But the main appeal of so-called "broadband" is that it's always online, and you don't have to fuck with it to use the net from moment to moment. People LIKE that; that's the #1 feature. It's reliable.
Speed is secondary. People DO like the speed... even if they say they don't... otehrwise they couldn't download all the movies and porn and music.
The source is NOT the work; it is a stage of the work. If I'm offering you a binary, that binary either has value to your or it doesn't. In most cases, it's not copyright that protects my binary, it's a license agreement. Just as an NDA can force you not to reveal internal facts in a company (even though they are not covered by copyright), so could software be protected even if copyright did not apply.
Trying to demand source on the grounds that copyright is being wronged without it is totally absurd.
It happens in cases where the source is part of the product.
Giving away source is adding value to a product; you not only get the product itself, but the ability to completely modify it to your own needs however you want.
Many companies WILL give you source, for a price, and a contract to protect them.
Some products DO include source, where it makes sense.. my favorite example being Starbase's Codewright. Codewright is a wicked cool programming editor, it's not cheap, and you pay per-seat, but they provide full source by default, so you can extend the editor to meet the needs of your development environment. This makes sense, as the product is geared towards programmers themselves.
My mom, however, does not need to pay for the added value in the Office source, were it available; it means nothing to her.
What are you comparing against? How do you know it hasn't slowed it, the source has never been available.
It's fair and reasonable to assume that if everyone had the windows source, a great many more flaws would be found, quickly. It's a thousand times easier to find buffer overflows when you can analyze the source than it is without it.
That's what I mean. I didn't mean in the open source soapdodging linux hippie zealot way.... I meant it in the "It means I have access to the source".
That's why I mentioned Codewright... it's fully commercial, you pay per-seat, but the full source is included so you can modify it for your own needs if you want. You can't distribute it, you can't send out your mods.. but your company can customize the environment, which is the whole point, and everything open source is supposed to be about.
People do have the right to modify the source as a function of normal copyright, as long as they aren't distributing those changes.
Define closed or open? The executable code, in and of itself, is a work, it's just not in a form YOU want it in.
If I write a book, does that mean the rough drafts, and pre-released manuscripts shouold be yours as well? What about the digital copy I sent to the printer? Shoudl you *DEMAND* to have that as well as the book?
Terminal velocity for whatever debris is leftover will not be that fast.. the odds of you being hit by it are extremely low.. the odds of you being seriously hurt if you were are even lower.
One is that it makes the inner workings more obscure, and lessens the likelyhood of someone "stealing" pieces of your code for use in their own works.
Secondly, it makes support more difficult; is the version of the software someone is using YOUR version, or modified? Did they build it right? Is it making your stuff seem crappy when it's not?
When it comes to corporate contracts, source makes sense. When it comes to mass market things like Office, it does not (from Microsoft's point of view)
This kind of things is done all the time. It's no secret.
Basically terms regarding non-competition and whatnot (they can use your code however they want, but shoudl they sell it or give it away, they would be competing with you)
Really. Talk to a lawyer. No amount of slashdot advice will help you write a contract better than a lawyer.
If you want an example, look at the license agreement that comes with the CodeWright editor from Starbase, they provide full source for the editor as part of the package.
The AHRA states that making recordings of copyrighted material using certain methods is not actionable in and of itself. You can't be charged with making a copy of a CD with your DAT player. That's a separate issue from whether copyright violation occurred... it's about the actual tools and items in use and whether such use is legal.
You can copy for personal use, yes, but not when the original material is not yours to copy in the first place (as it would be if it was illegally distributed).
It is my understanding that this has been somewhat overturned in some courts in the UK... given that there are many uses for a TV other than watching the BBC nowadays.
So have your developers do what many who are in-the-know do; test your code on Opera, as it is the most strict. If it works in opera, it will work in IE.
It's incredibly popular because of windows. It's the leader on the mac because it's the leader on windows, which is what the majority of web surfers use.
Yes, people who want to exploit things target the most popular platforms.
It helps to realise that looking at things in a purely technical sense is quite meaningless in reality.
