If a company did this to me, I would have to consider charging them fair value for the resource based on what they claim it was worth, if I did any of it at all on my own time.
What I do on my time is mine, no company owns it. Any law that says otherwise would be grossly unconstitutional in the US and immoral and unethical elsewhere.
This is why companies and employees should use a shop rights system, IMHO.
As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing. The harder it is for media companies to use intimidation and bully tactics instead of actually being good and worthwhile enterprises, the better it is for the rest of us.
But... no intelligent person would state that they aren't feeding false information by these takedown notices and the vast majority of DMCA cases. The corporations and the lawyers who do this know very well they are full of crap. Its largely the lack of a reverse sting against them that they continue to do their bully tactics.
I'll tell you what I did with a GUI video editor yesterday: I took two video streams, and composited one under the primary as background, and mixed in 3 different audio tracks sequence to events in the video. That was the easy part, the rest got tedious.
LaTeX is nice, but word processors do not suck. That's a absurd statement. Bad word processors suck, yes. But there are some very good ones out there, and they can do things you'll never do with a command line tool, LaTeX or not.
I frequently use Scrivener on the Mac... and then format with LaTeX. Neither of those programs can do the others job.
Why can you only think of two possibilities? Why can't Noah's flood have happened in what was "the world" to the writer and be perfectly true? Why can't you allow for morphing of a millennia old document, but accept it in modern science which does it daily?
The problem with discussions like this are the definitions are written in water. I see a lot of people in the thread tossing words around with obvious assumptions built in which often are not true. What exactly is an evolutionist or a creationist?
I believe in creationism: I don't think evolution as we understand it is sufficient to explain life. Creationism can be observed: I've created things, and given time humans will learn to create life. If we can create life, why can't some other being have done it?
Likewise I believe in evolution: I don't believe creationism explains life as we understand it, and I believe it is fundamentally dishonest to deny the nature of things, and evolution is clearly a part of life. Some religions fanatics claim to have a high respect for God's creation, but how can they if they deny one of its fundamental properties?
Here's something that blows the creationist’s mind: vestigial organs/parts. If a creator independently designed each organism, then lots of stuff that shouldn't be there somehow made it into the finished product. This excellent article explains it better than I could: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html
I don't see this as valid. Yes I know some people believe in an absolute form of creationism where every single species was custom made by God. Likewise there are a lot of people who believe evolution fully explains it. Both positions are laughably ridiculous.
Why can't a created organism have changed over time? Evolution obviously happens, we know that for a fact. So occasionally a created organism undergoes changes. Its creator anticipated it would need to change so it has a mechanism for handling that. Sometimes those changes are not perfect, or perhaps we just don't fully understand them. Why is that some kind of conflict between evolution and creationism?
I'm not trying to prove anything here, just pointing out that this isn't a valid argument one way or the other. Its interesting and a worthwhile exploration, but hardly proof of anything.
The problem is in taking things in the Bible literally. You can't even do that with scientific papers. Its a basic trait of human nature that we exaggerate and modify our stories. Its part of human storytelling, and in spite of what would appear to be a horrible error rate, its been shown to be highly effective and a major part of our ability to survive.
I've seen scientific papers become tangled messes, often highly syncretic, in very short time periods. We seem to accept that without question and yet, we give the Bible grief for the same thing and its thousands of years old and far more prone to alteration. Why the double standard?
Why can't the Noah story be true? Science tells us that there was at least one huge flood during the time period historians believe the biblical story coincides with. It wasn't the world, that idea is obviously ridiculous. However, certainly there were some ancients who thought that the area flooded was the whole world, and might have used a word to say that. Fast forward a few millenia and the story is distorted a bit, but does that mean its totally wrong? What if "the world" in the story is the area flooded when the Black Sea was created/expanded?
Yes there are problems with the story, but most of them can be explained by fairly normal and expected alterations in a story over time, and science if anything is helping us find the truth of these old stories, rather than disprove them totally.
Why does creationism have to be mutually exclusive with evolution?
I have never been able to understand why people think the two are in conflict.
