Note the adverb-adjective pair in "people who are very interested".
Well, I am not disputing that you would be "very interested" if you were to contribute to this effort. But interest alone is not sufficient. Anybody, including any number of average users, could be "very interested" in helping out but unable to due to the factors I pointed out. This was in response to an earlier statement that this effort/system was like leaving a comment card at restaurants. Well, it's not.
If you know what application you want to work with, and what you want to do, check the KDE Quality Team HOWTO for tips and information about the task you want to perform. If you don't know yet, you mask the list for guidance, and read the Quality Team Tasks Page to find out what kind of activity you like best and the requirements to perform this task. Each activity has a different set of requirements. For instance, to be a KDE unstable tester, it is necessary to know how to compile KDE unstable.
First of all, in my [somewhat limited] experience with QA, technical writing, and other non-development tasks, these people in general are not really friendly with mailing lists. That's a first turn off. I think an NNTP server would be a better solution. Second, this is targeted towards developers and extremely advanced users who will read all of the HOWTOs, rules, directions, etc. and memorize them to avoid getting flamed by others. Regular users don't do these things, they just click on pretty buttons.
I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just not for average joes out there.
I could get more done in an hour in WP 5.2 than in any other word processor I have ever used ever.
I used to use Framework by Ashton-Tate. It had many features that modern office suites come with today - spreadsheet, word processing, database, etc. with the ability to interact between different parts, and it ran on DOS!
If you think iTunes & legal $5/mo P2P are even close to equivalent you aren't looking very closely. In terms of price & available selection alone they are on completely different planes. That is like saying 'since we have Greyhound busses, why do we need cars?' The choice between iTunes, $1 a pop, very limited selection, DRM (minimal, but still there)'ed music vs $0, illegal, nearly unlimited selection, DRMless, poor to good quality, poor to good speed P2P is hardly anywhere close to $0, illegal, nearly unlimited selection, DRMless, poor to good quality, poor to good speed P2P vs. $5/mo, legal, nearly unlimited selection, DRMless, poor to good quality, poor to good speed P2P. One of the major benefits of P2P is the extensive collections available, iTunes doesn't even come close.
Well, my point is not to compare this system with iTunes. My point is that $5/month still doesn't beat free. If people don't support 99c/song, they won't support $5/month either. Still, there are other download services offering unlimited downloads for some higher monthly fee that RIAA is comfortable with. Well, I don't have any hard stats on how many songs average person downloads/shares every month, but the burden of proof that this system will work is on EFF, not for me to make their hypothetical case and then prove otherwise. They present little in their argument with regard to pricing or efficiency, other than centralized download services will compete with this offering.
As for "there will always be people who infringe...," that is true. Period.
That was exactly my point as well. I just don't see how the system will have any significant effect on what is going on now. The EFF doesn't present a valid case - see above.
As for measuring, another [slashdot.org] post deals with that. Sampling is a science much used in everyday life by anyone wanting city/nation/society wide information. As for fraud, yes, a system is susceptible to tampering. That hardly invalidates the idea, or else voting would be pretty useless. You deal with it by protection & prevention.
I guess voting would be useless if it was based on sampling and was susceptible to as much fraud as P2P statistics are. As for sampling - last presidential election exit polls? Howard Dean this year? This cannot be compared to counting ballots where errors are mechanical (and can be recounted) rather than simply remain unknown.
Movies & software are actually ancillary to this proposal. As also mentioned in the article, those industries are dealing better than riaa. The applicability to entirely different fields will naturally involve changes to the system. For a music distribution method, that is irrelevant.
Movies because they are too large to download; consumer software - because it's mostly a competitive market (other than one large OS company). However, the same argument that I made about software also applies to songs and music, though admittedly, in a less regard.
Sampling = looking at a small subset of a population to infer information about the population as a whole. To know the average weight of an african swallow, the number of people who wear seatbelts, or the number of trees in Aspen, CO, you don't count every titmouse, person, or tree. There are volumes [amazon.com] written on how to do so to obtain reliability, accuracy, and reproducability. The fact that you are dealing with a system where you can potentially measure as much as you need for a given level of confidence just makes this system even more applicable to such analysis.
This scares me - accounting done with statistics and sampling. Admittedly, this could be more efficient on a large enough data sample, putting smaller bands/labels at a huge disadvantage, while analysing mostly RIAA-related data.
