With the likes of you folks, it'll never happen. It seems you'd rather sit around and simply be negative about everything!
We've been burned. Left at the altar too many times. Stood up. Again and again. Does that mean we don't want it? No. But please excuse the crowd if they give their thumbs-up while crouching behind a pile of sandbags.
The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent such DRM, thereby basically enforcing perpetual protection of the work.
And here is a summary of the DOJ response to that question: "Um, yeah, pretty much you're screwed. Maybe someone will pass better laws."
They seem to have completely ignored the frustration level of the person asking the question. They don't address the feelings people have about these systems. Instead, they simply comment on the system itself. And that may be what they're legally required to do, but I could sense that more than a few questions were trying to hammer home the point that the system is unfair, and therefore unsupportable by the people. They don't seem to get it. Most corporations don't seem to get this at all -- they're totally out of touch and are going to be completely inept at handling the human response. Which is, of course, to use Kazaa and eDonkey and Freenet more and more and more.
Hey DOJ! Hey government officials! Hey massive corporations! I can summarize the problem for you in one sentence: the system doesn't honor the public domain or fair use rights anymore, so the people don't honor the system any more. Got it? You want people to respect the laws? Make the laws respectable.
wanton copying of songs is, whilst not immoral, certainly illegal in the eyes of the law.
Uh, I for one think wanton copying of copyrighted material is not just illegal, but immoral. Now, I can find things that are "more moral" to me than preserving copyright -- the people posting copyrighted documents from the Scientologists strike me as people who might have a very ethical purpose behind their activities. But wanting to hear the latest single for free doesn't exactly rise to that level, at least not for me.
However, something else does: copyright law itself. It has been extended and extended and re-extended to the point now where there is nothing falling into the public domain. In the US at least, "we the people" have been shafted by corporate interests. As a copyright holder myself on hundreds of poems, and with my wife having composed about 20 copyrighted songs, I want copyright to exist, but not like this. This harms us -- history is literally decomposing and falling apart as old books and tapes and artwork languishes so that Mickey Mouse can earn an extra 20 billion for Disney. I don't think that's a blanket justification to share/copy anything, but I have a very difficult time respecting materials marked "copyright 1923." For the most part, people who created those works are dead.
I saw a sticker on a car yesterday, and it really summed up my feeling about why copyrights are going to be less and less deserving of my respect. It read: "If you want people to respect the law, make the law respectable!"
I don't get it. How can they have made all these moves to become a desktop distro (such as bluecurve and the ensuing controversies) and then they walk away from retail? Retail == desktops!
This move sounds to me like a concession that SuSE and Mandrake have won that market.
When he called the company to clear things up, he found they weren't interested in his explanations: they wanted $3,500 and the smart card programmer, or they would literally make a federal case out of it and sue him under anti-piracy laws. "I didn't know what to do, I was completely flabbergasted. So I sent the money in," says Sosa.
You know, people like Sosa make this really difficult. DirecTV is doing something unethical, I believe. People are getting wrongfully accused in my opinion. But Sosa just rolled over and paid out $3500. These people are a problem because they help a bad system to stay bad. It makes it terribly difficult for me to have sympathy for someone who has such a lack of conviction, such a failed sense of justice. They don't care. Should we?
For the first time in three years something has happened in browser land. In fact, major events have started happening at a breathtaking pace.
I'm sorry, but what are these "major events"? I read the article and only saw an overview of the past and some predictions about the future. But there is no mention (that I could find) of any "major events" that are happening "for the first time in three years."
Is the major event that these guys have concluded that IE isn't viable long-term? That would mean that the major event is that these guys came to a conclusion, which sounds fairly minor to me. Maybe it's KHTML being used for Safari. I guess that could be major to a Mac person, even if the rest of the planet never notices.
After reading this article I really thought about a lot of things, and came to the conclusion that the term "Open Source" is really pointless and should be avoided.
