This happened a couple years ago. This is no longer a reason to prefer Perl.
I haven't succumbed to Ruby for the same reason most Java-heads haven't succumbed to Python yet. I am not a Java-head because I like my programming languages free as in liberty.
It's tempting to say "You know a company is corrupt when even Ashcroft says so."
But remember what part of the election cycle we're approaching before drawing too many conclusions here. This will all blow over before you can say "Judge Jackson was biased in favor of the truth."
1. Offer the binaries without a corresponding offer for the source code.
2. Hijack the ship coming from Malaysia with all the linux cd's. Equipment you'll need: eyepatch, parrot, pegleg, makeshift plank for the crew to walk, silly accent. Say "Yarrrrrr!" a lot and complain about scurvy.
Microsoft would like nothing more than to make linux enthusiasts look like pirates and terrorists. No advertising campaign could make this point as effectively as this threat does.
Unless this actually *IS* a M$ advertising campaign. Conspiracy theory anyone? It certainly sounds more plausible than linux h4x0rz thinking that M$ will give in to their threats.
I think it's the other way around
on
Hacking the XBox
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· Score: 1
lets take advantage of the good nature people show towards the disabled
Actually, I think their point was that the outrageous laws the content industries have purchased are making some benign activities. That is, the disabled are being written off as collateral damage in the copyright wars.
What you call taking advantage of sympathy, I call exposing the reckless disregard of our laws for the disabled and others to the sympathetic who otherwise might have missed it.
Yes, I know/. is slanted. It still irritates me though.
Slashdot's not slanted- the world is crooked. Slashdot just looks slanted from your perspective. I imagine you believe Foxnews when they say they're fair and balanced too. Sheesh.
Why should I waste my money and time to research something if I'm not going to make $ with it?
That must have been what Salk was thinking when he said that patenting the polio vaccine would be like patenting the sun. He probably thought "Why did I lead this comfortable University researcher life and eliminate this scourge from humanity when I could have cashed in for the big $$$?!"
In Boston circa 2000, there were black and white penguin ads everywhere- I mean the red line trains were just about wallpapered with them, guerilla marketers painted them on the sidewalks, etc. IBM paid for those, and it was really cool.
In fact, IBM is the only company I've ever seen advertise linux in a mainstream market. This makes sense- they are the only ones in a financial position to do so.
"Once you've safely eliminated your competition by forcing them to sell you their company for pennies on the dollar in the infringement suit settlement, you can proceed to seduce their barely legal daughters, release cockroaches into their ventilation systems and piss on their shoes, none of which is strictly illegal but you've already proven you're a giant dick so why not?"
We wouldn't want the former part taken out of context, would we? Tsk-tsk.
Taking the freedom to restrict freedom away doesn't restrict freedom.
The market stopped being free when someone was allowed to set up a proprietary format in the first place, i.e., the courts protect their MONOPOLY on the format.
Your argument is like saying "true freedom means the freedom to randomly lock up citizens to keep them scared and subservient". That's a stupid freedom to have because it is, in itself, a reduction in freedom for almost everyone for a tiny increase in freedom on the part of John Ashcroft.
Of course all non-anarchists believe there is a minimum level of freedom reduction that produces the optimum level of freedom for everyone (laws against murder, kidnapping, etc.). But giving one firm a monopoly on the expression of an idea takes everyone else's freedom away, clearly non-optimal in this case.
why don't we charge a fee on every copy of RedHat sold to give to Slackware, because they don't sell as many copies
Because proprietary formats create monopolies. They are the antithesis of the free market. Free markets work when monopolies are prevented. When monopolies crop up, competition fails to lower prices for consumers or to drive innovation.
Your other examples are also complete non-sequiturs.
Try looking at other companies -- you'll be suprised how many others demonstrate a propensity for evil.
What, you expect me to *disagree* with you?
Look, businesses are amoral because they are not natural people and are, in general, only held accountable for their profit status.
This is only a little bit bad when companies have to worry about their competition- they are afraid to piss anyone off because they'll lose market share, so they only do what they think they can get away with.
In monopoly conditions companies don't fear their competitors, so they don't fear their customers and don't make changes to keep them happy. In this case, we have a market monopoly, reinforced by copyright monopolies over the file formats, so powerful that the company doesn't even fear the *government*.
So you are saying "everyone's doing it".
I'm saying 1. That SUCKS and 2. it REALLY SUCKS when a powerful monopolist does it.
I imagine you'll tell me to get over it again. Thanks for the tip. F that.