Even if Outlook & Outlook Express have the same number of security problems as less popular mail clients, that doesn't change the fact that there is far less risk in using something less popular.
IE is a risk. Using Opera instead, FOR NOW, negates a lot of that risk. IF everyone used Opera, yeah, we'd be in the same boat... but we aren't.
Why kids, why not organized adults with financial resources? The answer: WHY
Kids.. it's fun, it's destructive, it's a sense of power.. the reasons go on. I shouldn't have to explain them.. go back, I'm sure many of you can understand.
Adults.. and I'm not talking about big kids who never grew up here... need a finanical reason to do this. Could organized, intelligent hackers with financial backing to some serious damange to the internet? You better believe it. What would they have to gain? Not much. Prison. Hatred. Being labeled as terrorists, maybe killed.
What are you going to do? Hold the Interent for ransom? I doubt it.
That's why this stuff is chiefly done by kids, not grownups.
If nothing has given me the right to modify or disribute the work....
and I ignore that fact and do it anyway...
Then I'm guilty of copyright violation. I've broken the law.
I have not "violated the GPL" however.. because I never agreed to it in the first place. I have violated the owner's copyright.. and only the copyright holder has a case against me.
I do not automatically "owe anyone" source, though I could release it and claim I am now protected from lawsuit by the GPL, as it grants me permission to do this.
You misunderstand my point. I'm not poking holes in your analogy; I'm pointing out that your analogy makes no sense with regards to websites. If you can use an analogy to prove a point, at least pick one that fits.
My point is, in going to the website, nobody said "you have to watch these ads to use our website". They just put some code in their website that may or may not be understood by my browser that may or may not successfully pop up an ad.
Any business that relies on what people "should know" is flawed. Deal in tangibles. If your business is delivering viewers to advertisements, then you should have a reliable way of doing it; not some unreliable way that you then whine and scream about if someone doesn't look at your ads.
I'm not stealing anything unless there is some sort of contractual agremenet for me to provide something in exchange for something else.
Saying "watch this salesman, listen to his pitch, and get 30% off", well, that's pretty clear that if I don't listen tot he whole thing, I get no deal.
The problem is, you can't ever rely on them only using it for the state purpose. Look how many companies change their privacy policies down the road.
Why should you be compelled to lie? You don't have to, you can ignore the card and pay higher prices. But as I'm not stupid, I'm not going to do that.
It's all fine and wondeful to discuss ideals, and how things SHOULD be. I'm talking about how I deal with these situations on a day-to-day basis, because I don't have TIME to hassle with boycotting the local store, or whatever.
I have to wonder... it seems poeple often feel a great reluctance to speak up or question when some information is asked of them they would rather not give.
Any time I've walked into Radio Shack, they've asked for my name and address, of course. I say "You don't need to know that", politely, and they say "No problem sir" and then continue to ring the order through.
Even buying a pay-as-you-go Cantel phone from radio shack... not only did radio shack want my name/address, but of course, they want it for the Cantel activation as well. Nevertheless, a polite "Well why do you need that if I have to pay everything up front.". "Well sir, you don't have to give us your name, we can just put it in under John Doe, but that will cause a problem should you forget your PIN or should your phone be stolen and you want it deactivated. In this case, we wouldn't be able to help you." Thanks, that made perfect sense, I can accept that. Right on sir, here you go, have a nice day.
You see... often that's all it takes, is some polite, non-confrontational intelligent questions.
Supermarker convenience cards? Lie. I'm serious. Just make some crap up and put it on the card. If you want to be really nice at the same time, keep the demographic information the same, but not your name/address/phone number. That way the store gets honest demographics, with no privacy violations. When tehy ask for ID, they usualy want it for cheque caching purposes.. just say you don't want that.
There is a difference between violations of privacy and straightforward information gathering; complaining about privacy is one thing, but taking a proactive stance towards it is another. If a majority of people refused to give information out at retail stores, fairly soon retail stores would stop asking.
is that you chose a way to make money (pop up ads) that you have no way to force people to view... and now want to call everyone thieves for not buying into your totally broken business model.
