discussion on the subject of copyright law will continue until one participant or the other says that "owning information is bullshit.
Obviously, you haven't read web-sites relating to Godwin's law. It doesn't work that way.
In any event, owning information is bullshit. Authors of books should have the limited priviledge to profit off of their work. In other words, copyrights, patents, trademarks, tradesecrets, etc need to be scratched and rebuilt, with much shorter durations (e.g., 20 years) and much smaller scopes (e.g., much broader fair-use rights).
As current IP law stands, it is a weapon used by corrupt entities. It has been used by unethical corporations to biopirate the medical knowledge of indigenous peoples, profiting off of what that corporation had no legitimacy to profit off of. It has been used by corporations to silence criticism of them. It is used by businesses to "patent business models". And, worst of all, it has been used by the Church of Scientology -- a cultist, possibly terrorist, organization -- to silence those who criticize the CoS by freely distributing its insane "religious dogma".
When we reform IP law so that it gives back consumers broader rights to use items they purchased, so that it does not allow companies to biopirate the knowledge of indigenous people, so that it does not allow companies to silence criticism or parody of them, and so that it can not be used as a weapon by cult/terrorist organizations like the CoS to silence criticism, then I'll respect intellectual property law. Until then, the RIAA and MPAA can go fuck themselves -- I'm downloading whatever I want. Time to see if The Poseidon Adventure is on LimeWire.
That's such bullshit. It's not any more a public performance than playing music on a PA at a party or gathering. It's no different than playing the radio over a PA. Has the RIAA brainwashed everyone? If it were up to those musinazis, borrowing CDs, loaning CDs for money, and first-sale would be criminal.
What's more important is that they don't disable options to underclock the CPU. I have a Gateway 1.1GHz AMD computer right now, and the fucking thing won't compile the bootstrap for Gentoo GNU/Linux -- gives me segmentation fault errors. This is because of either RAM running at too fast of a speed or the CPU running too fast and too hot. Gateway, however, didn't see fit to allow the consumer to underclock their CPU by adding the appropriate BIOS options. Of course, this is not AMD's fault, but Gateway's fault.
I plan on chewing their asses out for selling me defective parts, and will demand new ones. If the computer can't compile a program without a segmentation error, it's parts are bad or clocked too high.
Anyways, if Intel wants to patent this technology, fine. Just so long as they don't prevent people from underclocking. Helps out Intel and the consumers, who get fucked over when OEM's overclock a CPU and sell it as if it was the real deal.
As for the patent itself, I don't know much about preventing overclocking. I suspect, however, that this is a very obvious "innovation", which shouldn't be patentable in the first place. Furthermore, why should they patent it? It is not a feature that either OEMs or consumers will be wanting.
It absolutely would allow for the distribution of copyrighted music. If I have read-access to the file server, I can copy the files off of the server. That's distribution.
Copyright only covers public distribution of copyrighted materials, not private. If I have a family of 5 people, and set up a server in my house to serve each of their computers music upon request, that is covered under fair use. Likewise with this corporation.
I can't think of anything wrong with streaming.
Then what's your point? That's essentially what he's planning on doing. Even if not, how is streaming any different in practical effect than just putting a read-only (no copy/move/etc) copy on the music on ppl's HD. Would save alot of server bandwidth.
The company provided a facility not required for the normal conduct of business that made the act of distribution possible.
So, according to your twisted logic, the company is also liable if they play music on a PA, and one individual records that music then distributes it online? That's complete and utter BS. The same kind of fuzzy logic which the RIAA bribed judges into accepting, to make Napster liable for the actions of its users.
It would be a hell of a lot easier just to not break the law, rather than looking for complicated ways of indemnifying the company.
The company wouldn't be breaking the law. Their actions fall under fair use. Btw, copyright violation is a civil matter, not a crime.
This entire non-sense with owning information is bullshit in the first place. The entire IP system needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, with much lesser scope and duration. As it stands, the RIAA can go to hell -- I'm going download all of the music I like.
Because in the modern era, we have technology that can allow customization. Not everyone likes the same music. If the purpose is to increase moral, you're not going to do that by playing classical music over the PA when many in the company hate classical (unwashed swinely masses).
