I'm sorry but I'm having difficulty matching up your counter argument to the sentence you're describing as "Bullshit".
The comment you quoted was: "to all the people that download music, if you think you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are two working people with families who no longer have jobs because of music piracy.".
You go to great lengths to stress that you actually buy CDs, although you don't buy many recently produced CDs, instead preferring the back-catalogs and (presumably) used market.
You don't mention downloads at all, you claim to be a CD buyer, and imply you're not a downloader. So your opinion isn't really relevant, it is not you that has decided to download instead of buying. Further, you indicate that there's stuff worth buying at brick and mortar stores, even if it's just older music, so complaints that the "RIAA" isn't producing music "of substance" (actually, the RIAA is a trade association, it doesn't produce anything. You're thinking of the labels, or the artists represented and published by those labels) doesn't in any way help your argument.
So, bottom line: The music stores are, according to you, not suffering a shortage of sales brought about by people downloading instead of buying CDs, because, according to you, there's a lot of great music sold in stores even if most of the recent stuff is shit.
How does that make sense?
BTW, little tip: it has ALWAYS been the case that "most of the recent stuff is shit." Always. I appreciate the average Slashdotter is only five years old, and therefore has only had the last five years to listen to, and thinks music before then was all {Insert list of famous bands here}, but I assure you it's not. And the music industry has ALWAYS, I said ALWAYS boy, that kid doesn't lissen to a word I say, ALWAYS promoted the absolutely awful manufactured dross ahead of the music we consider classics today. Hell, a lot of the stuff we consider classics are actually shit, they're just in our subconscious now and there's no beating them out.
If CD sales are down, it's not because of some recent drop in the quality of music. It's because people are no longer choosing CDs as their primary means of obtaining semi-permanent copies of music. The music industry is absolutely right to suspect piracy is a major factor, now that it's easy for one person in possession of a legitimate copy to make it available to millions of anonymous strangers.
FWIW, I wasn't talking about Gentoo, or ciaranm who I've never heard of... (I didn't even know the Gentoo group were split, and what is the more successful OS that ciaranm has produced in that case? I'm curious.)
On a more serious note, one of the major issues with computing is that some of the most brilliant minds are also some of the most obnoxious. To the point that, without mentioning any names, a major free software operating system project was founded in part because the founder had his privileges removed from another major free software operating system. The offshoot is considered by most to be far, far, more successful, yet there's little question the founder isn't easy to work with, and whether just or not, the fact his privileges were removed in the first place wasn't exactly a surprise.
1) a cancellation by the Fox network is not a good metric for the value of a program.
No, and if you read my comment I never argued it was. I said it failed. It did. Fox cancelled it. Whether it was good or bad has no bearing on that. You, like most of the Firefly fans here, are being overly defensive and assuming failure - a show that barely made headway on TV and was cancelled, a movie that barely grossed $25M domestic (albeit with some good DVD sales) - is a mark of the value of a product. The Amiga is a failure. It was also, in my opinion, the greatest low cost, mass-market, personal computer ever built.
2)How often do the scifi fans you know in meatspace talk about Blade Runner or Planet of the Apes?(two of the other films mentions in the grandparent)
All of them. I cannot seriously believe that you've met a sizable group of people who are fans of Firefly but never mention the two classics above (assuming you're talking about the Charlton Heston version, and then the very fact I mention that should give you some idea of the degree to which these movies are talked about.) And you've never heard long rants about how the original BR was better/worse than the Director's Cut because of the commentary? That's almost as controversial as "Han shot first".
3) If you haven't seen Firefly, definitely give it a watch. If you haven't seen Serenity... eh, not bad if you have a chance, but watch Firefly first.
Maybe. Serenity regularly pops up in the "3 for $25" bin at the local video rental store, so I might grab it if I see it. Buying the series is a little more awkward and expensive, for something I'm not sure if I'd enjoy. Perhaps they'll rerun it on the Scifi channel at some point.
Our new car* can drive faster than the speed of sound**, to anywhere on Earth***, and carry as many passengers as you need****!
**** Limit of four passengers
*** Scope of car limited to that part of Earth that includes the city of Detroit and surrounding areas
** Speed limited to 70MPH
* Not a car
If you advertise "Unlimited", and it's not unlimited, you're lying. Putting it in the small print doesn't make you honest, it's an admission of guilt.
Unless you've bought into the notion that a company is selling an "Unlimited broadband" service that happens to be mobile. In which case you're unlikely to have bought a separate "home Internet connection".
