I mean, yes, a fully scaleable vectorized desktop would be great, where you could scale any component to the size you want, and keep the layout intact, that woudl be great... but..
in Windows:
- You can change font sizes - Even better, go into the advanced desktop settings, and set the DPI setting to 120 (it defaults to 96). This will cause all kinds of changes to make things more readable at a higher resolution. For those who haven't tried, please don't tell me it will make things smaller; this setting tells windows what resolution your display is, so it can compensate visually.
- If the widgets and buttons are too small in windows, you can quit easily grab some skinning tool and grab a theme with larger buttons and window bars.
Really, this is not a big problem.. I would be surprised if you can't quite easily overcome the problem of your high resolution display. I dare say, easier than you can in linux.
Linux: Window managers support themes. Font sizes are scaleable. What more do you want?
OSX: Same deal
The only problem you will come across is some applications where the layout is not done correctly, and when fonts scale, things become unreadable. You know, like when the stupid company's make some popup configuratin window with a bunch of columns in it that are too small to read the full text of each, but they won't let you resize the window. Really brilliant design there.
That depends, laregly, on the definition of contractor and consultant.
If someone works out of your office, using your equipment, and you set their hours, you can call them a contractor, but the law may say otherwise.. this is the position MS and others are getting caught on. If it walks like an employee, and it talks like an employee.. it may have the rights of an employee.
If all those MS contractors were working from home from their own businesses, there would not be an issue.
With this kind of outsourcing though, to india, we are not talking about hiring or contracting individuals, but farming out work to software houses... and you can be sure there is no way a software house in india is going to somehow make themselves out to be employees of microsoft, unless they really are.
I get the feeling that most slashdotters, when they hear "outsourcing to India" picture some run down building with old computers and starving Indians in cheap work clothes who are happy to program for $2 an hour or less, working in sweatshop conditions.
This isn't necessarily the case. India does have almost 1 billion people; not all of them are poor, or uneducated, and not all of them work for nothing.
The fact is, a software house in india may produce work just as good as one in the US, at a fraction of the price, simply because the overall cost of living is so much less. Educated, intelligent programmers who appreciate their jobs, which are good by their local standards, and these sofwtare firms are competing on a global scale with every other firm out there. And winning.
Because the principals of a corporation DO have some liability for it's actions. The board, the executive officers, have some liability for the actions of the company.
You can't just form a corporation with you as the sole director and owner, and escape liability, or taxes.
In a typical company, the corporate officers, and the board of directors, ARE responsible for what happens, and have a fair deal of personal liability for what the company does. Their assetts are not the company's, true, and if it's merely a matter of the company going bankrupt, they will be okay.. but in many places, if the company dodges taxes, it WILL be taken out of the director's pockets, and if the directors instruct the company to do something illegal... they can be held accountable.
A corporation exists sort of like another person, but not entirely.
So perhaps it needs to be a privately held cooperative, rather than a publicly traded company, where the owners really are co owners.
Also, with regards to public companies... the shareholders might be last in line, but then, so is the owner of a small home based business when he owes money all over. IT's not all that different. The stuff you are mentioning is about how debt is handled, not about who owns what. the shareholders DO own the company, and it's assetts, there are just rules they have to follow. If the company has it's bills paid, and pays it's taxes, and it's employees, part of the company's business COULD be that the shareholdres have rental access to the company assetts.
The scenario you draw is about a company liquidating, and who gets what.. that's a totally different matter than the running company.
They would say that, although you owned the CD, taking a copy from someoen who did not have permission to distribute it to you was still an illegal act.
Perhaps you don't realize it, but many of the things you take for granted as part of that lifestyle you only have because of cheap overseas labour.
IT wouldn't be the first time jobs went overseas, and things changed.
How can companies justify paying locals to do something that can be done for a fraction of the price overseas? If they don't do it, someone else will. Of course, the government would have to erect trade barriers, to ensure that jobs stayed local.. but then what would nike do? What about all the clothing manufacturers? Think of all the people that the textile industry could employ.
- As an American, you do not need a passport to enter the US from outside, you only need proof of citizenship. Driver's license, birth ceritficate, something like that is probably enough. - As an American, you can travel to Canada and some other countries in the americas without a passport, you only need proof of citizenship as above. - The biometrics are there to prevent others from stealing passports and modifying them and/or making fake US passports. This is not a bad thing; a US passport is worth a lot of money to someone who can't get one. - You are not required to have a passport to fly within the US. A passport is an international travel document, and the only universally accepted form of ID for travelling abroad. - Other countries will not necessarily have readers for these passports. How another country wants to verify your identity is up to them, not up to the US Government. - Biometrics stored by other countries is not covered by the US constitution anyways. Photographs, signed documents, and many other things are required in some countries to enter them, and the US constitution does not come into play.