I like the copy-left part of the GPL and I can see how the Share Alike license would be similar to the GPL if the Non-Commercial clause was added, but what about in the case where you have a share-alike license and permit commercial use? That would just be commercial license right?
No, that would be more like the GPL. The GPL doesn't block any commercial use -- it just requires people/companies to open-source the code if they distribute the product. I can take Red Hat's GPL'd code, and create a derivative product, and sell it. In fact, that's exactly what Mandrake did. Their only requirement was that they too had to GPL their code.
McBride radiates confidence, describing SCO's contracts as "bullet-proof."
Yeah, it sure has IBM's lawyers in a panic.
/me rolls eyes....
You know, at first, I thought that McBride was insane -- totally reckless or totally corrupt. But now, I'm starting to think the man is just stupid. I mean, sometimes I talk to people and I disagree with them, but I feel nervous because they might be smart enough to prove me wrong. I don't feel that way with McBride. I read his comments and I just think he's stupid, and the courts will tell him he's stupid, and he just won't get it.
The last time I felt this way was with the pet-store guy who sued anyone who said anything critical about his terrible service. He was dangerous because he intimidated some people into settling, but mostly he just lost lawsuit after lawsuit. The poor fool probably still thinks he'll somehow turn everything around. McBride is just a reincarnation of that pet store guy.
Re:Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!!
on
PHP 5 Beta 1
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
PHP is 4 times faster than Java technology 'JSP' (Java server pages).
Substantiate that statement.
Hey HeadDown. You're right to take the guy to task, s/he made some crazy comments. But I can at least partially substantiate speed issues. Back in 2000, I worked with Sabeer Bhatia (the Hotmail guy) on a startup called Arzoo. Our product (a Web site similar to epinions) was almost 100% Java, except for a bit of Perl for screen-scraping and searches. But anyway, it was slow -- first with Tomcat, then with JRun. At one point, we gave a private preview to 1,000 journalists. They didn't even visit the site all at once, they trickled in over the course of 3 days or so. Just that was enough to hammer the site. We ended up running cron jobs that would reboot the farm, round-robin, just to solve memory issues and instability.
Now, you can say, well, that was 2000! Try it now! OK. At SST, we have a team that is using Tomcat now. Although the instability is gone, the speed is still an issue -- they have wait screens as you click through the app. My team is working with PHP, and has no wait screens, and no need for them (with 1 exception). Our pages are actually more computationally stressful than the Java stuff, yet PHP is delivering the result to the browser faster.
As a final point, you might suggest that the teams I've worked with do not understand Java or how to run it well. It's no skin off my back if you make that argument -- it's not me doing this stuff, so no blow to my ego. But I think working with 2 different teams over the course of 3 years says something. Perhaps, at the very least, if Java really can handle a bigger load, it is so difficult to tune that mere mortals would do better with PHP.
If not, why not - do they include proporietary (closed source / otherwise copy-restricted components?).
Well, the SuSE installer is open source in the sense that the source is available, but proprietary in the sense that it comes with a very restrictive license -- I believe it would be difficult to legally embrace & extend their installer code. So this is one of the ways that they restrict distribution, and to be honest, since they also have a free installer for FTP downloads, I really don't mind their setup. But this release in particular comes with Crossover Office, which I believe cost them a little bit of money. And since the release is actually five licenses, the price is inflated. I'm sure if they released a single license system, it would be much cheaper.
Right now, there is no chance to try it out without paying 80 bucks.
What about their FTP server? I thought that you could create an install disk and then pull down a working system from their server, for free. In fact, I found the link in just 2 or 3 clicks on their site.
I hope you haven't seen this yet. It'll really boil your blood.
Can I just say that I really like Larry Wall? I mean, reading that document, I realize that he is sooo good for Perl culture. You won't hear "that's how it has always been done" from him. His focus is on how to build a better system, not politics, not grandstanding. I would be very happy to see this kind of openness and disarmingly reasonable attitude influence certain other people in the Perl community.