Because for $5 a month, you are 1. supporting the music you care about and 2. not in danger of being attacked by rabidly litigious riaa stormtroopers. There will always be people who participate in copyright infringement, that isn't avoidable. The point is to try and bring the masses into a system that is reasonable to everyone.
I don't see a point of such service since such commercial "opt-in" centralized services, like iTunes, are already available. If iTunes cannot deal with the problem, how can this imaginary system? "There will always be people who participate in copyright infringement" is not a good answer - since that's the status quo now; i.e. that new system won't change that in any significant way.
Most people don't mislabel their mp3s or wmas or aacs on purpose, why would they? If that kind of fraud appears, it would be easy to simply actualy listen to a sampling and determine the %age of fraud.
Who said intentionally? Some people don't care about artist name, some don't care about song names, others don't care about any names, only categories. Who is going to pay for sampling for every possible filename variation of every single song to come up with the final count of songs "traded?" Besides (what you conveniently ignored), how are these downloads going to be counted anyway, if the system is not centralized? Note the quote from the proposal:
Figuring out what is popular can be accomplished through a mix of anonymously monitoring what people are sharing (something companies like Big Champagne and BayTSP are already doing) and recruiting volunteers to serve as the digital music equivalent of Nielsen families.
First of all, BayTSP and others are mostly monitoring what people are sharing - what people are sharing and what people are dowloading are 2 very different things. Second, how would the volunteers be designated? How can you guarantee in a P2P system the "volunteer" service won't be abused? All you'd need to know is where these volunteers are to pipe your downloads through them? Third, even if you assume it won't be abused, it still is not an accurate count by any means, not even close to it. Especially for the small guys who may not be counted at all, thereby giving up their share of payments to RIAA's bigger labels. That's not fair at all and does not support music - it only supports RIAA!
If you RTFA you'd note that they specifically address the movies/software aspect (these industries are not suffering as badly, are adapting to the new technology better, and have been less litigious..plus there is nothing to prevent this strategy from working with movies & software as well.).
Unfortunately, I did RTFA, and I don't think the proposal is going to work for movies or software at all. In fact, it would be even worse in those industries. On the surface, it seems acceptable that EFF proposes dividing revenues equally among "rights holders" adjusted to their respective content popularity (i.e. songs). However, with regards to movies, and especially software, popularity does not always determine the price. Out of $1000 in revenue, if you determine that Textpad has been downloaded 30 times and MS Windows 2k3 - 20 times, would it be fair to give Textpad $600, and MS - $400? Even though Textpad costs much less that Win2K3? You could say - it should also be adjusted to their respective prices. So, then Textpad could say their software is worth $50K per copy online but freely downloadable through P2P, so they get a bigger cut of the shared pie?
This system will never work as it's been proposed, especially for movies and software!
Again, in the article, they suggest a sampling technique be used to estimate popularity, and that it be done by a non-profit group (in the vein of ASCAP, BMI & SESAC, organizations designed for a similar problem of new technology and musi
In effect, BSD-type license would then encourage more incompatible forks, while GPL-style license would make incorporating others' functionality easier.
Exactly my thoughts as well. Why wouldn't they simply keep using Kazaa, Morpheus or whatever they are using now without paying $5/month? Not to mention how they would determine who is an "artist," not that only music gets shared online - how about software and movies? How will they reliably tell the popularity, unless the service is centralized, and filenames and/or file signatures pre-determined? What if people encode their files in different formats, bitrates, and with different encoders? Who would you trust to do the count - the RIAA cartel?
Moreover, if sharing this way is permitted by RIAA or some other similar cartel, while they are making all the money, sharers should get a cut as well. After all, they are paying for bandwidth, service, and equipment to make the delivery happen in the cartel's commercial interest - sharers should also get a cut. Also, what happens to "artists" who have not signed their life over to the cartel? Would there be a competitive payment distribution systems that artists can join? Let's ask RIAA about that, shall we?
Without any doubt, if such system were implemented, it would only benefit one cartel - RIAA - not artists, not users - and it wouldn't be fair at all. In fact, it would be much less fair since all independent artists would in effect be either "unplugged" from the network, or their share of revenues taken in by the cartel.
Few people want to fork stuff just for the heck of it.. but if Sun doesn't want to go in the same direction as their developers, they're going to lose control either way.
