You're talking legality. I agree with you, without a contract, nothing I'm talking about is illegal.
But I'm not talking about legality. I'm talking about morality.
And I've never once said on here that TPM is evil. I would not be up in arms if Microsoft put a clause in the Office EULA forbidding it's use under WINE. Don't assume that, just because I post on Slashdot, my opinions are the same as that of the majority here.
If the RIAA decides that it will only sell you a CD under the condition that you don't rip it, then you are definitely morally wrong if you do so. If you don't like it, don't buy the damn CD.
Again, I'm talking morality, not law. Don't start quoting statutes at me.
What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, that right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were.
What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, that right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were.
You are legally in the right (I think, I'm no lawyer), but morally in the wrong. They (or one of their member companies, more accurately) produced the CD, they can set the terms it is sold under.
If you don't like the terms, you don't have to buy the CD. If enough people don't like the terms, the CD won't sell well, and the RIAA will be pressured into changing their policies.
It's not an argument about legal anything. I'm talking about morality. I believe that, if a company (or a single person) produces something, they should have complete and total control over what conditions it is sold under.
If they want to restrict you to being able to use their product from 12:00 PM to 12:10 PM on the third Tuesday of every month in leap years, then I think they have that right. You don't like it? You think that's too restrictive? Don't buy their product. Simple as that.
"However, I believe your error in your argument is that you think that all objects must be used in the way that the manufacturer intended. Alright, I'll use some more analogies. Is ripping (not sharing) a CD that you bought from the music store and converting those files to MP3s immoral because you aren't listening to the CD with a CD player? Is using a soccer ball for basketball immoral because soccer balls aren't intended to be used in basketball? Is putting an object wrapped in aluminum foil in a microwave immoral because it will blow up the microwave?"
No, I don't think all objects must be used in the way the manufacturer intended. However, I think that if a manufacturer sells you an object with the condition that you don't use it in a certain way, it's immoral to ignore their wishes.
So, if you buy a soccer ball for $5 from some manufacturer, under the condition that you not use it for basketball, then using it for basketball would be immoral. The manufacturer gets to set the conditions of the sale. If you want to buy a soccer ball and use it for basketball, then don't buy from that manufacturer. There are plenty of others who are willing to sell one to you unencumbered.
As for CDs: if the CD's publisher sells a CD to you with the restriction that you only play it in a CD player, not in your iPod, then ripping it to your iPod is immoral (even if it's legal, which I think it is, and should be). Simple as that - they make the CD, they can sell it with whatever terms they want. No one is forcing you to buy the CD. If you don't like the terms, find some other CD to buy. And if your favorite artist is only available from a publisher that doesn't want you ripping their CDs, tough shit. Life isn't fair. The fact that you don't like the terms the CD is being sold under doesn't give you the moral right to violate them.
Note that I'm talking about morals, as opposed to legality. I think there is a legal case to be made for fair use rights: if you buy a CD, the manufacturer should not be able to _legally_ control what you do with it. But there are plenty of things in this world that are legal, but not moral.
I don't understand why you think you have the right to do what you want with Mac OS X, just because you're not happy with the conditions that Apple sells it under.
They wrote OS X. They get to decide how to sell it. If you don't like the conditions, don't buy it.
It is immoral to say "I don't like the conditions they're selling it under, so I'm going to violate them." How can you not respect the fact that they, as authors of the software, have the right to sell it under the terms they prefer?
Let's say you write a book. You spend ten years of your life writing it, living off your savings. At the end of the ten years, you're almost broke, but your book is done, and it's a masterpiece. You go to a publisher, and say "I will sell you the rights to my book, if you give me 50% of the profits it makes." They agree.
The book goes on to make several millions of dollars in profits for the company, and they give you jack shit. When you complain, they say "Giving you 50% of the profits is NOT acceptable."
It's not exactly the same, but the situation is similar. Apple, as author of Mac OS X, can set the conditions under which it is sold. Even if you can come up with some legal loophole that lets you violate those conditions, doing so is still morally wrong. No one is forcing you to buy OS X. If you don't like the conditions, don't buy it.
Why should the OS vendor get to make hardware choices for you? Because that's how they want to do business. If you don't like it, don't buy from them.
"And no, artificially tying the product to their lackluster hardware offerings is NOT acceptable. Yes I said lackluster. Sure they are pretty but as PC hardware they just ain't all that. Cheap plastic cases with wimpy power supplies and little expansion for the desktop and useless one button laptops. Gimme a big manly box made of 2mil aluminum and a big ass stable power plant to start, then let me pick out a premium motherboard and memory and an drives of my choice. Why should the OS vendor get to make all of my hardware choices for me? And never forget the insane markup they get for their pretty but bland specced hardware."