As I understand this scheme, it would not allow for the distribution of copyrighted music. It is completely internalized within the company. Furthermore, I believe this guy is thinking of setting up a streaming system, which is not distributing copyrighted music. it's really little different than the company making an internal set of radio stations, except the employees can choose exactly what's playing on their station.
Btw, if one individual in the corporation does manage to distribute that music (despite the fact that it's streaming, which means the only way to do this would be to record direct-sound-output), then that person, not the corporation, would be liable. If I write a virus on a corporate computer and put it on the net from a corporate computer, the corporation isn't liable -- I am.
The corporation could remove all liability in these matters by having people sign a contract saying they won't do such before using the service, or, alternatively, by removing direct-sound-output recording programs and capabilities from their computers.
Just do streaming from a central server. It's really no different than playing several songs at once on a speaker-system, except you get to direct the sound so that chaos doesn't drive everyone nuts.
Also, consider how this will effect productiviy. Is someone listening to "Smack my bitch up" (Prodigy) really going to be productive in the office?
But there are no liability issues with your plan. You're planning on basically allowing people to listen to the music of their choice in a working-environment (that is, it's not public distribution). It's no different than playing music on a speaker from the ceiling. Actually, a better analogy would be it's like providing employees of the company with a corporate set of radio stations, from which they can choose the music they like.
What's your point? Normal users don't download those unstable and testing versions. Normal users download the stable versions, which work fine. It is precisely because FS & OSS projects release these unready versions that they "get somewhere": advanced users and developers test them, find flaws, and fix them.
You have the misconception that just because those layers aren't explicitly stated in other cases that they aren't there. All those layers do is provide a resource for programs to call upon, so that programs don't have to have information coded into them about how to access and manipulate devices, drawing the UI to the screen. Having separate layers allows separate projects to work on optimizing those gritty details, and allows many programmers to ignore them, which is good. If every programmer had to program into his program how to access and manipulate devices, programs would be very large, and take up much more RAM. Hard-drive space would also be wasted. And every programmer would have to reinvent the wheel for no reason.
Think of these separate modular layers as the computational equivalent of the assembly line, which created interchangeable parts, and modularity, and also allowed for the faster creation of products.
Quite frankly, the whole stink with XFree86 reminds me very much of ICANN. Technological snobs who won't listen to anyone else, have closed off public participation, aren't transparent, and now are defaming someone who rightly criticizes them. Furthermore, they are blundering. Why should Xfree86 drivers not be modularized? I only have one fucking video card. I don't need to download the drivers for every video-card Xfree86 supports. Xfree86 has also done an atrocious job of integrating the latest drivers from graphics chip corporations, like ATI. Their failure to promptly incorporate these drivers has alienated hardware developers. Why should ATI spend millions of dollars to make drivers for XFree86, if it takes them so long to incorporate them?
The actions of XFree86.org convince me that they want to restrict user choice in the GNU/Linux world, and prevent anyone else from running any X11-implementations other than XFree86. Their refusal to modularize drivers is one thing convincing me of this.
I can not think of any major projects which are as poor as XFree86 in regards to including the community and being accountable to the community. Many of the people within that "organization" are in fact figureheads who don't even believe in XFree86, like one of the founders linked to. If you don't use XFree86 at all, and only use Windows, then imo, you have no business being part of an XFree86 team.
Keith is right to fork off XFree86. He has tried to address his concerns from within the organization, and has been unable to do so. Just like Auerbach. There is only so much one crusader within an organization can do when the rest of the organization is bent on corruption.
XFree86 is proof that even a project covered under a license approved by the OSI and the FSF can be corrupt and non-transparent.
Misconceptions. Flexibility and modularity do not imply performance costs. In fact, they imply the possibility to optimize performance. If something is inflexible, you get what you get, even if you don't need all of it's superflous features. That's an unnecessary performance hit. If something is modular, you're free to mix and match parts to choose the best performing ones.
I think alot of people have the misconception that having more layers between applications and the hardware slows things down. That is not the case. Those formal layers (as introduced by the X11 protocol) are just abstractions of what would have to be there anyway. They end up reducing bloat and memory consumption, as well as saving programmers time, so that every programmer who wants to make a 3D visualization program doesn't have to reinvent the wheel by recoding into his application how to access and manipulate the graphics-card/monitor.
Actually, GNU/Linux does release early and often. However, there is a clear distinction between rock-solid stable (whatever Debian uses), Stable (what the rest of use), unstable (what some advanced users use), and testing (what developers use). Projects do not release buggy software and call it a stable version.