My point, I guess, is that in the case of a passport, having biometric doesn't seem like a bad thing.. the potential for abuse is extremely low, as the passport is only requried for foreign travel anyway.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but just as with those proxmity cards used for buildling access nowadays, the range is not determined so much by the card, as by the reader. A higher powered field will allow those cards to be read at a greater range.
I do agree, privacy concerns only go so far. We take measures to make sure your passport identifies YOU. I, for one, wouldn't necessarily mind if this was in our passports... what I WOULD be concerned about is who could use that information. would make dealing with stolen passports easier.
People who don' travel that much might not realize the value of a passport, espeically an American or Canadian, or any EU passport... you can travel amost unfettered around the world, and it's an accepted form of identification everywhere. Want a bank account in another country? Often all you need is a passport, the rest of the documents are easy to fake. Want to travel basically anywhere? The only entry requirement for an American or Canadian, or EU citizen in most places you'd actually want to go is a passport. WITHOUT that passport, you can hardly go anywhere.
Also, if you are not from one of those countries, travel is a very difficult thing. The visas and requirements needed to get into other countries can be astounding, and expensive..
I can fully see how stolen passports are a valuable thing, and although 9/11 should not be the reason for doing this, going to better forms of authentication of documetns like this should progress with the times.
Re:Before all the flamers get in.
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I think you are missing the point.. we aren't saying "This is a drop in replacement for X".. it's NOT X. I'm saying, to build desktop GUIs, we don't necessairily need to use X as a base. Yes, that might mean that only apps written for that gui would work.. but that gui could be, say, QT (as the article is about) or something else.
See OSX for an example. Can I run X apps? Sure, if I fire up the X server. ANd they run just how you expect them to, they look the right way, and everything... but the apps that work really well use the native display library, not X.... and they work even better. And no, it's not because the X server sucks, in fact, the X server is quite good.
We are adding so much stuff on top of X we have to question if we really need what X provides, and if it can't be better provided better another way.
Re:Before all the flamers get in.
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 1
I'm not implying there is no work involved.. just that the functions X provides we don't necessarily need, and they could be had much faster with a more native less layered approach.
Before all the flamers get in.
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Consider this: What do you really NEED X for. Try to think bigger than unix for a minute.
Yes, X has remote display. That's a really useful and flexible feature in some situations, no doubt about it. And from a technical point of view, it's extremely elegant. In reality, though, to a great many linux users, it's a neat trick that you don't necessairly NEED.
We use QT or whatever and try to design desktop systems (KDE, Gnome) which really just use X as a way to load up graphics primitives... those same systems could equally work on something else, with some great benefits in terms of speed.
From a GUI perspective, if you use all KDE apps, for instance, things have a very nice consistent feel to it. Same with gnome. When you start mixing things, plus mixing in old X apps, you just detract from an overall experience.. so let's come out with a fast, standard display system taht's NOT x.... and use X rootless for those legacy applications we need.
You are entirely correct. Everyone will argue with you, and completely miss this simple point though.
The point for those who are offended by this claim taht GPL is not a contract.. is that, even IF, DESPITE all your wonderful logic, the GPL is actually not valid.. all it means is people DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to redistribute.. it doesn't make the work suddently public domain or something.
You can argue about the validity of the GPL all you want.. but in the worst case, that it's not worth the virtual paper it's printed on, there is nothing left to grant anyone the right to distribute and make derivitave works.. copyright law applies, and SCO or whoever else will still be up shit creek.
It is my underestanding that copyright registration is not like patent application.... there is no "approval" process.. copyright applications are not rejected unless the forms aren't filled out right. IT's just a legal record that you applied on a certain date.. it does not imply any special grant of copyright... that still rests with the authors.
is when you look at what the site is actually used for.
In your scenario, I'd say no, you aren't responsible. That's not what's happening, though.
IF you kept it running for months, and participated in ongoing upgrades to it, and capacity upgrades, and the vast majority of the content was obvious copyright violation, you could not sit there and claim it was not your responsibility. People DO have a responsibility for their own actions, and those things under their control. Furthermore, if you knew your site contained copyrighted information taht you were not permitted to distribute, you WOULD be in violation, regardless of whether or not you put it there. IN teh case of these sites, they have nice front page lists containing tons of stuff.