Or does Verizon Wireless EV-DO now come with a free in-home genuinely unlimited DSL account, as part of the service?
If I were Verizon, I'd be plugging the hell out of the 5G limit. I'd call it "Data 5G" or something similar, I'd describe the kinds of things you can do with 5G. I'd use the term "Effectively unlimited".
And then after the sheer enormity of that number had sunk in, I'd create a new plan, costing $10 a month more, called "Data 20G".
Verizon isn't merely being dishonest in calling it "Unlimited", they're also being very, very, stupid.
I disagree. People will still be talking about Serenity because people will still be talking about Firefly.
Therein lies the bankruptcy of the argument. People, outside of a narrow group of "SFX readers" and "Angry geeks reading an article about an SFX poll", are not talking about Firefly. I know many science fiction fans in meatspace, and the words "Firefly" and "Serenity" have never actually been heard by my two ears with the exception of when I've heard them announced on television. Indeed, beyond a review or two on websites like Salon, I can honestly say I've never read about either outside of Slashdot.
Having not seen Serenity, I can't comment on whether it's any good or not, and I'm certainly not going to be arrogant enough, as some are doing, to suggest the SFX poll is wrong (in terms of which is better) on the basis of a simple popularity contest (especially given the Star Wars series's origins in legend telling and pulp-space-opera, rather than "true" science fiction), but it does certainly seem that its supporters are overreaching themselves in promoting its popularity. Firefly was, ultimately, a failure, another cancelled serial on Fox during the period where they tried to find something scifi-ish that had universal appeal.
Perhaps that, in some ways, is a complement, as the more faithful and strong a science fiction series is, the less popularity it ever seems to have, but it remains the case that outside of a very small group of committed fans, nobody's ever heard of it. And that's the surprise in the SFX poll. The poll may be right or wrong, but it's a surprise to hear something as obscure and unwatched as Serenity beating out something as popular as the Star Wars franchise.
If Firefly fans weren't being so defensive, they might even see that as a wonderful tribute to the series.
I'm not asking you to believe anything. The DRM-free files are twice the size, having twice the quality. They're also more usable, the buyer isn't going to have to buy the file again to get it to work on their Rio. In every sense, they're better to the end consumer, and they have more costs to the seller.
I'm not sure I agree. They're continuing to sell the same product for the same price they always have (less, if you take into account inflation.) What they've done is compromised, they'll give us a better product for slightly more (very slightly, again if you take into account inflation.)
And at the same time, what were they asking for? The ability, IIRC, to sell Britney Spear's latest for $2, and old Depeche Mode tracks for 50c.
They haven't really got their way, at least in no way that "consumers" haven't gotten their way on too.
Why should I pay more for these tracks than I would pay for a higher quality track from an actual CD (which has higher distribution costs)? I'm sorry, but $1.29 is not "very reasonable". It's a complete and utter money grab. One of these companies realized that if they broke away from the oligarchy, they could charge more for their music than the others and make more money without seeing an increase in piracy.
Complete albums, DRM free, will cost $9.99 (the same as DRM'd albums), so no, either you'll be buying one or two tracks (and thus less than the price of a complete CD), or the entire album (for around the same price as a CD, a cheap CD at that) without DRM.
Either way, $1.29 for a track, or $9.99 for the whole album is reasonable by the metric of comparing them to CD prices.
I agree things start to get a little interesting. But a much, much more powerful (and supported!) Mac mini ($599) is still only $171 more.
Well, kind of, ignoring the difficulty of getting a licensed copy of Tiger for Intel right now.
For a household that already has Macs, the costs come down. If you already have one Mac, then the cost of an AppleTV with a copy of Leopard will be, assuming Apple's pricing doesn't change, ~$370, because a family pack costs $70 more than a single license. If you have more than one (and five or less, including the AppleTVs), then obviously the AppleTV is effectively a free upgrade.
Which is sad in some ways because it means that this "very low end, entry-point Mac" would only really be available to established Mac users, it couldn't be used by newcomers wanting to see if the Mac is worth it. But it does open the door to there being a very cheap way of adding workstations to an existing network at home.
Funnily enough, I own several Macs. And we are looking for something basic to sit in the living room to browse the web, check email, and access a central iTunes library, with, to replace my aging, and steadily deteriorating Beige G3 in there. The other option is something second hand, like an iLamp, but the pricing on the latter isn't that great and it wouldn't be new. And, damn it, the AppleTV is an extremely desirable size.