I don't think he meant that it would necessarily get forked. As I understand, SUN would not be able to use any of the GPLed additions/improvements to Java in its commercial offering. In that case, even if SUN was completely in line with their developers, they would either have to give up completely on GPL-only improvements, or duplicate the effort and come up with their own clean-room version of the same. So, dual licensing doesn't give SUN as much advantage as the article would have you believe.
No, it does not do that already. By definition, if I have to look at the "lower left" of the screen to see something, then that something is not taking up the "full screen".
But it does not say that it has to take up the "full screen." If you look at claim 1 (as well as some other claims later on), it says that the display consists of 2 peripheries, one of them completely filled with scaled down virtual desktops. Claim 1, which would have its own legal standing, says nothing about how large any of these 2 peripheries are, or what part of the actual display each takes up.
Microsoft's "invention" is to quickly blow up the pager-previews to cover the whole monitor.
It says that later on, but that's not required per patent application, as far as I can see.
You need to convince the DRM developer that his scheme is unbreakable and that no further review will help. Then you convince all the media companies to make them standard....and then you break it (see DVD CSS) and you're able to use the CD/DVD you bought as you please.
But you forgot that then you are thrown in jail for violating DMCA by "trafficking a circumvention device" if the recent 321 Studios case is an example. Note the Jack Valenti quote to AP:
Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, has suggested that consumers have no legitimate need for such software, telling The Associated Press in November, "If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one."
I believe that point was made in the article, and that the ultimate conclusion was that eventually you would have to upgrade and that would force you into paying them if they win the case.
I don't understand - who would have to pay SCO for what? If IBM violated their contract with SCO, it would be only IBM who is responsible for SCO's alleged damages, not me, you, Linus, Red Hat, SUSE, or unrelated 3rd parties.
Also, it is important to note that SCO is not even alleging copyright infringement with regards to Linux. All they are alleging is contract violation against IBM for what they call a "derivative" code. That code is copyright IBM! That's not even being challenged. It's unclear to me what legal principle they would or could use to go after anybody else than IBM (or some other licensee). Nobody so far has drawn that hypothetical line, and neither did ZDNet in this case. IMO, anyone arguing in that direction should either draw that line, or stop FUDding around!
I agree SCO is full of shit. However would I bet my job on it? Certainly not. If I were ( I am not) an IT manager I would simply not put any Linux systems in and prefer FreeBSD or Solarisx86 until dust has settled with the case.
You don't have to bet anything on it. If you are an IT manager, you go to your company lawyer and ask a question like this one: if I buy a software from vendor A, and then vendor B sues vendor A for some obscure contract violation, can I be held responsible for copyright infringement? IANAL, so ask your lawyer!
If you want a copyright parallel, here's one I've mentioned couple of times here before:
- you buy book A from author AAA - author of book B sues author AAA for contract violation/copyright infringement - judge finds in BBB's favor - can author BBB come after you (and everyone else who bought book A) to make you pay more for the book you've already bought?
Of course not - I've never heard of copyright law that works that way. SCO is full of FUD; talk to your lawyer. You don't bet/risk your job by talking to your lawyer and following their advice.
- violate laws (anti-competitive/price-fixing/accounting/privacy/ etc.) - get sued - pay fines - continue doing exactly the same as before
Violating laws is a minor cost of doing business only while associated fines are cheaper than purchasing new, more favorable laws. Score 1 consumer, sure! I didn't know RIAA was submitting stories to Slashdot!
In that case many new cars/alarms, assuming the car is being stolen, will shut off and disable the engine until it's reset by a dealer (or driver, if you know how to reset it). These types of alarms have a way of turning of the alarm once you open the door without starting the engine; then, after everything is good to go, enable the alarm again.
So let me get that last part straight - "We're trying this anyway, and it's not going to work."
So why bother, and/or what strategy might work?
The partial answer to your questions lies in answering this one: why didn't FBI propose to work with FSF or Linus and others to put an FBI copyright warning on their software for SCO and other corporate software "pirates?" It seems like corporate pirates need as much reminders and education of what copyright means as your average person buying a CD or a DVD.
I don't know why this was modded offtopic, because it's a valid point. The grandparent poster makes a mistake in that industry-specific trademarks for limited use are awarded only when the mark is a generic word not related to that industry in question. If the mark is not a generic word, then I don't believe there is such a restriction. I am assuming this is true for France also.
