IMHO, RMS is full of it here, and trying to ride Linux' popularity. OTOH, I am quite willing to believe the GPL _is_ absolutely critical to all Linux' development -- it attracted many more developers than the BSDL, most likely those who were concerned about commercial exploitation -- those who wouldn't be proud Apple took their code and hid it in OS/X.
I agree that the GNU/Linux thing is at this stage largely pointless. Linux has become the de facto name for Linux distributions - not just the kernel.
You're aware that the GPL doesn't preclude commercial exploitation? Also, what do you mean by code being hidden? Is it not in compliance with the licenses for the code in question? If there is no compliance issue then why insinuate bad behavior? Are Debian "hiding" vim if they include it without adding a prominent "now contains vim!" banner to their site? Do we want a return to the advertising clauses of the earlier MIT license? Developers should choose licenses that best represent their wishes, and if a developer wants to force Red Hat management to once a month march through the city waving OpenSSH banners and setting off fucking fireworks then that's what they should require in a license. Neither GPL nor BSD are inherently better licenses. If GPL works for Linux the same is not automatically true of something like OpenSSH. Choose the license that suits your needs - don't expect anyone to do anything more than that which is specifically required by the license.
GPL undoubtably helped renew and popularize the open source movement - including Linux. The legal difficulties surrounding BSD didn't do any harm to Linux adoption.
I find it baffling that modern-day creationists, given the vast amount of information available to them, can still be more wrong than someone living thousands of years ago.
This biblical literalism appears to be a more modern fad. Some of the great thinkers of church history would be appalled at the way in which creationists discredit their religion by clinging to literal interpretations of scripture in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Augustine is a good example of a notable Christian two-thousand years ago who realized scripture will have to be continually reinterpreted as new information comes to light. Reinterpretation is not without its pitfalls, but it's better than trying to defend a verse that is clearly indefensible in the face of evidence.
I like the way you summed that up. Succinct and on the money.
I'd recommend Windows instead of OpenBSD. Sure Windows has had its problems in the past but now with Windows 7 and Norton it's practically impossible to hack my systems. Even the Lunix box I run feels safer when the Windows computer is on the network. I imagine it's the firewall in Windows 7 reaching out in to the network to protect all the computers in my office.
I've been supporting Lunix and Windows at the enterprise level for many years now. I think its finally time to move away from Lunix. Linus really needs to ask himself where he wants this to go? The kernal is hacked up, probably with viruses hidden in there (we can't be sure). Sorry, I have to say bye bye to Lunix.
By definition email is no-longer spam if the receiver opted-in to receive it. Spam is *unsolicited* bulk email. This distinction is important because without it pretty much every piece of bulk email sent would be spam.
The damage caused by Sony's testing of their customers to see exactly how much shit they'll put up with before they wise up is more practically rendered using the McBride unit. Tramiels are tiny in comparison to McBrides - making the latter far more suitable for measuring Sony and similar shit bags.
Example: Sony is pleased to announce that our recent lax management of customer data has caused 160 McBrides (47,000 Tramiels) worth of damage to the company. Stringer, President and CEO of Sony, told investors that he didn't understand why Sony still had customers - but he promised that he personally would piss in the eyes of his customers' children if that's what it takes to finally drive them all away.
Sounds to me like this Act needs to be repealed. Since when is it the USG's responsibility to make sure other countries are policing themselves properly?
The law could use some reworking in order to ensure that it is being invoked for reasons of conservation - not to protect jobs in x country. If wood is legally sourced in a country then I don't see how the environment is protected or harmed by importing the raw product without having it finished in x country.
We have laws on the books here saying women aren't allowed to wear pants, and that you're not allowed to have sex with the lights on. Should foreign governments be policing us to make sure we're following our own laws?
This question is fucking stupid. How would a conservation law be used to enforce the societal mores of another country.
