People like you are just the type of idiots who got us in the current situation. MS is a monopoly -- a status the gov't should prevent any company from obtaining -- and they use that status to unfairly destroy all competition. This harms consumers, whether they know it or not. Superios OS to windows in ease of use and speed -- such as BeOS -- don't have a chance, however well designed they are, because MS has a monopoly, and not enough vendors are willing to make drivers or software for alternate OS', irrelevant the merits of that OS.
It is a violation of the basic principle of a capitalistic market -- that anyone can come into the market and establish themselves. Not possible, if your competing against MS in the desktop market -- why? b/c of what I just said -- they have a monopoly, so no one is willing to write drivers/software for alternatives; and they build anti-competitive measures into the OS itself, making it incompatable with competing products: not to mention that they purposefully introduce incompatabilities from one version to the next, so that people in the open sourced community trying to work on compatability don't have a chance.
Idiots like you need to wake up. Just because a company is a monopoly, doesn't mean they deserve it. AT&T established a monopoly by anti-competitive measures, and maintained that monopoly by anti-competitive measures: just as MS has done now(refer to their purposefully sabotaging DR DOS). Furthermore, consumers really weren't complaining about AT&T. But when AT&T was broken up and other phone companies entered the market, there were huge leaps in innovation, which served the consumer well. AT&T has never re-established its dominance under the fair-play rules set up by the government: proof that they didn't deserve their monopoly status.
The same should be done to MS. Just as when AT&T was broken up, if MS is broken up, it will undoubtedly benefit the consumer by allowing for many more ventures into cutting-edge software ideas.
Re:Pedophilia's just as wrong as rape or murder
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Roasting Sacred Cows
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· Score: 1
I never said the effect of the two crimes was the same. I said in my view, both are equally wrong: rape/molestment is a form of torture, and torture, imo, is just as morally wrong as murder. Nor did I ever say the victim's life was over, and nor is it in America -- there are numerous groups to help people who've been raped. A rapist or child molestor is really a man who keeps his victim alive, so he can torture her/him. You wouldn't say that if I spared your life only to torture you, that would be somehow more "noble" than killing you on my part, would you? Of course not.
Pedophilia's just as wrong as rape or murder
on
Roasting Sacred Cows
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· Score: 1
Imo, molesting a child is rape, and deserves the same punishment as rape, which in my opinion deserves the same punishment as murder or torture -- death, or life in prison.
However, this is a comedy, and Morris didn't mean to say that pedophilia's OK -- he was trying to show how fucking ignorant society is of the real issues. It was funny.
Yea, whatever. Who decides what's an "instable driver"? Fact is, M$ is just using this as an excuse to drive competition into the ground. M$ probably even intentionally introduces features into their OS to make products that compete w/ M$ products instable.
This is NOT a good idea. At least not if its mandatory. If this was an optional feature that users could turn on and off, then it would be OK. If MS ships their OS w/ this feature defaulted to on, they have to provide a way for advanced users to disable it the first time it tries to prevent them from installing something they want. For example, a message like, "MS' stability protocol X does not allow the installation of this drivers, or other drivers not up to the'MS stability standard'[ROTFLOL]. Would you like the turn this feature off?"
Otherwise, its just another anticompetitive measure, designed: (1) To eliminate competition, (2) to hinder user control, allowing MS to try to stop users from copying their own music or programs(Kazaa, LimeWire, BearShare, etc, are now deemed by M$ to be "instable programs").
Shut the fuck up, you idiot. The best OS ever? LOL, yea, unless you actually want to have control over it yourself. Sure, MS could've made Win95 really stable by giving the user zero control. The user has to have control over what goes on -- not M$. Their introducing copy-protection, software-blocking, and whatnot, is just another monopolistic anti-competitive measure. M$' WinXP should be blocked from hitting the markets -- it is their biggest anti-competive tool yet.
Look, the company paid for that computer that its employees use, the company paid for the internet connection, the company paid for the phone line, and the company paid for the damn power. They aren't paying all this so that their employees can fuck off.
But, on the other hand, employees shouldn't have to fear that every time they, say, go to a website such as this one for a source of "recreational news unrelated to business" that they'll be fired. But, on the same hand, they shouldn't be allowed to parasite off of their company, hogging bandwidth, or to spend too much of their time doing things other than what they're getting paid for.
So, here's what I propose. Companies should be able to use certain blocking software that will block out innappropriate websites from -- porn sites, and so forth. They should also be able to monitor how much time an employee spends on the internet, and how much bandwidth (s)he consumes. If the employee spends more time on the internet than is expected for his/her job, or uses significantly more bandwidth than (s)he would be expected to for his/her job, then here's what should happen:
(1) The company should lock down their computer, so any "evidence" can not be tampered with: in other words, so the original content of files as of the time of lockdown can not be modified[but so as to allow the employee to open the file and save it as another file, leaving the original unchanged].
(2) The company should give the employee a warning of an impeding investigation, where the employee can have time to talk to the officials at the company and his lawyers.
(3) The investigation should proceed. The basis upon which disicplinary actions or the cancellation of his job based on what is found on his hard drive in such a case, should be laid out clearly in his employee contract, and made verbally clear to him by whoever hired him in the first place.
You stupid f**k, it's not a crime. What Dimitry did was simply creating a program which allows users to excercise their fair rights usage here in the US. Also, he wrote the program in Russia, where it is illegal to put a limit on the number of backup copies that can be made. And his company, not him, decided to release the program to the public. You can not prosecute a man here in the US for what he did in Russia. You also can not prosecute someone for making a program which basically gives users back their fair-use rights.
I'm not saying they should give all of it away -- just give it to schools: children's education is more important than MS making a few extra bucks. All APIs should be open, as well as anything else that might allow a competing OS to run software meant for Windows -- that's the only way that real competition with MS(as an OS) is possible. Of course MS doesn't want to do it -- that's why the government has to force them to do it. Breaking up the company is not enough, and indeed, not as important, as forcing them to open up their standards to competitors, so people making competing software can integrate that software just as well into windows as does MS, and so people making competing OS' can add features to their OS that allows it to use programs made for Windows.
So they did the right thing once, big deal. Does MS honestly expect us all to bow down on our knees in praise of them, for "voluntarily" doing the right thing, after the court basically forced their hand? What's next, are we going to say that a rapist who's being trialed for rape is a great man because he refraimed from committing any rapes while on trial?