So, no, you cannot make a "Mickey Mouse Linux" or "Disney Linux" without violating those trademarks. I'm not sure what Mandrake is in French other than the trademarked magician, I mean if it's a common word or not.
This crap about "The RIAA doesn't care about artists" when those artists are the ones who freely signed the contracts in order to get a deal is bogus--you think those artists think they need you to pity them when they put down their signatures willingly?
First of all, let me say that I agree with the previous posters, and you partially, that people who share copyrighted material without permission to the masses online are likely to be infringing on those copyrights. I am indifferent towards the recent RIAA lawsuits as they filed John Doe cases, so that a judge can issue subpoena[e/s] to find users' identities. This is much better than going directly to ISPs to extort private info and shutting off users' accounts.
Having said that, what I believe is "not right" is not directly related to the above, but is a larger issue. The entertainment industry, IMO, as represented mostly by RIAA and MPAA member companies, is an illegal cartel. These are handful of media conglomerates that do not compete in a true sense of competition, they fix prices, they unfairly squash competition, enforce illegal trade restrictions, abuse people's rights and privacy, engage in "creative accounting" and don't pay a dime in taxes, etc., etc., etc. They have been sued/charged with many of these violations, have lost or been convicted, have paid fines, and have resumed practicing exactly the same.
This is not only hurting potential customers and the related entertainment market in general, but also has an adverse effect on musicians and artists. In effect, most artists are not even able to negotiate their contracts saying anything better than signing their lives over to the cartel. There is no real competition. This is not right. The cartel should be disbanded, illegal price fixing and non-compete agreements should be invalid. Law makers should assist in creating an environment where competition will bloom. It's especially important right now with all the technological advancements being made. This, however, is a difficult task to accomplish, partly because of legal bribery that is allowed in many "developed" governments. Cartels want control and power - they don't want competition and fair play.
What a load of crap! Of course it's their business! Their business is collecting fees for services rendered, and when they agree to provide you with service they have done so under specific terms. Namely, they have checked your credit to determine risk, and if they have determined the risk is too great to assume they have taken a deposit from you or simply withheld service (for example, my wife could not get international calling on her cel phone at all for a while, even with a deposit, because she had no credit).
They cannot do this if you decide to transfer your contract to someone else. How do you know the buyer of this phone number hasn't just declared bankruptcy and otherwise cannot even get a phone line in his house? Obviously, this is certainly the phone company's business! It is the very definition of their business.
Nonsense! They offer the transfer service themselves in order to gain new customers - they are not forced to obey something that their customers do out of the blue. They have methods to check the credit and other requirements with the transferee to make sure they are able to provide the service. Obviously, if they cannot provide the service, then no transfer can happen.
Refer back to what the BellSouth representative said.
People like ESR and Linus are praised and recognized as the fathers of OSS, heros among their kind, but as soon as they say something offensive you disown them.
Who is the last "you" in your statement? Don't you think people have different opinions about different matters? And there is no general you. Yes, I personally (and many others) recognize the contributions Linus and others have made and they are to be praised for them, but this does not in any way mean that I blindly agree and follow everything they say or do.
I'll take a single opinion and tell you whether it represents mine or differs from mine. I am not your perception of you.
In life, whether personal, corporate, OSS, whatever, when you associate yourself with an organization, your actions reflect that organization to some degree. If ESR had said "these comments are solely my own and do not represent any organization I take part in", I could agree.
I don't know what this means. Surely, agreeing with every single ESR statement is not a requirement for writing or using OSS?
This has nothing to do with number portability between carriers. It has to do with the ability to transfer service [contract] between two parties or customers.
AT&T wireless, many baby bells, and possibly many others actively advertize that instead of simply canceling your service with them, you could give it or transfer the service and the associated phone number to someone else.
Now, It's none of their business what kind of arrangement I will make with someone else to transfer the service whether it's a roommate, a friend that needs a cell phone or whatever. They cannot tell people what to do outside the scope of their contract. To quote BellSouth from the article:
"What two parties do between themselves is between them," she said. "We provide phone service."
IMO, losing any significant server market share to AMD would be a "failure" for Intel. I don't think we are speaking about the same thing.
Those $million+ monsters won't be on your desktop, but they will run all the websites and corporate datacenters for years to come.