How much more proof do we need, before we realize that the entire patent system is corrupted beyond repair and needs to be rebuild from the ground up?
Firstly, business models or other general "methods" -- like this auction method -- should never be patentable. Patents should cover inventions. You've found a good business model -- fine. Doesn't mean that just because you're the first one to utilize that business model or method, that no one else should be able to.
Patents should, at the very least, consider independent discovery. Furthermore, simply coming up with the idea a few days before someone else hardly means that you're entitled to sole ownership.
Another thing -- life should not be patentable. Living organisms should not be patentable. It is absurd to treat living organisms as if they are "property". This poses innate problems, because living organisms tend to spread. See the Canada case where a greedy multinational corporation decided to bankrupt a farmer for growing what was in his own yard.
Finally, corporations should not be allowed to patent inventions that they did not actually develop. A disgusting category in this case is biopiracy, where corporations are given the rights to profit off of an invention which they in no way invented, but simply extracted from indigenous peoples. Anyone who pursues these kind of patents is an immoral crook.
Once again, corporation goes out on a limb, doesn't do well, and decides to put its burden on the rest of the community, and fuck over its shareholders.
I hope that TiVo continues, as people who paid for that box have a right to get the service they paid for -- that, or a refund.
I also hope that the RioVolt line of products doesn't bite the dust, as they are excellent.
Actually, it's retarded to measure computer performance by either efficiency or clock-speed, or some calculated measure. If you want to compare how well two different processors can perform, you use FLOPS (floating point operations per second), or in the modern era GFLOPS (giga FLOPS).
Furthermore, as any intelligent analysis will show you -- namely, a benchmark -- different CPU's are better at performing different tasks.
You should also note that if you really want the best processors, AMD, Intel, Motorolla, and even MIPS may all be the wrong place to look. Processors being developed for gaming systems -- such as the PS2, which has 6 GFLOPS/sec performance -- are by far superior, and selling at alower price. This, however, will only be useful to the computer world if GCC develops options to compile for such processors.
Actually, making programs with Apple's Cocao and the GNUstep standard is said to be a real joy by anyone who's done it, and they rely on Objective-C, which is inherently better than C++, providing full OO with just a few additions over C.
Trying to blame OSX's performance on the hardware is a crock of bullshit. Mac hardwware is as good, if not better, than is PC hardware. Mac computers may not have as high a clock-setting, but their top-line versions still run just as fast as the top-line versions of Intel/AMD, because they are more efficient processors (less cycles per instruction required, other various factors). Why do you think that the MIPS processors used on SGI systems are vastly superior to Intel/AMD chips, even though they run at slower clock-rates?
If you're going to try to make some comparison between two vastly different CPU architectures, then you need to use a real standard, like GFLOPS. Not that I'd expect someone who's so stupid that he doens't know that a 600MHz Apple computer != a 600MHz Intel computer to have even heard of GFLOPS.
Actually, these arguments are good, because no-one EVER bought the equivalent amount of CD's that they are now downloading. That does generalize. People still buy about the same amount of CD's that they used to -- that generalizes too. So the music industry is not losing anywhere near what is the dollar equivalent of what is downloaded.
I don't feel the need to justify anything. I buy just as many CD's now as I did before, which I'll admit isn't many. Why would I, when most CD's are 75% filler? (and what I do buy is classical, which means no filler, all top-notch). Even if I didn't buy any CDs, I'd still feel no guilt. Tough shit for the music industry. Adapt or die. New technology -- P2P -- has arisen which may (according to them) threaten their business model. That's their problem, and it means they need to come up with a new business model, or perish and make room for those who can adapt.
New technologies come along all the time that make old business models -- and indeed, old businesses -- obsolete. We are no longer in need of monastic scribes. Nor do we need horse and buggy. What about abbicus'? The list goes on and on. The world evolves, and if you can't adapt, that's too damn bad.
I'll tell you this -- music isn't going anywhere. Music is here to stay. Indeed, music will thrive like never before, precisely because of P2P and the interest it generates in music. I predict, indeed, specific types of music -- those which were previously relegated away to insignificance -- will thrive, especially modern classic music.