Where do you get this sense of self-entitlement? Apple spent their money creating Mac OS X. They get to decide how they want to sell it. If you don't like how they sell it, you don't have to buy it. You're not morally, much less legally, entitled to do what you want with their hard work, just because you can.
Apple isn't denying that people are capable of breaking their copy-protection. They're asking that people don't, out of respect for their right as producer of the software to sell it under their terms.
I don't understand this attitude, where people think that they are fucking entitled to pirate music, movies, software, or whatever. They actually get offended when you tell them that it's immoral!
I mean, I can understand the attitude of "Yeah, I know it's wrong, but I don't care." I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But I don't understand the people who truly don't see what's immoral about, for example, running Mac OS X in a way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really give a shit about the Power architecture. Yeah, maybe it has some theoretical advantages for compiler writers and people doing vast amounts of scientific computation. But for ordinary users? Who even notices?
I bought a Mac for OS X. OS X is what's unique about Apples, not the chips that run it.
Anyone who says you can build an Apple on your own by installing a free Unix on a Dell just doesn't get why people buy them. Mac OS X is desktop Unix done right. It is easy to install, set up, configure and use. It's the most widely-supported, widely-installed desktop Unix that has ever existed. And there is practically nothing you can do in Linux that I can't do in OS X.
Valve is not owned by Vivendi. They do have a (somewhat rocky) business relationship: Vivendi has published most of Valve's games. But Valve is independent.
Blizzard, on the other hand, is a subsidiary of Vivendi.
According to talk in Hollywood, Disney was struggling with a script in which Buzz Lightyear, one of the two stars, developed a fault and had to be recalled to Taiwan for repairs.
That sounds like a reasonably good premise, actually.
If Apple's going to be commodity CPU on the server front, then there's no incentive on the hardware front to pay for Apple.
Uh, why do you say that? You're saying that the only important hardware consideration for a server is what brand of CPU it uses. All Intel servers are otherwise equally desirable, and all AMD servers are otherwise equally desirable.
That's obviously not the case.
And really, no one in the past five years bought an Apple because of the PowerPC processor. They bought one despite it, because the hardware was great otherwise, and because the OS was great.
What modern, in-use, server operating system do you consider the most secure one available today? I'm talking about one along the lines of Linux (name the distro), OpenBSD, Mac OS X, Windows, and so forth. How about a desktop operating system?
Please name a specific answer for both questions, and please don't name something useless like DOS. Your answer must be something that a sane network administrator might choose for an internet-connected server and desktop deployment.
Separately, do you think that Mac OS X is a more secure _desktop_ operating system than Windows XP? Obviously there have been far fewer worms, trojans, and viruses for OS X than Windows. Is that really solely due to OS X's lesser popularity, or is it truly a fundamentally more secure system?
If you think Windows XP is more secure, why? What security features does it have that OS X doesn't?
Stop with the melodramatic, pessimist, defeatist "Well, it's been a fun ride, but the internet is dead" posts. Do you really think anyone in a position of power at any company will respond to this by saying "Aw shucks, I guess that's the end of that! We'd better divert some of our profits to BellSouth!"?
The only people who benefit from this practice are the telecommunications providers. And even among them, the only ones desperate enough to try this manuever are the old dinosaurs that still depend heavily on POTS for their revenue. Every other company in the world suffers because of this, and they're not going simply going to roll over and pay what amounts to protection money.
Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google. Hell, every company whose employees work from home over a VPN, or every company that links small remote offices with a VPN over cheap DSL lines. They're not going to take this lying down.
If BellSouth does go ahead with this, consumers will be made abundantly aware of what they're doing: every website that provides downloads will have a prominent link on it, stating "An important notice for BellSouth customers."
Government intervention isn't even necessary - the free market will take care of this. BellSouth is not a monopoly.
Re:Pics are nice, but what about battery life?
on
New iMac disassembled
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· Score: 2, Interesting
According to one of the Mac rumors sites, the battery life hasn't changed much on the MacBooks, but they don't have official figures yet.
I would hardly call this a vulnerability. You're certainly no more vulnerable if someone exploits this little "feature" than you are at any other time you're connected to a network.
This is such a complete non-issue, it's like a freaking joke. Read the article - all a hacker might gain some this vulnerability is the ability to connect to your computer, as if it was still on a wireless network, after you've moved outside the range of an access point. Big deal. But the author and "discoverer" both talk about it like this is a remote root exploit or something. At one point, the author includes this little gem: "As Loveless pointed out, this "feature" of Windows actually behaves somewhat like a virus." Virus, my ass.
