Emphasis on "limited times" and "to authors and inventors".
The industries in question have been systematically (and successfully) attacking the first item for decades, and do not generally belong to the groups specified by the second part.
The majority of the money made in these industries goes to distributors whose historical monopoly on the means of distribution is slipping away from them. In some cases they facilitate the creative process, but in the majority of cases they do not, or do so to a limited and replaceable degree.
In fact, in many cases, these monopolists have in essence enslaved the creators of works and used them as livestock to drive their engines of profit.
Does any of this make the unlicensed sharing of copyrighted works ethical or justifiable? Probably not.
The profligate use of the guillotine during the French revolution was probably not ethical or justifiable, either, but it sure happened anyway.
The monopoly is dead, like it or not. The current noise is the death rattle of an expiring regime, the which never go quiet into that good night. Something else will rise in its place, and what that will be we simply do not yet know.
But I'll bet these same money grubbers will eventually find a way to cash in without creating anything themselves. They always do.
... the rest end up working in [jobs you don't respect]...
That's pure horse manure. Student athletes come in all varieties, from the studious to the willfully ignorant, from the meek to the arrogant, and all points on any number of other axes.
I'll offer as a counter example to your statement the son of a friend, who is in his first year at the US Air Force Academy. He was an outstanding high school athlete, an outstanding honors student, and to top it off the most responsible and empathetic young man you'd ever care to meet.
Or for a less glamorous example, myself. I was a passable athlete in school, a varsity track runner. I was a goof-off in class, but managed to graduate and scored well on the standardized tests. After an ignominious beginning to my university career, I managed to retrieve my head from my posterior and graduate with honors. The better part of two decades later, I'm now working as a senior level software developer, which I will assume is a position which carries at least a modicum of respect from the slashdot crowd.
I don't believe either of us falls into this "rest of them" group digging ditches and pining for the glory days of our teen years. Nor do the large majority of former student athletes.
And frankly, you show a lamentable lack of respect for those who work very hard indeed to build the structures you depend on to keep you safe from the big blue room. That's a real job, not this pansy code typing that I do for a living.
The site AllOfMP3.com, which operates in Russia under Russian law, claims on their site that the music they sell is completely legal - in Russia. Others must judge according to the laws of their country.
I believe the original question was asking for an opinion as to whether the music files obtained from that site would be legal in another country, such as perhaps the USA. We are all quite aware that the legalities are in flux. Indeed, most of us understand the word "flux" without looking it up.
If you like, you may look up the notices on the aforementioned website - see the section "Is it legal to download music from site AllOFMP3.com?"
I think what Mr. Beckerman is trying to get across is that the legal ground here is as solid as the deck of the Titanic. Unfortunately, because he IS a lawyer, it would be unprofessional of him to offer personal opinion on specific actions or topics which are not solidly grounded in case law. Especially in a public forum.
The rest of us can afford to postulate and opine, but he cannot. His job is to represent, not to judge.
Perhaps we should get a judge to answer some of the same questions. But then, apparently, the answers would depend on which judge we asked...
If the code isn't running (and unless it's being used - in which case by definition it's necessary) then it isn't being used and reprsents nothing more than additional used disk space.
And, as I've said elsewhere, if a few tens or hundreds of megabytes worth of diskspace is of any great importance to you, then you have bigger problems to worry about.
I have terabytes to burn, I don't give a rat's posterior about the disk space it takes up, but why shouldn't I be able to strip it out if I'm not using it?
Besides, it most certainly does represent something more than used disk space. It is executable code with potential security vulnerabilities. The fact that it is not currently being used doesn't mean it might not be at some point, intentionally or otherwise.
If you cannot handle a planned outage on a single machine for patching without loss of service to your clients, then your architecture and/or processes are broken.
(Arguably, the same could be said about unplanned outages, but since complete redundancy is not only very difficult but also extrememly expensive, IMHO that attitude is unreasonable.)
If you're applying patches to production systems without testing them in a staging environment first, then you deserve the problems you get.
That applies no matter what your OS is - and if you've never seen a Linux patch break everything, then you can't have been doing it for very long.
Not one server - hundreds. The fact is that percentagewise very few servers have problems after patching. But the odds do catch up, and frequently one or two of the hundreds have to be wiped and re-imaged after a patch. And yes, that's after extensive testing on dev and test servers. If we didn't do that first the impact would be vastly increased.