In fact, I hope there is a regime change in the music industry. It is corrupt and exploitative, both of artists and consumers. I'm doing my part by downloading music. Indeed, the current labels need not even go bankrupt for a regime change, but simply change their business model. Something along the lines of "if you buy 20 CD's a year, you can download unlimited music", is a simple and easy way to take advantage of the situation, and create an enormous incentive for people to buy more CD's than they ever would have before.
I am not so upset that Google is caving in to some of these demands. They cannot afford to fight off rich powerful corporations like the Church of Scientology and Microsoft. Even if these lawsuites are spurrious, they simply can't afford to fight all of them. In that regard, we need legislation to allow the quick and efficient dismissal of bullshit lawsuites like this.
Google should be completely transparent if they remove information. They should create a section called "Censored Sites" and list what sites (in text-format) these nazi's have asked them to not link to, with the threat of a lawsuite to back up. This way, everyone knows what draconian nazi's are forcing Google's hand by threatening them with impeding lawsuites. It should be like a news section, and they should post the following:
(1) Who (what corp., country, business, etc) requested what to be removed.
(2) Their letter requesting such.
(3) What Google decided to do about it.
(4) Why they decided to do such.
(5) The address and e-mail of the offending corporation, so we can let them know what we think.
What do you think most people download over a month from P2P networks? Probably hundreds of songs, amounting to (these days) 10 - 20 CDs. Do you really think that if P2P wasn't there, they were going to buy 10 - 20 CDs a month? No, of coruse not. So the music industry has not lost 10 - 20 CD's worth of revenue.
People -- even those with Cable modems like myself -- still buy CD's. The average person probably bought 5 CD's a year before P2P. I count myself as one of those "average people". I usually bought about 5 CD's a year, and still do, despite having P2P. In short, the music industry has lost nothing, so they can quit their bitching. Now, that said, I typically don't buy the crap that the RIAA is pushing. That stuff is not worth my money -- that's the stuff I download for recreation. If I'm going to shell out money for a CD, it's going to be real music -- not this modern day fling-in-the-pants stuff. By that, I mean "classical" music (Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert, Strauss, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, etc), which is all in the public domain anyways, and some excellent modern music of sophistication (like, for example, stuff by John Williams, Samuel Barber, (outlier) Wilson Pickett, Copeland, etc.
In short, before P2P, the music industry made zilch off of me. Now they still make zilch off of me, but I download their music. Correction, after P2P came ought, I bought the 3 Britney Spears CD's, so they've actually made more money from me now than before. So, why do people still buy basically the same number of CD's as before? The answer is simple: for stuff they really like, they want the highest quality, which -- no matter how good compression gets -- can never be replicated by compressed music. They might also want whatever perps come with the CD.
Despite all of the RIAA's bitching and moaning, they haven't proven that they've lost any money because of the sharing of music. It seems to me more likely that they've gained money, due to the enormous surge in interest in music, caused by P2P. P2P has been good for music as a whole, so quite frankly, I could care less about the RIAA's bottom line. P2P has caused an surge in interest of music as art -- e.g., classical music, and contemporary. This is good for music.
As to why the RIAA's bottom line seems to be going down, let's do a reality check. We're in the middle of a recession. Recession. Less money. More thift. Music is not essential. Thus, people buy less music. Can we say, "fucking duh?" Oh yea, not to mention, the RIAA's latest moves that take away consumer rights which they've traditionally had, selling consumers crippled CDs. Generally speaking, selling crippled crapware products is not a good way to maintain a thriving business. Nor is calling your customers thiefs.
SOURCE: Linux Development Survey, Vol. 1 2003
on
CIOs Looking At OSS
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· Score: 3, Informative
This was an interesting article, but without referring to the source, it's worthless. The author -- for some strange unknown reason -- thought it was too much work to include a reference to the actual study. This spurred several valid criticisms about possible skewing by people who responded to the article on the article's page.
I've looked up Evans Data Corporation and have actually found the source. Apparently, most/.ers were too happy jumping up and down in joy to actually bother with this small detail.
Jeez, he's 50 already? That last pictures I saw of him made him look relatively young.
Anyways, how about for his birthday, we try to get HURD done sometime before the guy dies? Huh?
