SD cards go up to 32GB. They're only 2.1mm thick. Just piling them up you could fit 200 or so in the volume of a typical hard disk, and it's not like an SD card is the most space efficient means of storage since a lot of the volume is taken up with the plastic case. Micro-SD can go to a quarter of the capacity in a tenth of the size. So we can squeeze at least 16TB into the same volume. That's probably adequate for a typical home user. The price is the issue here.
People who are taking this seriously - Do you really believe that someone snowed under with work would spend so long composing email responses, or spend so much of his time putting together silly posters?
Do you really think that the woman asking wouldn't have got the hint and done it herself? Or even if she didn't, she might have talked to someone else who would have explained things?
The scope of the DMCA has been tested many times. It doesn't include garage door openers. It does include DVD ripping software. It turns out if apparently doesn't include circumventing a dongle.
When we talk about exploiting people, we usually mean in the sense "to take unfair advantage of something or someone so as to achieve one's own aims." (Chambers online dictionary).
Now, given that we have a situation where the parties have a distinctly uneven bargaining position, one side gets to behave in a manner that is generally seen as malicious, manipulative, and completely at odds with the manner in which we expect an ethical human being to behave, and the other side finds themselves obliged to work outside the contracted hours, for free, why do you not have a problem?
I'm not even sure why you think that the threat of losing your job and peer pressure are not forms of force.
There are ways to coerce people without threats of violence.
"So, you're not working overtime? Well, everyone else is. I am. If you don't then all your colleagues will have to do even more overtime. We need to get this out on schedule - the last game made a loss and we really need to make a profit on this one, and well, at your last review your lack of commitment came up - we'll be considering that if we downsize."
Yes, you can say "no". I did. Confrontations make me feel extremely uncomfortable. It was extremely hard to say "no". When you have an implied threat about your own job, and bullying about it being hard on the other people who you feel a camaraderie with, you have to develop a certain level of sociopathy to do so. Why do you think so few people do yet so many complain about it?
Very few people have the option of quitting on a whim. When I left it took 2 months to find another job. I still had rent to pay, and still had to eat.
True indeed. A lot of this may be down to the industries being very different. Game developers are almost all salaried. Movie production crew are almost all freelance. So, the knock on effects are that while the games industry staff have problems, they at least have a reliable income. However, it's a lot harder to refuse work. It also means that a union can't blackball a studio, so would be a little weaker.
Retro gaming is a bit of a niche hobby. The main advantage is that there are a lot of games available for free. If it had serious marketm then developers would be rehashing those games a lot more.
So, there are small publishers and independent game developers. If there was a substantial market for original ideas, someone with an original idea would see the niche and would surely do unexpectedly well. They don't. Lack of originality is the fault of the customer.
Nobody is going to steal your code. It simply isn't worth it. The saving will be a few thousand dollars in programmer salary, and the risk will be a lawsuit worth millions, which is quite likely to come to light is the competition has to release their source.
And the software simply isn't that complex. You don't want it to be too complex. The users want it to do a simple job.
I realise I'm presenting my understanding rather vociferously, but I do so in order to counter those who present the opposite view as substantially more clear cut than it deserves.
It seems to largely boil down to whether the use of an API makes a product a derivative work. I think it doesn't, but I do see your point. I also suspect that many of those who defend this argument would be less inclined to were a large company to use it against a product that calls their internal API.
Well, there's still the arguments abut the extent of the use and the nature of the use.
i.e. those old fair use arguments that Slashdot is usually so keen on.
I could write a GPL library. So everything that links to it must abide by the terms of the GPL.
So what if I write a GPL version of libc? Or a GPL windows compatibility library? Is software that uses that obliged to be distributed under the terms of the GPL? Suppose a programmer then ports that code to a platform that uses a different compatible version of libc. He only distributes the compiled executables. There is none of my GPL code in the executable, but it was originally written to work with my GPL library. It works perfectly well with many other libraries.
and therefore Thesis code can run against any other set of.php files which offers functions with the same names - it's not really tied to WordPress.
Are there any?
I mean I agree this isn't direct copyright infringement, and can't be a GPL violation since there's no reason to believe the GPL was accepted, but there's always contributory infringement.
Now, allegedly, Thesis lifted sections of code from a GPLed work. This affects things quite substantially, however, there's an argument about fair use here that I'll not get into.
Aside from that, Jaquith is completely wrong.
Indeed Wordpress and Thesis are run as the same unit. That does not make Thesis a derivative work. It makes the work that the user made combining the two of them into a derivative work. Thesis does not derive from Wordpress any more than Wordpress derives from Thesis. The fact that two works interact does not make them derivative. That's not what the word means. The word means "derived from". It does not mean "intended to be used with". Revision notes on books are not derived works even though they directly reference specific parts of a work of fiction.
There is no court precedent on Linux modules. These are typically licensed under the GPL because it's convenient to do so. However, I see no reason why they must be.
As for copying from existing themes - there's a clear fair use argument here. Themes must interact with the copyrighted software. Code for interoperability is often considered to be fair use.