Of course, I could be extrapolating too much, and it could be he's a PITA, but I've read his comments/posts/articles a few times over the years, and he's been this way each time.
You know, I've lived in the woods of Maine for two and a half years, and I lived in Newfoundland for 8 months before that.
Riiiight. And we're supposed to believe someone a little over 3 years old would have as much experience as you do. And be able to type about it! Sheesh!
Slashdot Mirror
We've been burned. Left at the altar too many times. Stood up. Again and again. Does that mean we don't want it? No. But please excuse the crowd if they give their thumbs-up while crouching behind a pile of sandbags.
And here is a summary of the DOJ response to that question: "Um, yeah, pretty much you're screwed. Maybe someone will pass better laws."
They seem to have completely ignored the frustration level of the person asking the question. They don't address the feelings people have about these systems. Instead, they simply comment on the system itself. And that may be what they're legally required to do, but I could sense that more than a few questions were trying to hammer home the point that the system is unfair, and therefore unsupportable by the people. They don't seem to get it. Most corporations don't seem to get this at all -- they're totally out of touch and are going to be completely inept at handling the human response. Which is, of course, to use Kazaa and eDonkey and Freenet more and more and more.
Hey DOJ! Hey government officials! Hey massive corporations! I can summarize the problem for you in one sentence: the system doesn't honor the public domain or fair use rights anymore, so the people don't honor the system any more. Got it? You want people to respect the laws? Make the laws respectable.
Wow. Without providing any evidence or winning a court case, SCO has got at least one sucker to buy into their FUD. How sad.
Pronunciation guide: oh ess ten!
Uh, I for one think wanton copying of copyrighted material is not just illegal, but immoral. Now, I can find things that are "more moral" to me than preserving copyright -- the people posting copyrighted documents from the Scientologists strike me as people who might have a very ethical purpose behind their activities. But wanting to hear the latest single for free doesn't exactly rise to that level, at least not for me.
However, something else does: copyright law itself. It has been extended and extended and re-extended to the point now where there is nothing falling into the public domain. In the US at least, "we the people" have been shafted by corporate interests. As a copyright holder myself on hundreds of poems, and with my wife having composed about 20 copyrighted songs, I want copyright to exist, but not like this. This harms us -- history is literally decomposing and falling apart as old books and tapes and artwork languishes so that Mickey Mouse can earn an extra 20 billion for Disney. I don't think that's a blanket justification to share/copy anything, but I have a very difficult time respecting materials marked "copyright 1923." For the most part, people who created those works are dead.
I saw a sticker on a car yesterday, and it really summed up my feeling about why copyrights are going to be less and less deserving of my respect. It read: "If you want people to respect the law, make the law respectable!"
I don't get it. How can they have made all these moves to become a desktop distro (such as bluecurve and the ensuing controversies) and then they walk away from retail? Retail == desktops!
This move sounds to me like a concession that SuSE and Mandrake have won that market.
You know, people like Sosa make this really difficult. DirecTV is doing something unethical, I believe. People are getting wrongfully accused in my opinion. But Sosa just rolled over and paid out $3500. These people are a problem because they help a bad system to stay bad. It makes it terribly difficult for me to have sympathy for someone who has such a lack of conviction, such a failed sense of justice. They don't care. Should we?
I'm sorry, but what are these "major events"? I read the article and only saw an overview of the past and some predictions about the future. But there is no mention (that I could find) of any "major events" that are happening "for the first time in three years."
Is the major event that these guys have concluded that IE isn't viable long-term? That would mean that the major event is that these guys came to a conclusion, which sounds fairly minor to me. Maybe it's KHTML being used for Safari. I guess that could be major to a Mac person, even if the rest of the planet never notices.
Geeze. Even the mirrors are getting slashdotted!
...or a standard Slashdot editor misspelling?
If it's a play on words, someone clue me in. I don't get it.
Hi Richard! Astroturfing again?
Good rebuttal. Mr. Critical deserves an "insightful" mod point.