Evolution obviously happens. You cannot claim to respect anything, if you are willing to deny its fundamental nature. Religious zealots are inherently dishonest in saying evolution does not happen. We can observe it, so denial is openly dishonest. However, its equally dishonest to say it explains life, because it certain doesn't. The non-religious, atheist, and other creation-hating zealots are just as bad.
Nature likes to break down, lose energy, and simplify... it doesn't spontaneously create the complexity needed for pure evolution.
Evolution is great for explaining how life adapts and how procreation works and benefits a species, but its rather poor for showing how life got here in the first place. An honest and scientific opinion is that its just not enough alone.
How is this a win for science? A decent man--regardless of whether he is correct or not--was flamed by a moron claiming to be a man of science?
Personally I have no conflicts between science and spirituality. I see science and faith complementing one another well, and science certainly has not the clairvoyance to state that all of our religious or spiritual beliefs are wrong. If anything, newer ideas in science suggest they might be real after all. In the end, we should all be focused on learning. If you decide ahead of time, things you cannot possibly know, you are neither faithful nor much of a scientist.
No valid scientist denies God or things of that nature. Before you counter with some sound-bite, make sure you listen to it. The great ones, even those who were atheists, only stated their personal belief. They never denied the things other belief in were impossible. A good scientist knows that isn't possible or reasonable.
The most zealous and religious person I have ever met, and whom still gives me the most grief about his religion, is an atheist. I like to call him and people like him evangelical atheists, members of one of the world's most vocal religions.
It's shiny and made by Apple, that's guaranteed regardless of who is CEO of the company. Apple is the electronic version of Versace, except with the benefit that nobody else is producing computers geared for things like being trendy as the primary feature.
Actually, quite a few companies produce things where being trendy is the primary feature. Apple is one of the companies that does *NOT* do this. Their primary product feature is that it works.
There are changes that may cause them to go away from that, but Apple is hardly the trendy company, most of their stuff is pragmatically designed. Its the PC world that is heavily focused on trendy fluff, since that's often all they have.
That's typically ignorant geek response. Most users--and by that I mean over 90% of them--would have no idea how to do that and of those who do a good number will not want to and with good reason.
That's not a solution to the problem. The only real solution is for it to not happen in the first place.
Maybe its not any different on a technical level, but its certainly very different in terms of its affect.
The UNIX process model doesn't prevent a lot of applications I want from being available to me, the Apple Store model does. Applications are already being dumbed down, features removed, and limited to Lion and there is no valid reason for any of that.
It is not a non-issue. The more libraries and garbage you have sitting under your app, the harder it is to keep it all working properly.
The bloat on your typical Linux system makes OSX look lean and mean. Its a mess to write code for. I can run all kinds of things on top of all kinds of ugly layers, but why is that the best solution our industry can offer?
If UNIX hadn't arisen, we may very well be using a system that was based off of TOPS-20 or VMS instead. Those were essentially killed off by UNIX for most lower-end uses throughout the 1970s and 1980s. That wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing. VMS offered some unique concepts and abilities that UNIX-like systems have only gained recently. It also offered far more flexibility when it came to userland programming languages, with interoperability between languages as diverse as ALGOL, BASIC, FORTRAN, PL/I, and COBOL being almost seamless.
UNIX did not kill off TOPS-20, new DECsystem hardware, Galaxy, etc... VMS did. DEC cancelled everything else wholesale. It was really shocking to the players at the time.
They said "that's not what we mean," I said "that's what's written on the contract I'm not signing," they said "all of our other employees signed this," I said "that's not my concern." They amended the contract.
Unfortunately, today that conversation would end, "All of our other employees signed this, and if you don't want to we have a hundred equally qualified people lined up to take the position".
Not necessarily. In Virginia for example we have anti-coercion laws. Basically you can claim needing a job as meaning you signed under coercion and the contract isn't worth the ink used for signing it.
I know because I've gone through it and the company in question was powerless. I am fairly certain a lot of states are also like this and/or have some form of reciprocity with those that do.