The thing is, the AppleTV does actually run Mac OS X, just with some unnecessary components removed and the Finder replaced by a FrontRow type application. So it can't be that hard, in theory at least, to run the real thing.
At worst, it may be that the components that are encumbered by DRM in the regular Intel version of Tiger (Dock.app and Finder.app IIRC, they're tied to the "Don't steal Mac OS X" kernel extension) will not work on the AppleTV version. That presents a challenge to hackers, but as there have been versions without that crippling in the past, I can't see it being a permanent issue.
So if this is an April Fools, it's about on the same level as "Linus has just released Linux 2.6.22" or "Microsoft is preparing a service pack for Vista".
If I do a map of my home, in far-from-Katrina-hit Florida, the imagary is also around two years old (at least.) It's not newly replaced either, it's been pretty much the same maps since I discovered Google maps.
I'd be surprised if Google has replaced anything, if they have I suspect it was a case of newer imagery being prematurely released and then removed, not anything aimed at New Orleans.
Exactly what would lead you to write a sentence where you'd seriously think it's in question whether politicians who have no understanding whatsoever of video games would have played a particular one in the first place?
Well, yes, anyone can fire off a DMCA request. But if they're lying, then they're guilty of perjury.
Likewise, anyone could break into YouTube's HQ, hack into their servers, and delete the files they don't like. But, as in the "lying when making a DMCA request", they're breaking the law.
The idea of the DMCA here was to shield larger ISPs (or, to be more specific, internet service companies, including web hosting companies, that have a huge number of customers whose activities they cannot possibly track or be responsible for every action of, so not just GreatHosting.Web, but everything from Geocities.com to, whatever Viacom and Mark Cuban might argue, YouTube) from being responsible for the copyright violations of their customers.
To do this shielding, a compromise was set up that would make it easier for copyright holders to have works taken down, but in a way that would backfire and be rendered sterile if they abuse it. In order for this to work, copyright holders must have an effective system to do this, so the hosting company being required to take down the content immediately (if they want to not be liable) was a reasonable part of the compromise. Remember that in many cases, timing is of the essence - someone who, for example, uploads for free distribution a movie the day before it's released in theaters could have a devastating effect on the copyright holder's ability to recover the costs of making that movie.
As soon as the notice is received, the person responsible for the content being uploaded in the first place can challenge the original notice, and if they do, then the content can be immediately put back up, again without the hosting company being liable. If the original notice is then shown to be false and in bad faith, the usual laws about making false statements on a legal document take over.
So, at worst, someone being mischievous might be able to have content they don't like removed from a website for a few days (depending on the organizational skills of the hosting provider), but wouldn't be able to do it permanently, and would run the severe risk of legal sanctions for what they've done.
The system isn't perfect, but it's a legitimate compromise. Yes, someone can play havoc with the mechanism, but likewise they could also employ a team of 31337 h4x0rs to achieve the same effect. In both cases they'd have the content removed for several days, and in both cases, they run a severe risk of having the law turn against them.
If the.GNU and Mono people both have working GPL'd C# compilers, retargetting them to output Java bytecode would be an interesting project, but there's no reason I can see why it should be particularly hard. All you need to add after that are some stub libraries to make it easy to port.NET programs over to the Java platform without making serious changes.
You don't. You pay Verizon $5 for the convenience of being able to download a ring tone without any complications on your part, using a subsidized phone that doesn't include some of the nicer features that'd make it easy too.
If you bought an unsubsidized phone, the chances are you could move across the ring tone as an MP3 or, at worst, MIDI, file via Bluetooth or USB.
And with most phones, subsidized or not, you have the option of doing what my wife did, and just using the phone's audio recorder to make your ring tone. Yes, I'm talking speaker to mike, like you did when you copied tapes at the age of 5 and 3.5mm jacks weren't available to you. Before you complain about the quality, remember it's going to be played out of a crappy over-cranked speaker. It'll probably be more than acceptable.
You've always been able to do that. The "Or latest version" was never part of the license, it was part of the text attached to copyrighted files stating under what license(s) you can use the materials.
The FSF are encouraging this text now for people wary of the "or later versions of the GPL" text, but it's not as if it hasn't always been possible.
(The other alternative is copyright assignment, which is also very frequently used, or a meta license that allows reuse under the meta license or any approved of by the original author. The latter is often useful to allow, for instance, interoperability between MPL and GPL projects.)
Slashdot Mirror
ISDN (at least, the bearer channels) do not run over X.25.