This is the best part about this. Suddenly the 1% or so of users on *nix OS's have a couple more percentage points worth of users, many in corporate environments, who will demand web standards compliance since IE only pages won't work for them anymore once MS comes out with its next standard-smashing version of IE.
For now of course everyone already has the current version of IE for Mac, but when that version becomes obsolete the enemy of my enemy will once again be my friend. Yay market share buddies!
That's what happens in a Monopoly. What did you expect?
it is highly likely that there is nothing Microsoft could do to please the Slashdot community
I think it would be closer to the truth to say there is nothing they *will* do to please this community.
What, do you expect us to just "get over" the fact that they demonstrate a propensity for evil over and over again?
Any action they can take will receive the same scorn and criticism, by the same group of people.
Of course, because they keep demonstrating an infinite propensity for being a pack of jerks.
There are lots of things they could do that would make slashdot people happy - they just happen not to be in Microsoft's financial interest. That's what happens in a monopoly market- your financial interest becomes opposed to the interests of consumers because there's no longer any pressure to please them. If Microsoft didn't own the file formats for Office they'd be forced to compete.
Defenders of Microsoft love to describe the objections to their business practices as "the same old story" and "tired" because they have no defense other than the fact that they've been doing the things people describe so long that they can't believe anyone is still complaining about them - it's obvious to them that no one has the power to stop them from being evil so the complainers should just "stop whining" about Microsoft's behavior.
I agree with you that Linksys should tell people what GPL'd code they're using. Publishing programs made with GPL source requires publishing an offer for the source or the source itself.
However, I disagree with you about an SASE being too onerous. The reason is that only one person really has to do it, then we can all leech off her server all night long. Or she can set up a bittorrent stream, or what have you.
Maybe not, but 1gb compact flash cards are what, $250? More? This is more storage for way less money and makes some devices price come down into a range where someone might actually buy them.
Solid state is nice, but price-wise it's still next-gen.
every reasonable explanation is accused of being a lie.
The newspeak accusation works both ways. The best way to disarm your enemies when you're actually doing something nefarious is to accuse them of lying about *you*, putting them on the defensive instead.
So who do you trust, baby? Microsoft or the "Linux Community"? Who has a reputation for openness, and who for secrecy? Who has been caught in lie after lie, scheme after scheme, extinguishment after extension?
It makes Microsoft look like a bunch of petulant three year olds. I actually think the only reason anyone tolerates them is that their behavior is so unbelievably bad that no one actually thinks it could possibly all be true.
I'm interested in this, but after a quick look at bestbuy.com, compusa.com and tigerdirect.com I didn't see them. I see you can order them directly- is that the only way? $400 is a bit much, but I'm willing to compare prices a bit.
Since they've not told anyone what code that is exactly, there's no evidence that they even gave away any copyrighted code anyway.
Even so, you can bet your bottom dollar that the GPL is not unique in this respect; any contract with any other entity that "inadvertently" licensed their ideas would be enforced just as surely as the GPL ought to be here.
Imagine that SCO licenses some unix code to Microsoft so they can make an OS X clone. SCO's legal department complains 6 months after they sell the license that "we didn't mean to license the Sys V stuff, could we please take that part back?"
I'm sure you can imagine the outpouring of sympathy that would come from Redmond. Do you suppose there would be a coordinated effort to label proprietary licensing "viral" on that day? Only if the world were fair, I'm afraid.
Bottom line, enforcing your monopoly over an idea is a mean thing to do to people, but if you insist on doing it don't come crying when you fuck up and accidentally give back to the world what you fenced off as your own.
It keeps companies from mixing in their proprietary bits then claiming a proprietary interest in the whole work just because they contributed a piece.
This was no accident; SCO deliberately distributed their code under the GPL. They didn't contract the GPL like a virus, they deliberately and knowingly ingested it like a pill. Now they're whining because they weren't good enough to compete so they're delaying their imminent demise through the court system.
If the GPL does indeed stop SCO from pursuing this course of action, it won't prove Microsoft's point. Rather, it will prove that the GPL is doing exactly what it was intended to: embrace? sure. extend? great! extinguish? GO FUCK YOURSELF.
Slashdot Mirror
This happened a couple years ago. This is no longer a reason to prefer Perl.
I haven't succumbed to Ruby for the same reason most Java-heads haven't succumbed to Python yet. I am not a Java-head because I like my programming languages free as in liberty.
It's tempting to say "You know a company is corrupt when even Ashcroft says so."
But remember what part of the election cycle we're approaching before drawing too many conclusions here. This will all blow over before you can say "Judge Jackson was biased in favor of the truth."