I can't, nor can many of Slashdot's audience. Why? Because of a law IBM bought in 1986 prohibiting programmers and software engineers from working as self-employed individuals. (Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html ). So, once again we see regulations bought by corporations to steer things in their favor. Which is kind of the whole point of the protest.
Where did you get this from?
I've worked self-employed as a programmer for years. I know someone who's done it for 20.
I'm going to work for a company for my next gig, but not because any imaginary law is making me do so...:)
Wow... that's just insane. Nearly ever line in Stallman's message had a jab in it. He didn't acknowledge tragedy, he made light of it in every sentence in his message. It was tasteless and at least part of it was also factually incorrect.
Why is he glad Steve Jobs is gone? He gave no valid reason for it.
Nothing Jobs ever did stopped Stallman or anyone else from delivering usable software as an alternative to the allegedly walled garden of Apple. The only thing I see stopping GNU from delivering an alternative system is GNU itself. If anything Apple has helped them.
They remove DRM when the "RECORD COMPANIES" smelled competition. It was still a decision driven outside of Apple. Apple was subjec to contractual agreement, and could not remove DRM until the record companies agreed.
That's how that sort of thing works. They had a deal and they could not have removed DRM without violating contract until either that didn't matter or the people they had the contract with agreed to it.
Everyone else also had to wait until the record companies agreed too, so its not like Apple was holding the world hostage here. A lot of people had DRM in their data files.
And indeed, by doing so you can shrink the system dramatically. But have fun building complex programs.
Which brings us back to the notion that Linux really is GNU/Linux, but I would rather call it Linux/GNU, because let's face it, the kernel is the core of the operating system, even if you break it up into pieces and have a microkernel and some servers. And no, I'm not going to write Linux/GNU, because everyone who needs to know knows that a typical modern Linux system continues to use the Linux kernel and the GNU userland and toolchain.
Heh, I build complex programs all the time without GNU.
Its not GNU/Linux, that's insane. My current Linux desktop, even with the full GNU userland, still is about 75% non-GNU software, so why would anyone call it GNU/Linux?
I think a lot of people count all software under GPL as GNU, which is not true. GPL does not mean GNU wrote it. For that matter, I've seen people count all software on a Linux system as GNU even though a lot of it isn't even under GPL.
Apple is one of the largest contributors to projects like GNU C for example, and in fact probably did more to fix some of its glaring problems than any other single entity at various times in the last ten years.
Its incredibly ignorant to say that they gave nothing back.
The GPL has more restrictions on my freedom than the BSD license, and it presumes that I want the same things as its proponents, which isn't always true. There are valid reasons for not releasing source code at various times, even if only temporarily. The GNU double-talk on that is like watching "Who's on First" by Abbot and Costello.
a) Stallman is hardly the only one pushing free software, nor did he push the best of it and
b) Its just plain stupid to assume that even if that were true, that no one else would have taken up the cause in his absence.
Richard Stallman wants to limit my freedom more than Steve Jobs ever did, while trying far harder to convince me that it is good for me. Jobs never hid what he was selling, it was all there for you to accept or not. Stallman lies constantly about what he is selling, telling me its one thing when its really another. Stallman does not want freedom in any way I understand freedom. I appreciate the good he has done, but he could have done it without the negative aspects that come with it and him.
Remove everything Stallman did, and you are still left with more than enough software to do the job, the majority of it open source.
Remove everything else keeping only what Stallman and GNU offer, and you don't have what you need, and even what you do have was frequently paid for by all of the things they call so evil.
Its ridiculous to point at any ONE part of this whole thing and call it the "only" way we can do what we do. That's just ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
Hahahahahahahaha... really, that's hilarious.
This just goes to show you that it is true: you can fool morons by lying to them constantly until they believe you.
If a company did this to me, I would have to consider charging them fair value for the resource based on what they claim it was worth, if I did any of it at all on my own time.
The hell they do.
What I do on my time is mine, no company owns it. Any law that says otherwise would be grossly unconstitutional in the US and immoral and unethical elsewhere.