Really, there is nothing to praise -- MS has given OEMs the "right to do" what should have been their right to do all along. If we're going to praise them for that, it's like praising someone who gave you asperin after wacking you on the head with a mallet. Quite frankly, when someone buys a piece of software -- the physical CD, that is, or downloads the data that constitutes the program for the price of unlimited use -- they should own it in the same sense that you'd own a book you buy: you can modify it, change it, make a million copies of it(so long as you don't give them away to other pepole), lend it to friends, try to understand how it works, and so forth.
I think furthermore, that I should also comment on MS's.NET plan: they want to force the private consumer to pay for renta-software, without the option of physically buying it in the same sense they would today, and for the same or better value(if anything, people pay too much money for software today, largely due to the MS monopoly). This is certainly not something worth praise. Now, on the other hand, if they wanted to offer the OPTION -- not the ULTIMATUM -- of.NET to people, that would be ok.
We shouldn't bother praising MS until they stop doing the wrong thing(i.e., imposing their draconian EULA license on people, and using the BSA to ruin individuals and small business'), and until they start doing the right thing: i.e., giving away their software for free to public schools, open-sourcing the OS standards that determine how programs interact w/ the OS so that non-windows OS' can run windows programs.
How about Barney just go and fuck himself up his fat gay purple ass. So Barney's the fat fuck that's keeping our kids in front of the TV all day, instead of going outside and actually doing something, or learning something.
The license basically says that you can't use their SDK toolkit to make a GPLed program, right? (or rather, that you can't distribute a GPLed program made from their toolkit). This is invalid. It won't hold up in court, not any more than would a person putting a clause in a license for a word processor that would say "this word processor may not be used to create any copy-lefted material".
Actually, no, it is not a restatement of the GPL. Nothing in the GPL says that you can't link to code (written by someone else) that is closed source. The GPL says (in a nutshell), that if you make a program based on GPLed code, you must GPL that program in so far as you have made it; obviously, it can not require you to GPL the code of someone else' program that you may link to.
No, referring to the software, when I buy a piece of software, I own the CD or disk or miniCD or whatever that it came on. That CD is my property, and I have the right to do whatever I want with it, so long as I don't make it available to other's who didn't pay for it. Hence, the information on that CD is also mine in the same sense that information in a book I buy is mine: I can do whatever I want with it, so long as I don't make it available to those who didn't pay for it. Any contract which tries to state otherwise is an invalid violation of my rights. Copyright law was never meant to give IP owners the right to tell people how to use their intellectual property: for example, MS telling me I can't use their SDK kit to develop open sourced code. All that copyright law was meant to do was control the distribution of a product: i.e., they can tell me "I can't give it to those who haven't paid for it". That's valid, and that is all that is needed to protect their rights, and their investment in the software. Any other terms added on are invalid, and the Supreme Court would rule so if such was ever brought before them.
In other words, copyright law was not meant to do anything other than to allow the creator/inventor to make a reasonable profit off of their invention. It was never meant to allow them to control how people use their invention. Any any laws that allow such are invalid.
This guy's obviously a corporate cronnie. The prices we pay for software are the prices of ownership: borrowing prices are nominal and minimal. There is no compelling reason to allow software companies to include such assinite terms in their contracts that prevent us from, say, using their development kit to make open sourced code: absurd. That's like me releasing a GPLed word processor but saying that "this processor can not be used to create any non-copylefted text, or non-copylefted source coce". Absurd and invalid.
In short, there is no compelling reason to allow software companies to sell us software in any other way, aside from the way in which book companies sell us books -- the consumers getting the same rights that they would if they were buying books: namely, the right to do anything with the book, short of photocopy it and redistribute it for free. The inventor requires no protection beyond that. Any additional restricting clauses can only be seen as anti-competitive efforts and/or attempts to control people and violate their rights.
Quite frankly, to me, it is pretty obvious that when we buy a piece of software -- say Descent 3 -- we own it in the same sense that we own a book. If we hack it and release it for all to download for free, the company can seek damages against us, but they CAN NOT take the product from us. Irrelevant of what I did with any piece of software I own, no court in the US would mandate that I return that software to the company that owns it: and if they did, I could challenge that the enforcement of such a mandate would be an unconstitutional violation of my rights to privacy, and that would be upheld by the next higher court.
Its bullshit. Firstly, they can't enforce it -- I can use their "shared source" code with any GPL program I want to and they can't do a fucking thing to stop me. Secondly, its an unreasonable/illegal contract: no different than selling someone a book with the condition that they can't make notes in the margin -- you can't do it. When I buy a piece of software, I own it in the same sense that I own a book -- I can do whatever the fuck I want with it, except transcribe it and give the transcript away on the internet, or a comparable redistribution w/o the owner's consent. If I want to rip out the page, I can do that; if I want to analyze how it works, I can do that; if I want to make corrections, I can do that. And even if they try to make me agree to a "contract" in buying the book which says I can't, they have no means to enforce that, without violating my right to privacy. Hence, they can't impose such a restriction -- and that is the same type of restriction M$ is trying to impose. It just can't be done. The principle of the restriction won't hold up if its challenged in court(because copyright laws were never meant to let author's tell people HOW to use their works), and the means necessary to enforce such a contract would be unconstitutional.
It's their website, and they can do whatever the fuck they want to with it, whether or not this defaces your website by association. Even if that was their intent, so what? Its their site, and whether or not they've given u permission to linkt to their site, they can change it however they want. As a site developer, its your job to make sure that you link to sites that represent you and your site desireably, and eliminate those links if they cease doing so. Stop your whining.
Besides, you don't have the right "not to be defamed/defaced/insulted/accused/". There is, however, the right to free speach. This means that I can say right here, that your site is pornographic, innappropriate, or illegal, irrelevant of whether or not it is true. If the right to free speach only applies in so far as YOU or some other person thinks people are speaking the truth, it doesn't mean shit.
There is one reason and one reason only why MS Windows is the dominant product on the market today -- software standards. All software developers develop to MS standards as their main plan, and anything else only as a subsidary. The solution is to force MS to open source any standards it creates or has created for how programs interact with its operating system -- system calls, routines, etc etc. This way, competing companies can effectively compete to make programs that work under MS Windows(because they'd have free, unhindered access to the standards), and alternate operating systems could compete because they could include compatability features that would allow programs written to run in Windows, to run in an other operating system.