1. Offer the binaries without a corresponding offer for the source code.
2. Hijack the ship coming from Malaysia with all the linux cd's. Equipment you'll need: eyepatch, parrot, pegleg, makeshift plank for the crew to walk, silly accent. Say "Yarrrrrr!" a lot and complain about scurvy.
Microsoft would like nothing more than to make linux enthusiasts look like pirates and terrorists. No advertising campaign could make this point as effectively as this threat does.
Unless this actually *IS* a M$ advertising campaign. Conspiracy theory anyone? It certainly sounds more plausible than linux h4x0rz thinking that M$ will give in to their threats.
lets take advantage of the good nature people show towards the disabled
Actually, I think their point was that the outrageous laws the content industries have purchased are making some benign activities. That is, the disabled are being written off as collateral damage in the copyright wars.
What you call taking advantage of sympathy, I call exposing the reckless disregard of our laws for the disabled and others to the sympathetic who otherwise might have missed it.
Yes, I know /. is slanted. It still irritates me though.
Slashdot's not slanted- the world is crooked. Slashdot just looks slanted from your perspective. I imagine you believe Foxnews when they say they're fair and balanced too. Sheesh.
You need to read about the Bayh/Dole act. Corporations now can patent ideas made with government funding, since the early 80's.
PR is not a useful check on the tendency of corporations to be jerks- it is a last ditch safety check, not a proper restraint.
Why should I waste my money and time to research something if I'm not going to make $ with it?
That must have been what Salk was thinking when he said that patenting the polio vaccine would be like patenting the sun. He probably thought "Why did I lead this comfortable University researcher life and eliminate this scourge from humanity when I could have cashed in for the big $$$?!"
In Boston circa 2000, there were black and white penguin ads everywhere- I mean the red line trains were just about wallpapered with them, guerilla marketers painted them on the sidewalks, etc. IBM paid for those, and it was really cool.
In fact, IBM is the only company I've ever seen advertise linux in a mainstream market. This makes sense- they are the only ones in a financial position to do so.
You forgot the rest of it:
"Once you've safely eliminated your competition by forcing them to sell you their company for pennies on the dollar in the infringement suit settlement, you can proceed to seduce their barely legal daughters, release cockroaches into their ventilation systems and piss on their shoes, none of which is strictly illegal but you've already proven you're a giant dick so why not?"
We wouldn't want the former part taken out of context, would we? Tsk-tsk.
This bill needs to be renamed. Henceforth it will be known as:
"The Privacy Deterrence and Re-education Act"
It's not enough that we have no privacy; we have to brainwashed not to want it anymore. Welcome to the land of the free, ladies and gentlemen.
No...
Taking the freedom to restrict freedom away doesn't restrict freedom.
The market stopped being free when someone was allowed to set up a proprietary format in the first place, i.e., the courts protect their MONOPOLY on the format.
Your argument is like saying "true freedom means the freedom to randomly lock up citizens to keep them scared and subservient". That's a stupid freedom to have because it is, in itself, a reduction in freedom for almost everyone for a tiny increase in freedom on the part of John Ashcroft.
Of course all non-anarchists believe there is a minimum level of freedom reduction that produces the optimum level of freedom for everyone (laws against murder, kidnapping, etc.). But giving one firm a monopoly on the expression of an idea takes everyone else's freedom away, clearly non-optimal in this case.
why don't we charge a fee on every copy of RedHat sold to give to Slackware, because they don't sell as many copies
Because proprietary formats create monopolies. They are the antithesis of the free market. Free markets work when monopolies are prevented. When monopolies crop up, competition fails to lower prices for consumers or to drive innovation.
Your other examples are also complete non-sequiturs.
Last time M$ did something like this they killed Netscape... and we got Mozilla!
I hear SCO's war drums beating but I don't see any troops.
You have to sign the NDA first before you are allowed to see them.
It's also the world's first liquid NDA, they serve it mixed with kool-aid.
Try looking at other companies -- you'll be suprised how many others demonstrate a propensity for evil.
What, you expect me to *disagree* with you?
Look, businesses are amoral because they are not natural people and are, in general, only held accountable for their profit status.
This is only a little bit bad when companies have to worry about their competition- they are afraid to piss anyone off because they'll lose market share, so they only do what they think they can get away with.
In monopoly conditions companies don't fear their competitors, so they don't fear their customers and don't make changes to keep them happy. In this case, we have a market monopoly, reinforced by copyright monopolies over the file formats, so powerful that the company doesn't even fear the *government*.
So you are saying "everyone's doing it".
I'm saying 1. That SUCKS and 2. it REALLY SUCKS when a powerful monopolist does it.
I imagine you'll tell me to get over it again. Thanks for the tip. F that.