I'm not so sure. History has shown that while there is a market for these types of beasts, market prefers commodity hardware. Intel wanted Itanium to be a commodity, but that's not going to happen with AMD around. IMO, if Intel loses market share to AMD, it will be extremely hard for them to reverse that trend. Maybe Intel didn't read their own history until recently.
Every time the word Buran has even been uttered, the idea has been shot down by the RSA right away. Not only do they not have enough funds to bring back the program, they have also lost a lot of specs and documentation, not to mention people and the minds who worked on it. It is at a point where they would effectively be reverse-engineering their own shuttle.
Besides, IMO, the U.S. space shuttles have shown that there could be more efficient ways to design space vehicles for the LEO, and Russians (and everybody else for that matter) would be better suited to think forward, rather than repeat the NASA history.
You have your facts rather jumbled up. For one Itanium isn't x86....
Yeah, that was wrong in my post. Thank you for the correction. Intel wanted Itanium to succeed their higher end 32-bit x86 server processor line. Itanium is not x86.
I can't be bothered listing the rest.
Yeah, well, go to sleep then - what's the point of replying in a discussion thread?
As for one operating system, who? They in cahoots with Microsoft, after Microsoft dragged it's feet on AMD? Sounds like collusion, anti-competitiveness, and all that.
This is what I think happened: Intel thought their server reputation would trump AMD's 64-bit offering. They thought their Itanium would be the only reputable and reliable 64-bit platform for x86. They were wrong: they started having problems and delays, while AMD was well ahead with backward compatible Opterons. Intel was not going to have major market share with Itaniums. However, while AMD most likely bet their entire existence on x86-64, Intel took into account the worst-case scenario with Itaniums and developed 64-bit Pentiums on the side.
After the Itanium failure, they came to a realization that MS was not willing to develop and support 2 different instruction sets. Praise as you may how advanced MS' NT kernel is, and how portable it is - it just doesn't make business sense, even for Microsoft, to support it on more than one platform (remember Alpha?). Also, as I remember, Linus also expressed his preference was AMD's solution and hoped Itanium would lose out. Intel is not so powerful after all. So, now they are forced to execute their plan B, and introduce their 64-bit Xeons.... I'm sure there's more to it.
Also, the statement "one operating system" was made by MS spokesperson, not Intel, as suggested by the/. story.
Intel's approach is compatible with AMD's, the Microsoft representative said. "There will be one operating system that will support all (64 bit) extended systems," the representative said.... from the linked article!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I am not disputing that you would be "very interested" if you were to contribute to this effort. But interest alone is not sufficient. Anybody, including any number of average users, could be "very interested" in helping out but unable to due to the factors I pointed out. This was in response to an earlier statement that this effort/system was like leaving a comment card at restaurants. Well, it's not.
I think it's a little different. Consider this:
Start subscribing to the KDE Quality Team Mailing List and announce yourself...
If you know what application you want to work with, and what you want to do, check the KDE Quality Team HOWTO for tips and information about the task you want to perform. If you don't know yet, you mask the list for guidance, and read the Quality Team Tasks Page to find out what kind of activity you like best and the requirements to perform this task. Each activity has a different set of requirements. For instance, to be a KDE unstable tester, it is necessary to know how to compile KDE unstable.
First of all, in my [somewhat limited] experience with QA, technical writing, and other non-development tasks, these people in general are not really friendly with mailing lists. That's a first turn off. I think an NNTP server would be a better solution. Second, this is targeted towards developers and extremely advanced users who will read all of the HOWTOs, rules, directions, etc. and memorize them to avoid getting flamed by others. Regular users don't do these things, they just click on pretty buttons.
I'm not saying this is wrong, it's just not for average joes out there.
I used to use Framework by Ashton-Tate. It had many features that modern office suites come with today - spreadsheet, word processing, database, etc. with the ability to interact between different parts, and it ran on DOS!
Here is a screenshot of a splashscreen, and a wikipedia entry.
Well, my point is not to compare this system with iTunes. My point is that $5/month still doesn't beat free. If people don't support 99c/song, they won't support $5/month either. Still, there are other download services offering unlimited downloads for some higher monthly fee that RIAA is comfortable with. Well, I don't have any hard stats on how many songs average person downloads/shares every month, but the burden of proof that this system will work is on EFF, not for me to make their hypothetical case and then prove otherwise. They present little in their argument with regard to pricing or efficiency, other than centralized download services will compete with this offering.