Defamation laws are a bunch of crap. Anything I say about anyone -- whether it be true or false or opinion -- I have the right to say. Politicians say false things about eachother all the time, and I have the right to do that to companies. If you say that defamation makes it "illegal" to say false statements about someone, I could be sued for every false statement I ever said about anything -- including spreading gossip. That's a bunch of fucking bullshit. Now, as for opinion, I have the RIGHT to assert my opinions, irrelevant of how it affects some rich corporation(and lets face the fucking truth, defamation laws ONLY work for the rich and powerful).
In short, defamation laws VIOLATE MY RIGHT to FREE SPEECH.
Speed/Stability is all important but unmentioned
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OSX/Win2K Deathmatch
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· Score: 1
Lets face it -- speed and stability is all important. Yet they're never mentioned in any review. Why? Because most reviewers are just the type of fucking idiots that would buy a mac because "iMacs are green!" Nonsense. Now, I don't particularly like Windows 2000 -- but the fact is, it is faster than OS X by quite a bit. Make no mistake, Win2000 is certainly not fast. Debian Linux, FreeBSD, Amiga SDK, and BeOS are fast Operating Systems. Windows 2000, WinME, Win98, Win95 are pokey OS'. MacOS' are slow fucking Operating systems. A Unix core does not change the fact that the MacOS interface is bloated as hell and inefficient(in that, it uses much more code than necessary to produce the effects). It is also inefficient in that it offers tons of useless bullshit features which DO NOT make OS operating easier, nor allow tasks to get done faster. Simply put: a good improvement on a GUI is one that allows a TASK to get DONE FASTER. NOT an improvement that makes something easier, but one that allows a task to get done faster. If a feature allows a task to be easier, but makes it get done much slower due to bloat, it is not worth while. If a certain improvement can allow a task to be done faster, even after considering the performance hit, then it should be implemented. Otherwise, NO. Hence, Windows animation, menu animation, moving windows while displaying their contents, and unnecessary graphcial decoration are CRAPPY "IMPROVEMENTS". Should developers make buttons change color/tint when hovered over or clicked -- yes. This directs the users attention to their action or impending action. Should buttons be made to look 3D? Yes, to the extent that this distinguishes them from neighboring buttons or space. GUI improvements which offer FUNCTIONAL improvements should be implemented -- not ones which simply offer aesthetic improvements. Aesthetic improvements should only be implemented in and of themselves if they do not hinder overall performance.
Some people in here seem to have the crazy idea that the industry is "doing the right thing," and we're all just saying, "oh no, they're doing the right thing, now we can't have anarchy and do as we please." Well, it's not that way. Companies never do the right thing. They do the profitable thing, the thing that is in their interests -- whether or not it is right or wrong. We should not put any deference in what a company says of their own measures, their own hype of their own products, etc. Companies are simply looking out for their interests -- if there interests included killing you, and they could get away with it, they would do it. The fact of the matter is that what they are doing can and will negatively impair our rights -- it will hinder people who are not using technology to illegally redistribute music(just as the Napster decision has negatively affected people who were not using it to distribute copyrighted material -- i.e., the ppl who distributed parodies). Of course, it will also negatively affect those of us who ARE using technology to illegally distribute/get copyrighted material.
We, of course, should look out for our interests, whether or not its right/wrong. Right and wrong is a concept that companies couldn't care less about -- neither should we, at least not on such things.
Everyone looks out for their own interests. A companies interest is to charge you 5000 times more on a product than its worth. Your interest is to get that product for free, irrelevant of the "moral values" involved.
Very simply put -- its a conflict of interests. Neither is right. Companies naturally want to do illegal and shady things to deprive the consumer of choice and competition. Customers naturally want to rip companies off.
Its natural. Don't whine about people who want stuff for free, b/c so do companies.
Alright, I'm really sorry about this. Apparently, I still #$%@ed up. For some reason, even under plain text submissions, slashdot assumes anything in is an HTML marker, this was how I quoted. Here's my correction of my correction:
This is pure bullshit. He HAS changed his license. A license stands as it is, and by making a new *version* of that license which you think clarifies what the previous license meant does not change the fact that the previous license is vague, and may be interpretted differently.
He states that this:
"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that this notice is preserved and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors."
implies this:
"this means that derivitive or modified works are not permitted without the author's prior consent."
and that this extra line is siimply clarifying what was implied by the previous sentence, and hence implied in the earlier license. This is a blatant lie. The first sentence in no way implies the second: not by any conceivable twist of the imagination.
What he is trying to do is create an afterthought to the license; you can not do this. You create a license, and it stands as it is: after you've created a license, your opinion on what it means is no more valid than someone else'. Providing clarification on what you want it to mean in succeeding versions of the license does not change the older license. That new line effectively makes it a NEW license, not a clarification of the OLD license: why? because the the new line is in no way implied by the line preceeding it, as the author asserts.
The license that older versions of his software come with does NOT in any way state or imply that you can not modify the source. Furthermore, an weak implication is NOT enough to prevent people from modifying the source(and if there is an implication, it is definately weak).
His attempt to tell you what the old license says you can't do are irrelevant. The old license does not say that you can not modify the source, and thus that right is to be assumed.
Anything that a license does not say you can't do, is to be assumed as something you can do.
I appologize for the first response I posted, which had ommissions and was not spaced properly; this is because I inadvertently told slashdot to post it as html, when I should have told it to post it as "plain old text". Here is my corrected response:
This is pure bullshit. He HAS changed his license. A license stands as it is, and by making a new *version* of that license which you think clarifies what the previous license meant does not change the fact that the previous license is vague, and may be interpretted differently.
He states that this:
implies this:
and that this extra line is siimply clarifying what was implied by the previous sentence, and hence implied in the earlier license. This is a blatant lie. The first sentence in no way implies the second: not by any conceivable twist of the imagination.
What he is trying to do is create an afterthought to the license; you can not do this. You create a license, and it stands as it is: after you've created a license, your opinion on what it means is no more valid than someone else'. Providing clarification on what you want it to mean in succeeding versions of the license does not change the older license. That new line effectively makes it a NEW license, not a clarification of the OLD license: why? because the the new line is in no way implied by the line preceeding it, as the author asserts.