What's with all the foaming-at-the-mouth hype about these minor little things lately? It's counterproductive - going beserk over every slight issue that might, in some fantastic combination of circumstances be a security problem, takes away attention from flaws that actually matter.
IDEA is the best IDE I've ever used. It automates pretty much every mindless code navigation/generation/refactoring task, but stays out of your way otherwise. Really, it's not so much an IDE - more an souped-up, heavily-Java-specific text editor. There are no wizards, and it never hides code from you. It just takes a lot of the tedious tasks out of coding.
It's not hard to use, but the sheer array of features can take some time to discover and learn to use. It is very definitely "straightforward".
Eclipse is not bad - IDEA is expensive, and Eclipse is a decent free alternative. But if you have the money, there's no reason not to use IDEA. Eclipse has always seemed to me like a poorly-executed IDEA clone. Similar to most open-source desktop software, really.
And don't listen to the masochists who will tell you a text editor and the command line is all you need.
IDEA has a 30-day free trial - why don't you download it and give it a spin?
If you buy a cell phone and decide the interface is sucky, you don't punish the company by suing them. You punish the company by buying another brand next time.
Oh, man, that's gotta hurt the Mac zealots even more than the switch to intel. Apple hiring *PC laptop designers* to build the next Powerbook.
Uh, no, actually I couldn't care less. I was happy about the Intel switch - despite Apple's marketing, Motorola and IBM just haven't been able to deliver the same performance in the G4/G5 as Intel and AMD have with the x86 chips.
It seems like a watch is the wrong form factor for this thing. The idea is really cool, and I think I might actually buy one if it was made as a desk clock, but I wouldn't want that enormous hockey-puck-sized-thing strapped to my wrist all day.
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You're talking legality. I agree with you, without a contract, nothing I'm talking about is illegal.
But I'm not talking about legality. I'm talking about morality.
And I've never once said on here that TPM is evil. I would not be up in arms if Microsoft put a clause in the Office EULA forbidding it's use under WINE. Don't assume that, just because I post on Slashdot, my opinions are the same as that of the majority here.
If the RIAA decides that it will only sell you a CD under the condition that you don't rip it, then you are definitely morally wrong if you do so. If you don't like it, don't buy the damn CD.
Again, I'm talking morality, not law. Don't start quoting statutes at me.
What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, that right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were.
What's your opinion on academic or personal-use licenses, then?
I can buy a copy of IntelliJ IDEA for academic use for $99, or a license for personal use for $199. They charge (I think) $599 for the commercial license. All have equal functionality. So, you think it's moral for me to buy the personal license for $199, and then use it to create commercial software? After all, that right do they have to tell me what to do with the software I've purchased? I should be able to do whatever I want with it, regardless of what the terms of the sale were.
You are legally in the right (I think, I'm no lawyer), but morally in the wrong. They (or one of their member companies, more accurately) produced the CD, they can set the terms it is sold under.
If you don't like the terms, you don't have to buy the CD. If enough people don't like the terms, the CD won't sell well, and the RIAA will be pressured into changing their policies.
It's not an argument about legal anything. I'm talking about morality. I believe that, if a company (or a single person) produces something, they should have complete and total control over what conditions it is sold under.
If they want to restrict you to being able to use their product from 12:00 PM to 12:10 PM on the third Tuesday of every month in leap years, then I think they have that right. You don't like it? You think that's too restrictive? Don't buy their product. Simple as that.
"However, I believe your error in your argument is that you think that all objects must be used in the way that the manufacturer intended. Alright, I'll use some more analogies. Is ripping (not sharing) a CD that you bought from the music store and converting those files to MP3s immoral because you aren't listening to the CD with a CD player? Is using a soccer ball for basketball immoral because soccer balls aren't intended to be used in basketball? Is putting an object wrapped in aluminum foil in a microwave immoral because it will blow up the microwave?"
No, I don't think all objects must be used in the way the manufacturer intended. However, I think that if a manufacturer sells you an object with the condition that you don't use it in a certain way, it's immoral to ignore their wishes.
So, if you buy a soccer ball for $5 from some manufacturer, under the condition that you not use it for basketball, then using it for basketball would be immoral. The manufacturer gets to set the conditions of the sale. If you want to buy a soccer ball and use it for basketball, then don't buy from that manufacturer. There are plenty of others who are willing to sell one to you unencumbered.