That was exactly my point as well. I just don't see how the system will have any significant effect on what is going on now. The EFF doesn't present a valid case - see above.
I guess voting would be useless if it was based on sampling and was susceptible to as much fraud as P2P statistics are. As for sampling - last presidential election exit polls? Howard Dean this year? This cannot be compared to counting ballots where errors are mechanical (and can be recounted) rather than simply remain unknown.
Movies because they are too large to download; consumer software - because it's mostly a competitive market (other than one large OS company). However, the same argument that I made about software also applies to songs and music, though admittedly, in a less regard.
This scares me - accounting done with statistics and sampling. Admittedly, this could be more efficient on a large enough data sample, putting smaller bands/labels at a huge disadvantage, while analysing mostly RIAA-related data.
I don't see a point of such service since such commercial "opt-in" centralized services, like iTunes, are already available. If iTunes cannot deal with the problem, how can this imaginary system? "There will always be people who participate in copyright infringement" is not a good answer - since that's the status quo now; i.e. that new system won't change that in any significant way.
Who said intentionally? Some people don't care about artist name, some don't care about song names, others don't care about any names, only categories. Who is going to pay for sampling for every possible filename variation of every single song to come up with the final count of songs "traded?" Besides (what you conveniently ignored), how are these downloads going to be counted anyway, if the system is not centralized? Note the quote from the proposal:
Figuring out what is popular can be accomplished through a mix of anonymously monitoring what people are sharing (something companies like Big Champagne and BayTSP are already doing) and recruiting volunteers to serve as the digital music equivalent of Nielsen families.
First of all, BayTSP and others are mostly monitoring what people are sharing - what people are sharing and what people are dowloading are 2 very different things. Second, how would the volunteers be designated? How can you guarantee in a P2P system the "volunteer" service won't be abused? All you'd need to know is where these volunteers are to pipe your downloads through them? Third, even if you assume it won't be abused, it still is not an accurate count by any means, not even close to it. Especially for the small guys who may not be counted at all, thereby giving up their share of payments to RIAA's bigger labels. That's not fair at all and does not support music - it only supports RIAA!
Unfortunately, I did RTFA, and I don't think the proposal is going to work for movies or software at all. In fact, it would be even worse in those industries. On the surface, it seems acceptable that EFF proposes dividing revenues equally among "rights holders" adjusted to their respective content popularity (i.e. songs). However, with regards to movies, and especially software, popularity does not always determine the price. Out of $1000 in revenue, if you determine that Textpad has been downloaded 30 times and MS Windows 2k3 - 20 times, would it be fair to give Textpad $600, and MS - $400? Even though Textpad costs much less that Win2K3? You could say - it should also be adjusted to their respective prices. So, then Textpad could say their software is worth $50K per copy online but freely downloadable through P2P, so they get a bigger cut of the shared pie?
This system will never work as it's been proposed, especially for movies and software!
In effect, BSD-type license would then encourage more incompatible forks, while GPL-style license would make incorporating others' functionality easier.
Exactly my thoughts as well. Why wouldn't they simply keep using Kazaa, Morpheus or whatever they are using now without paying $5/month? Not to mention how they would determine who is an "artist," not that only music gets shared online - how about software and movies? How will they reliably tell the popularity, unless the service is centralized, and filenames and/or file signatures pre-determined? What if people encode their files in different formats, bitrates, and with different encoders? Who would you trust to do the count - the RIAA cartel?
Moreover, if sharing this way is permitted by RIAA or some other similar cartel, while they are making all the money, sharers should get a cut as well. After all, they are paying for bandwidth, service, and equipment to make the delivery happen in the cartel's commercial interest - sharers should also get a cut. Also, what happens to "artists" who have not signed their life over to the cartel? Would there be a competitive payment distribution systems that artists can join? Let's ask RIAA about that, shall we?
Without any doubt, if such system were implemented, it would only benefit one cartel - RIAA - not artists, not users - and it wouldn't be fair at all. In fact, it would be much less fair since all independent artists would in effect be either "unplugged" from the network, or their share of revenues taken in by the cartel.
Is EFF going nuts?
It is not specified. Read the patent claim 1 and provide relevant quote from there if you think it does.