The license that older versions of his software come with does NOT in any way state or imply that you can not modify the source. Furthermore, an weak implication is NOT enough to prevent people from modifying the source(and if there is an implication, it is definately weak).
His attempt to tell you what the old license says you can't do are irrelevant. The old license does not say that you can not modify the source, and thus that right is to be assumed.
Anything that a license does not say you can't do, is to be assumed as something you can do.
This is pure bullshit. He HAS changed his license. A license stands as it is, and by making a new *version* of that license which you think clarifies what the previous license meant does not change the fact that the previous license is vague, and may be interpretted differently.
He states that this:
implies this:
and that this extra line is siimply clarifying what was implied by the previous sentence, and hence implied in the earlier license. This is a blatant lie. The first sentence in no way implies the second: not by any conceivable twist of the imagination.
What he is trying to do is create an afterthought to the license; you can not do this. You create a license, and it stands as it is: after you've created a license, your opinion on what it means is no more valid than someone else'. Providing clarification on what you want it to mean in succeeding versions of the license does not change the older license. That new line effectively makes it a NEW license, not a clarification of the OLD license: why? because the the new line is in no way implied by the line preceeding it, as the author asserts.
The license that older versions of his software come with does NOT in any way state or imply that you can not modify the source. Furthermore, an weak implication is NOT enough to prevent people from modifying the source(and if there is an implication, it is definately weak).
His attempt to tell you what the old license says you can't do are irrelevant. The old license does not say that you can not modify the source, and thus that right is to be assumed.
Anything that a license does not say you can't do, is to be assumed as something you can do.
This is the kind of penalty that needs to be applied to fraudulent, monopolistic, or exploitative companies like Micro $oft -- the complete liquidation of their stock and the publicization of any of their "intellectual property." This is the only way to prevent companies like M$ from forming monopolies, using their financial powers abusively, or performing otherwise illegal activity(i.e., Pepsi hiring child laborers in China/India). As for the people who invested in these corporations -- tough: you take a chance when you make an investment. As for the people who had jobs, we can't let their predicament stop us from doing what's right. We don't refuse to punish rapists and murderers because they have families that would be negatively affected by their punishment: in fact, such crap shouldn't even enter into the decision regarding punishment. Neither should we consider how our punishment to a company that has done something illegal will affect its employees: that is irrelevant.
Look, all these file sharing services were not created with the purpose to share copyrighted music -- they were created to share files in general: to share whatever kind of files they were capbable of. It is obvious that services like Aimster, Morpheus, Gnutella, and so forth, clearly are not intended for distributing copyrighted files, and have significant legal uses -- thus should be left the fuck alone.
Just because M$, the MPAA, and the RIAA are losing money because *some* people use the internet and file sharing services to distribute copyrighted materials doesn't mean they can restrict MY rights in any way. Sorry, MY right to get any program, to share my hard drive with other users, to share information, and to privacy, is more important than the bogus intellectual property rights companies claim to have(btw, where in the 10 amendments does it mention the right to make tons and tons of money off of something that can be freely replicated?).
There may be a problem with the distribution of copyrighted material on the internet -- but that doesn't give organizations like M$, the RI@@, the MP@@, or the BS@ the right to violate MY rights. The only legitimate way they can stop this activity is a way which does not in any way violate any of my rights, or those of any others. This means they can't say bullshit like "you can't link to this site". That violates my right to freedom of speech and freedom of association. They can't say "we're going to force services like Napster to filter out anything that has the digital music contents of X" -- that violates my right to distribute parodies, and it violates the right of the service provider: as they now have to make their product inferior via unnecessary bloat. They can't say "we're going to keep tabs on every log of the internet," and log IP's, and request that ISP's give us the personal information of IP's that distribute "copyrighted files" -- that's a violation of the right to privacy.
Companies may have a right to profit off of their intellectual property, and to stop intellectual property violations(though this is disputed, by me and others). [By intellectual property violatsion I mean redistribution: if buy their DVD, software, or music, I own it in the same sense that I own a book: I can disassemble it, analyze it, edit it, put notes in the margins(i.e., program comments), take it apart and learn from it, photocopy it for my own personal use, scan it into my computer, whatever as long as I don't redistribute it to other people.] But that does not mean they have the right to do whatever it takes to profit off of their intellectual property, or do whatever it takes to protect their intellectual property.
In other words, they are free to protect their rights, so long as they do not in any way violate my rights, or anyone elses.
What they are currently doing violates my rights, and those of everyone else.
Look, I download songs from Napster all the time -- I've downloaded over one Gigabyte of them: so many, that I'm having trouble thinking of more things to download via Napigator Napster.
I don't feel guilty.
I don't feel that it's wrong.
I don't care what the minority of arrogant moralists and the RIAA say about how immoral/communistic/whatever it is.
It benefits me, so I utilize it. This is the principle of capitalism: benefit to the self. What I am doing is no different than what companies do -- whatever it takes to get an advantage, to get something cheaper, to cut costs, or cut corners, etc. Companies are only interested in what is beneficial to them: they are not interested in the law, or morality, or the rights of consumers -- the fact that companies try to form and uphold monopolies proves this(i.e., the M$ monopoly, and the RIAA-organized music-cartel). Companies do whatever they think will maximize their profits -- whether or not it is within the boundaries of the law. They do whatever they can get away with: this means price-fixing, eliminating competition, monopolistic behaviour, using 9-year olds in India for labor, whatever.
So, in conclusion, what I'm doing when I use Napster is no different than what the average company does: whatever it takes to benefit my interests. Just as the average company continues doing whatever it can to benefit its financial interests as long as it can(whetehr it be legal or not), so will I.
It is the same thing politicians do: whatever it takes to benefit their politcal interests(power), whether it be truthful or not, legal or not.
Let me repeat: I feel no guilt, no regret. What I am doing is the logical thing to do: when an opportunity presents itself with minimal risk, you grab it. In fact, if I did NOT do it, I would be a sucker -- a loser. Everyone else would be benefitting from it, but not me: that would make me a loser.
Let me explain why that would make me a loser. It actually goes back to a sophistry argument. Lets say that I find a ring which can make me invisible. Now, the most self-beneficial thing I could do with this ring would be to put it on and go around stealing from my neighbors and whatnot. For that is what other men would do in my position. And if I didn't do this, and say told someone about this ring, they would consider me a fool, and idiot, a loser: they would say, "look at this sap, he has the power to do as he will, yet he does nothing in his own interest."