Simply saying something is forbidden does not exhonerate you from all responsibility.. not when something is so obvious.
Wired had a good article about this in it's early days....
The idea came from "Who watches the watchers".
The idea is that, rather than just government watching everything, EVERYONE can watch everything.. so the people have access to the same resources as the police.
Public security cameras all over the place in public areas? ALL of the public have access to them, not just the government.
Or teh alternate scenario.
Public cameras everywhere, only the police have access to them, but then there are cameras on the police, where all their actions are tracked... and the public has access to those.. so we watch them while they watch us. This could prevent abuse.
I guess I"m not in that group. I thought going after the technology was stupid. - Napster was a corporate target, who's business was based around enabling people to do something illegal, despite it's legal uses. So they got what they deserved. - The p2p smear campaign is not good, it blames the technology, not the poeple. - Going after individuals is fair. Some penalties may be overly harsh, which is NOT fair, but hey, the reason a great many of us DONT set up big pirate mp3 sites is because it's illegal.
And I have to say IANAL because, in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, if some moron takes what I said as actual professional legal advice, and then loses in court, I might get sued and hence arrested next time I have to catch a connecting flight through this Bastion of Freedom, for giving legal advice without stating that I'm not actually a lawyer. Even though I wasn't actually giving legal advice, or talking to the guy directly.
Why should they release their code? I don't understand. What do you mean, got away with a new server? And a boat load of cash? You mean from donations?
What did you think, donating money for use in illegal activities was somehow protected?
A grokster case is a little differen than running a website that hosts pirated material.
If you mean the "Let's pirate like it's legal, openly and blatently" movement, then yes, it will.
It should have been obvious it was only a matter of time before these sites came under legal pressure.
IT's contributory infringement with no doubt about it.. you could try to claim that, as the sites are automated, they have no control over the content... that sort of works with usenet, but that's because the legal:illegal ratio is so high.... in this case, those sites have primarily large files that they do not have rights to distribute, and it's a relatively small number, so to insist they have no control over what's there is absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, yes, a fully scaleable vectorized desktop would be great, where you could scale any component to the size you want, and keep the layout intact, that woudl be great... but..
in Windows:
- You can change font sizes
- Even better, go into the advanced desktop settings, and set the DPI setting to 120 (it defaults to 96). This will cause all kinds of changes to make things more readable at a higher resolution. For those who haven't tried, please don't tell me it will make things smaller; this setting tells windows what resolution your display is, so it can compensate visually.
- If the widgets and buttons are too small in windows, you can quit easily grab some skinning tool and grab a theme with larger buttons and window bars.
Really, this is not a big problem.. I would be surprised if you can't quite easily overcome the problem of your high resolution display. I dare say, easier than you can in linux.
Linux: Window managers support themes. Font sizes are scaleable. What more do you want?
OSX: Same deal
The only problem you will come across is some applications where the layout is not done correctly, and when fonts scale, things become unreadable. You know, like when the stupid company's make some popup configuratin window with a bunch of columns in it that are too small to read the full text of each, but they won't let you resize the window. Really brilliant design there.
That depends, laregly, on the definition of contractor and consultant.
If someone works out of your office, using your equipment, and you set their hours, you can call them a contractor, but the law may say otherwise.. this is the position MS and others are getting caught on.
If it walks like an employee, and it talks like an employee.. it may have the rights of an employee.
If all those MS contractors were working from home from their own businesses, there would not be an issue.
With this kind of outsourcing though, to india, we are not talking about hiring or contracting individuals, but farming out work to software houses... and you can be sure there is no way a software house in india is going to somehow make themselves out to be employees of microsoft, unless they really are.
I get the feeling that most slashdotters, when they hear "outsourcing to India" picture some run down building with old computers and starving Indians in cheap work clothes who are happy to program for $2 an hour or less, working in sweatshop conditions.
This isn't necessarily the case. India does have almost 1 billion people; not all of them are poor, or uneducated, and not all of them work for nothing.
The fact is, a software house in india may produce work just as good as one in the US, at a fraction of the price, simply because the overall cost of living is so much less.
Educated, intelligent programmers who appreciate their jobs, which are good by their local standards, and these sofwtare firms are competing on a global scale with every other firm out there. And winning.
This isn't the garment industry.
Because the principals of a corporation DO have some liability for it's actions. The board, the executive officers, have some liability for the actions of the company.
You can't just form a corporation with you as the sole director and owner, and escape liability, or taxes.