And yes, foreign governments should indeed under certain circumstances be policing the US? For example, if the US were to allow piracy to thrive in its waters then the Canadians would have a pretty good argument for sending in its military south in order to safeguard civilian shipping. The same would apply in Canada if her government should decide that begin rounding-up ginger haired people for execution. I am confident that the US would intervene - with the support of the majority of the population.
If one supports BSD licensing and/or placing code under public domain, the next logical connection would seem to be that they would support having open code everywhere.... but they're specifically endorsing a system where that option is allowed to be taken away at any time. Why would one want code that descends from your codebase to end up closed to the world if your original intention was to provide more freedom to the end user?
Nah, that's a non sequitur. One could release code under a permissive license without having any real desire to see open code everywhere - or at least no desire to push this as an agenda. I don't think this can be simplified in to base ideological reasons. People should license according to what's best for their project(s). If what an author wants is widespread adoption then BSD is better than GPL. OpenSSH is a good example of this done well. If the author prefers to risk limiting adoption by adopting a licence that better preserves the ability of hackers to fiddle with the code then the GPL is far superior. The Linux kernel is an obviously good example of GPL licensed code that has been widely adopted. Anyone who claims that one license is simply better than the other is likely more influenced by ideology than a general appreciation of the pros and cons of the licenses in relation to a given project.
I can give code away under a BSD license, with the hope that people will submit improvements, but not wanting to impose limits to force that behavior. That'd be my reason for choosing BSD.
$150 readers can be rooted and made to function as tablets
Yeah, in the same way that a hairdryer can be used to make toast. Depends on what you actually plan to use it for and the type of experience you're after. The average non-technie user who wants to be able to lie in bed and watch a movie isn't likely likely to be spending time rooting a fucking e-reader and then trying to squeeze everything they can out of a device that effectively belongs to a different class of products. Yeah, some e-readers are looking pretty capable. These are the ones that are sitting on the hazy line between tablets and e-readers.
$100 for an adequate tablet? Sure, if you're also the kind of person who'd consider a gimped $300 laptop in a casing designed in an afternoon to be perfectly adequate. Prices will come down as tablets become more ubiquitous. Part of that is of course due to them being a novel or premium item, and part is due to it being a comparatively small market with new manufacturing processes and expertise required. Maybe $100 in the future, but not likely anytime soon unless it's tied-in somehow to a revenue stream that effectively shifts the cost elsewhere from the initial purchase price - such as the cell phone contracts.
Has there been any patent or copyright case in the United States (or similar western nation) in which ownership was legally weakened because the clearly identified author delayed in enforcing their rights?
The only problem I'm aware of is that if a word did go viral then the author will have to prove that they did indeed author the work in question. That could be tricky if all they have as evidence is the time stamp of a file saved on their hard drive.
Rubble is likely to be a bit unstable for a device lifting that much weight. I imagine they'd use the boot rockets to hover above the rubble, and then employ arm mounted laser proton beams to cut the survivors free. The operator will then safely return, and after ensuring the survivors are safe, will return to the arms of their love interest who will soon be kidnapped by an evil mastermind hoping to use her to get the suit operator to turn over his super sekrit schematics.
It kind of did. Clark Greg is a guy with a pretty average build, yet he appeared to be lifting 200lbs with little effort. It's unfortunate that they didn't demonstrate the sheer stamina of a man using such a device, but for us noodle arms who'd struggle to life 200lbs it's impressive enough.
That's been my experience. The DRM from Steam isn't onerous enough to outweigh the benefits I get from the service as a whole. Same for Battlenet titles, except with the upcoming Diablo III which will require a persistent Internet connection - even for single-player content that should be playable offline. I've bought every Diablo title, and pretty much everything Blizzard has put out in the past 10 years or so, but I won't be buying Diablo III or any other Blizzard titles if they insist on using DRM that I consider to be unreasonable.
Daily Mail readers have already been getting the manifesto in serialized form for over a hundred years. Were house prices and vaccinations discussed at all in the manifesto?
That's true. He is also free to continue pushing the GPLed version that has already been released. You cannot retroactively de-GPL code.