I don't think he meant that it would necessarily get forked. As I understand, SUN would not be able to use any of the GPLed additions/improvements to Java in its commercial offering. In that case, even if SUN was completely in line with their developers, they would either have to give up completely on GPL-only improvements, or duplicate the effort and come up with their own clean-room version of the same. So, dual licensing doesn't give SUN as much advantage as the article would have you believe.
But it does not say that it has to take up the "full screen." If you look at claim 1 (as well as some other claims later on), it says that the display consists of 2 peripheries, one of them completely filled with scaled down virtual desktops. Claim 1, which would have its own legal standing, says nothing about how large any of these 2 peripheries are, or what part of the actual display each takes up.
It says that later on, but that's not required per patent application, as far as I can see.
But you forgot that then you are thrown in jail for violating DMCA by "trafficking a circumvention device" if the recent 321 Studios case is an example. Note the Jack Valenti quote to AP:
Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, has suggested that consumers have no legitimate need for such software, telling The Associated Press in November, "If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one."
Nice, huh?
I don't understand - who would have to pay SCO for what? If IBM violated their contract with SCO, it would be only IBM who is responsible for SCO's alleged damages, not me, you, Linus, Red Hat, SUSE, or unrelated 3rd parties.
Also, it is important to note that SCO is not even alleging copyright infringement with regards to Linux. All they are alleging is contract violation against IBM for what they call a "derivative" code. That code is copyright IBM! That's not even being challenged. It's unclear to me what legal principle they would or could use to go after anybody else than IBM (or some other licensee). Nobody so far has drawn that hypothetical line, and neither did ZDNet in this case. IMO, anyone arguing in that direction should either draw that line, or stop FUDding around!
You don't have to bet anything on it. If you are an IT manager, you go to your company lawyer and ask a question like this one: if I buy a software from vendor A, and then vendor B sues vendor A for some obscure contract violation, can I be held responsible for copyright infringement? IANAL, so ask your lawyer!
If you want a copyright parallel, here's one I've mentioned couple of times here before:
- you buy book A from author AAA
- author of book B sues author AAA for contract violation/copyright infringement
- judge finds in BBB's favor
- can author BBB come after you (and everyone else who bought book A) to make you pay more for the book you've already bought?
Of course not - I've never heard of copyright law that works that way. SCO is full of FUD; talk to your lawyer. You don't bet/risk your job by talking to your lawyer and following their advice.
Absolutely right. RIAA strategy has been:
/ etc.)
- violate laws (anti-competitive/price-fixing/accounting/privacy
- get sued
- pay fines
- continue doing exactly the same as before
Violating laws is a minor cost of doing business only while associated fines are cheaper than purchasing new, more favorable laws. Score 1 consumer, sure! I didn't know RIAA was submitting stories to Slashdot!
In that case many new cars/alarms, assuming the car is being stolen, will shut off and disable the engine until it's reset by a dealer (or driver, if you know how to reset it). These types of alarms have a way of turning of the alarm once you open the door without starting the engine; then, after everything is good to go, enable the alarm again.
The partial answer to your questions lies in answering this one: why didn't FBI propose to work with FSF or Linus and others to put an FBI copyright warning on their software for SCO and other corporate software "pirates?" It seems like corporate pirates need as much reminders and education of what copyright means as your average person buying a CD or a DVD.
I don't know why this was modded offtopic, because it's a valid point. The grandparent poster makes a mistake in that industry-specific trademarks for limited use are awarded only when the mark is a generic word not related to that industry in question. If the mark is not a generic word, then I don't believe there is such a restriction. I am assuming this is true for France also.
So, no, you cannot make a "Mickey Mouse Linux" or "Disney Linux" without violating those trademarks. I'm not sure what Mandrake is in French other than the trademarked magician, I mean if it's a common word or not.
First of all, let me say that I agree with the previous posters, and you partially, that people who share copyrighted material without permission to the masses online are likely to be infringing on those copyrights. I am indifferent towards the recent RIAA lawsuits as they filed John Doe cases, so that a judge can issue subpoena[e/s] to find users' identities. This is much better than going directly to ISPs to extort private info and shutting off users' accounts.
Having said that, what I believe is "not right" is not directly related to the above, but is a larger issue. The entertainment industry, IMO, as represented mostly by RIAA and MPAA member companies, is an illegal cartel. These are handful of media conglomerates that do not compete in a true sense of competition, they fix prices, they unfairly squash competition, enforce illegal trade restrictions, abuse people's rights and privacy, engage in "creative accounting" and don't pay a dime in taxes, etc., etc., etc. They have been sued/charged with many of these violations, have lost or been convicted, have paid fines, and have resumed practicing exactly the same.