This is the best part about this. Suddenly the 1% or so of users on *nix OS's have a couple more percentage points worth of users, many in corporate environments, who will demand web standards compliance since IE only pages won't work for them anymore once MS comes out with its next standard-smashing version of IE.
For now of course everyone already has the current version of IE for Mac, but when that version becomes obsolete the enemy of my enemy will once again be my friend. Yay market share buddies!
Microsoft's biggest competitor is themselves,
That's what happens in a Monopoly. What did you expect?
it is highly likely that there is nothing Microsoft could do to please the Slashdot community
I think it would be closer to the truth to say there is nothing they *will* do to please this community.
What, do you expect us to just "get over" the fact that they demonstrate a propensity for evil over and over again?
Any action they can take will receive the same scorn and criticism, by the same group of people.
Of course, because they keep demonstrating an infinite propensity for being a pack of jerks.
There are lots of things they could do that would make slashdot people happy - they just happen not to be in Microsoft's financial interest. That's what happens in a monopoly market- your financial interest becomes opposed to the interests of consumers because there's no longer any pressure to please them. If Microsoft didn't own the file formats for Office they'd be forced to compete.
Defenders of Microsoft love to describe the objections to their business practices as "the same old story" and "tired" because they have no defense other than the fact that they've been doing the things people describe so long that they can't believe anyone is still complaining about them - it's obvious to them that no one has the power to stop them from being evil so the complainers should just "stop whining" about Microsoft's behavior.
Well, F that my friend.
I agree with you that Linksys should tell people what GPL'd code they're using. Publishing programs made with GPL source requires publishing an offer for the source or the source itself.
However, I disagree with you about an SASE being too onerous. The reason is that only one person really has to do it, then we can all leech off her server all night long. Or she can set up a bittorrent stream, or what have you.
Maybe not, but 1gb compact flash cards are what, $250? More? This is more storage for way less money and makes some devices price come down into a range where someone might actually buy them.
Solid state is nice, but price-wise it's still next-gen.
every reasonable explanation is accused of being a lie.
The newspeak accusation works both ways. The best way to disarm your enemies when you're actually doing something nefarious is to accuse them of lying about *you*, putting them on the defensive instead.
So who do you trust, baby? Microsoft or the "Linux Community"? Who has a reputation for openness, and who for secrecy? Who has been caught in lie after lie, scheme after scheme, extinguishment after extension?
It makes Microsoft look like a bunch of petulant three year olds. I actually think the only reason anyone tolerates them is that their behavior is so unbelievably bad that no one actually thinks it could possibly all be true.
I'm interested in this, but after a quick look at bestbuy.com, compusa.com and tigerdirect.com I didn't see them. I see you can order them directly- is that the only way? $400 is a bit much, but I'm willing to compare prices a bit.
decent programmers who choose to give their work away should not be taken advantage of.
Sure they should, they gave it away!
Yeah, that's what I say when I take food from the soup kitchen! Haha, suckers! Real restaurants charge for their food, like McDonalds!
Since they've not told anyone what code that is exactly, there's no evidence that they even gave away any copyrighted code anyway.
Even so, you can bet your bottom dollar that the GPL is not unique in this respect; any contract with any other entity that "inadvertently" licensed their ideas would be enforced just as surely as the GPL ought to be here.
Imagine that SCO licenses some unix code to Microsoft so they can make an OS X clone. SCO's legal department complains 6 months after they sell the license that "we didn't mean to license the Sys V stuff, could we please take that part back?"
I'm sure you can imagine the outpouring of sympathy that would come from Redmond. Do you suppose there would be a coordinated effort to label proprietary licensing "viral" on that day? Only if the world were fair, I'm afraid.
Bottom line, enforcing your monopoly over an idea is a mean thing to do to people, but if you insist on doing it don't come crying when you fuck up and accidentally give back to the world what you fenced off as your own.
But here's the catch: Does this validate Microsoft's view of a "viral GPL"?"
We've been through this before, it's a vaccine, not a virus.
It keeps companies from mixing in their proprietary bits then claiming a proprietary interest in the whole work just because they contributed a piece.
This was no accident; SCO deliberately distributed their code under the GPL. They didn't contract the GPL like a virus, they deliberately and knowingly ingested it like a pill. Now they're whining because they weren't good enough to compete so they're delaying their imminent demise through the court system.
If the GPL does indeed stop SCO from pursuing this course of action, it won't prove Microsoft's point. Rather, it will prove that the GPL is doing exactly what it was intended to: embrace? sure. extend? great! extinguish? GO FUCK YOURSELF.
If