Is this supposed to be the bad scenario, or the fun scenario? What gender are the guards? How good looking are they?
While that tramp "Intellectual Property" just wants to be 0wn3d.
Umm... you're welcome?
No, that would be more like the GPL. The GPL doesn't block any commercial use -- it just requires people/companies to open-source the code if they distribute the product. I can take Red Hat's GPL'd code, and create a derivative product, and sell it. In fact, that's exactly what Mandrake did. Their only requirement was that they too had to GPL their code.
Yeah, it sure has IBM's lawyers in a panic.
/me rolls eyes....
You know, at first, I thought that McBride was insane -- totally reckless or totally corrupt. But now, I'm starting to think the man is just stupid. I mean, sometimes I talk to people and I disagree with them, but I feel nervous because they might be smart enough to prove me wrong. I don't feel that way with McBride. I read his comments and I just think he's stupid, and the courts will tell him he's stupid, and he just won't get it.
The last time I felt this way was with the pet-store guy who sued anyone who said anything critical about his terrible service. He was dangerous because he intimidated some people into settling, but mostly he just lost lawsuit after lawsuit. The poor fool probably still thinks he'll somehow turn everything around. McBride is just a reincarnation of that pet store guy.
Hey HeadDown. You're right to take the guy to task, s/he made some crazy comments. But I can at least partially substantiate speed issues. Back in 2000, I worked with Sabeer Bhatia (the Hotmail guy) on a startup called Arzoo. Our product (a Web site similar to epinions) was almost 100% Java, except for a bit of Perl for screen-scraping and searches. But anyway, it was slow -- first with Tomcat, then with JRun. At one point, we gave a private preview to 1,000 journalists. They didn't even visit the site all at once, they trickled in over the course of 3 days or so. Just that was enough to hammer the site. We ended up running cron jobs that would reboot the farm, round-robin, just to solve memory issues and instability.
Now, you can say, well, that was 2000! Try it now! OK. At SST, we have a team that is using Tomcat now. Although the instability is gone, the speed is still an issue -- they have wait screens as you click through the app. My team is working with PHP, and has no wait screens, and no need for them (with 1 exception). Our pages are actually more computationally stressful than the Java stuff, yet PHP is delivering the result to the browser faster.
As a final point, you might suggest that the teams I've worked with do not understand Java or how to run it well. It's no skin off my back if you make that argument -- it's not me doing this stuff, so no blow to my ego. But I think working with 2 different teams over the course of 3 years says something. Perhaps, at the very least, if Java really can handle a bigger load, it is so difficult to tune that mere mortals would do better with PHP.
Well, the SuSE installer is open source in the sense that the source is available, but proprietary in the sense that it comes with a very restrictive license -- I believe it would be difficult to legally embrace & extend their installer code. So this is one of the ways that they restrict distribution, and to be honest, since they also have a free installer for FTP downloads, I really don't mind their setup. But this release in particular comes with Crossover Office, which I believe cost them a little bit of money. And since the release is actually five licenses, the price is inflated. I'm sure if they released a single license system, it would be much cheaper.
What about their FTP server? I thought that you could create an install disk and then pull down a working system from their server, for free. In fact, I found the link in just 2 or 3 clicks on their site.
So, no one took either of you seriously, then?
Hmm. Yeah. That's a great defense. Good luck in court with that.
I almost always come to the party after the moderators leave. I'm used to it. :)
Can I just say that I really like Larry Wall? I mean, reading that document, I realize that he is sooo good for Perl culture. You won't hear "that's how it has always been done" from him. His focus is on how to build a better system, not politics, not grandstanding. I would be very happy to see this kind of openness and disarmingly reasonable attitude influence certain other people in the Perl community.
Of course, I could be extrapolating too much, and it could be he's a PITA, but I've read his comments/posts/articles a few times over the years, and he's been this way each time.
Riiiight. And we're supposed to believe someone a little over 3 years old would have as much experience as you do. And be able to type about it! Sheesh!