Maybe we can actually add the whole 4 extra characters and call it GNU/Linux instead of just Linux. Btw, RMS, I'm going to pronounce it G N U Linux, not Geenoo Linux, which sounds wierd. Sorry bout that one. Since GNU stands for GNU's not Linux, I prefer to speak it like I speak many other 3-letter abbreviations which don't sound good when spoken out phonetically: as letters (DOS is an exception).
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yea, but employees don't pay to work at a corporation; they're paid to work there. So diff story.
Obviously, you haven't read web-sites relating to Godwin's law. It doesn't work that way.
In any event, owning information is bullshit. Authors of books should have the limited priviledge to profit off of their work. In other words, copyrights, patents, trademarks, tradesecrets, etc need to be scratched and rebuilt, with much shorter durations (e.g., 20 years) and much smaller scopes (e.g., much broader fair-use rights).
As current IP law stands, it is a weapon used by corrupt entities. It has been used by unethical corporations to biopirate the medical knowledge of indigenous peoples, profiting off of what that corporation had no legitimacy to profit off of. It has been used by corporations to silence criticism of them. It is used by businesses to "patent business models". And, worst of all, it has been used by the Church of Scientology -- a cultist, possibly terrorist, organization -- to silence those who criticize the CoS by freely distributing its insane "religious dogma".
When we reform IP law so that it gives back consumers broader rights to use items they purchased, so that it does not allow companies to biopirate the knowledge of indigenous people, so that it does not allow companies to silence criticism or parody of them, and so that it can not be used as a weapon by cult/terrorist organizations like the CoS to silence criticism, then I'll respect intellectual property law. Until then, the RIAA and MPAA can go fuck themselves -- I'm downloading whatever I want. Time to see if The Poseidon Adventure is on LimeWire.
That's such bullshit. It's not any more a public performance than playing music on a PA at a party or gathering. It's no different than playing the radio over a PA. Has the RIAA brainwashed everyone? If it were up to those musinazis, borrowing CDs, loaning CDs for money, and first-sale would be criminal.
I plan on chewing their asses out for selling me defective parts, and will demand new ones. If the computer can't compile a program without a segmentation error, it's parts are bad or clocked too high.
Anyways, if Intel wants to patent this technology, fine. Just so long as they don't prevent people from underclocking. Helps out Intel and the consumers, who get fucked over when OEM's overclock a CPU and sell it as if it was the real deal.
As for the patent itself, I don't know much about preventing overclocking. I suspect, however, that this is a very obvious "innovation", which shouldn't be patentable in the first place. Furthermore, why should they patent it? It is not a feature that either OEMs or consumers will be wanting.
Copyright only covers public distribution of copyrighted materials, not private. If I have a family of 5 people, and set up a server in my house to serve each of their computers music upon request, that is covered under fair use. Likewise with this corporation.
I can't think of anything wrong with streaming.
Then what's your point? That's essentially what he's planning on doing. Even if not, how is streaming any different in practical effect than just putting a read-only (no copy/move/etc) copy on the music on ppl's HD. Would save alot of server bandwidth.
The company provided a facility not required for the normal conduct of business that made the act of distribution possible.
So, according to your twisted logic, the company is also liable if they play music on a PA, and one individual records that music then distributes it online? That's complete and utter BS. The same kind of fuzzy logic which the RIAA bribed judges into accepting, to make Napster liable for the actions of its users.
It would be a hell of a lot easier just to not break the law, rather than looking for complicated ways of indemnifying the company.
The company wouldn't be breaking the law. Their actions fall under fair use. Btw, copyright violation is a civil matter, not a crime.
This entire non-sense with owning information is bullshit in the first place. The entire IP system needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, with much lesser scope and duration. As it stands, the RIAA can go to hell -- I'm going download all of the music I like.
Because in the modern era, we have technology that can allow customization. Not everyone likes the same music. If the purpose is to increase moral, you're not going to do that by playing classical music over the PA when many in the company hate classical (unwashed swinely masses).
As I understand this scheme, it would not allow for the distribution of copyrighted music. It is completely internalized within the company. Furthermore, I believe this guy is thinking of setting up a streaming system, which is not distributing copyrighted music. it's really little different than the company making an internal set of radio stations, except the employees can choose exactly what's playing on their station.
Btw, if one individual in the corporation does manage to distribute that music (despite the fact that it's streaming, which means the only way to do this would be to record direct-sound-output), then that person, not the corporation, would be liable. If I write a virus on a corporate computer and put it on the net from a corporate computer, the corporation isn't liable -- I am.