Furthermore, it generally does NOT affect service to clients, because we have a huge investment in redundancy (clusters to back up clusters, spread across multiple datacenters, etc.) and a large team standing by to take care of whatever problems do occur.
And of course I've seen Linux patches break things. No OS is perfect, certainly not Linux. But the "other" OSes, quite simply, do not have to be patched as often. The available patches are often for optional components which frequently are not installed. With Linux, especially, we can and do run the systems stripped down to essentials as much as reasonably possible.
It's really a matter of scale. If I was running a handful of servers in one location, it just wouldn't be such a problem. The odds would be with me. But as I deal with a 24x7x365 operation spread across every time zone on earth and datacenters in 6 or 7 different countries, even small problems can bite me hard.
If the bits are unused, why are you patching them ?
You can't seriously be proposing that I intentionally leave vulnerable code on even one of my mission critical servers, can you? What if someone comes along and decides to run that piece of code? Someone who should know better. I know, they should be held responsible for their actions, but that's pretty crappy rationalization if I could have prevented the problem in the first place.
It's like this:
Why should I have to endure another surgery every month on an organ I can easily live without?
I'd be happy to bet you several thousand dollars that your linux and unix machines have code installed on them that has never been executed - and in normal usage of the machine, never will.
Sucker bet. Of course they do. And it gets patched when there's a vulnerability. But it is as rare as hen's teeth that we have to completely rebuild the system after patching the vulnerability. Sometimes the patches break other other things, though...
It's really all pretty much a pain in the neck. Windows just causes me more pain, more often.
Microsoft not pandering to a miniscule portion of the market by providing a GUI-less version of Windows does not in any way, shape or form support any of your assertions about its design. Windows is a whole product[...]
Speaking as the guy who has to keep the critical factory applications running for one of the largest vendors of Microsoft operating systems on planet Earth, I wish like heck that there were a version of "Windows" that didn't include so much unnecessary cruft. Yes, unnecessary. Why do I need an html rendering component on an application server? Or a database server? Or a middleware server?
What it means is that every time there's another security patch for that unused Piece Of S...oftware on my servers, I have to shut down operations and apply patches. And then when one of those servers fails to boot after patching (happens almost every time) we have to bring the backups online or reinstall the OS, or...
If there were fewer unused bits on the box, this would be much easier.
Like it is on the Linux, Solaris, SCO (eek!), Non-Stop, and assorted other server OSes I have running in my data centers. (None of which has any kind of GUI installed - much less a pile of unremovable desktop apps)
I guess you would have to call it something else besides "Windows", though. Maybe something like "Microsoft Works"... [snicker, guffaw]
There's my two cents. Don't spend it all in one place.
I'm curious about the second martyrdom. I must have missed that somewhere. Elaborate please?
The way I read it, the martyrdom occurred to a flesh-n-blood person, once. Also, the group in the Americas was a group of your "genocidal, patriarchal" etc. people who had traveled there by boat.
Believe it or don't, but do get the story straight.
I find it entirely possible to live a double life as a geek and an explorer. The caving world is full of geeks. It seems to be a general misfit personality thing.
Cavers have such geeky projects as ground penetrating radio location and communications, 3D cave mapping software, science of all sorts, not to mention the peculiar smell of clothing which has been muddied underground and then left in a trash bag for weeks.
For USians see the National Speleological Society to find out more. Other countries have similar organizations, I just don't happen to know the URLs off the top of my head. Try googling to find your local org.
Doesn't matter who I vote for. I live in Texas and my vote will not be counted. Bush will get a majority here and will walk away with all of the electoral votes as if it had been unanimous, leaving my bush-despising minority self disenfranchised.
So I will probably not vote for President at all. I will be voting in elections where my vote will count for something.
See, now it's not free, and it's definitely proven in the industry.
Problem solved, plus money in your pocket.
THIS IS NOT A JOKE. Thousands of consultants all over the world sell open source solutions to people who don't know how to do it themselves. It makes the pointy haired bosses feel good to think about how much money they are spending to get the very best that money can't buy.
The best part is, you don't have to feel sleazy about it, because you really are setting them up with the best solution for their needs. They are paying you for your knowledge and expertise.