We have a word for that: stupid business model.
You are right up there with the cuecat. Was it a crime to buy a cuecat then NOT use it for what the company wanted you to use it for? No... they took a stupid risk that their stupid business model called for, and they failed. Because they were stupid.
Except nobody told me I had to listen to a salesman to get a 30% discount. They just tried to call a feature I may or may not have on my browser to pop up another browser to fetch some more pages. That's a pretty shitty analogy.
It's more like there is a booth outside the restaurant, and anyone who dines that night gets a discount... and I choose to walk right past the booth and ignore the dork trying to get my attention.
Just because they "thought" I would render the site a certain way using a certain browser doesn't mean ANYTHING to me.
How I choose to access material over the web is my business.
Of course, the same goes both ways.. the site operators are free to do whatever it is they want with their site. If they want to use stuff like this, or force the use of certain browsers, power to them.
I'ts poeple like you who toss around the word "stealing" and accept that just about anything not happening the way the originator intended is theft that let the world get into the state it's in now with the RIAA, MPAA, etctera.
You probably think it's theft to mod an Xbox too... or to buy something sold below cost then not use it for the intended purpose.
If someone doesn't want me to fetch just certain objects from their webserver, they can do something about it instead of WHINE
It's a developer issue. IT's still too difficult for developers to know what toolkit to use to write applications for Linux... especially if they wan't something modern.
Yes, they can use GTK. Yes they can use QT. What version should they pick? What will be the most compatable?
It would be nice to have a NEW display API that really rocks... that's what this is about.
Slashdot Mirror
But the main appeal of so-called "broadband" is that it's always online, and you don't have to fuck with it to use the net from moment to moment. People LIKE that; that's the #1 feature. It's reliable.
Speed is secondary. People DO like the speed... even if they say they don't... otehrwise they couldn't download all the movies and porn and music.
The source is NOT the work; it is a stage of the work. If I'm offering you a binary, that binary either has value to your or it doesn't.
In most cases, it's not copyright that protects my binary, it's a license agreement.
Just as an NDA can force you not to reveal internal facts in a company (even though they are not covered by copyright), so could software be protected even if copyright did not apply.
Trying to demand source on the grounds that copyright is being wronged without it is totally absurd.
It happens in cases where the source is part of the product.
Giving away source is adding value to a product; you not only get the product itself, but the ability to completely modify it to your own needs however you want.
Many companies WILL give you source, for a price, and a contract to protect them.
Some products DO include source, where it makes sense.. my favorite example being Starbase's Codewright. Codewright is a wicked cool programming editor, it's not cheap, and you pay per-seat, but they provide full source by default, so you can extend the editor to meet the needs of your development environment.
This makes sense, as the product is geared towards programmers themselves.
My mom, however, does not need to pay for the added value in the Office source, were it available; it means nothing to her.
What are you comparing against? How do you know it hasn't slowed it, the source has never been available.
It's fair and reasonable to assume that if everyone had the windows source, a great many more flaws would be found, quickly. It's a thousand times easier to find buffer overflows when you can analyze the source than it is without it.
That's what I mean. I didn't mean in the open source soapdodging linux hippie zealot way....
I meant it in the "It means I have access to the source".
That's why I mentioned Codewright... it's fully commercial, you pay per-seat, but the full source is included so you can modify it for your own needs if you want. You can't distribute it, you can't send out your mods.. but your company can customize the environment, which is the whole point, and everything open source is supposed to be about.
People do have the right to modify the source as a function of normal copyright, as long as they aren't distributing those changes.
Define closed or open? The executable code, in and of itself, is a work, it's just not in a form YOU want it in.
If I write a book, does that mean the rough drafts, and pre-released manuscripts shouold be yours as well? What about the digital copy I sent to the printer? Shoudl you *DEMAND* to have that as well as the book?
I don't see where you are going with this.
Terminal velocity for whatever debris is leftover will not be that fast.. the odds of you being hit by it are extremely low.. the odds of you being seriously hurt if you were are even lower.