The corporation could remove all liability in these matters by having people sign a contract saying they won't do such before using the service, or, alternatively, by removing direct-sound-output recording programs and capabilities from their computers.
Just do streaming from a central server. It's really no different than playing several songs at once on a speaker-system, except you get to direct the sound so that chaos doesn't drive everyone nuts.
Also, consider how this will effect productiviy. Is someone listening to "Smack my bitch up" (Prodigy) really going to be productive in the office?
But there are no liability issues with your plan. You're planning on basically allowing people to listen to the music of their choice in a working-environment (that is, it's not public distribution). It's no different than playing music on a speaker from the ceiling. Actually, a better analogy would be it's like providing employees of the company with a corporate set of radio stations, from which they can choose the music they like.
This is covered under fair use.
What's your point? Normal users don't download those unstable and testing versions. Normal users download the stable versions, which work fine. It is precisely because FS & OSS projects release these unready versions that they "get somewhere": advanced users and developers test them, find flaws, and fix them.
You have the misconception that just because those layers aren't explicitly stated in other cases that they aren't there. All those layers do is provide a resource for programs to call upon, so that programs don't have to have information coded into them about how to access and manipulate devices, drawing the UI to the screen. Having separate layers allows separate projects to work on optimizing those gritty details, and allows many programmers to ignore them, which is good. If every programmer had to program into his program how to access and manipulate devices, programs would be very large, and take up much more RAM. Hard-drive space would also be wasted. And every programmer would have to reinvent the wheel for no reason.
Think of these separate modular layers as the computational equivalent of the assembly line, which created interchangeable parts, and modularity, and also allowed for the faster creation of products.
Quite frankly, the whole stink with XFree86 reminds me very much of ICANN. Technological snobs who won't listen to anyone else, have closed off public participation, aren't transparent, and now are defaming someone who rightly criticizes them. Furthermore, they are blundering. Why should Xfree86 drivers not be modularized? I only have one fucking video card. I don't need to download the drivers for every video-card Xfree86 supports. Xfree86 has also done an atrocious job of integrating the latest drivers from graphics chip corporations, like ATI. Their failure to promptly incorporate these drivers has alienated hardware developers. Why should ATI spend millions of dollars to make drivers for XFree86, if it takes them so long to incorporate them?
The actions of XFree86.org convince me that they want to restrict user choice in the GNU/Linux world, and prevent anyone else from running any X11-implementations other than XFree86. Their refusal to modularize drivers is one thing convincing me of this.
I can not think of any major projects which are as poor as XFree86 in regards to including the community and being accountable to the community. Many of the people within that "organization" are in fact figureheads who don't even believe in XFree86, like one of the founders linked to. If you don't use XFree86 at all, and only use Windows, then imo, you have no business being part of an XFree86 team.
Keith is right to fork off XFree86. He has tried to address his concerns from within the organization, and has been unable to do so. Just like Auerbach. There is only so much one crusader within an organization can do when the rest of the organization is bent on corruption.
XFree86 is proof that even a project covered under a license approved by the OSI and the FSF can be corrupt and non-transparent.
Misconceptions. Flexibility and modularity do not imply performance costs. In fact, they imply the possibility to optimize performance. If something is inflexible, you get what you get, even if you don't need all of it's superflous features. That's an unnecessary performance hit. If something is modular, you're free to mix and match parts to choose the best performing ones.
I think alot of people have the misconception that having more layers between applications and the hardware slows things down. That is not the case. Those formal layers (as introduced by the X11 protocol) are just abstractions of what would have to be there anyway. They end up reducing bloat and memory consumption, as well as saving programmers time, so that every programmer who wants to make a 3D visualization program doesn't have to reinvent the wheel by recoding into his application how to access and manipulate the graphics-card/monitor.
Actually, GNU/Linux does release early and often. However, there is a clear distinction between rock-solid stable (whatever Debian uses), Stable (what the rest of use), unstable (what some advanced users use), and testing (what developers use). Projects do not release buggy software and call it a stable version.
How much more proof do we need, before we realize that the entire patent system is corrupted beyond repair and needs to be rebuild from the ground up?
Firstly, business models or other general "methods" -- like this auction method -- should never be patentable. Patents should cover inventions. You've found a good business model -- fine. Doesn't mean that just because you're the first one to utilize that business model or method, that no one else should be able to.