As for CDs: if the CD's publisher sells a CD to you with the restriction that you only play it in a CD player, not in your iPod, then ripping it to your iPod is immoral (even if it's legal, which I think it is, and should be). Simple as that - they make the CD, they can sell it with whatever terms they want. No one is forcing you to buy the CD. If you don't like the terms, find some other CD to buy. And if your favorite artist is only available from a publisher that doesn't want you ripping their CDs, tough shit. Life isn't fair. The fact that you don't like the terms the CD is being sold under doesn't give you the moral right to violate them.
Note that I'm talking about morals, as opposed to legality. I think there is a legal case to be made for fair use rights: if you buy a CD, the manufacturer should not be able to _legally_ control what you do with it. But there are plenty of things in this world that are legal, but not moral.
I don't understand why you think you have the right to do what you want with Mac OS X, just because you're not happy with the conditions that Apple sells it under.
They wrote OS X. They get to decide how to sell it. If you don't like the conditions, don't buy it.
It is immoral to say "I don't like the conditions they're selling it under, so I'm going to violate them." How can you not respect the fact that they, as authors of the software, have the right to sell it under the terms they prefer?
Let's say you write a book. You spend ten years of your life writing it, living off your savings. At the end of the ten years, you're almost broke, but your book is done, and it's a masterpiece. You go to a publisher, and say "I will sell you the rights to my book, if you give me 50% of the profits it makes." They agree.
The book goes on to make several millions of dollars in profits for the company, and they give you jack shit. When you complain, they say "Giving you 50% of the profits is NOT acceptable."
It's not exactly the same, but the situation is similar. Apple, as author of Mac OS X, can set the conditions under which it is sold. Even if you can come up with some legal loophole that lets you violate those conditions, doing so is still morally wrong. No one is forcing you to buy OS X. If you don't like the conditions, don't buy it.
Why should the OS vendor get to make hardware choices for you? Because that's how they want to do business. If you don't like it, don't buy from them.
"And no, artificially tying the product to their lackluster hardware offerings is NOT acceptable. Yes I said lackluster. Sure they are pretty but as PC hardware they just ain't all that. Cheap plastic cases with wimpy power supplies and little expansion for the desktop and useless one button laptops. Gimme a big manly box made of 2mil aluminum and a big ass stable power plant to start, then let me pick out a premium motherboard and memory and an drives of my choice. Why should the OS vendor get to make all of my hardware choices for me? And never forget the insane markup they get for their pretty but bland specced hardware."
Where do you get this sense of self-entitlement? Apple spent their money creating Mac OS X. They get to decide how they want to sell it. If you don't like how they sell it, you don't have to buy it. You're not morally, much less legally, entitled to do what you want with their hard work, just because you can.
Apple isn't denying that people are capable of breaking their copy-protection. They're asking that people don't, out of respect for their right as producer of the software to sell it under their terms.
I don't understand this attitude, where people think that they are fucking entitled to pirate music, movies, software, or whatever. They actually get offended when you tell them that it's immoral!
I mean, I can understand the attitude of "Yeah, I know it's wrong, but I don't care." I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But I don't understand the people who truly don't see what's immoral about, for example, running Mac OS X in a way that Apple expressly asks you not to.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't really give a shit about the Power architecture. Yeah, maybe it has some theoretical advantages for compiler writers and people doing vast amounts of scientific computation. But for ordinary users? Who even notices?
I bought a Mac for OS X. OS X is what's unique about Apples, not the chips that run it.
Anyone who says you can build an Apple on your own by installing a free Unix on a Dell just doesn't get why people buy them. Mac OS X is desktop Unix done right. It is easy to install, set up, configure and use. It's the most widely-supported, widely-installed desktop Unix that has ever existed. And there is practically nothing you can do in Linux that I can't do in OS X.
We'll know soon enough.
Steve Jobs has said that the battery life should be about the same as the previous PowerBooks, meaning 4-5 hours.
The advantage here is that you can use your cell phone as a modem, if you're on the train, in your car, whatever.
Valve is not owned by Vivendi. They do have a (somewhat rocky) business relationship: Vivendi has published most of Valve's games. But Valve is independent.
Blizzard, on the other hand, is a subsidiary of Vivendi.
According to talk in Hollywood, Disney was struggling with a script in which Buzz Lightyear, one of the two stars, developed a fault and had to be recalled to Taiwan for repairs.
That sounds like a reasonably good premise, actually.
If Apple's going to be commodity CPU on the server front, then there's no incentive on the hardware front to pay for Apple.
