The insufficiency of analogy to more traditional means of communication (postal service in sealed envelopes, telegraph, town crier, word of mouth, whatever) is sufficient demonstration that the constitution is unclear on these matters. Fine. Have you by any chance ever read the 10th Amendment?
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. In other words, if the Constitution is unclear and there is no relevant law then the Federal Govt. has no power whatsoever to intercept our Internet traffic. The commerce clause is misapplied depressingly often, but IMO it seems clearly to apply to operation of the internet.
That said, the grandparent's position that the 4th Amendment doesn't apply here seems silly.
Are their offices in Massachusetts? Do they have any presence in Massachusetts? Yep. I've picked up Red Sox tickets from them before -- they have office space a few blocks from Fenway Park.
I'm assuming when you state that the 'sun is closer during the winter' that you're talking about Earth's orbital eccentricity (non-circular orbit) resulting in the entire planet being about 5 million kilometres closer to the sun during winter. Living in the northern or southern hemisphere would make no difference. Statements about "the entire planet" "during winter" make no sense. You forgot that the northern hemisphere's summer is the southern hemisphere's winter.
That is not "using" the software... It's using and abusing the people who developed it in the first place. GPL2 had loopholes that allowed this abuse. GPL3 closes those loopholes. It's not "different rules for different players," it's a change of the letter of the rules to match the intended spirit. Of course it's different rules for different players. It's explicitly such! The FSF even addresses this on their own site:
We think it's unfortunate that [business customers] would be willing to give up their freedom like this. But they should be able to fend for themselves... As a result, we have introduced this compromise to the draft: distributors are only required to provide Installation Information when they're distributing the software on a User Product... See? And notice that the FSF isn't even attempting to claim that this compromise is for the benefit of free software authors or the free software community; how could they? If DRM is something to be protected against, then explicitly carving out special cases where it's allowed certainly isn't protecting anyone.
Their claim instead is that this is a compromise on behalf of business end-users to allow them to make unfortunate choices. Whatever you think of that claim (I don't buy it), clearly the GPLv3 provides different rules for different players.
As I said earlier in this thread: under the GPLv3, TiVo using DRM to restrict the use of the hardware they sell is disallowed. But Google using DRM to restrict the use of hardware they sell would be allowed. The FSF doesn't claim this is a move for freedom. They claim they "introduced a compromise". I find it distasteful that the license is crafted based on the FSF's idea of who can and who can't "fend for themselves" — and certainly, reasonable people can disagree.
That's exactly what Tivoization is trying to guard against. Only in this case, the hardware makers were using hardware hacks to make the code useless. It's certainly a reasonable position that Tivoization is a problem, though I'm not sure I agree that a software license should concern itself with hardware distribution. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that that TiVo's strategy really is harmful and needs to be prevented in the future.
If that's the case, then why do the protections only apply to "User Product"s? If Google wanted to use the exact same technique with their search appliance, the GPLv3 would allow it, because a Google search appliance isn't meant to be installed in the home. Why compromise here? It sure feels like, to me, a way for the FSF to stick it to TiVo without pissing off the larger corporations that invest lots of money into free software development. The new version of the GPL is more complex, and it's troublesome when some of that added complexity is devoted to targeting particular uses of software. I thought this was supposed to be about "freedom", but different rules for different players sure doesn't feel like "freedom" to me. That's why I think the GPLv2 is a better license.
No, GPLv3 is significantly different from GPLv2, and some of us think that the new version really, really, sucks. If you're of this opinion, why not just read the license? You might change your mind. I'm not really sure why a glib post yours gets positive moderation. Just because somebody's opinion disagrees with yours doesn't mean they're uninformed. There are valid reasons to prefer GPLv2 over GPLv3. Of course, this is a matter of opinion, thus my use of the word "prefer" here (and the grandparent's "some of us think"), but it's not a baseless one.
GPLv2 might be characterized as a clever means of turning copyright on its head. GPLv3 doesn't seem as clever to me, as it goes through some odd contortions to address some rather specific uses of software.
As an example, one of the strangest is the special handling of "User Product"s, which means the rights you get regarding your use of GPLv3-protected code depend on your own software's intended use!
There's a post on the discussion draft FAQ about this -- why is TiVo disallowed to use DRM when others aren't? To me it's unconvincing, but they claim it's "a compromise of strategy, and not our ideals".
This is the risk people took releasing their code under GPLv2 "or any later version". Doing so gives the FSF a great deal of power, as now they have access to a much larger body of code to use to leverage the terms of their as-then-unwritten license. I find the FSF's pragmatism argument weak, and I think it's very unfortunate that the GPLv3 goes through such a contortion to limit the set of protections afforded to a subset of developers based on the target audience of devices they want to distribute their code on.
As the LLVM guys themselves say they choose their BSD style license because it has a lower adoption threshold than the GPL has. This is especially true for cutting edge companies such as Apple. BSD enables developers, such as myself or development companies such as Apple, true freedom to choose their usage of software without restrictions. LLVM rules. Don't get me wrong. I agree that LLVM rules, I'm no huge fan of copyleft, and I dislike GPLv3. My views about the relative merits of GPL- and BSD-style licenses are probably close to yours.