Then you can turn around and help out with the project that made you some money, by coding, testing, documenting, or DONATING!
I can't really comment on Steven's annoying qualities, as I don't watch broadcast television. Ever.
However, I have seen figures which suggest that Dell's sales to home users have skyrocketed since the "Dude" ads began.
I have no numbers to back this up, so take it for what it's worth. Apparently annoying marketing works. Of course, annoying marketing is a primary reason for my above mentioned viewing habits.
I just ordered a new box at my local computer shop (Laboratory Computers) with preloaded Mandrake. Schweet deal, too. Very nice set-up, and they sell it with no OS, or choose your OS and they'll load it for you. Mandrake costs $0.
Much better computer than the WalMart jobbie, and not much more $$. And it comes with support.
Next best thing -- This time I get to take my 9 year old son to see a Star Wars flick. Judging by his love for TPM and wearing out the video tapes of all four, I expect to have a grand time watching him watch the movie, and I might even forget to be cynical and experienced and all that - and just sit back and enjoy it myself.
On reading the decision I note that the Judge leaves wide open a suit for invasion of privacy. See footnote 10, quoted below for your convenience. I would guess that the judge does not like the contents of the website any better than I do. My personal politics aside, this type of cheerleading for criminal behavior makes me want to hurl.
---- snip -----
10 We need not decide here whether the First Amendment would protect
defendants from a suit for invasion of privacy, because plaintiffs do not
claim damages based solely on the publication of private facts, namely
their addresses and telephone numbers. Cf. Anderson v. Fisher Broadcast-
ing Cos., 712 P.2d 803, 807 (Or. 1986) (recognizing a tort for invasion of
privacy when the tortfeasor has the specific intent to cause plaintiff severe
mental or emotional distress and such conduct exceeds "the farthest reach
of socially tolerable behavior").
----/snip-------
Please place your attitude where your head apparently resides.
*If* you are as capable as you imply, why not lend this poor fellow a helping hand and teach him, and many others, something useful. Your comment merely builds the impression that our favorite OS is only for self-important jerks. If that is the case, perhaps I'll switch to something else.
Interestingly, earlier today a group of sales guys from the company the book's authors work for (according to the ad at the top of the book's homepage) gave me a demo of some of the Java apps they sell. They are using Java for both back end stuff and client apps. I must say that I was highly impressed with both the appearance and the performance of the client apps. I am assuming that the authors had some hand in the coding. If so, I for one am willing to listen to what they have to say in their book. They seem to know what the heck they are talking about, unlike some other books I've wasted good money buying. (And perhaps unlike _some_ of the folks posting to/.)
Actually, all that the "non-compatible" bit means is that you can't run the "code-morphing" software for one chip on the other. The emulated x86 instruction set is the same, so your binaries should work on either.
So Linux will work quite readily on either chip.
The 16 bit business means that old worn out windows and DOS binaries will work better on the faster chip than they do on the slower one.
I simply feel moved by the sincere and and heartfelt emotions expressed by scrytch. I hope that the person who replied to scrytch's original post understands that the love flowing over the net comes from scrytch's deep care for his education and enlightenment. The rest of us also appreciate the poetic terms in which this conversation is couched. It brightens our day, and leaves us with that "fresh as a morning shower" feeling deep down in our souls. Please, someone moderate this sort of posting up even more! We need more such original contributions on/.
I hope that someday I too can enrich the lives of my fellow slashdotters with such score:4 worthy messages, and teach them that in order to be a default 2 person they should emulate me.
Meanwhile, I must simply apologize for taking up yet more space in the database with this off-topic reply.
My current employer has more than 25,000 users on Exchange. It works fine except that exchange crashes every other day!;-)
My last employer had a similiar load on exchange servers, and it seemed more reliable there. Then again, my last employer had access to more knowledge about exchange and NT than any other company there is. ( Guess who?)
I'd concur with the other posts that suggested something on a proper enterprise scalable real OS.
I'd just point out that emerging standards such as XSL and XLL may make XML very capable as a document format. If these standards succeed as well as HTML has, even Microsoft will have to support them. Of course, MS is playing a large role in the development of these standards, so one might expect them to use their marketing prowess to cash in early. They shouldn't, however, be able to establish a monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
Emphasis on "limited times" and "to authors and inventors".