Uh, why do you say that? You're saying that the only important hardware consideration for a server is what brand of CPU it uses. All Intel servers are otherwise equally desirable, and all AMD servers are otherwise equally desirable.
That's obviously not the case.
And really, no one in the past five years bought an Apple because of the PowerPC processor. They bought one despite it, because the hardware was great otherwise, and because the OS was great.
I never said he couldn't pick Windows. Where did you pull that from?
I simply asked that, if he did pick Windows, he provide some concrete justification.
What modern, in-use, server operating system do you consider the most secure one available today? I'm talking about one along the lines of Linux (name the distro), OpenBSD, Mac OS X, Windows, and so forth. How about a desktop operating system?
Please name a specific answer for both questions, and please don't name something useless like DOS. Your answer must be something that a sane network administrator might choose for an internet-connected server and desktop deployment.
Separately, do you think that Mac OS X is a more secure _desktop_ operating system than Windows XP? Obviously there have been far fewer worms, trojans, and viruses for OS X than Windows. Is that really solely due to OS X's lesser popularity, or is it truly a fundamentally more secure system?
If you think Windows XP is more secure, why? What security features does it have that OS X doesn't?
Stop with the melodramatic, pessimist, defeatist "Well, it's been a fun ride, but the internet is dead" posts. Do you really think anyone in a position of power at any company will respond to this by saying "Aw shucks, I guess that's the end of that! We'd better divert some of our profits to BellSouth!"?
The only people who benefit from this practice are the telecommunications providers. And even among them, the only ones desperate enough to try this manuever are the old dinosaurs that still depend heavily on POTS for their revenue. Every other company in the world suffers because of this, and they're not going simply going to roll over and pay what amounts to protection money.
Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google. Hell, every company whose employees work from home over a VPN, or every company that links small remote offices with a VPN over cheap DSL lines. They're not going to take this lying down.
If BellSouth does go ahead with this, consumers will be made abundantly aware of what they're doing: every website that provides downloads will have a prominent link on it, stating "An important notice for BellSouth customers."
Government intervention isn't even necessary - the free market will take care of this. BellSouth is not a monopoly.
According to one of the Mac rumors sites, the battery life hasn't changed much on the MacBooks, but they don't have official figures yet.
I would hardly call this a vulnerability. You're certainly no more vulnerable if someone exploits this little "feature" than you are at any other time you're
connected to a network.
This is such a complete non-issue, it's like a freaking joke. Read the article - all a hacker might gain some this vulnerability is the ability to connect to your computer, as if it was still on a wireless network, after you've moved outside the range of an access point. Big deal. But the author and "discoverer" both talk about it like this is a remote root exploit or something. At one point, the author includes this little gem: "As Loveless pointed out, this "feature" of Windows actually behaves somewhat like a virus." Virus, my ass.
What's with all the foaming-at-the-mouth hype about these minor little things lately? It's counterproductive - going beserk over every slight issue that might, in some fantastic combination of circumstances be a security problem, takes away attention from flaws that actually matter.
IDEA is the best IDE I've ever used. It automates pretty much every mindless code navigation/generation/refactoring task, but stays out of your way otherwise. Really, it's not so much an IDE - more an souped-up, heavily-Java-specific text editor. There are no wizards, and it never hides code from you. It just takes a lot of the tedious tasks out of coding.
It's not hard to use, but the sheer array of features can take some time to discover and learn to use. It is very definitely "straightforward".
Eclipse is not bad - IDEA is expensive, and Eclipse is a decent free alternative. But if you have the money, there's no reason not to use IDEA. Eclipse has always seemed to me like a poorly-executed IDEA clone. Similar to most open-source desktop software, really.
And don't listen to the masochists who will tell you a text editor and the command line is all you need.
IDEA has a 30-day free trial - why don't you download it and give it a spin?
Uh, no, how about not buying its products?
If you buy a cell phone and decide the interface is sucky, you don't punish the company by suing them. You punish the company by buying another brand next time.
Oh, man, that's gotta hurt the Mac zealots even more than the switch to intel. Apple hiring *PC laptop designers* to build the next Powerbook.
Uh, no, actually I couldn't care less. I was happy about the Intel switch - despite Apple's marketing, Motorola and IBM just haven't been able to deliver the same performance in the G4/G5 as Intel and AMD have with the x86 chips.
It seems like a watch is the wrong form factor for this thing. The idea is really cool, and I think I might actually buy one if it was made as a desk clock, but I wouldn't want that enormous hockey-puck-sized-thing strapped to my wrist all day.
It's an interesting article, but the melodrama kills it.
It was an Audi, not a Mercedes.