The opinions of Drupal and Joomla are completely worthless. Their knowledge of content management is formidable but they are not legal professionals.
The Thesis code is completely separate from Wordpress. Granted, it is useless without Wordpress. It may well be that it's not legal to use Thesis with Wordpress, but the copyright on the Thesis code is owned by whoever wrote that. They can distribute it as they want. The person combining it with Wordpress code is the one at risk of violating the GPL.
So why do people go to shooting ranges? They seem to enjoy it. I've fired a shotgun a few times. And yes, safety was very important and something I tok very seriously. I still thought it was fun.
Other peopel have fun driving, parachuting, climbing - all of these activities are potentially dangerous, so safety is extremely important but that doesn't need to make it less fun.
You want the default date to be no later than the production date.
The EOS D range dates back to 2001. No doubt the programmer chose an arbitrary date before the day he wrote that line of code. Nobody has seen any reason to change it for subsequent revisions of the software becaue, well, why bother?
These are actually faked because a couple of those screens were blank or showing too much glare. They've only been changed to copy other screens so it's not like they're actually adding anything.
So where's the harm? Is someone going to draw a conclusion from this image that they wouldn't have done with the original? They're going to assume that this is an indication of the round-the-clock busyness of the control centre because there's a photo?
Photographers fake all sorts of things all the time. They add additional lighting, they pose the shots, they select the best image out of hundreds, they crop the image. Why? Aesthetic reasons.
It's not about patents restricting use of split screen gaming (which has been around since the 1980's). It's simply about the technology being made obsolete.
Really it makes no difference whether they have a hollywood style "command centre", or a few guys ina prefab hut working on laptops. If people had been genuinely impressed even by a completely non-doctored photo then they're simply gullible.
I totally agree with you. The photo tells you nothing. It's meaningless. They replaced it with a meaningless photo that tells you nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
SD cards go up to 32GB. They're only 2.1mm thick. Just piling them up you could fit 200 or so in the volume of a typical hard disk, and it's not like an SD card is the most space efficient means of storage since a lot of the volume is taken up with the plastic case. Micro-SD can go to a quarter of the capacity in a tenth of the size. So we can squeeze at least 16TB into the same volume. That's probably adequate for a typical home user. The price is the issue here.
People who are taking this seriously - Do you really believe that someone snowed under with work would spend so long composing email responses, or spend so much of his time putting together silly posters?
Do you really think that the woman asking wouldn't have got the hint and done it herself? Or even if she didn't, she might have talked to someone else who would have explained things?
The scope of the DMCA has been tested many times. It doesn't include garage door openers. It does include DVD ripping software. It turns out if apparently doesn't include circumventing a dongle.
Nope.
The fact that this is and always has been legal does though, as long as you do so without making a copy of the DVD.
When we talk about exploiting people, we usually mean in the sense "to take unfair advantage of something or someone so as to achieve one's own aims." (Chambers online dictionary).
Now, given that we have a situation where the parties have a distinctly uneven bargaining position, one side gets to behave in a manner that is generally seen as malicious, manipulative, and completely at odds with the manner in which we expect an ethical human being to behave, and the other side finds themselves obliged to work outside the contracted hours, for free, why do you not have a problem?
I'm not even sure why you think that the threat of losing your job and peer pressure are not forms of force.
If the level of "exploitation" is not sufficient to overcome peer pressure, it's a tough case to make.
Why? Do you perceive peer pressure as being something trivial and easy to ignore? People have an instinct to conform.
This means that, "exploitation" and all, the job is still worth having for them.
Quite so. Doesn't stop it from being exploitation.
There are ways to coerce people without threats of violence.
"So, you're not working overtime? Well, everyone else is. I am. If you don't then all your colleagues will have to do even more overtime. We need to get this out on schedule - the last game made a loss and we really need to make a profit on this one, and well, at your last review your lack of commitment came up - we'll be considering that if we downsize."
Yes, you can say "no". I did. Confrontations make me feel extremely uncomfortable. It was extremely hard to say "no". When you have an implied threat about your own job, and bullying about it being hard on the other people who you feel a camaraderie with, you have to develop a certain level of sociopathy to do so. Why do you think so few people do yet so many complain about it?
Very few people have the option of quitting on a whim. When I left it took 2 months to find another job. I still had rent to pay, and still had to eat.
One other way of looking at it is that it's a boss who is willing to accept that he's made a mistake and reverse a decision.
Add to that the whole getting paid thing, it seems like a sensible choice.
True indeed. A lot of this may be down to the industries being very different. Game developers are almost all salaried. Movie production crew are almost all freelance. So, the knock on effects are that while the games industry staff have problems, they at least have a reliable income. However, it's a lot harder to refuse work. It also means that a union can't blackball a studio, so would be a little weaker.
Retro gaming is a bit of a niche hobby. The main advantage is that there are a lot of games available for free. If it had serious marketm then developers would be rehashing those games a lot more.
