AMEN!!, [in response to Lessig's statement that although the sharing of copyrighted files is illegal under current law, technology can not be made illegal if it has substantial noninfringing uses]
I must admit, I was at first pleased upon reading this response from Oppenheim. However, if Oppenheim -- who is representing the RIAA -- really believed that, then the RIAA wouldn't be trying to stop P2P developers and shut down P2P networks, or destroy these networks by flooding them with crap.
you misread it. he is saying AMEN to the view of the person asking the question, not to lessig's response.
this leaves out the League of Nations mandate that a jewish state (and a palistinian state) be created in the region. (they also created jordan and iraq this way).
The region was under the control of the british after WWI and was still under british control when a jewish state was finally created (as the result of a U.N. resolution).
There was also supposed to be a Palestinian state (also by U.N. resolution) but the day the resolution to create Israel was passed, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan (i forget who else was involved) attacked israel. The disputed lands were captured during this (and about 5 other) wars between israel and their neighbors.
Pirates have been given a bad rap, historically. History is written by the victors, remember. Many of the pirates from the great sailing age freed slaves and the indentured, set up their own kingless mini-republics and functional anarchies, and would appear more modern to us than their other contemporaries
I'll freely admit to not being an authority on the subject of pirates, but i cannot think of a single pirate who set up a functional anarchy. Most pirate ships were pure democracies. They were also equal opportunity employers (well, kinda). Black slaves were freed and many joined the pirates. There were even a few female pirates (though they hid their gender from their fellow pirates).
Pirates were also endorsed by governments against their adversaries (England supported many pirates against the Spanish in the Carribean. That is, until they were no longer needed. then they were arrested and killed)
That being said, there's not really a relationship between traditional pirates and what are now being called pirates.
I have Windows XP because i had no choice when i bought my laptop. I need some version of windows just to do cross platform testing on stuff i create.
There do appear to be some other differences though. I have a bitch of a time getting folders shared over lans from win2k boxes to show up in network neighborhood (and other irritating lan issues).
It is entirely possible that my problems with that are configuration issues or something. The issue is so minor for my uses that i've never been annoyed enough to really research the issue. It doesnt interfere with my ability to play games at lan parties.
Most major companies try to make you jump thru hoops to get information, robotic voice machines parroting useless info, clueless tech support,and many other iditic blocks to solutions
That doesnt vindicate any of them for treating their customers like shit.
My opinion is both are good. I have no problem with people using RBLs to categorically block addresses that are known to produce spam in large quantities or whose output is primarily spam.
I also have no problem with people sorting their mail automatically and deciding for themselves what to keep and what to dump.
With respect to ISPs, I think it is appropriate for them to use RBLs as long as it is disclosed to the users. The people affected by the blocking to have a right to know the specifics of the limitations being put on their service by their provider.
in my opinion, it is absolutely appropriate and fair for a company (or individual if he controls the server) to block access to it's mail server for any reason they choose. (with the exception of government servers. The government has the additional responsibility of ensuring their servers do not block any speech that would be protected by the constitution, and that would probably make blacklists impossible for them)
In the case of an ISP, I do think it should be disclosed to their clients so that those clients who disapprove of that choice can move to another provider (or possibly, if there is enough demand, the isp can set up another server that allows anything through).
I think having software that checks for spam once it arrives in your inbox is good too and people should be allowed to use it also.
The only exception i can imagine to this would be if the ISP had a monopoly on internet connectivity. Otherwise, it's just their business policy and the customers can approve or disapprove with where they spend their money.
however, if the software is widely used, it is reasonable to expect that it will be picked up and maintained by someone in it's user community out of need or desire for the program.
if it is not used much or isnt a popular program, it might deserve it's death.
Fundamentally, if there is no community for the package, it is either not a good package or it is a very small niche piece of software. In the first case, there may well be another package you could switch to that is better. In the second case, you'll probably have to maintain it yourself, if you're the only one who needs it.
In that second case, there probably isnt much in the way of proprietary solutions either since there probably isnt a market for them.
Linux does no different, except the price it "sells" its wares for is zero. Certainly it is taking a loss, and if you ask people its explicit purpose is to shut out a competitor. At the point where Linux "sales" exceed Microsoft's sales, will that make Linux the "wrong thing" because it "sells its products at a loss to shut out a smaller competitor"?
"Linux" is not a company. "Linux" is not a business entity. "Linux" is not subject to rules and regulations like it was one of those things, because it isnt. Microsoft is. Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, Mandrake....they are all businesses. They sell sevices and some proprietary software in their distributions. None of them are selling under their costs to try to shut out a competitor.
It isnt dumping for linux to be free (as in beer).
Plus, the creators of Microsoft have a motivation to make their products solid first time,
I cannot think of a single software product from microsoft that was solid the first time. There's a reason for the saying that you should never install a microsoft product before it hits version 3.
because they'll lose sales otherwise.
Unless they're a monopoly and can dictate terms to the clients.
The makers of free software presently have competition, and so are motivated to compete.
The makers of free software will always have competition because they compete with each other. If there is an ideological disagreement or a methodological disagreement, the project will be forked and compete against itself.
But once they've knocked down that competition, I suspect they'll get lazy and start releasing buggy versions first time out of the box, making me pay if I want a working version.