The industries in question have been systematically (and successfully) attacking the first item for decades, and do not generally belong to the groups specified by the second part.
The majority of the money made in these industries goes to distributors whose historical monopoly on the means of distribution is slipping away from them. In some cases they facilitate the creative process, but in the majority of cases they do not, or do so to a limited and replaceable degree.
In fact, in many cases, these monopolists have in essence enslaved the creators of works and used them as livestock to drive their engines of profit.
Does any of this make the unlicensed sharing of copyrighted works ethical or justifiable? Probably not.
The profligate use of the guillotine during the French revolution was probably not ethical or justifiable, either, but it sure happened anyway.
The monopoly is dead, like it or not. The current noise is the death rattle of an expiring regime, the which never go quiet into that good night. Something else will rise in its place, and what that will be we simply do not yet know.
But I'll bet these same money grubbers will eventually find a way to cash in without creating anything themselves. They always do.
... the rest end up working in [jobs you don't respect]...
That's pure horse manure. Student athletes come in all varieties, from the studious to the willfully ignorant, from the meek to the arrogant, and all points on any number of other axes.
I'll offer as a counter example to your statement the son of a friend, who is in his first year at the US Air Force Academy. He was an outstanding high school athlete, an outstanding honors student, and to top it off the most responsible and empathetic young man you'd ever care to meet.
Or for a less glamorous example, myself. I was a passable athlete in school, a varsity track runner. I was a goof-off in class, but managed to graduate and scored well on the standardized tests. After an ignominious beginning to my university career, I managed to retrieve my head from my posterior and graduate with honors. The better part of two decades later, I'm now working as a senior level software developer, which I will assume is a position which carries at least a modicum of respect from the slashdot crowd.
I don't believe either of us falls into this "rest of them" group digging ditches and pining for the glory days of our teen years. Nor do the large majority of former student athletes.
And frankly, you show a lamentable lack of respect for those who work very hard indeed to build the structures you depend on to keep you safe from the big blue room. That's a real job, not this pansy code typing that I do for a living.
spam spam spam
In other news, let's at least attempt to stay on topic? Please?
OK, here are the possibilities I see:
In any case, I am finished with this “conversation”.
Well, I have to weigh in again here.
Mr. Beckerman:
The site AllOfMP3.com, which operates in Russia under Russian law, claims on their site that the music they sell is completely legal - in Russia. Others must judge according to the laws of their country.
I believe the original question was asking for an opinion as to whether the music files obtained from that site would be legal in another country, such as perhaps the USA. We are all quite aware that the legalities are in flux. Indeed, most of us understand the word "flux" without looking it up.
If you like, you may look up the notices on the aforementioned website - see the section "Is it legal to download music from site AllOFMP3.com?"
cheers,
iceaxe
Hey all,
I think what Mr. Beckerman is trying to get across is that the legal ground here is as solid as the deck of the Titanic. Unfortunately, because he IS a lawyer, it would be unprofessional of him to offer personal opinion on specific actions or topics which are not solidly grounded in case law. Especially in a public forum.
The rest of us can afford to postulate and opine, but he cannot. His job is to represent, not to judge.
Perhaps we should get a judge to answer some of the same questions. But then, apparently, the answers would depend on which judge we asked...
cheers,
iceaxe
I have terabytes to burn, I don't give a rat's posterior about the disk space it takes up, but why shouldn't I be able to strip it out if I'm not using it?
Besides, it most certainly does represent something more than used disk space. It is executable code with potential security vulnerabilities. The fact that it is not currently being used doesn't mean it might not be at some point, intentionally or otherwise.
Not one server - hundreds. The fact is that percentagewise very few servers have problems after patching. But the odds do catch up, and frequently one or two of the hundreds have to be wiped and re-imaged after a patch. And yes, that's after extensive testing on dev and test servers. If we didn't do that first the impact would be vastly increased.
Furthermore, it generally does NOT affect service to clients, because we have a huge investment in redundancy (clusters to back up clusters, spread across multiple datacenters, etc.) and a large team standing by to take care of whatever problems do occur.
And of course I've seen Linux patches break things. No OS is perfect, certainly not Linux. But the "other" OSes, quite simply, do not have to be patched as often. The available patches are often for optional components which frequently are not installed. With Linux, especially, we can and do run the systems stripped down to essentials as much as reasonably possible.