Try $500 for Mac OS X. The only legal ways of obtaining Mac OS X for Intel as of today are:
1. Buy Mac OS X Server, 10 licenses ($500)
2. Buy an Intel Mac. Remove OS, install something else (or destroy it or whatever.)
You cannot buy the Intel version of Mac OS X for $130. You hopefully will once Leopard is released, but that's not happened yet. Kind of sucks, huh?
I'm sorry but I'm having difficulty matching up your counter argument to the sentence you're describing as "Bullshit".
The comment you quoted was: "to all the people that download music, if you think you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are two working people with families who no longer have jobs because of music piracy.".
You go to great lengths to stress that you actually buy CDs, although you don't buy many recently produced CDs, instead preferring the back-catalogs and (presumably) used market.
You don't mention downloads at all, you claim to be a CD buyer, and imply you're not a downloader. So your opinion isn't really relevant, it is not you that has decided to download instead of buying. Further, you indicate that there's stuff worth buying at brick and mortar stores, even if it's just older music, so complaints that the "RIAA" isn't producing music "of substance" (actually, the RIAA is a trade association, it doesn't produce anything. You're thinking of the labels, or the artists represented and published by those labels) doesn't in any way help your argument.
So, bottom line: The music stores are, according to you, not suffering a shortage of sales brought about by people downloading instead of buying CDs, because, according to you, there's a lot of great music sold in stores even if most of the recent stuff is shit.
How does that make sense?
BTW, little tip: it has ALWAYS been the case that "most of the recent stuff is shit." Always. I appreciate the average Slashdotter is only five years old, and therefore has only had the last five years to listen to, and thinks music before then was all {Insert list of famous bands here}, but I assure you it's not. And the music industry has ALWAYS, I said ALWAYS boy, that kid doesn't lissen to a word I say, ALWAYS promoted the absolutely awful manufactured dross ahead of the music we consider classics today. Hell, a lot of the stuff we consider classics are actually shit, they're just in our subconscious now and there's no beating them out.
If CD sales are down, it's not because of some recent drop in the quality of music. It's because people are no longer choosing CDs as their primary means of obtaining semi-permanent copies of music. The music industry is absolutely right to suspect piracy is a major factor, now that it's easy for one person in possession of a legitimate copy to make it available to millions of anonymous strangers.
FWIW, I wasn't talking about Gentoo, or ciaranm who I've never heard of... (I didn't even know the Gentoo group were split, and what is the more successful OS that ciaranm has produced in that case? I'm curious.)
I guess it happens a lot more than I thought!
I think we should cut their goolies off*.
On a more serious note, one of the major issues with computing is that some of the most brilliant minds are also some of the most obnoxious. To the point that, without mentioning any names, a major free software operating system project was founded in part because the founder had his privileges removed from another major free software operating system. The offshoot is considered by most to be far, far, more successful, yet there's little question the founder isn't easy to work with, and whether just or not, the fact his privileges were removed in the first place wasn't exactly a surprise.
* I'm probably dating myself with that reference.
Screw that, I think I'd just call it the "Verizon Wireless Data Giggidy-Giggidy-Giggidy-Giggidy-Giggidy plan."
No, and if you read my comment I never argued it was. I said it failed. It did. Fox cancelled it. Whether it was good or bad has no bearing on that. You, like most of the Firefly fans here, are being overly defensive and assuming failure - a show that barely made headway on TV and was cancelled, a movie that barely grossed $25M domestic (albeit with some good DVD sales) - is a mark of the value of a product. The Amiga is a failure. It was also, in my opinion, the greatest low cost, mass-market, personal computer ever built.
All of them. I cannot seriously believe that you've met a sizable group of people who are fans of Firefly but never mention the two classics above (assuming you're talking about the Charlton Heston version, and then the very fact I mention that should give you some idea of the degree to which these movies are talked about.) And you've never heard long rants about how the original BR was better/worse than the Director's Cut because of the commentary? That's almost as controversial as "Han shot first".
Maybe. Serenity regularly pops up in the "3 for $25" bin at the local video rental store, so I might grab it if I see it. Buying the series is a little more awkward and expensive, for something I'm not sure if I'd enjoy. Perhaps they'll rerun it on the Scifi channel at some point.
No, marketing friendly would provide you with the opportunity to grow, as described above. It's just plain idiotic.
How, exactly, is Verizon supposed to market its bigger and better service in the future if its describing its current one as "Unlimited"?
Our new car* can drive faster than the speed of sound**, to anywhere on Earth***, and carry as many passengers as you need****!