Code cannot be retroactively stripped of the GPL, but the original GPL licensing could be invalidated if the author never had the rights necessary to release the code under the GPL. Probably depends on the contract he had with his former employers. The guy in question should review that contract and seek legal advice before kicking up a stink. He, and anyone else distributing the code, could be sued by the former employers if they in-fact own it.
Depends on ISP records. Having a dynamic IP doesn't mean that one can spend a day enjoying loll, power cycle the router and expect that the master criminal's tracks have been well and truly covered.
That's not how it is supposed to work: having a copyright simply means that you have the right to seek redress: it was not supposed to mean that the United States Federal Government will seek to destroy people and companies on your behalf.
I'd expect the figure to go the other way, i.e. 5 percent or less is legitimately copied content. Ignoring trackers for very specific uses - such as Blizzard's tracker for distributing WoW patches, the bulk of the torrents would almost certainly be infringing content.
Movie tickets are normally sold for a single performance, so it's expected to expire regardless of whoever attends the showing. It's more comparable to someone re-selling a DVD. Developers get their fair share of the profit when the title is originally sold and have no obvious right to take a cut in subsequent re-selling. If you're not making enough profit on the initial sale then rethink your margins and/or business model. It's like turfing someone out of a cafe for denying you a sale by sharing their chips with a friend. You can make sharing against the rules of your cafe, but it's intellectually dishonest to equate it with someone someone stealing chips for resale.
By all means introduce terms and technical measures that limit a game to a single activation (I accept that with Steam titles, StarCraft II and WoW. It's completely asinine to equate the reselling of games to piracy for profit. This mentality is one of reasons why I rarely buy movies and games anymore. I'm tired of publishers treating us like shit in order to shore-up a business model that could benefit from a rethink. I'll only buy things that really leap out at me - particularly if I know that I won't be able to re-sell the game should it turn out to be less than enjoyable.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, RMS is full of it here, and trying to ride Linux' popularity. OTOH, I am quite willing to believe the GPL _is_ absolutely critical to all Linux' development -- it attracted many more developers than the BSDL, most likely those who were concerned about commercial exploitation -- those who wouldn't be proud Apple took their code and hid it in OS/X.
I agree that the GNU/Linux thing is at this stage largely pointless. Linux has become the de facto name for Linux distributions - not just the kernel.
You're aware that the GPL doesn't preclude commercial exploitation? Also, what do you mean by code being hidden? Is it not in compliance with the licenses for the code in question? If there is no compliance issue then why insinuate bad behavior? Are Debian "hiding" vim if they include it without adding a prominent "now contains vim!" banner to their site? Do we want a return to the advertising clauses of the earlier MIT license? Developers should choose licenses that best represent their wishes, and if a developer wants to force Red Hat management to once a month march through the city waving OpenSSH banners and setting off fucking fireworks then that's what they should require in a license. Neither GPL nor BSD are inherently better licenses. If GPL works for Linux the same is not automatically true of something like OpenSSH. Choose the license that suits your needs - don't expect anyone to do anything more than that which is specifically required by the license.
GPL undoubtably helped renew and popularize the open source movement - including Linux. The legal difficulties surrounding BSD didn't do any harm to Linux adoption.
I find it baffling that modern-day creationists, given the vast amount of information available to them, can still be more wrong than someone living thousands of years ago.
This biblical literalism appears to be a more modern fad. Some of the great thinkers of church history would be appalled at the way in which creationists discredit their religion by clinging to literal interpretations of scripture in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Augustine is a good example of a notable Christian two-thousand years ago who realized scripture will have to be continually reinterpreted as new information comes to light. Reinterpretation is not without its pitfalls, but it's better than trying to defend a verse that is clearly indefensible in the face of evidence.
I like the way you summed that up. Succinct and on the money.
I'd recommend Windows instead of OpenBSD. Sure Windows has had its problems in the past but now with Windows 7 and Norton it's practically impossible to hack my systems. Even the Lunix box I run feels safer when the Windows computer is on the network. I imagine it's the firewall in Windows 7 reaching out in to the network to protect all the computers in my office.