This is why companies and employees should use a shop rights system, IMHO.
As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing. The harder it is for media companies to use intimidation and bully tactics instead of actually being good and worthwhile enterprises, the better it is for the rest of us.
But... no intelligent person would state that they aren't feeding false information by these takedown notices and the vast majority of DMCA cases. The corporations and the lawyers who do this know very well they are full of crap. Its largely the lack of a reverse sting against them that they continue to do their bully tactics.
You edited video from the command line?
OK I'll bite, exactly what did you do?
I'll tell you what I did with a GUI video editor yesterday: I took two video streams, and composited one under the primary as background, and mixed in 3 different audio tracks sequence to events in the video. That was the easy part, the rest got tedious.
LaTeX is nice, but word processors do not suck. That's a absurd statement. Bad word processors suck, yes. But there are some very good ones out there, and they can do things you'll never do with a command line tool, LaTeX or not.
I frequently use Scrivener on the Mac... and then format with LaTeX. Neither of those programs can do the others job.
Why can you only think of two possibilities? Why can't Noah's flood have happened in what was "the world" to the writer and be perfectly true? Why can't you allow for morphing of a millennia old document, but accept it in modern science which does it daily?
Correction: there is no advantage or disadvantage we are aware of.
The problem with discussions like this are the definitions are written in water. I see a lot of people in the thread tossing words around with obvious assumptions built in which often are not true. What exactly is an evolutionist or a creationist?
I believe in creationism: I don't think evolution as we understand it is sufficient to explain life. Creationism can be observed: I've created things, and given time humans will learn to create life. If we can create life, why can't some other being have done it?
Likewise I believe in evolution: I don't believe creationism explains life as we understand it, and I believe it is fundamentally dishonest to deny the nature of things, and evolution is clearly a part of life. Some religions fanatics claim to have a high respect for God's creation, but how can they if they deny one of its fundamental properties?
Here's something that blows the creationist’s mind: vestigial organs/parts. If a creator independently designed each organism, then lots of stuff that shouldn't be there somehow made it into the finished product. This excellent article explains it better than I could: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html
I don't see this as valid. Yes I know some people believe in an absolute form of creationism where every single species was custom made by God. Likewise there are a lot of people who believe evolution fully explains it. Both positions are laughably ridiculous.
Why can't a created organism have changed over time? Evolution obviously happens, we know that for a fact. So occasionally a created organism undergoes changes. Its creator anticipated it would need to change so it has a mechanism for handling that. Sometimes those changes are not perfect, or perhaps we just don't fully understand them. Why is that some kind of conflict between evolution and creationism?
I'm not trying to prove anything here, just pointing out that this isn't a valid argument one way or the other. Its interesting and a worthwhile exploration, but hardly proof of anything.
Creationists also have a hard time talking their way around the massive problems with Noah's flood: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
The problem is in taking things in the Bible literally. You can't even do that with scientific papers. Its a basic trait of human nature that we exaggerate and modify our stories. Its part of human storytelling, and in spite of what would appear to be a horrible error rate, its been shown to be highly effective and a major part of our ability to survive.
I've seen scientific papers become tangled messes, often highly syncretic, in very short time periods. We seem to accept that without question and yet, we give the Bible grief for the same thing and its thousands of years old and far more prone to alteration. Why the double standard?
Why can't the Noah story be true? Science tells us that there was at least one huge flood during the time period historians believe the biblical story coincides with. It wasn't the world, that idea is obviously ridiculous. However, certainly there were some ancients who thought that the area flooded was the whole world, and might have used a word to say that. Fast forward a few millenia and the story is distorted a bit, but does that mean its totally wrong? What if "the world" in the story is the area flooded when the Black Sea was created/expanded?
Yes there are problems with the story, but most of them can be explained by fairly normal and expected alterations in a story over time, and science if anything is helping us find the truth of these old stories, rather than disprove them totally.
Why does creationism have to be mutually exclusive with evolution?
I have never been able to understand why people think the two are in conflict.