Same thing with Napster: those of us who use it are benefitting because of our use of it, and those of us who don't are losing.
Slashdot Mirror
{EOM}
People like you are just the type of idiots who got us in the current situation. MS is a monopoly -- a status the gov't should prevent any company from obtaining -- and they use that status to unfairly destroy all competition. This harms consumers, whether they know it or not. Superios OS to windows in ease of use and speed -- such as BeOS -- don't have a chance, however well designed they are, because MS has a monopoly, and not enough vendors are willing to make drivers or software for alternate OS', irrelevant the merits of that OS.
It is a violation of the basic principle of a capitalistic market -- that anyone can come into the market and establish themselves. Not possible, if your competing against MS in the desktop market -- why? b/c of what I just said -- they have a monopoly, so no one is willing to write drivers/software for alternatives; and they build anti-competitive measures into the OS itself, making it incompatable with competing products: not to mention that they purposefully introduce incompatabilities from one version to the next, so that people in the open sourced community trying to work on compatability don't have a chance.
Idiots like you need to wake up. Just because a company is a monopoly, doesn't mean they deserve it. AT&T established a monopoly by anti-competitive measures, and maintained that monopoly by anti-competitive measures: just as MS has done now(refer to their purposefully sabotaging DR DOS). Furthermore, consumers really weren't complaining about AT&T. But when AT&T was broken up and other phone companies entered the market, there were huge leaps in innovation, which served the consumer well. AT&T has never re-established its dominance under the fair-play rules set up by the government: proof that they didn't deserve their monopoly status.
The same should be done to MS. Just as when AT&T was broken up, if MS is broken up, it will undoubtedly benefit the consumer by allowing for many more ventures into cutting-edge software ideas.
I never said the effect of the two crimes was the same. I said in my view, both are equally wrong: rape/molestment is a form of torture, and torture, imo, is just as morally wrong as murder. Nor did I ever say the victim's life was over, and nor is it in America -- there are numerous groups to help people who've been raped. A rapist or child molestor is really a man who keeps his victim alive, so he can torture her/him. You wouldn't say that if I spared your life only to torture you, that would be somehow more "noble" than killing you on my part, would you? Of course not.
Imo, molesting a child is rape, and deserves the same punishment as rape, which in my opinion deserves the same punishment as murder or torture -- death, or life in prison.
However, this is a comedy, and Morris didn't mean to say that pedophilia's OK -- he was trying to show how fucking ignorant society is of the real issues. It was funny.
Yea, whatever. Who decides what's an "instable driver"? Fact is, M$ is just using this as an excuse to drive competition into the ground. M$ probably even intentionally introduces features into their OS to make products that compete w/ M$ products instable.
This is NOT a good idea. At least not if its mandatory. If this was an optional feature that users could turn on and off, then it would be OK. If MS ships their OS w/ this feature defaulted to on, they have to provide a way for advanced users to disable it the first time it tries to prevent them from installing something they want. For example, a message like, "MS' stability protocol X does not allow the installation of this drivers, or other drivers not up to the'MS stability standard'[ROTFLOL]. Would you like the turn this feature off?"
Otherwise, its just another anticompetitive measure, designed: (1) To eliminate competition, (2) to hinder user control, allowing MS to try to stop users from copying their own music or programs(Kazaa, LimeWire, BearShare, etc, are now deemed by M$ to be "instable programs").
Shut the fuck up, you idiot. The best OS ever? LOL, yea, unless you actually want to have control over it yourself. Sure, MS could've made Win95 really stable by giving the user zero control. The user has to have control over what goes on -- not M$. Their introducing copy-protection, software-blocking, and whatnot, is just another monopolistic anti-competitive measure. M$' WinXP should be blocked from hitting the markets -- it is their biggest anti-competive tool yet.
Look, the company paid for that computer that its employees use, the company paid for the internet connection, the company paid for the phone line, and the company paid for the damn power. They aren't paying all this so that their employees can fuck off.
But, on the other hand, employees shouldn't have to fear that every time they, say, go to a website such as this one for a source of "recreational news unrelated to business" that they'll be fired. But, on the same hand, they shouldn't be allowed to parasite off of their company, hogging bandwidth, or to spend too much of their time doing things other than what they're getting paid for.
So, here's what I propose. Companies should be able to use certain blocking software that will block out innappropriate websites from -- porn sites, and so forth. They should also be able to monitor how much time an employee spends on the internet, and how much bandwidth (s)he consumes. If the employee spends more time on the internet than is expected for his/her job, or uses significantly more bandwidth than (s)he would be expected to for his/her job, then here's what should happen:
(1) The company should lock down their computer, so any "evidence" can not be tampered with: in other words, so the original content of files as of the time of lockdown can not be modified[but so as to allow the employee to open the file and save it as another file, leaving the original unchanged].
(2) The company should give the employee a warning of an impeding investigation, where the employee can have time to talk to the officials at the company and his lawyers.
(3) The investigation should proceed. The basis upon which disicplinary actions or the cancellation of his job based on what is found on his hard drive in such a case, should be laid out clearly in his employee contract, and made verbally clear to him by whoever hired him in the first place.
You stupid f**k, it's not a crime. What Dimitry did was simply creating a program which allows users to excercise their fair rights usage here in the US. Also, he wrote the program in Russia, where it is illegal to put a limit on the number of backup copies that can be made. And his company, not him, decided to release the program to the public. You can not prosecute a man here in the US for what he did in Russia. You also can not prosecute someone for making a program which basically gives users back their fair-use rights.
I'm not saying they should give all of it away -- just give it to schools: children's education is more important than MS making a few extra bucks. All APIs should be open, as well as anything else that might allow a competing OS to run software meant for Windows -- that's the only way that real competition with MS(as an OS) is possible. Of course MS doesn't want to do it -- that's why the government has to force them to do it. Breaking up the company is not enough, and indeed, not as important, as forcing them to open up their standards to competitors, so people making competing software can integrate that software just as well into windows as does MS, and so people making competing OS' can add features to their OS that allows it to use programs made for Windows.