I've been supporting Lunix and Windows at the enterprise level for many years now. I think its finally time to move away from Lunix. Linus really needs to ask himself where he wants this to go? The kernal is hacked up, probably with viruses hidden in there (we can't be sure). Sorry, I have to say bye bye to Lunix.
By definition email is no-longer spam if the receiver opted-in to receive it. Spam is *unsolicited* bulk email. This distinction is important because without it pretty much every piece of bulk email sent would be spam.
The damage caused by Sony's testing of their customers to see exactly how much shit they'll put up with before they wise up is more practically rendered using the McBride unit. Tramiels are tiny in comparison to McBrides - making the latter far more suitable for measuring Sony and similar shit bags.
Example: Sony is pleased to announce that our recent lax management of customer data has caused 160 McBrides (47,000 Tramiels) worth of damage to the company. Stringer, President and CEO of Sony, told investors that he didn't understand why Sony still had customers - but he promised that he personally would piss in the eyes of his customers' children if that's what it takes to finally drive them all away.
Sounds to me like this Act needs to be repealed. Since when is it the USG's responsibility to make sure other countries are policing themselves properly?
The law could use some reworking in order to ensure that it is being invoked for reasons of conservation - not to protect jobs in x country. If wood is legally sourced in a country then I don't see how the environment is protected or harmed by importing the raw product without having it finished in x country.
We have laws on the books here saying women aren't allowed to wear pants, and that you're not allowed to have sex with the lights on. Should foreign governments be policing us to make sure we're following our own laws?
This question is fucking stupid. How would a conservation law be used to enforce the societal mores of another country. And yes, foreign governments should indeed under certain circumstances be policing the US? For example, if the US were to allow piracy to thrive in its waters then the Canadians would have a pretty good argument for sending in its military south in order to safeguard civilian shipping. The same would apply in Canada if her government should decide that begin rounding-up ginger haired people for execution. I am confident that the US would intervene - with the support of the majority of the population.
If one supports BSD licensing and/or placing code under public domain, the next logical connection would seem to be that they would support having open code everywhere.... but they're specifically endorsing a system where that option is allowed to be taken away at any time. Why would one want code that descends from your codebase to end up closed to the world if your original intention was to provide more freedom to the end user?
Nah, that's a non sequitur. One could release code under a permissive license without having any real desire to see open code everywhere - or at least no desire to push this as an agenda. I don't think this can be simplified in to base ideological reasons. People should license according to what's best for their project(s). If what an author wants is widespread adoption then BSD is better than GPL. OpenSSH is a good example of this done well. If the author prefers to risk limiting adoption by adopting a licence that better preserves the ability of hackers to fiddle with the code then the GPL is far superior. The Linux kernel is an obviously good example of GPL licensed code that has been widely adopted. Anyone who claims that one license is simply better than the other is likely more influenced by ideology than a general appreciation of the pros and cons of the licenses in relation to a given project. I can give code away under a BSD license, with the hope that people will submit improvements, but not wanting to impose limits to force that behavior. That'd be my reason for choosing BSD.
$150 readers can be rooted and made to function as tablets
Yeah, in the same way that a hairdryer can be used to make toast. Depends on what you actually plan to use it for and the type of experience you're after. The average non-technie user who wants to be able to lie in bed and watch a movie isn't likely likely to be spending time rooting a fucking e-reader and then trying to squeeze everything they can out of a device that effectively belongs to a different class of products. Yeah, some e-readers are looking pretty capable. These are the ones that are sitting on the hazy line between tablets and e-readers. $100 for an adequate tablet? Sure, if you're also the kind of person who'd consider a gimped $300 laptop in a casing designed in an afternoon to be perfectly adequate. Prices will come down as tablets become more ubiquitous. Part of that is of course due to them being a novel or premium item, and part is due to it being a comparatively small market with new manufacturing processes and expertise required. Maybe $100 in the future, but not likely anytime soon unless it's tied-in somehow to a revenue stream that effectively shifts the cost elsewhere from the initial purchase price - such as the cell phone contracts.