The case for closed-source is twofold:
One is that it makes the inner workings more obscure, and lessens the likelyhood of someone "stealing" pieces of your code for use in their own works.
Secondly, it makes support more difficult; is the version of the software someone is using YOUR version, or modified? Did they build it right? Is it making your stuff seem crappy when it's not?
When it comes to corporate contracts, source makes sense.
When it comes to mass market things like Office, it does not (from Microsoft's point of view)
This kind of things is done all the time. It's no secret.
Basically terms regarding non-competition and whatnot (they can use your code however they want, but shoudl they sell it or give it away, they would be competing with you)
Really. Talk to a lawyer. No amount of slashdot advice will help you write a contract better than a lawyer.
If you want an example, look at the license agreement that comes with the CodeWright editor from Starbase, they provide full source for the editor as part of the package.
The AHRA states that making recordings of copyrighted material using certain methods is not actionable in and of itself. You can't be charged with making a copy of a CD with your DAT player. That's a separate issue from whether copyright violation occurred... it's about the actual tools and items in use and whether such use is legal.
You can copy for personal use, yes, but not when the original material is not yours to copy in the first place (as it would be if it was illegally distributed).
Are you saying there are 3d devices that DON'T require stereoscopic vision?
Also, those that are dominant in one eye, even severely so, still have a sense of depth perception better than if they only had one eye.
The DMCA is a uniquely American law. Most of the rest of the world still operates the way the US did before the DMCA.
Canada has no such silly law.
You can absolutley play DVDs under linux with LiViD in Canada. You can also use your chipped DVD player in Canada.
It is my understanding that this has been somewhat overturned in some courts in the UK... given that there are many uses for a TV other than watching the BBC nowadays.
So have your developers do what many who are in-the-know do; test your code on Opera, as it is the most strict. If it works in opera, it will work in IE.
It's incredibly popular because of windows. It's the leader on the mac because it's the leader on windows, which is what the majority of web surfers use.
Yes, people who want to exploit things target the most popular platforms.
It helps to realise that looking at things in a purely technical sense is quite meaningless in reality.
Even if Outlook & Outlook Express have the same number of security problems as less popular mail clients, that doesn't change the fact that there is far less risk in using something less popular.
IE is a risk. Using Opera instead, FOR NOW, negates a lot of that risk. IF everyone used Opera, yeah, we'd be in the same boat... but we aren't.
Why kids, why not organized adults with financial resources?
The answer: WHY
Kids.. it's fun, it's destructive, it's a sense of power.. the reasons go on. I shouldn't have to explain them.. go back, I'm sure many of you can understand.
Adults.. and I'm not talking about big kids who never grew up here... need a finanical reason to do this. Could organized, intelligent hackers with financial backing to some serious damange to the internet? You better believe it. What would they have to gain? Not much. Prison. Hatred. Being labeled as terrorists, maybe killed.
What are you going to do? Hold the Interent for ransom? I doubt it.
That's why this stuff is chiefly done by kids, not grownups.
Yup.
Too bad so may companies now master cds without using that range.
Sony even purposefully degrades their CDs so that when transferred to minidisc, there is less noticeable degradation.
I think CD kicks ass when mastered properly... unfortunately, not many modern cds take full advantage of the format.
Yes... that's my POINT.
If nothing has given me the right to modify or disribute the work....
and I ignore that fact and do it anyway...
Then I'm guilty of copyright violation. I've broken the law.
I have not "violated the GPL" however.. because I never agreed to it in the first place. I have violated the owner's copyright.. and only the copyright holder has a case against me.
I do not automatically "owe anyone" source, though I could release it and claim I am now protected from lawsuit by the GPL, as it grants me permission to do this.
What if it's a new platform with a new machine code? Someone has to bootstrap it.
Yes, these days you cross compile.. of course.. but that's what they were talking about...
You misunderstand my point. I'm not poking holes in your analogy; I'm pointing out that your analogy makes no sense with regards to websites. If you can use an analogy to prove a point, at least pick one that fits.
My point is, in going to the website, nobody said "you have to watch these ads to use our website".