In a typical company, the corporate officers, and the board of directors, ARE responsible for what happens, and have a fair deal of personal liability for what the company does. Their assetts are not the company's, true, and if it's merely a matter of the company going bankrupt, they will be okay.. but in many places, if the company dodges taxes, it WILL be taken out of the director's pockets, and if the directors instruct the company to do something illegal... they can be held accountable.
A corporation exists sort of like another person, but not entirely.
but the article indicated publicly traded company. Is your company publicly traded?
Incorporation is not the same thing.
It's the right of an owner to listen to the music he legally owns.
Fair use doesn't come into play when you listen you a cd you bought at home.. fair use is for exceptions to that.
So perhaps it needs to be a privately held cooperative, rather than a publicly traded company, where the owners really are co owners.
Also, with regards to public companies... the shareholders might be last in line, but then, so is the owner of a small home based business when he owes money all over. IT's not all that different.
The stuff you are mentioning is about how debt is handled, not about who owns what. the shareholders DO own the company, and it's assetts, there are just rules they have to follow.
If the company has it's bills paid, and pays it's taxes, and it's employees, part of the company's business COULD be that the shareholdres have rental access to the company assetts.
The scenario you draw is about a company liquidating, and who gets what.. that's a totally different matter than the running company.
Start your own comany, take it public, and then do as you suggest. See how well you do.
They would say that, although you owned the CD, taking a copy from someoen who did not have permission to distribute it to you was still an illegal act.
Perhaps you don't realize it, but many of the things you take for granted as part of that lifestyle you only have because of cheap overseas labour.
IT wouldn't be the first time jobs went overseas, and things changed.
How can companies justify paying locals to do something that can be done for a fraction of the price overseas? If they don't do it, someone else will.
Of course, the government would have to erect trade barriers, to ensure that jobs stayed local.. but then what would nike do? What about all the clothing manufacturers? Think of all the people that the textile industry could employ.
A few things about passports:
- As an American, you do not need a passport to enter the US from outside, you only need proof of citizenship. Driver's license, birth ceritficate, something like that is probably enough.
- As an American, you can travel to Canada and some other countries in the americas without a passport, you only need proof of citizenship as above.
- The biometrics are there to prevent others from stealing passports and modifying them and/or making fake US passports. This is not a bad thing; a US passport is worth a lot of money to someone who can't get one.
- You are not required to have a passport to fly within the US. A passport is an international travel document, and the only universally accepted form of ID for travelling abroad.
- Other countries will not necessarily have readers for these passports. How another country wants to verify your identity is up to them, not up to the US Government.
- Biometrics stored by other countries is not covered by the US constitution anyways. Photographs, signed documents, and many other things are required in some countries to enter them, and the US constitution does not come into play.
My point, I guess, is that in the case of a passport, having biometric doesn't seem like a bad thing.. the potential for abuse is extremely low, as the passport is only requried for foreign travel anyway.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but just as with those proxmity cards used for buildling access nowadays, the range is not determined so much by the card, as by the reader. A higher powered field will allow those cards to be read at a greater range.
I do agree, privacy concerns only go so far. We take measures to make sure your passport identifies YOU. I, for one, wouldn't necessarily mind if this was in our passports... what I WOULD be concerned about is who could use that information.
would make dealing with stolen passports easier.
People who don' travel that much might not realize the value of a passport, espeically an American or Canadian, or any EU passport... you can travel amost unfettered around the world, and it's an accepted form of identification everywhere. Want a bank account in another country? Often all you need is a passport, the rest of the documents are easy to fake.
Want to travel basically anywhere? The only entry requirement for an American or Canadian, or EU citizen in most places you'd actually want to go is a passport.
WITHOUT that passport, you can hardly go anywhere.
Also, if you are not from one of those countries, travel is a very difficult thing. The visas and requirements needed to get into other countries can be astounding, and expensive..
I can fully see how stolen passports are a valuable thing, and although 9/11 should not be the reason for doing this, going to better forms of authentication of documetns like this should progress with the times.
I think you are missing the point.. we aren't saying "This is a drop in replacement for X" .. it's NOT X. I'm saying, to build desktop GUIs, we don't necessairily need to use X as a base.
Yes, that might mean that only apps written for that gui would work.. but that gui could be, say, QT (as the article is about) or something else.
See OSX for an example. Can I run X apps? Sure, if I fire up the X server. ANd they run just how you expect them to, they look the right way, and everything... but the apps that work really well use the native display library, not X.... and they work even better. And no, it's not because the X server sucks, in fact, the X server is quite good.
We are adding so much stuff on top of X we have to question if we really need what X provides, and if it can't be better provided better another way.