Patents should, at the very least, consider independent discovery. Furthermore, simply coming up with the idea a few days before someone else hardly means that you're entitled to sole ownership.
Another thing -- life should not be patentable. Living organisms should not be patentable. It is absurd to treat living organisms as if they are "property". This poses innate problems, because living organisms tend to spread. See the Canada case where a greedy multinational corporation decided to bankrupt a farmer for growing what was in his own yard.
Finally, corporations should not be allowed to patent inventions that they did not actually develop. A disgusting category in this case is biopiracy, where corporations are given the rights to profit off of an invention which they in no way invented, but simply extracted from indigenous peoples. Anyone who pursues these kind of patents is an immoral crook.
but, why port over the worst game, NWN?
NWN has been said to be "like BG2, but without the fun".
That said, I think it'd have been much better for them to have ported over BG2 SoA/ToB and BG1.
Once again, corporation goes out on a limb, doesn't do well, and decides to put its burden on the rest of the community, and fuck over its shareholders.
I hope that TiVo continues, as people who paid for that box have a right to get the service they paid for -- that, or a refund.
I also hope that the RioVolt line of products doesn't bite the dust, as they are excellent.
Actually, it's retarded to measure computer performance by either efficiency or clock-speed, or some calculated measure. If you want to compare how well two different processors can perform, you use FLOPS (floating point operations per second), or in the modern era GFLOPS (giga FLOPS).
Furthermore, as any intelligent analysis will show you -- namely, a benchmark -- different CPU's are better at performing different tasks.
You should also note that if you really want the best processors, AMD, Intel, Motorolla, and even MIPS may all be the wrong place to look. Processors being developed for gaming systems -- such as the PS2, which has 6 GFLOPS/sec performance -- are by far superior, and selling at alower price. This, however, will only be useful to the computer world if GCC develops options to compile for such processors.
Actually, making programs with Apple's Cocao and the GNUstep standard is said to be a real joy by anyone who's done it, and they rely on Objective-C, which is inherently better than C++, providing full OO with just a few additions over C.
Trying to blame OSX's performance on the hardware is a crock of bullshit. Mac hardwware is as good, if not better, than is PC hardware. Mac computers may not have as high a clock-setting, but their top-line versions still run just as fast as the top-line versions of Intel/AMD, because they are more efficient processors (less cycles per instruction required, other various factors). Why do you think that the MIPS processors used on SGI systems are vastly superior to Intel/AMD chips, even though they run at slower clock-rates?
If you're going to try to make some comparison between two vastly different CPU architectures, then you need to use a real standard, like GFLOPS. Not that I'd expect someone who's so stupid that he doens't know that a 600MHz Apple computer != a 600MHz Intel computer to have even heard of GFLOPS.
Actually, these arguments are good, because no-one EVER bought the equivalent amount of CD's that they are now downloading. That does generalize. People still buy about the same amount of CD's that they used to -- that generalizes too. So the music industry is not losing anywhere near what is the dollar equivalent of what is downloaded.
I don't feel the need to justify anything. I buy just as many CD's now as I did before, which I'll admit isn't many. Why would I, when most CD's are 75% filler? (and what I do buy is classical, which means no filler, all top-notch). Even if I didn't buy any CDs, I'd still feel no guilt. Tough shit for the music industry. Adapt or die. New technology -- P2P -- has arisen which may (according to them) threaten their business model. That's their problem, and it means they need to come up with a new business model, or perish and make room for those who can adapt.
New technologies come along all the time that make old business models -- and indeed, old businesses -- obsolete. We are no longer in need of monastic scribes. Nor do we need horse and buggy. What about abbicus'? The list goes on and on. The world evolves, and if you can't adapt, that's too damn bad.
I'll tell you this -- music isn't going anywhere. Music is here to stay. Indeed, music will thrive like never before, precisely because of P2P and the interest it generates in music. I predict, indeed, specific types of music -- those which were previously relegated away to insignificance -- will thrive, especially modern classic music.
In fact, I hope there is a regime change in the music industry. It is corrupt and exploitative, both of artists and consumers. I'm doing my part by downloading music. Indeed, the current labels need not even go bankrupt for a regime change, but simply change their business model. Something along the lines of "if you buy 20 CD's a year, you can download unlimited music", is a simple and easy way to take advantage of the situation, and create an enormous incentive for people to buy more CD's than they ever would have before.