Evolution obviously happens. You cannot claim to respect anything, if you are willing to deny its fundamental nature. Religious zealots are inherently dishonest in saying evolution does not happen. We can observe it, so denial is openly dishonest. However, its equally dishonest to say it explains life, because it certain doesn't. The non-religious, atheist, and other creation-hating zealots are just as bad.
Nature likes to break down, lose energy, and simplify... it doesn't spontaneously create the complexity needed for pure evolution.
Evolution is great for explaining how life adapts and how procreation works and benefits a species, but its rather poor for showing how life got here in the first place. An honest and scientific opinion is that its just not enough alone.
How is this a win for science? A decent man--regardless of whether he is correct or not--was flamed by a moron claiming to be a man of science?
Personally I have no conflicts between science and spirituality. I see science and faith complementing one another well, and science certainly has not the clairvoyance to state that all of our religious or spiritual beliefs are wrong. If anything, newer ideas in science suggest they might be real after all. In the end, we should all be focused on learning. If you decide ahead of time, things you cannot possibly know, you are neither faithful nor much of a scientist.
No valid scientist denies God or things of that nature. Before you counter with some sound-bite, make sure you listen to it. The great ones, even those who were atheists, only stated their personal belief. They never denied the things other belief in were impossible. A good scientist knows that isn't possible or reasonable.
The most zealous and religious person I have ever met, and whom still gives me the most grief about his religion, is an atheist. I like to call him and people like him evangelical atheists, members of one of the world's most vocal religions.
It's shiny and made by Apple, that's guaranteed regardless of who is CEO of the company. Apple is the electronic version of Versace, except with the benefit that nobody else is producing computers geared for things like being trendy as the primary feature.
Actually, quite a few companies produce things where being trendy is the primary feature. Apple is one of the companies that does *NOT* do this. Their primary product feature is that it works.
There are changes that may cause them to go away from that, but Apple is hardly the trendy company, most of their stuff is pragmatically designed. Its the PC world that is heavily focused on trendy fluff, since that's often all they have.
That's typically ignorant geek response. Most users--and by that I mean over 90% of them--would have no idea how to do that and of those who do a good number will not want to and with good reason.
That's not a solution to the problem. The only real solution is for it to not happen in the first place.
Maybe its not any different on a technical level, but its certainly very different in terms of its affect.
The UNIX process model doesn't prevent a lot of applications I want from being available to me, the Apple Store model does. Applications are already being dumbed down, features removed, and limited to Lion and there is no valid reason for any of that.
It is not a non-issue. The more libraries and garbage you have sitting under your app, the harder it is to keep it all working properly.
The bloat on your typical Linux system makes OSX look lean and mean. Its a mess to write code for. I can run all kinds of things on top of all kinds of ugly layers, but why is that the best solution our industry can offer?
One problem with both XUL and HTML5 is all of this web stack is horribly fragile and slow.
Yea I'm sure we can eventually through enough horsepower at the problem to ignore much of the problem, but can't we come up with something better?
I will always prefer native applications until someone can make a web stack that doesn't suck.
If UNIX hadn't arisen, we may very well be using a system that was based off of TOPS-20 or VMS instead. Those were essentially killed off by UNIX for most lower-end uses throughout the 1970s and 1980s. That wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing. VMS offered some unique concepts and abilities that UNIX-like systems have only gained recently. It also offered far more flexibility when it came to userland programming languages, with interoperability between languages as diverse as ALGOL, BASIC, FORTRAN, PL/I, and COBOL being almost seamless.
UNIX did not kill off TOPS-20, new DECsystem hardware, Galaxy, etc... VMS did. DEC cancelled everything else wholesale. It was really shocking to the players at the time.
Um... so do the cops. They are, after all, local too.
They said "that's not what we mean," I said "that's what's written on the contract I'm not signing," they said "all of our other employees signed this," I said "that's not my concern." They amended the contract.
Unfortunately, today that conversation would end, "All of our other employees signed this, and if you don't want to we have a hundred equally qualified people lined up to take the position".