It's really a matter of scale. If I was running a handful of servers in one location, it just wouldn't be such a problem. The odds would be with me. But as I deal with a 24x7x365 operation spread across every time zone on earth and datacenters in 6 or 7 different countries, even small problems can bite me hard.
You can't seriously be proposing that I intentionally leave vulnerable code on even one of my mission critical servers, can you? What if someone comes along and decides to run that piece of code? Someone who should know better. I know, they should be held responsible for their actions, but that's pretty crappy rationalization if I could have prevented the problem in the first place.
It's like this:
Why should I have to endure another surgery every month on an organ I can easily live without?
Sucker bet. Of course they do. And it gets patched when there's a vulnerability. But it is as rare as hen's teeth that we have to completely rebuild the system after patching the vulnerability. Sometimes the patches break other other things, though...
It's really all pretty much a pain in the neck. Windows just causes me more pain, more often.
Now, it would appear that you suspect me of
Speaking as the guy who has to keep the critical factory applications running for one of the largest vendors of Microsoft operating systems on planet Earth, I wish like heck that there were a version of "Windows" that didn't include so much unnecessary cruft. Yes, unnecessary. Why do I need an html rendering component on an application server? Or a database server? Or a middleware server?
What it means is that every time there's another security patch for that unused Piece Of S...oftware on my servers, I have to shut down operations and apply patches. And then when one of those servers fails to boot after patching (happens almost every time) we have to bring the backups online or reinstall the OS, or...
If there were fewer unused bits on the box, this would be much easier.
Like it is on the Linux, Solaris, SCO (eek!), Non-Stop, and assorted other server OSes I have running in my data centers. (None of which has any kind of GUI installed - much less a pile of unremovable desktop apps)
I guess you would have to call it something else besides "Windows", though. Maybe something like "Microsoft Works"... [snicker, guffaw]
There's my two cents. Don't spend it all in one place.
I'm curious about the second martyrdom. I must have missed that somewhere. Elaborate please?
The way I read it, the martyrdom occurred to a flesh-n-blood person, once. Also, the group in the Americas was a group of your "genocidal, patriarchal" etc. people who had traveled there by boat.
Believe it or don't, but do get the story straight.
I find it entirely possible to live a double life as a geek and an explorer. The caving world is full of geeks. It seems to be a general misfit personality thing.
/. #18903
Cavers have such geeky projects as ground penetrating radio location and communications, 3D cave mapping software, science of all sorts, not to mention the peculiar smell of clothing which has been muddied underground and then left in a trash bag for weeks.
For USians see the National Speleological Society to find out more. Other countries have similar organizations, I just don't happen to know the URLs off the top of my head. Try googling to find your local org.
cheers all,
TK
NSS #33262
Doesn't matter who I vote for. I live in Texas and my vote will not be counted. Bush will get a majority here and will walk away with all of the electoral votes as if it had been unanimous, leaving my bush-despising minority self disenfranchised.
So I will probably not vote for President at all. I will be voting in elections where my vote will count for something.
Now back to my regularly scheduled meltdown.
See the Avalung.
Or at Avalung.com, if you can view flash.
Hey, no problem. Sell it to them.
See, now it's not free, and it's definitely proven in the industry.
Problem solved, plus money in your pocket.
THIS IS NOT A JOKE.
Thousands of consultants all over the world sell open source solutions to people who don't know how to do it themselves. It makes the pointy haired bosses feel good to think about how much money they are spending to get the very best that money can't buy.
The best part is, you don't have to feel sleazy about it, because you really are setting them up with the best solution for their needs. They are paying you for your knowledge and expertise.
Then you can turn around and help out with the project that made you some money, by coding, testing, documenting, or DONATING!
Everybody wins.
Go get 'em.
I can't really comment on Steven's annoying qualities, as I don't watch broadcast television. Ever.
However, I have seen figures which suggest that Dell's sales to home users have skyrocketed since the "Dude" ads began.
I have no numbers to back this up, so take it for what it's worth. Apparently annoying marketing works. Of course, annoying marketing is a primary reason for my above mentioned viewing habits.
iceaxe
I just ordered a new box at my local computer shop (Laboratory Computers) with preloaded Mandrake.
