people hear that sentence accurately enough the first time they groan at the horror of the pun. Where is the difference? Context and tone, two things even the current generation of text dictation programs don't fully realize.
The point I was trying to make was that modeling algorythms (such as those used to process speech, filter spam, or manage traffic lights) often work better the "simpler" they are (I trust naieve Bayesian filters to handle spam, and that essentially decomposes to a little text processing and one math equation). Essentially, I'm arguing that Occam's Razor should be applied to the algorythms. But how to properly pare text processing with the Razor is a question I do not yet have a handle upon.
Does their logic system fail (or degrade) gracefully?
My tastes in music are varied wildly, and I often will select a small set of my MP3s based on mood; will this system be able to determine that when I code I like to listen to classical but when playing games, alternative music is the thing? Or will it just play it all at once, unaware of the correlative patterns that would link the timing of music selection -- just mashing everything together into one massive playlist? (Given that nothing, not even time of day, can help determine what I want to hear, I have some serious doubts their system can handle my preferences as well as I do.)
Truly "smart" programs often aren't really; the defining line I draw is how well they handle pathological cases. For example, have your dictation software transcribe the following sentence: "The village yeoman, Hugh, hewed two yews to use in the upcoming archery contest". I'm not guaranteeing it will choke, but it sure won't be pleased with you, despite the grammatical perfection of the sentence. However, any human hearing that will immediately make sense of it. Unsurprisingly, it is the simple algorythms (like naieve Bayesian statistics for spam filtering) that seem to best manage the complexity of real life while still failing gracefully.
If you're talking the hardcore gamer -- the kind who subscribes to six gaming magazines, builds his(/her) own $4,000 box and argues over the merits of a higher framerate vs. higher screen resolution -- then yes, if Linux doesn't run $Big_Name_Game then they won't want to deal with it. But for Joe SixPack, who doesn't have a single gaming magazine subscription, it doesn't matter if they have Hoyle Solitaire, Spider Solitaire or PySol, just so long as it works. For that segment of the market, there is nothing wrong with Linux's native game support (it's the desktop experience, in my experience, that scares them away).
Since I can state with certainty that casual gamers far outnumber the hardcore gamers, we can worry only about the casual gamers, and let market forces take care of moving the hardcore types to Linux.
WineX will not run games on any non-x86 platform. WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator" and that statement is quite true: all it does is translate Windows API calls to Linux API calls. Since this does not alter or in any way affect the machine code of the game program itself, you cannot use Wine (or WineX) to play games on a different platform.
Platform independent code.
There are projects out there that aim to provide a platform-independent method to produce commercial-quality games. There is no real reason that a company has to struggle with long, difficult ports of system-oriented code if they use the platform independent OpenGL (and other libraries) instead.
Now, how do you convince developers (or, more importantly, their managers) of the value of this approach? I don't know, because to a manager market flexibility is just Yet Another Buzzword (TM).
Anyway, as I've stated elsewhere, you're ignoring the fact that Linux does have games. You needn't rely on software ports to attract gamers to Linux (although I will admit that it does make things easier).
Anyway, it's not as if Linux doesn't run games without WINE.
I don't subscribe because I feel that WINE is holding back the state of native application ports. After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent. Without a visible need to port to Linux, developers will continue to release games that only support Windows.
You have a choice: emulate Windows (forever), or seek native software ports. I've chosen native ports, because I think that is the better long-term solution. But if you just can't stand to give over your EverCrack until they provide a Linux client... that is your choice. Just be aware I won't be sympathetic to complaints about the dearth of Linux game ports.
No, it makes perfect sense. We have a Drug Czar (John Walters) and a Terrorism Czar (Tom Ridge), both of whose jobs are to eradicate the things they are Czar "of". Therefore, the Prizacy Czar's job is to eradicate privacy. Ergo, the title makes perfect sense.
Hey! You forgot one!
We need to bring this centuries long debate to closure and create consensus with the Flat Earthers!