So, there are small publishers and independent game developers. If there was a substantial market for original ideas, someone with an original idea would see the niche and would surely do unexpectedly well. They don't. Lack of originality is the fault of the customer.
I've worked in microchip development, flight simulators, commercial display systems, and games.
Games sucks much more than any of the others. This is why I don't work in that industry any more.
Nobody is going to steal your code. It simply isn't worth it. The saving will be a few thousand dollars in programmer salary, and the risk will be a lawsuit worth millions, which is quite likely to come to light is the competition has to release their source.
And the software simply isn't that complex. You don't want it to be too complex. The users want it to do a simple job.
They are sort of asking for a finished product for their sales pitch though. It's a lot more work for a speculative deal.
I realise I'm presenting my understanding rather vociferously, but I do so in order to counter those who present the opposite view as substantially more clear cut than it deserves.
It seems to largely boil down to whether the use of an API makes a product a derivative work. I think it doesn't, but I do see your point. I also suspect that many of those who defend this argument would be less inclined to were a large company to use it against a product that calls their internal API.
Well, there's still the arguments abut the extent of the use and the nature of the use. i.e. those old fair use arguments that Slashdot is usually so keen on.
Here's where it gets murky though.
I could write a GPL library. So everything that links to it must abide by the terms of the GPL.
So what if I write a GPL version of libc? Or a GPL windows compatibility library? Is software that uses that obliged to be distributed under the terms of the GPL? Suppose a programmer then ports that code to a platform that uses a different compatible version of libc. He only distributes the compiled executables. There is none of my GPL code in the executable, but it was originally written to work with my GPL library. It works perfectly well with many other libraries.
Is he obligated to provide source to his program?
and therefore Thesis code can run against any other set of .php files which offers functions with the same names - it's not really tied to WordPress.
Are there any?
I mean I agree this isn't direct copyright infringement, and can't be a GPL violation since there's no reason to believe the GPL was accepted, but there's always contributory infringement.
Now, allegedly, Thesis lifted sections of code from a GPLed work. This affects things quite substantially, however, there's an argument about fair use here that I'll not get into.
Aside from that, Jaquith is completely wrong.
Indeed Wordpress and Thesis are run as the same unit. That does not make Thesis a derivative work. It makes the work that the user made combining the two of them into a derivative work. Thesis does not derive from Wordpress any more than Wordpress derives from Thesis. The fact that two works interact does not make them derivative. That's not what the word means. The word means "derived from". It does not mean "intended to be used with". Revision notes on books are not derived works even though they directly reference specific parts of a work of fiction.
There is no court precedent on Linux modules. These are typically licensed under the GPL because it's convenient to do so. However, I see no reason why they must be.
As for copying from existing themes - there's a clear fair use argument here. Themes must interact with the copyrighted software. Code for interoperability is often considered to be fair use.
The opinions of Drupal and Joomla are completely worthless. Their knowledge of content management is formidable but they are not legal professionals.
The Thesis code is completely separate from Wordpress. Granted, it is useless without Wordpress. It may well be that it's not legal to use Thesis with Wordpress, but the copyright on the Thesis code is owned by whoever wrote that. They can distribute it as they want. The person combining it with Wordpress code is the one at risk of violating the GPL.
Clause 9 if the licence specifically allows you to reject it, and simply bars acts that require permission under copyright.
Hence, there is no claim to violation without a claim under copyright.
So why do people go to shooting ranges? They seem to enjoy it. I've fired a shotgun a few times. And yes, safety was very important and something I tok very seriously. I still thought it was fun.
Other peopel have fun driving, parachuting, climbing - all of these activities are potentially dangerous, so safety is extremely important but that doesn't need to make it less fun.
I think it is. I also think that a single line quoted from a novel is in a very pedantic way.
But that's why you have fair use. It is derived but it's not inringing because copyright law has exceptions for the at sort of thing.
You want the default date to be no later than the production date.
The EOS D range dates back to 2001. No doubt the programmer chose an arbitrary date before the day he wrote that line of code. Nobody has seen any reason to change it for subsequent revisions of the software becaue, well, why bother?
These are actually faked because a couple of those screens were blank or showing too much glare. They've only been changed to copy other screens so it's not like they're actually adding anything.
So where's the harm? Is someone going to draw a conclusion from this image that they wouldn't have done with the original? They're going to assume that this is an indication of the round-the-clock busyness of the control centre because there's a photo?
Photographers fake all sorts of things all the time. They add additional lighting, they pose the shots, they select the best image out of hundreds, they crop the image. Why? Aesthetic reasons.
It's not about patents restricting use of split screen gaming (which has been around since the 1980's). It's simply about the technology being made obsolete.
I'd honestly be surprised if they hadn't.
Really it makes no difference whether they have a hollywood style "command centre", or a few guys ina prefab hut working on laptops. If people had been genuinely impressed even by a completely non-doctored photo then they're simply gullible.
I totally agree with you. The photo tells you nothing. It's meaningless. They replaced it with a meaningless photo that tells you nothing.