I am not so upset that Google is caving in to some of these demands. They cannot afford to fight off rich powerful corporations like the Church of Scientology and Microsoft. Even if these lawsuites are spurrious, they simply can't afford to fight all of them. In that regard, we need legislation to allow the quick and efficient dismissal of bullshit lawsuites like this.
Google should be completely transparent if they remove information. They should create a section called "Censored Sites" and list what sites (in text-format) these nazi's have asked them to not link to, with the threat of a lawsuite to back up. This way, everyone knows what draconian nazi's are forcing Google's hand by threatening them with impeding lawsuites. It should be like a news section, and they should post the following:
(1) Who (what corp., country, business, etc) requested what to be removed.
(2) Their letter requesting such.
(3) What Google decided to do about it.
(4) Why they decided to do such.
(5) The address and e-mail of the offending corporation, so we can let them know what we think.
What do you think most people download over a month from P2P networks? Probably hundreds of songs, amounting to (these days) 10 - 20 CDs. Do you really think that if P2P wasn't there, they were going to buy 10 - 20 CDs a month? No, of coruse not. So the music industry has not lost 10 - 20 CD's worth of revenue.
People -- even those with Cable modems like myself -- still buy CD's. The average person probably bought 5 CD's a year before P2P. I count myself as one of those "average people". I usually bought about 5 CD's a year, and still do, despite having P2P. In short, the music industry has lost nothing, so they can quit their bitching. Now, that said, I typically don't buy the crap that the RIAA is pushing. That stuff is not worth my money -- that's the stuff I download for recreation. If I'm going to shell out money for a CD, it's going to be real music -- not this modern day fling-in-the-pants stuff. By that, I mean "classical" music (Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert, Strauss, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, etc), which is all in the public domain anyways, and some excellent modern music of sophistication (like, for example, stuff by John Williams, Samuel Barber, (outlier) Wilson Pickett, Copeland, etc.
In short, before P2P, the music industry made zilch off of me. Now they still make zilch off of me, but I download their music. Correction, after P2P came ought, I bought the 3 Britney Spears CD's, so they've actually made more money from me now than before. So, why do people still buy basically the same number of CD's as before? The answer is simple: for stuff they really like, they want the highest quality, which -- no matter how good compression gets -- can never be replicated by compressed music. They might also want whatever perps come with the CD.
Despite all of the RIAA's bitching and moaning, they haven't proven that they've lost any money because of the sharing of music. It seems to me more likely that they've gained money, due to the enormous surge in interest in music, caused by P2P. P2P has been good for music as a whole, so quite frankly, I could care less about the RIAA's bottom line. P2P has caused an surge in interest of music as art -- e.g., classical music, and contemporary. This is good for music.
As to why the RIAA's bottom line seems to be going down, let's do a reality check. We're in the middle of a recession. Recession. Less money. More thift. Music is not essential. Thus, people buy less music. Can we say, "fucking duh?" Oh yea, not to mention, the RIAA's latest moves that take away consumer rights which they've traditionally had, selling consumers crippled CDs. Generally speaking, selling crippled crapware products is not a good way to maintain a thriving business. Nor is calling your customers thiefs.
I've looked up Evans Data Corporation and have actually found the source. Apparently, most /.ers were too happy jumping up and down in joy to actually bother with this small detail.
SOURCE: Linux Development Survey, Vol. 1 2003: http://www.evansdata.com/n2/surveys/linux_toc_03_1 .shtml
Nope, you're right. I'm wasn't thinking and was full of shit.
Well, get it to a state so it's useable by the average user. Ready for primetime, so to speak.
Jeez, he's 50 already? That last pictures I saw of him made him look relatively young.
Anyways, how about for his birthday, we try to get HURD done sometime before the guy dies? Huh?
Maybe we can actually add the whole 4 extra characters and call it GNU/Linux instead of just Linux. Btw, RMS, I'm going to pronounce it G N U Linux, not Geenoo Linux, which sounds wierd. Sorry bout that one. Since GNU stands for GNU's not Linux, I prefer to speak it like I speak many other 3-letter abbreviations which don't sound good when spoken out phonetically: as letters (DOS is an exception).