I'm not implying there is no work involved.. just that the functions X provides we don't necessarily need, and they could be had much faster with a more native less layered approach.
Consider this: What do you really NEED X for. Try to think bigger than unix for a minute.
Yes, X has remote display. That's a really useful and flexible feature in some situations, no doubt about it. And from a technical point of view, it's extremely elegant.
In reality, though, to a great many linux users, it's a neat trick that you don't necessairly NEED.
We use QT or whatever and try to design desktop systems (KDE, Gnome) which really just use X as a way to load up graphics primitives... those same systems could equally work on something else, with some great benefits in terms of speed.
From a GUI perspective, if you use all KDE apps, for instance, things have a very nice consistent feel to it. Same with gnome. When you start mixing things, plus mixing in old X apps, you just detract from an overall experience.. so let's come out with a fast, standard display system taht's NOT x.... and use X rootless for those legacy applications we need.
You are entirely correct. Everyone will argue with you, and completely miss this simple point though.
The point for those who are offended by this claim taht GPL is not a contract.. is that, even IF, DESPITE all your wonderful logic, the GPL is actually not valid.. all it means is people DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT to redistribute.. it doesn't make the work suddently public domain or something.
You can argue about the validity of the GPL all you want.. but in the worst case, that it's not worth the virtual paper it's printed on, there is nothing left to grant anyone the right to distribute and make derivitave works.. copyright law applies, and SCO or whoever else will still be up shit creek.
It is my underestanding that copyright registration is not like patent application.... there is no "approval" process.. copyright applications are not rejected unless the forms aren't filled out right. IT's just a legal record that you applied on a certain date.. it does not imply any special grant of copyright... that still rests with the authors.
is when you look at what the site is actually used for.
In your scenario, I'd say no, you aren't responsible. That's not what's happening, though.
IF you kept it running for months, and participated in ongoing upgrades to it, and capacity upgrades, and the vast majority of the content was obvious copyright violation, you could not sit there and claim it was not your responsibility. People DO have a responsibility for their own actions, and those things under their control.
Furthermore, if you knew your site contained copyrighted information taht you were not permitted to distribute, you WOULD be in violation, regardless of whether or not you put it there. IN teh case of these sites, they have nice front page lists containing tons of stuff.
Simply saying something is forbidden does not exhonerate you from all responsibility.. not when something is so obvious.
Wired had a good article about this in it's early days....
The idea came from "Who watches the watchers".
The idea is that, rather than just government watching everything, EVERYONE can watch everything.. so the people have access to the same resources as the police.
Public security cameras all over the place in public areas? ALL of the public have access to them, not just the government.
Or teh alternate scenario.
Public cameras everywhere, only the police have access to them, but then there are cameras on the police, where all their actions are tracked... and the public has access to those.. so we watch them while they watch us. This could prevent abuse.
I guess I"m not in that group. I thought going after the technology was stupid.
- Napster was a corporate target, who's business was based around enabling people to do something illegal, despite it's legal uses. So they got what they deserved.
- The p2p smear campaign is not good, it blames the technology, not the poeple.
- Going after individuals is fair. Some penalties may be overly harsh, which is NOT fair, but hey, the reason a great many of us DONT set up big pirate mp3 sites is because it's illegal.
And I have to say IANAL because, in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, if some moron takes what I said as actual professional legal advice, and then loses in court, I might get sued and hence arrested next time I have to catch a connecting flight through this Bastion of Freedom, for giving legal advice without stating that I'm not actually a lawyer. Even though I wasn't actually giving legal advice, or talking to the guy directly.
Why should they release their code? I don't understand.
What do you mean, got away with a new server? And a boat load of cash? You mean from donations?
What did you think, donating money for use in illegal activities was somehow protected?
A grokster case is a little differen than running a website that hosts pirated material.
This is about websites, that are acting as a hub for warez activity.
It's got no more to do with Bittorrent than a pirate ftp site has to do with ftp. You don't blame FTP, you blame the site.
This is not at all the same thing as p2p networks.
If you mean the "Let's pirate like it's legal, openly and blatently" movement, then yes, it will.
It should have been obvious it was only a matter of time before these sites came under legal pressure.
IT's contributory infringement with no doubt about it.. you could try to claim that, as the sites are automated, they have no control over the content... that sort of works with usenet, but that's because the legal:illegal ratio is so high.... in this case, those sites have primarily large files that they do not have rights to distribute, and it's a relatively small number, so to insist they have no control over what's there is absurd.
I guess I'm not talking about the US then.