This is not only hurting potential customers and the related entertainment market in general, but also has an adverse effect on musicians and artists. In effect, most artists are not even able to negotiate their contracts saying anything better than signing their lives over to the cartel. There is no real competition. This is not right. The cartel should be disbanded, illegal price fixing and non-compete agreements should be invalid. Law makers should assist in creating an environment where competition will bloom. It's especially important right now with all the technological advancements being made. This, however, is a difficult task to accomplish, partly because of legal bribery that is allowed in many "developed" governments. Cartels want control and power - they don't want competition and fair play.
Nonsense! They offer the transfer service themselves in order to gain new customers - they are not forced to obey something that their customers do out of the blue. They have methods to check the credit and other requirements with the transferee to make sure they are able to provide the service. Obviously, if they cannot provide the service, then no transfer can happen.
Refer back to what the BellSouth representative said.
Who is the last "you" in your statement? Don't you think people have different opinions about different matters? And there is no general you. Yes, I personally (and many others) recognize the contributions Linus and others have made and they are to be praised for them, but this does not in any way mean that I blindly agree and follow everything they say or do.
I'll take a single opinion and tell you whether it represents mine or differs from mine. I am not your perception of you.
I don't know what this means. Surely, agreeing with every single ESR statement is not a requirement for writing or using OSS?
This has nothing to do with number portability between carriers. It has to do with the ability to transfer service [contract] between two parties or customers.
AT&T wireless, many baby bells, and possibly many others actively advertize that instead of simply canceling your service with them, you could give it or transfer the service and the associated phone number to someone else.
Now, It's none of their business what kind of arrangement I will make with someone else to transfer the service whether it's a roommate, a friend that needs a cell phone or whatever. They cannot tell people what to do outside the scope of their contract. To quote BellSouth from the article:
"What two parties do between themselves is between them," she said. "We provide phone service."
IMO, losing any significant server market share to AMD would be a "failure" for Intel. I don't think we are speaking about the same thing.
I'm not so sure. History has shown that while there is a market for these types of beasts, market prefers commodity hardware. Intel wanted Itanium to be a commodity, but that's not going to happen with AMD around. IMO, if Intel loses market share to AMD, it will be extremely hard for them to reverse that trend. Maybe Intel didn't read their own history until recently.
Every time the word Buran has even been uttered, the idea has been shot down by the RSA right away. Not only do they not have enough funds to bring back the program, they have also lost a lot of specs and documentation, not to mention people and the minds who worked on it. It is at a point where they would effectively be reverse-engineering their own shuttle.
Besides, IMO, the U.S. space shuttles have shown that there could be more efficient ways to design space vehicles for the LEO, and Russians (and everybody else for that matter) would be better suited to think forward, rather than repeat the NASA history.
Yeah, that was wrong in my post. Thank you for the correction. Intel wanted Itanium to succeed their higher end 32-bit x86 server processor line. Itanium is not x86.
Yeah, well, go to sleep then - what's the point of replying in a discussion thread?
This is what I think happened: Intel thought their server reputation would trump AMD's 64-bit offering. They thought their Itanium would be the only reputable and reliable 64-bit platform for x86. They were wrong: they started having problems and delays, while AMD was well ahead with backward compatible Opterons. Intel was not going to have major market share with Itaniums. However, while AMD most likely bet their entire existence on x86-64, Intel took into account the worst-case scenario with Itaniums and developed 64-bit Pentiums on the side.
After the Itanium failure, they came to a realization that MS was not willing to develop and support 2 different instruction sets. Praise as you may how advanced MS' NT kernel is, and how portable it is - it just doesn't make business sense, even for Microsoft, to support it on more than one platform (remember Alpha?). Also, as I remember, Linus also expressed his preference was AMD's solution and hoped Itanium would lose out. Intel is not so powerful after all. So, now they are forced to execute their plan B, and introduce their 64-bit Xeons.
Also, the statement "one operating system" was made by MS spokesperson, not Intel, as suggested by the
Intel's approach is compatible with AMD's, the Microsoft representative said. "There will be one operating system that will support all (64 bit) extended systems," the representative said.