**** Limit of four passengers
*** Scope of car limited to that part of Earth that includes the city of Detroit and surrounding areas
** Speed limited to 70MPH
* Not a car
If you advertise "Unlimited", and it's not unlimited, you're lying. Putting it in the small print doesn't make you honest, it's an admission of guilt.
Unless you've bought into the notion that a company is selling an "Unlimited broadband" service that happens to be mobile. In which case you're unlikely to have bought a separate "home Internet connection".
Or does Verizon Wireless EV-DO now come with a free in-home genuinely unlimited DSL account, as part of the service?
Note that many of us would consider an artificial prohibition a limit in itself...
I don't think it's "easier", it's "lazier".
If I were Verizon, I'd be plugging the hell out of the 5G limit. I'd call it "Data 5G" or something similar, I'd describe the kinds of things you can do with 5G. I'd use the term "Effectively unlimited".
And then after the sheer enormity of that number had sunk in, I'd create a new plan, costing $10 a month more, called "Data 20G".
Verizon isn't merely being dishonest in calling it "Unlimited", they're also being very, very, stupid.
Therein lies the bankruptcy of the argument. People, outside of a narrow group of "SFX readers" and "Angry geeks reading an article about an SFX poll", are not talking about Firefly. I know many science fiction fans in meatspace, and the words "Firefly" and "Serenity" have never actually been heard by my two ears with the exception of when I've heard them announced on television. Indeed, beyond a review or two on websites like Salon, I can honestly say I've never read about either outside of Slashdot.
Having not seen Serenity, I can't comment on whether it's any good or not, and I'm certainly not going to be arrogant enough, as some are doing, to suggest the SFX poll is wrong (in terms of which is better) on the basis of a simple popularity contest (especially given the Star Wars series's origins in legend telling and pulp-space-opera, rather than "true" science fiction), but it does certainly seem that its supporters are overreaching themselves in promoting its popularity. Firefly was, ultimately, a failure, another cancelled serial on Fox during the period where they tried to find something scifi-ish that had universal appeal.
Perhaps that, in some ways, is a complement, as the more faithful and strong a science fiction series is, the less popularity it ever seems to have, but it remains the case that outside of a very small group of committed fans, nobody's ever heard of it. And that's the surprise in the SFX poll. The poll may be right or wrong, but it's a surprise to hear something as obscure and unwatched as Serenity beating out something as popular as the Star Wars franchise.
If Firefly fans weren't being so defensive, they might even see that as a wonderful tribute to the series.
I'm not asking you to believe anything. The DRM-free files are twice the size, having twice the quality. They're also more usable, the buyer isn't going to have to buy the file again to get it to work on their Rio. In every sense, they're better to the end consumer, and they have more costs to the seller.
I'm not sure I agree. They're continuing to sell the same product for the same price they always have (less, if you take into account inflation.) What they've done is compromised, they'll give us a better product for slightly more (very slightly, again if you take into account inflation.)
And at the same time, what were they asking for? The ability, IIRC, to sell Britney Spear's latest for $2, and old Depeche Mode tracks for 50c.
They haven't really got their way, at least in no way that "consumers" haven't gotten their way on too.
Complete albums, DRM free, will cost $9.99 (the same as DRM'd albums), so no, either you'll be buying one or two tracks (and thus less than the price of a complete CD), or the entire album (for around the same price as a CD, a cheap CD at that) without DRM.
Either way, $1.29 for a track, or $9.99 for the whole album is reasonable by the metric of comparing them to CD prices.
Well, kind of, ignoring the difficulty of getting a licensed copy of Tiger for Intel right now.
For a household that already has Macs, the costs come down. If you already have one Mac, then the cost of an AppleTV with a copy of Leopard will be, assuming Apple's pricing doesn't change, ~$370, because a family pack costs $70 more than a single license. If you have more than one (and five or less, including the AppleTVs), then obviously the AppleTV is effectively a free upgrade.
Which is sad in some ways because it means that this "very low end, entry-point Mac" would only really be available to established Mac users, it couldn't be used by newcomers wanting to see if the Mac is worth it. But it does open the door to there being a very cheap way of adding workstations to an existing network at home.
Funnily enough, I own several Macs. And we are looking for something basic to sit in the living room to browse the web, check email, and access a central iTunes library, with, to replace my aging, and steadily deteriorating Beige G3 in there. The other option is something second hand, like an iLamp, but the pricing on the latter isn't that great and it wouldn't be new. And, damn it, the AppleTV is an extremely desirable size.