So they did the right thing once, big deal. Does MS honestly expect us all to bow down on our knees in praise of them, for "voluntarily" doing the right thing, after the court basically forced their hand? What's next, are we going to say that a rapist who's being trialed for rape is a great man because he refraimed from committing any rapes while on trial? Really, there is nothing to praise -- MS has given OEMs the "right to do" what should have been their right to do all along. If we're going to praise them for that, it's like praising someone who gave you asperin after wacking you on the head with a mallet. Quite frankly, when someone buys a piece of software -- the physical CD, that is, or downloads the data that constitutes the program for the price of unlimited use -- they should own it in the same sense that you'd own a book you buy: you can modify it, change it, make a million copies of it(so long as you don't give them away to other pepole), lend it to friends, try to understand how it works, and so forth. I think furthermore, that I should also comment on MS's .NET plan: they want to force the private consumer to pay for renta-software, without the option of physically buying it in the same sense they would today, and for the same or better value(if anything, people pay too much money for software today, largely due to the MS monopoly). This is certainly not something worth praise. Now, on the other hand, if they wanted to offer the OPTION -- not the ULTIMATUM -- of .NET to people, that would be ok.
We shouldn't bother praising MS until they stop doing the wrong thing(i.e., imposing their draconian EULA license on people, and using the BSA to ruin individuals and small business'), and until they start doing the right thing: i.e., giving away their software for free to public schools, open-sourcing the OS standards that determine how programs interact w/ the OS so that non-windows OS' can run windows programs.
How about Barney just go and fuck himself up his fat gay purple ass. So Barney's the fat fuck that's keeping our kids in front of the TV all day, instead of going outside and actually doing something, or learning something.
The license basically says that you can't use their SDK toolkit to make a GPLed program, right? (or rather, that you can't distribute a GPLed program made from their toolkit). This is invalid. It won't hold up in court, not any more than would a person putting a clause in a license for a word processor that would say "this word processor may not be used to create any copy-lefted material".
Actually, no, it is not a restatement of the GPL. Nothing in the GPL says that you can't link to code (written by someone else) that is closed source. The GPL says (in a nutshell), that if you make a program based on GPLed code, you must GPL that program in so far as you have made it; obviously, it can not require you to GPL the code of someone else' program that you may link to.
No, referring to the software, when I buy a piece of software, I own the CD or disk or miniCD or whatever that it came on. That CD is my property, and I have the right to do whatever I want with it, so long as I don't make it available to other's who didn't pay for it. Hence, the information on that CD is also mine in the same sense that information in a book I buy is mine: I can do whatever I want with it, so long as I don't make it available to those who didn't pay for it. Any contract which tries to state otherwise is an invalid violation of my rights. Copyright law was never meant to give IP owners the right to tell people how to use their intellectual property: for example, MS telling me I can't use their SDK kit to develop open sourced code. All that copyright law was meant to do was control the distribution of a product: i.e., they can tell me "I can't give it to those who haven't paid for it". That's valid, and that is all that is needed to protect their rights, and their investment in the software. Any other terms added on are invalid, and the Supreme Court would rule so if such was ever brought before them.
In other words, copyright law was not meant to do anything other than to allow the creator/inventor to make a reasonable profit off of their invention. It was never meant to allow them to control how people use their invention. Any any laws that allow such are invalid.
This guy's obviously a corporate cronnie. The prices we pay for software are the prices of ownership: borrowing prices are nominal and minimal. There is no compelling reason to allow software companies to include such assinite terms in their contracts that prevent us from, say, using their development kit to make open sourced code: absurd. That's like me releasing a GPLed word processor but saying that "this processor can not be used to create any non-copylefted text, or non-copylefted source coce". Absurd and invalid.
In short, there is no compelling reason to allow software companies to sell us software in any other way, aside from the way in which book companies sell us books -- the consumers getting the same rights that they would if they were buying books: namely, the right to do anything with the book, short of photocopy it and redistribute it for free. The inventor requires no protection beyond that. Any additional restricting clauses can only be seen as anti-competitive efforts and/or attempts to control people and violate their rights.
Quite frankly, to me, it is pretty obvious that when we buy a piece of software -- say Descent 3 -- we own it in the same sense that we own a book. If we hack it and release it for all to download for free, the company can seek damages against us, but they CAN NOT take the product from us. Irrelevant of what I did with any piece of software I own, no court in the US would mandate that I return that software to the company that owns it: and if they did, I could challenge that the enforcement of such a mandate would be an unconstitutional violation of my rights to privacy, and that would be upheld by the next higher court.
Its bullshit. Firstly, they can't enforce it -- I can use their "shared source" code with any GPL program I want to and they can't do a fucking thing to stop me. Secondly, its an unreasonable/illegal contract: no different than selling someone a book with the condition that they can't make notes in the margin -- you can't do it. When I buy a piece of software, I own it in the same sense that I own a book -- I can do whatever the fuck I want with it, except transcribe it and give the transcript away on the internet, or a comparable redistribution w/o the owner's consent. If I want to rip out the page, I can do that; if I want to analyze how it works, I can do that; if I want to make corrections, I can do that. And even if they try to make me agree to a "contract" in buying the book which says I can't, they have no means to enforce that, without violating my right to privacy. Hence, they can't impose such a restriction -- and that is the same type of restriction M$ is trying to impose. It just can't be done. The principle of the restriction won't hold up if its challenged in court(because copyright laws were never meant to let author's tell people HOW to use their works), and the means necessary to enforce such a contract would be unconstitutional.
It's their website, and they can do whatever the fuck they want to with it, whether or not this defaces your website by association. Even if that was their intent, so what? Its their site, and whether or not they've given u permission to linkt to their site, they can change it however they want. As a site developer, its your job to make sure that you link to sites that represent you and your site desireably, and eliminate those links if they cease doing so. Stop your whining.
Besides, you don't have the right "not to be defamed/defaced/insulted/accused/". There is, however, the right to free speach. This means that I can say right here, that your site is pornographic, innappropriate, or illegal, irrelevant of whether or not it is true. If the right to free speach only applies in so far as YOU or some other person thinks people are speaking the truth, it doesn't mean shit.
There is one reason and one reason only why MS Windows is the dominant product on the market today -- software standards. All software developers develop to MS standards as their main plan, and anything else only as a subsidary. The solution is to force MS to open source any standards it creates or has created for how programs interact with its operating system -- system calls, routines, etc etc. This way, competing companies can effectively compete to make programs that work under MS Windows(because they'd have free, unhindered access to the standards), and alternate operating systems could compete because they could include compatability features that would allow programs written to run in Windows, to run in an other operating system.