Schweet deal, too. Very nice set-up, and they sell it with no OS, or choose your OS and they'll load it for you. Mandrake costs $0.
Much better computer than the WalMart jobbie, and not much more $$. And it comes with support.
Check 'em out
iceaxe
Next best thing --
This time I get to take my 9 year old son to see a Star Wars flick. Judging by his love for TPM and wearing out the video tapes of all four, I expect to have a grand time watching him watch the movie, and I might even forget to be cynical and experienced and all that - and just sit back and enjoy it myself.
On reading the decision I note that the Judge leaves wide open a suit for invasion of privacy. See footnote 10, quoted below for your convenience. I would guess that the judge does not like the contents of the website any better than I do. My personal politics aside, this type of cheerleading for criminal behavior makes me want to hurl.
---- snip -----
10 We need not decide here whether the First Amendment would protect
defendants from a suit for invasion of privacy, because plaintiffs do not
claim damages based solely on the publication of private facts, namely
their addresses and telephone numbers. Cf. Anderson v. Fisher Broadcast-
ing Cos., 712 P.2d 803, 807 (Or. 1986) (recognizing a tort for invasion of
privacy when the tortfeasor has the specific intent to cause plaintiff severe
mental or emotional distress and such conduct exceeds "the farthest reach
of socially tolerable behavior").
----/snip-------
If it doesn't turn out to be a good space drive, maybe it could be marketed as the
"New, Space-Age Superconducting Vibrator"
[As seen on TV!]
-iceaxe
Mr. Blake:
Please place your attitude where your head apparently resides.
*If* you are as capable as you imply, why not lend this poor fellow a helping hand and teach him, and many others, something useful. Your comment merely builds the impression that our favorite OS is only for self-important jerks. If that is the case, perhaps I'll switch to something else.
iceaxe
Interestingly, earlier today a group of sales guys from the company the book's authors work for (according to the ad at the top of the book's homepage) gave me a demo of some of the Java apps they sell. They are using Java for both back end stuff and client apps. I must say that I was highly impressed with both the appearance and the performance of the client apps. I am assuming that the authors had some hand in the coding. If so, I for one am willing to listen to what they have to say in their book. They seem to know what the heck they are talking about, unlike some other books I've wasted good money buying. (And perhaps unlike _some_ of the folks posting to /.)
cheers!
iceaxe
Installed Mandrake 7.0-2 with defaults, and can't log in as root *EXCEPT* if you let it start X when you boot.
The unsuspecting newbie will probably always tell it to start X by default, so the problem still exists.
Haven't tried 'paranoid', so I don't know if this behavior is the same there.
Iceaxe
Actually, all that the "non-compatible" bit means is that you can't run the "code-morphing" software for one chip on the other. The emulated x86 instruction set is the same, so your binaries should work on either.
So Linux will work quite readily on either chip.
The 16 bit business means that old worn out windows and DOS binaries will work better on the faster chip than they do on the slower one.
Cheers-
Iceaxe
I simply feel moved by the sincere and and heartfelt emotions expressed by scrytch. I hope that the person who replied to scrytch's original post understands that the love flowing over the net comes from scrytch's deep care for his education and enlightenment. The rest of us also appreciate the poetic terms in which this conversation is couched. It brightens our day, and leaves us with that "fresh as a morning shower" feeling deep down in our souls. Please, someone moderate this sort of posting up even more! We need more such original contributions on /.
I hope that someday I too can enrich the lives of my fellow slashdotters with such score:4 worthy messages, and teach them that in order to be a default 2 person they should emulate me.
Meanwhile, I must simply apologize for taking up yet more space in the database with this off-topic reply.
Thank you,
--iceaxe
My current employer has more than 25,000 users on Exchange. It works fine except that exchange crashes every other day! ;-)
My last employer had a similiar load on exchange servers, and it seemed more reliable there. Then again, my last employer had access to more knowledge about exchange and NT than any other company there is. ( Guess who?)
I'd concur with the other posts that suggested something on a proper enterprise scalable real OS.
--iceaxe
I'd just point out that emerging standards such as XSL and XLL may make XML very capable as a document format. If these standards succeed as well as HTML has, even Microsoft will have to support them. Of course, MS is playing a large role in the development of these standards, so one might expect them to use their marketing prowess to cash in early. They shouldn't, however, be able to establish a monopoly.