They just put some code in their website that may or may not be understood by my browser that may or may not successfully pop up an ad.
Any business that relies on what people "should know" is flawed. Deal in tangibles. If your business is delivering viewers to advertisements, then you should have a reliable way of doing it; not some unreliable way that you then whine and scream about if someone doesn't look at your ads.
I'm not stealing anything unless there is some sort of contractual agremenet for me to provide something in exchange for something else.
Saying "watch this salesman, listen to his pitch, and get 30% off", well, that's pretty clear that if I don't listen tot he whole thing, I get no deal.
The problem is, you can't ever rely on them only using it for the state purpose. Look how many companies change their privacy policies down the road.
Why should you be compelled to lie? You don't have to, you can ignore the card and pay higher prices. But as I'm not stupid, I'm not going to do that.
It's all fine and wondeful to discuss ideals, and how things SHOULD be. I'm talking about how I deal with these situations on a day-to-day basis, because I don't have TIME to hassle with boycotting the local store, or whatever.
I have to wonder... it seems poeple often feel a great reluctance to speak up or question when some information is asked of them they would rather not give.
Any time I've walked into Radio Shack, they've asked for my name and address, of course. I say "You don't need to know that", politely, and they say "No problem sir" and then continue to ring the order through.
Even buying a pay-as-you-go Cantel phone from radio shack... not only did radio shack want my name/address, but of course, they want it for the Cantel activation as well. Nevertheless, a polite "Well why do you need that if I have to pay everything up front.". "Well sir, you don't have to give us your name, we can just put it in under John Doe, but that will cause a problem should you forget your PIN or should your phone be stolen and you want it deactivated. In this case, we wouldn't be able to help you."
Thanks, that made perfect sense, I can accept that. Right on sir, here you go, have a nice day.
You see... often that's all it takes, is some polite, non-confrontational intelligent questions.
Supermarker convenience cards? Lie. I'm serious. Just make some crap up and put it on the card. If you want to be really nice at the same time, keep the demographic information the same, but not your name/address/phone number. That way the store gets honest demographics, with no privacy violations. When tehy ask for ID, they usualy want it for cheque caching purposes.. just say you don't want that.
There is a difference between violations of privacy and straightforward information gathering; complaining about privacy is one thing, but taking a proactive stance towards it is another. If a majority of people refused to give information out at retail stores, fairly soon retail stores would stop asking.
is that you chose a way to make money (pop up ads) that you have no way to force people to view... and now want to call everyone thieves for not buying into your totally broken business model.
We have a word for that: stupid business model.
You are right up there with the cuecat. Was it a crime to buy a cuecat then NOT use it for what the company wanted you to use it for? No... they took a stupid risk that their stupid business model called for, and they failed. Because they were stupid.
Except nobody told me I had to listen to a salesman to get a 30% discount.
They just tried to call a feature I may or may not have on my browser to pop up another browser to fetch some more pages. That's a pretty shitty analogy.
It's more like there is a booth outside the restaurant, and anyone who dines that night gets a discount... and I choose to walk right past the booth and ignore the dork trying to get my attention.
Just because they "thought" I would render the site a certain way using a certain browser doesn't mean ANYTHING to me.
How I choose to access material over the web is my business.
Of course, the same goes both ways.. the site operators are free to do whatever it is they want with their site. If they want to use stuff like this, or force the use of certain browsers, power to them.
I'ts poeple like you who toss around the word "stealing" and accept that just about anything not happening the way the originator intended is theft that let the world get into the state it's in now with the RIAA, MPAA, etctera.
You probably think it's theft to mod an Xbox too... or to buy something sold below cost then not use it for the intended purpose.
If someone doesn't want me to fetch just certain objects from their webserver, they can do something about it instead of WHINE
It's a developer issue.
IT's still too difficult for developers to know what toolkit to use to write applications for Linux... especially if they wan't something modern.
Yes, they can use GTK. Yes they can use QT.
What version should they pick? What will be the most compatable?
It would be nice to have a NEW display API that really rocks... that's what this is about.