Defamation laws are a bunch of crap. Anything I say about anyone -- whether it be true or false or opinion -- I have the right to say. Politicians say false things about eachother all the time, and I have the right to do that to companies. If you say that defamation makes it "illegal" to say false statements about someone, I could be sued for every false statement I ever said about anything -- including spreading gossip. That's a bunch of fucking bullshit. Now, as for opinion, I have the RIGHT to assert my opinions, irrelevant of how it affects some rich corporation(and lets face the fucking truth, defamation laws ONLY work for the rich and powerful).
In short, defamation laws VIOLATE MY RIGHT to FREE SPEECH.
Lets face it -- speed and stability is all important. Yet they're never mentioned in any review. Why? Because most reviewers are just the type of fucking idiots that would buy a mac because "iMacs are green!" Nonsense. Now, I don't particularly like Windows 2000 -- but the fact is, it is faster than OS X by quite a bit. Make no mistake, Win2000 is certainly not fast. Debian Linux, FreeBSD, Amiga SDK, and BeOS are fast Operating Systems. Windows 2000, WinME, Win98, Win95 are pokey OS'. MacOS' are slow fucking Operating systems. A Unix core does not change the fact that the MacOS interface is bloated as hell and inefficient(in that, it uses much more code than necessary to produce the effects). It is also inefficient in that it offers tons of useless bullshit features which DO NOT make OS operating easier, nor allow tasks to get done faster. Simply put: a good improvement on a GUI is one that allows a TASK to get DONE FASTER. NOT an improvement that makes something easier, but one that allows a task to get done faster. If a feature allows a task to be easier, but makes it get done much slower due to bloat, it is not worth while. If a certain improvement can allow a task to be done faster, even after considering the performance hit, then it should be implemented. Otherwise, NO. Hence, Windows animation, menu animation, moving windows while displaying their contents, and unnecessary graphcial decoration are CRAPPY "IMPROVEMENTS". Should developers make buttons change color/tint when hovered over or clicked -- yes. This directs the users attention to their action or impending action. Should buttons be made to look 3D? Yes, to the extent that this distinguishes them from neighboring buttons or space. GUI improvements which offer FUNCTIONAL improvements should be implemented -- not ones which simply offer aesthetic improvements. Aesthetic improvements should only be implemented in and of themselves if they do not hinder overall performance.
Some people in here seem to have the crazy idea that the industry is "doing the right thing," and we're all just saying, "oh no, they're doing the right thing, now we can't have anarchy and do as we please." Well, it's not that way. Companies never do the right thing. They do the profitable thing, the thing that is in their interests -- whether or not it is right or wrong. We should not put any deference in what a company says of their own measures, their own hype of their own products, etc. Companies are simply looking out for their interests -- if there interests included killing you, and they could get away with it, they would do it. The fact of the matter is that what they are doing can and will negatively impair our rights -- it will hinder people who are not using technology to illegally redistribute music(just as the Napster decision has negatively affected people who were not using it to distribute copyrighted material -- i.e., the ppl who distributed parodies). Of course, it will also negatively affect those of us who ARE using technology to illegally distribute/get copyrighted material.
We, of course, should look out for our interests, whether or not its right/wrong. Right and wrong is a concept that companies couldn't care less about -- neither should we, at least not on such things.
Everyone looks out for their own interests. A companies interest is to charge you 5000 times more on a product than its worth. Your interest is to get that product for free, irrelevant of the "moral values" involved.
Very simply put -- its a conflict of interests. Neither is right. Companies naturally want to do illegal and shady things to deprive the consumer of choice and competition. Customers naturally want to rip companies off.
Its natural. Don't whine about people who want stuff for free, b/c so do companies.
Let OUR will prevail.
Alright, I'm really sorry about this. Apparently, I still #$%@ed up. For some reason, even under plain text submissions, slashdot assumes anything in is an HTML marker, this was how I quoted. Here's my correction of my correction:
This is pure bullshit. He HAS changed his license. A license stands as it is, and by making a new *version* of that license which you think clarifies what the previous license meant does not change the fact that the previous license is vague, and may be interpretted differently.
He states that this:
"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that this notice is preserved and due credit is given to the original author and the contributors."
implies this:
"this means that derivitive or modified works are not permitted without the author's prior consent."
and that this extra line is siimply clarifying what was implied by the previous sentence, and hence implied in the earlier license. This is a blatant lie. The first sentence in no way implies the second: not by any conceivable twist of the imagination.
What he is trying to do is create an afterthought to the license; you can not do this. You create a license, and it stands as it is: after you've created a license, your opinion on what it means is no more valid than someone else'. Providing clarification on what you want it to mean in succeeding versions of the license does not change the older license. That new line effectively makes it a NEW license, not a clarification of the OLD license: why? because the the new line is in no way implied by the line preceeding it, as the author asserts.
The license that older versions of his software come with does NOT in any way state or imply that you can not modify the source. Furthermore, an weak implication is NOT enough to prevent people from modifying the source(and if there is an implication, it is definately weak).
His attempt to tell you what the old license says you can't do are irrelevant. The old license does not say that you can not modify the source, and thus that right is to be assumed.
Anything that a license does not say you can't do, is to be assumed as something you can do.
I appologize for the first response I posted, which had ommissions and was not spaced properly; this is because I inadvertently told slashdot to post it as html, when I should have told it to post it as "plain old text". Here is my corrected response:
This is pure bullshit. He HAS changed his license. A license stands as it is, and by making a new *version* of that license which you think clarifies what the previous license meant does not change the fact that the previous license is vague, and may be interpretted differently.
He states that this:
implies this:
and that this extra line is siimply clarifying what was implied by the previous sentence, and hence implied in the earlier license. This is a blatant lie. The first sentence in no way implies the second: not by any conceivable twist of the imagination.
What he is trying to do is create an afterthought to the license; you can not do this. You create a license, and it stands as it is: after you've created a license, your opinion on what it means is no more valid than someone else'. Providing clarification on what you want it to mean in succeeding versions of the license does not change the older license. That new line effectively makes it a NEW license, not a clarification of the OLD license: why? because the the new line is in no way implied by the line preceeding it, as the author asserts.
The license that older versions of his software come with does NOT in any way state or imply that you can not modify the source. Furthermore, an weak implication is NOT enough to prevent people from modifying the source(and if there is an implication, it is definately weak).