That said, my prior post here was one of fact, not opinion. It was meant to support fsmunoz's refutation of Constantine XVI's post. Constantine XVI pointed to Apple's use of GCC as evidence that Apple wouldn't aim to add proprietary changes to CUPS. As fsmunoz pointed out, this is bad evidence, as Apple is actively working on a non-copyleft GCC alternative.
I have little doubts that Apple will try to use/make another compiler as soon as they can so they can avoid having to share their changes. Indeed, Apple is active in the LLVM project, a non-copyleft optimizing compiler backend. Currently, to make any real-world use of it, you have to use GCC as the frontend, but Apple is working on that problem, too.
What's so special about Apple? Why can't I be notified by Slashdot when Microsoft releases patches?
Yeah, Slashdot never makes post like this about Microsoft. Certainly this article from two weeks ago has nothing to do with notable Windows security patches.
I've had bad experiences overclocking AMD processors (considering extended usage >6 months and at 100% load) with proper refrigeration. Unfortunately those processors tend do break (with no prior warning) eventually. What's a pity, since they overclock well.
They tend to break when overclocked, and yet they overclock "well"?
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I actually wanted to buy a 2600 in 1979, but when I went to look at one it was side-by-side with the spanking-new Atari 400 computer for about 200 bucks more. That was the end of consoles for me.
With every single console since, the computer on my desk had more raw power, better graphics, and better gameplay (via the keyboard) than any console of each era.
Years from now, none of these things will be anything but doorstops.
Compared to your Atari 400, which was useful technology for decades.</sarcasm>
Re:I Think This Can Be Summed Up In Five Words
on
Life or Death for Tivo
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If you think the whole Mac/PC beef is religious in nature, try the Tivo/anything else one.
Ain't that the truth.
Go to an online TiVo forum and ask about feeding your TiVo listings from XMLTV rather than subscribing. Bask in the hostility.
While I certainly agree many TiVo fans have an religious attachment to their DVRs, I don't think your suggestion really demonstrates this.
Here's an analogy: Go to the fansite of a struggling AAA baseball team, and enter the forums. Ask the fans there for the best way to sneak into the ballpark. You'll get hostility there, too, not because the fans are fanatical, but because they're pissed you've come to their fansite to solicit information on ways to rip off the their team.
I don't know if you're referring to the largest of the TiVo forum sites, but that site has red, highlighted text at the front of each forum where you might want to discuss TiVo service theft, saying in no uncertain terms that their forums are not the appropriate place to discuss it. So if you tried it there, then the community would be pissed at you not only about your chutzpah, but also about your sub-AOL-user levels of netiquette.
And they had such a good track record going into this too, what with the MiniDisc, MicroMV and its predecessor Digital 8, BetaMax...
UMD was invented by a can't-miss tech company and supplied the market of people who wanted a second full-price, lower-resoultion copy of hit movies for their myriad of UMD players. So, you know, I'm shocked.
So much for the folks at http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html. They suggest folks never send mail to gmail.com, and provide boilerplate text to reply with in case someone at gmail.com mails them.
Well, now they might be sending mail directly to Google's servers without even knowing it! I find it highly amusing that these privacy advocates assume there's any privacy at all regarding the plaintext email they might send.
(I also find it amusing that among their privacy concerns, they also complain that gmail doesn't include the originating IP in the email headers. I guess consistency doesn't matter as long as they're railing against the great beast Google.)
This is really good news, because it gives us an actual target for our energies about this issue. Most readers here understand why an anti-competitive tiered Internet is such a bad idea. We've all bitched about it on previous postings of this issue.
Please, please, if you're an American citizen and care about this issue, call, email, write, or telegram your senators in support of this bill. We need them to know they have constituents who care about keeping the Internet a powerful communications tool for all.
Certainly such an important issue is worth the effort?
This reminds me of a MUD I frequented in college. It had a very restrictive profanity filter, even blanking out "turd". We discovered this once when discussing what we were going to do the coming Sa****ay.
So, I guess Judge Paez lives in that fantasy world where the rights of the people must be explicitly given within the Constitution, or they don't have them.
No, Judge Paez lives in the reality world where the legislative branch, and not the judicial branch, writes law.
If you're unhappy with this, your beef should be with Congress, not the 9th Circuit.
I suppose that clever satire is more work than just making some stupid unthinking GNU/joke. Hahahahahaha! I put "GNU/" in front of a word! I'm so funny and cool!
And likewise, any poker player who thinks poker is only about representing false strength and putting your opponent on a hand has no idea how to play poker. The real trick is a balanced approach. The best poker players are great at both reading hands and psychological warfare, but you had also better believe they know exactly what odds the pot is offering and whether finishing a draw is a positive or negative play.
If you disagree, you're more than welcome to join our weekly game.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, the grandparent's position that the 4th Amendment doesn't apply here seems silly.
Their claim instead is that this is a compromise on behalf of business end-users to allow them to make unfortunate choices. Whatever you think of that claim (I don't buy it), clearly the GPLv3 provides different rules for different players.