Has there been any patent or copyright case in the United States (or similar western nation) in which ownership was legally weakened because the clearly identified author delayed in enforcing their rights? The only problem I'm aware of is that if a word did go viral then the author will have to prove that they did indeed author the work in question. That could be tricky if all they have as evidence is the time stamp of a file saved on their hard drive.
John of Patmos? Why didn't you tell me you were back in town?
I like your style! I remember the good old days when super heroes had to stop every few minutes to allow the orchestra to keep up with them.
It's an interesting technology, and I hope it's made practical, but I don't see it being used in combat any time soon.
No shit, Sherlock!
Rubble is likely to be a bit unstable for a device lifting that much weight. I imagine they'd use the boot rockets to hover above the rubble, and then employ arm mounted laser proton beams to cut the survivors free. The operator will then safely return, and after ensuring the survivors are safe, will return to the arms of their love interest who will soon be kidnapped by an evil mastermind hoping to use her to get the suit operator to turn over his super sekrit schematics.
It kind of did. Clark Greg is a guy with a pretty average build, yet he appeared to be lifting 200lbs with little effort. It's unfortunate that they didn't demonstrate the sheer stamina of a man using such a device, but for us noodle arms who'd struggle to life 200lbs it's impressive enough.
That's been my experience. The DRM from Steam isn't onerous enough to outweigh the benefits I get from the service as a whole. Same for Battlenet titles, except with the upcoming Diablo III which will require a persistent Internet connection - even for single-player content that should be playable offline. I've bought every Diablo title, and pretty much everything Blizzard has put out in the past 10 years or so, but I won't be buying Diablo III or any other Blizzard titles if they insist on using DRM that I consider to be unreasonable.
Daily Mail readers have already been getting the manifesto in serialized form for over a hundred years. Were house prices and vaccinations discussed at all in the manifesto?
That's true. He is also free to continue pushing the GPLed version that has already been released. You cannot retroactively de-GPL code.
Code cannot be retroactively stripped of the GPL, but the original GPL licensing could be invalidated if the author never had the rights necessary to release the code under the GPL. Probably depends on the contract he had with his former employers. The guy in question should review that contract and seek legal advice before kicking up a stink. He, and anyone else distributing the code, could be sued by the former employers if they in-fact own it.
Depends on ISP records. Having a dynamic IP doesn't mean that one can spend a day enjoying loll, power cycle the router and expect that the master criminal's tracks have been well and truly covered.
That's not how it is supposed to work: having a copyright simply means that you have the right to seek redress: it was not supposed to mean that the United States Federal Government will seek to destroy people and companies on your behalf.
Well put, sir!
I'd expect the figure to go the other way, i.e. 5 percent or less is legitimately copied content. Ignoring trackers for very specific uses - such as Blizzard's tracker for distributing WoW patches, the bulk of the torrents would almost certainly be infringing content.
Movie tickets are normally sold for a single performance, so it's expected to expire regardless of whoever attends the showing. It's more comparable to someone re-selling a DVD. Developers get their fair share of the profit when the title is originally sold and have no obvious right to take a cut in subsequent re-selling. If you're not making enough profit on the initial sale then rethink your margins and/or business model. It's like turfing someone out of a cafe for denying you a sale by sharing their chips with a friend. You can make sharing against the rules of your cafe, but it's intellectually dishonest to equate it with someone someone stealing chips for resale. By all means introduce terms and technical measures that limit a game to a single activation (I accept that with Steam titles, StarCraft II and WoW. It's completely asinine to equate the reselling of games to piracy for profit. This mentality is one of reasons why I rarely buy movies and games anymore. I'm tired of publishers treating us like shit in order to shore-up a business model that could benefit from a rethink. I'll only buy things that really leap out at me - particularly if I know that I won't be able to re-sell the game should it turn out to be less than enjoyable.