His attempt to tell you what the old license says you can't do are irrelevant. The old license does not say that you can not modify the source, and thus that right is to be assumed.
Anything that a license does not say you can't do, is to be assumed as something you can do.
This is pure bullshit. He HAS changed his license. A license stands as it is, and by making a new *version* of that license which you think clarifies what the previous license meant does not change the fact that the previous license is vague, and may be interpretted differently. He states that this: implies this: and that this extra line is siimply clarifying what was implied by the previous sentence, and hence implied in the earlier license. This is a blatant lie. The first sentence in no way implies the second: not by any conceivable twist of the imagination. What he is trying to do is create an afterthought to the license; you can not do this. You create a license, and it stands as it is: after you've created a license, your opinion on what it means is no more valid than someone else'. Providing clarification on what you want it to mean in succeeding versions of the license does not change the older license. That new line effectively makes it a NEW license, not a clarification of the OLD license: why? because the the new line is in no way implied by the line preceeding it, as the author asserts. The license that older versions of his software come with does NOT in any way state or imply that you can not modify the source. Furthermore, an weak implication is NOT enough to prevent people from modifying the source(and if there is an implication, it is definately weak). His attempt to tell you what the old license says you can't do are irrelevant. The old license does not say that you can not modify the source, and thus that right is to be assumed. Anything that a license does not say you can't do, is to be assumed as something you can do.
This is the kind of penalty that needs to be applied to fraudulent, monopolistic, or exploitative companies like Micro $oft -- the complete liquidation of their stock and the publicization of any of their "intellectual property." This is the only way to prevent companies like M$ from forming monopolies, using their financial powers abusively, or performing otherwise illegal activity(i.e., Pepsi hiring child laborers in China/India). As for the people who invested in these corporations -- tough: you take a chance when you make an investment. As for the people who had jobs, we can't let their predicament stop us from doing what's right. We don't refuse to punish rapists and murderers because they have families that would be negatively affected by their punishment: in fact, such crap shouldn't even enter into the decision regarding punishment. Neither should we consider how our punishment to a company that has done something illegal will affect its employees: that is irrelevant.
Look, all these file sharing services were not created with the purpose to share copyrighted music -- they were created to share files in general: to share whatever kind of files they were capbable of. It is obvious that services like Aimster, Morpheus, Gnutella, and so forth, clearly are not intended for distributing copyrighted files, and have significant legal uses -- thus should be left the fuck alone.
Just because M$, the MPAA, and the RIAA are losing money because *some* people use the internet and file sharing services to distribute copyrighted materials doesn't mean they can restrict MY rights in any way. Sorry, MY right to get any program, to share my hard drive with other users, to share information, and to privacy, is more important than the bogus intellectual property rights companies claim to have(btw, where in the 10 amendments does it mention the right to make tons and tons of money off of something that can be freely replicated?).
There may be a problem with the distribution of copyrighted material on the internet -- but that doesn't give organizations like M$, the RI@@, the MP@@, or the BS@ the right to violate MY rights. The only legitimate way they can stop this activity is a way which does not in any way violate any of my rights, or those of any others. This means they can't say bullshit like "you can't link to this site". That violates my right to freedom of speech and freedom of association. They can't say "we're going to force services like Napster to filter out anything that has the digital music contents of X" -- that violates my right to distribute parodies, and it violates the right of the service provider: as they now have to make their product inferior via unnecessary bloat. They can't say "we're going to keep tabs on every log of the internet," and log IP's, and request that ISP's give us the personal information of IP's that distribute "copyrighted files" -- that's a violation of the right to privacy.
Companies may have a right to profit off of their intellectual property, and to stop intellectual property violations(though this is disputed, by me and others). [By intellectual property violatsion I mean redistribution: if buy their DVD, software, or music, I own it in the same sense that I own a book: I can disassemble it, analyze it, edit it, put notes in the margins(i.e., program comments), take it apart and learn from it, photocopy it for my own personal use, scan it into my computer, whatever as long as I don't redistribute it to other people.] But that does not mean they have the right to do whatever it takes to profit off of their intellectual property, or do whatever it takes to protect their intellectual property.
In other words, they are free to protect their rights, so long as they do not in any way violate my rights, or anyone elses.
What they are currently doing violates my rights, and those of everyone else.
Look, I download songs from Napster all the time -- I've downloaded over one Gigabyte of them: so many, that I'm having trouble thinking of more things to download via Napigator Napster.
I don't feel guilty.
I don't feel that it's wrong.
I don't care what the minority of arrogant moralists and the RIAA say about how immoral/communistic/whatever it is.
It benefits me, so I utilize it. This is the principle of capitalism: benefit to the self. What I am doing is no different than what companies do -- whatever it takes to get an advantage, to get something cheaper, to cut costs, or cut corners, etc. Companies are only interested in what is beneficial to them: they are not interested in the law, or morality, or the rights of consumers -- the fact that companies try to form and uphold monopolies proves this(i.e., the M$ monopoly, and the RIAA-organized music-cartel). Companies do whatever they think will maximize their profits -- whether or not it is within the boundaries of the law. They do whatever they can get away with: this means price-fixing, eliminating competition, monopolistic behaviour, using 9-year olds in India for labor, whatever.
So, in conclusion, what I'm doing when I use Napster is no different than what the average company does: whatever it takes to benefit my interests. Just as the average company continues doing whatever it can to benefit its financial interests as long as it can(whetehr it be legal or not), so will I.
It is the same thing politicians do: whatever it takes to benefit their politcal interests(power), whether it be truthful or not, legal or not.
Let me repeat: I feel no guilt, no regret. What I am doing is the logical thing to do: when an opportunity presents itself with minimal risk, you grab it. In fact, if I did NOT do it, I would be a sucker -- a loser. Everyone else would be benefitting from it, but not me: that would make me a loser.
Let me explain why that would make me a loser. It actually goes back to a sophistry argument. Lets say that I find a ring which can make me invisible. Now, the most self-beneficial thing I could do with this ring would be to put it on and go around stealing from my neighbors and whatnot. For that is what other men would do in my position. And if I didn't do this, and say told someone about this ring, they would consider me a fool, and idiot, a loser: they would say, "look at this sap, he has the power to do as he will, yet he does nothing in his own interest."
Same thing with Napster: those of us who use it are benefitting because of our use of it, and those of us who don't are losing.