As I said earlier in this thread: under the GPLv3, TiVo using DRM to restrict the use of the hardware they sell is disallowed. But Google using DRM to restrict the use of hardware they sell would be allowed. The FSF doesn't claim this is a move for freedom. They claim they "introduced a compromise". I find it distasteful that the license is crafted based on the FSF's idea of who can and who can't "fend for themselves" — and certainly, reasonable people can disagree.
If that's the case, then why do the protections only apply to "User Product"s? If Google wanted to use the exact same technique with their search appliance, the GPLv3 would allow it, because a Google search appliance isn't meant to be installed in the home. Why compromise here? It sure feels like, to me, a way for the FSF to stick it to TiVo without pissing off the larger corporations that invest lots of money into free software development. The new version of the GPL is more complex, and it's troublesome when some of that added complexity is devoted to targeting particular uses of software. I thought this was supposed to be about "freedom", but different rules for different players sure doesn't feel like "freedom" to me. That's why I think the GPLv2 is a better license.
GPLv2 might be characterized as a clever means of turning copyright on its head. GPLv3 doesn't seem as clever to me, as it goes through some odd contortions to address some rather specific uses of software.
As an example, one of the strangest is the special handling of "User Product"s, which means the rights you get regarding your use of GPLv3-protected code depend on your own software's intended use!
There's a post on the discussion draft FAQ about this -- why is TiVo disallowed to use DRM when others aren't? To me it's unconvincing, but they claim it's "a compromise of strategy, and not our ideals".
This is the risk people took releasing their code under GPLv2 "or any later version". Doing so gives the FSF a great deal of power, as now they have access to a much larger body of code to use to leverage the terms of their as-then-unwritten license. I find the FSF's pragmatism argument weak, and I think it's very unfortunate that the GPLv3 goes through such a contortion to limit the set of protections afforded to a subset of developers based on the target audience of devices they want to distribute their code on.
That said, my prior post here was one of fact, not opinion. It was meant to support fsmunoz's refutation of Constantine XVI's post. Constantine XVI pointed to Apple's use of GCC as evidence that Apple wouldn't aim to add proprietary changes to CUPS. As fsmunoz pointed out, this is bad evidence, as Apple is actively working on a non-copyleft GCC alternative.
Yeah, Slashdot never makes post like this about Microsoft. Certainly this article from two weeks ago has nothing to do with notable Windows security patches.
...because, remember:
So much to do at Cartmanland, but you can't come!
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Compared to your Atari 400, which was useful technology for decades.</sarcasm>
Here's an analogy: Go to the fansite of a struggling AAA baseball team, and enter the forums. Ask the fans there for the best way to sneak into the ballpark. You'll get hostility there, too, not because the fans are fanatical, but because they're pissed you've come to their fansite to solicit information on ways to rip off the their team.
I don't know if you're referring to the largest of the TiVo forum sites, but that site has red, highlighted text at the front of each forum where you might want to discuss TiVo service theft, saying in no uncertain terms that their forums are not the appropriate place to discuss it. So if you tried it there, then the community would be pissed at you not only about your chutzpah, but also about your sub-AOL-user levels of netiquette.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/30/ 1626239
And they had such a good track record going into this too, what with the MiniDisc, MicroMV and its predecessor Digital 8, BetaMax...
UMD was invented by a can't-miss tech company and supplied the market of people who wanted a second full-price, lower-resoultion copy of hit movies for their myriad of UMD players. So, you know, I'm shocked.
So much for the folks at http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html. They suggest folks never send mail to gmail.com, and provide boilerplate text to reply with in case someone at gmail.com mails them.
Well, now they might be sending mail directly to Google's servers without even knowing it! I find it highly amusing that these privacy advocates assume there's any privacy at all regarding the plaintext email they might send.
(I also find it amusing that among their privacy concerns, they also complain that gmail doesn't include the originating IP in the email headers. I guess consistency doesn't matter as long as they're railing against the great beast Google.)
This is really good news, because it gives us an actual target for our energies about this issue. Most readers here understand why an anti-competitive tiered Internet is such a bad idea. We've all bitched about it on previous postings of this issue.
Please, please, if you're an American citizen and care about this issue, call, email, write, or telegram your senators in support of this bill. We need them to know they have constituents who care about keeping the Internet a powerful communications tool for all.
Certainly such an important issue is worth the effort?
This reminds me of a MUD I frequented in college. It had a very restrictive profanity filter, even blanking out "turd". We discovered this once when discussing what we were going to do the coming Sa****ay.
If you're unhappy with this, your beef should be with Congress, not the 9th Circuit.
I have two questions here.
How did they deal with the relativistic time skew caused by the increased altitude?
And likewise, any poker player who thinks poker is only about representing false strength and putting your opponent on a hand has no idea how to play poker. The real trick is a balanced approach. The best poker players are great at both reading hands and psychological warfare, but you had also better believe they know exactly what odds the pot is offering and whether finishing a draw is a positive or negative play.
If you disagree, you're more than welcome to join our weekly game.