The thing is, the AppleTV does actually run Mac OS X, just with some unnecessary components removed and the Finder replaced by a FrontRow type application. So it can't be that hard, in theory at least, to run the real thing.
At worst, it may be that the components that are encumbered by DRM in the regular Intel version of Tiger (Dock.app and Finder.app IIRC, they're tied to the "Don't steal Mac OS X" kernel extension) will not work on the AppleTV version. That presents a challenge to hackers, but as there have been versions without that crippling in the past, I can't see it being a permanent issue.
So if this is an April Fools, it's about on the same level as "Linus has just released Linux 2.6.22" or "Microsoft is preparing a service pack for Vista".
If I do a map of my home, in far-from-Katrina-hit Florida, the imagary is also around two years old (at least.) It's not newly replaced either, it's been pretty much the same maps since I discovered Google maps.
I'd be surprised if Google has replaced anything, if they have I suspect it was a case of newer imagery being prematurely released and then removed, not anything aimed at New Orleans.
Er, really? You think that huh?
Exactly what would lead you to write a sentence where you'd seriously think it's in question whether politicians who have no understanding whatsoever of video games would have played a particular one in the first place?
Well, yes, anyone can fire off a DMCA request. But if they're lying, then they're guilty of perjury.
Likewise, anyone could break into YouTube's HQ, hack into their servers, and delete the files they don't like. But, as in the "lying when making a DMCA request", they're breaking the law.
Nope, but don't read too much into that.
The idea of the DMCA here was to shield larger ISPs (or, to be more specific, internet service companies, including web hosting companies, that have a huge number of customers whose activities they cannot possibly track or be responsible for every action of, so not just GreatHosting.Web, but everything from Geocities.com to, whatever Viacom and Mark Cuban might argue, YouTube) from being responsible for the copyright violations of their customers.
To do this shielding, a compromise was set up that would make it easier for copyright holders to have works taken down, but in a way that would backfire and be rendered sterile if they abuse it. In order for this to work, copyright holders must have an effective system to do this, so the hosting company being required to take down the content immediately (if they want to not be liable) was a reasonable part of the compromise. Remember that in many cases, timing is of the essence - someone who, for example, uploads for free distribution a movie the day before it's released in theaters could have a devastating effect on the copyright holder's ability to recover the costs of making that movie.
As soon as the notice is received, the person responsible for the content being uploaded in the first place can challenge the original notice, and if they do, then the content can be immediately put back up, again without the hosting company being liable. If the original notice is then shown to be false and in bad faith, the usual laws about making false statements on a legal document take over.
So, at worst, someone being mischievous might be able to have content they don't like removed from a website for a few days (depending on the organizational skills of the hosting provider), but wouldn't be able to do it permanently, and would run the severe risk of legal sanctions for what they've done.
The system isn't perfect, but it's a legitimate compromise. Yes, someone can play havoc with the mechanism, but likewise they could also employ a team of 31337 h4x0rs to achieve the same effect. In both cases they'd have the content removed for several days, and in both cases, they run a severe risk of having the law turn against them.
Then port C# to Java.
If the .GNU and Mono people both have working GPL'd C# compilers, retargetting them to output Java bytecode would be an interesting project, but there's no reason I can see why it should be particularly hard. All you need to add after that are some stub libraries to make it easy to port .NET programs over to the Java platform without making serious changes.
You don't. You pay Verizon $5 for the convenience of being able to download a ring tone without any complications on your part, using a subsidized phone that doesn't include some of the nicer features that'd make it easy too.
If you bought an unsubsidized phone, the chances are you could move across the ring tone as an MP3 or, at worst, MIDI, file via Bluetooth or USB.
And with most phones, subsidized or not, you have the option of doing what my wife did, and just using the phone's audio recorder to make your ring tone. Yes, I'm talking speaker to mike, like you did when you copied tapes at the age of 5 and 3.5mm jacks weren't available to you. Before you complain about the quality, remember it's going to be played out of a crappy over-cranked speaker. It'll probably be more than acceptable.
You've always been able to do that. The "Or latest version" was never part of the license, it was part of the text attached to copyrighted files stating under what license(s) you can use the materials.
The FSF are encouraging this text now for people wary of the "or later versions of the GPL" text, but it's not as if it hasn't always been possible.
(The other alternative is copyright assignment, which is also very frequently used, or a meta license that allows reuse under the meta license or any approved of by the original author. The latter is often useful to allow, for instance, interoperability between MPL and GPL projects.)