Not necessarily. In Virginia for example we have anti-coercion laws. Basically you can claim needing a job as meaning you signed under coercion and the contract isn't worth the ink used for signing it.
I know because I've gone through it and the company in question was powerless. I am fairly certain a lot of states are also like this and/or have some form of reciprocity with those that do.
So start your own business. I did.
I can't, nor can many of Slashdot's audience. Why? Because of a law IBM bought in 1986 prohibiting programmers and software engineers from working as self-employed individuals. (Citation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19tax.html ). So, once again we see regulations bought by corporations to steer things in their favor. Which is kind of the whole point of the protest.
Where did you get this from?
I've worked self-employed as a programmer for years. I know someone who's done it for 20.
I'm going to work for a company for my next gig, but not because any imaginary law is making me do so... :)
Wow... that's just insane. Nearly ever line in Stallman's message had a jab in it. He didn't acknowledge tragedy, he made light of it in every sentence in his message. It was tasteless and at least part of it was also factually incorrect.
Why is he glad Steve Jobs is gone? He gave no valid reason for it.
Nothing Jobs ever did stopped Stallman or anyone else from delivering usable software as an alternative to the allegedly walled garden of Apple. The only thing I see stopping GNU from delivering an alternative system is GNU itself. If anything Apple has helped them.
They remove DRM when the "RECORD COMPANIES" smelled competition. It was still a decision driven outside of Apple. Apple was subjec to contractual agreement, and could not remove DRM until the record companies agreed.
That's how that sort of thing works. They had a deal and they could not have removed DRM without violating contract until either that didn't matter or the people they had the contract with agreed to it.
Everyone else also had to wait until the record companies agreed too, so its not like Apple was holding the world hostage here. A lot of people had DRM in their data files.
And indeed, by doing so you can shrink the system dramatically. But have fun building complex programs.
Which brings us back to the notion that Linux really is GNU/Linux, but I would rather call it Linux/GNU, because let's face it, the kernel is the core of the operating system, even if you break it up into pieces and have a microkernel and some servers. And no, I'm not going to write Linux/GNU, because everyone who needs to know knows that a typical modern Linux system continues to use the Linux kernel and the GNU userland and toolchain.
Heh, I build complex programs all the time without GNU.
Its not GNU/Linux, that's insane. My current Linux desktop, even with the full GNU userland, still is about 75% non-GNU software, so why would anyone call it GNU/Linux?
I think a lot of people count all software under GPL as GNU, which is not true. GPL does not mean GNU wrote it. For that matter, I've seen people count all software on a Linux system as GNU even though a lot of it isn't even under GPL.
That is simply not true.
Apple is one of the largest contributors to projects like GNU C for example, and in fact probably did more to fix some of its glaring problems than any other single entity at various times in the last ten years.
Its incredibly ignorant to say that they gave nothing back.
The GPL has more restrictions on my freedom than the BSD license, and it presumes that I want the same things as its proponents, which isn't always true. There are valid reasons for not releasing source code at various times, even if only temporarily. The GNU double-talk on that is like watching "Who's on First" by Abbot and Costello.
You are assuming a hell of a lot.
a) Stallman is hardly the only one pushing free software, nor did he push the best of it and
b) Its just plain stupid to assume that even if that were true, that no one else would have taken up the cause in his absence.
Richard Stallman wants to limit my freedom more than Steve Jobs ever did, while trying far harder to convince me that it is good for me. Jobs never hid what he was selling, it was all there for you to accept or not. Stallman lies constantly about what he is selling, telling me its one thing when its really another. Stallman does not want freedom in any way I understand freedom. I appreciate the good he has done, but he could have done it without the negative aspects that come with it and him.
Remove everything Stallman did, and you are still left with more than enough software to do the job, the majority of it open source.
Remove everything else keeping only what Stallman and GNU offer, and you don't have what you need, and even what you do have was frequently paid for by all of the things they call so evil.
Its ridiculous to point at any ONE part of this whole thing and call it the "only" way we can do what we do. That's just ridiculous.