If they get lazy and start releasing buggy versions, they'll lose their project to another maintainer or it'll be forked and continue under more competent leadership.
And they cannot make you pay for a working version because of the licensing scheme. The only way they could do that is if the copyright holder on it released a buggy version under GPL and a non-buggy version under a proprietary license. The result from that would simply be that the buggy version would be fixed by the community who uses it and would replace the proprietary version and the original copyright holder would be ostracised for his underhandedness.
In my opinion IBM is absolutely clued in. They understand that openness and consumer freedom in the personal computer market is necessary. The fact that they are invested in mainframes and some proprietary solutions doesnt affect this because those solutions are in a different market. There is no conflict of interests between the two segments of IBM.
The major corporate areas that they are selling as400s and proprietary solutions to need (or at least want) something that the open consumer market will not provide because the consumer market has different needs.
Microsoft views the computing world as a bunch of feet that need to be shoehorned into one type of shoe regardless of where you plan on walking.
IBM is not viewing the computing world as a bunch of feet that need different shoes for different uses and environments.
IBM is trying to provide all the types of shoes. Microsoft keeps offering the same shoe with a different tread pattern and different coloured laces.
The border jumpers thing is probably an urban legend. I've lived in texas since i was 6mo old and i dont recall ever hearing about that from a reputable source.
I mentioned this in another post, but it bears repeating.
Solaris for x86 is probably ignored because Sun probably didnt license the term UNIX from SCO for use with Solaris for x86.
Their statement is probably technically accurate but completely ignores the existance of Unix-like operating systems that are equivalent to UNIX, but do not license the term UNIX from SCO.
Well, i just took a cursory look at the solaris on x86 product page at Sun's website and i didnt see the term UNIX on it.
They probably are ignoring Solaris because Sun doesnt license the term UNIX to apply it to Solaris. Therefore, Solaris isnt a UNIX "flavour" on intel-based systems. It's a Unix-like os.
That's like saying the mafia's control of construction contracts in New York should have been ok because nobody is forcing you to build a building in New York.
but if you were average joe user and you just got opera because a more technical friend recommended it or something, you would think, "it always looked ok in IE. i wonder what else i cannot see with this Opera browser. I'm going back to IE."
Alternately, if that web page is valuable to you for some reason, you would abandon Opera to get that page to work correctly.
>I think it is a bit silly to say, "Someone would have to write software to tie our bios initiatives to DRM," as if such a probability is extremely remote.
>I think the correct answer might have been:
>"If we weren't including and supporting these bios initiatives, there'd be nothing in our bios anyone could tie to a DRM software inititiative."
I think you are quite skillfully missing the point on your own last statement there.
The answer wouldnt be:
"If we weren't including and supporting these bios initiatives, there'd be nothing in our bios anyone could tie to a DRM software initiative." The answer would be: "Our bios isnt included on your motherboard because the motherboard vendor wanted a bios with TCPA support and we refused to provide one."
That's not a tenable answer for a company, if it wants to survive.
The ethical vacuum you want to attach to AMI attaches more nicely to the motherboard vendors and possibly the OEMs. The question is are the motherboard vendors being pressured to support TCPA for fear of losing OEM clients?
To a large degree I agree that being morally clean is more important than being financially successful, there's still an issue of survival.
Also, if TCPA has other legitimate uses that could be valuable, villifying the tool becomes eerily similar to the villification of things like DeCSS.
This will be where the argument about DeCSS being designed for legal fair use purposes while DRM is created specifically in opposition to fair use. While I might agree with that statement, I believe the intent in creating the tool is less relevent than the use of the tool.
nobody, except possibly market forces, is forcing microsoft to release their source under an open source license.
What they are doing is saying "I wrote this. I've opened it's source so that others can use it. However, if you want to do so, you have to play by my rules."
Microsoft is saying "We wrote this. We keep the source closed and if you want to use it, you have to play by our rules."
This whole "viral" thing is misleading. Nobody just wakes up with gpl code in their project and goes "damn, now i have to gpl it if i want to distribute it." If you dont want to gpl code you intend to distribute, build your own library or look for one under a license like the bsd license. Just dont cry because the mean programmer wont let you use his code.
Personally, i find it incredibly hypocritical of Microsoft to complain about gpl not letting them use other people's code while they continually obscure file formats and communication protocols specifically to not allow people to interoperate with their code.
I guess "it's our code. we can do what we want with it" is only an acceptable answer when it's coming from their lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
The vast majority of musicians are dying to get contracts with record companies.
unless they are rappers. Then they are dying because they got contracts with record companies.
AMEN!!, [in response to Lessig's statement that although the sharing of copyrighted files is illegal under current law, technology can not be made illegal if it has substantial noninfringing uses]
I must admit, I was at first pleased upon reading this response from Oppenheim. However, if Oppenheim -- who is representing the RIAA -- really believed that, then the RIAA wouldn't be trying to stop P2P developers and shut down P2P networks, or destroy these networks by flooding them with crap.
you misread it. he is saying AMEN to the view of the person asking the question, not to lessig's response.
this leaves out the League of Nations mandate that a jewish state (and a palistinian state) be created in the region. (they also created jordan and iraq this way).
The region was under the control of the british after WWI and was still under british control when a jewish state was finally created (as the result of a U.N. resolution).
There was also supposed to be a Palestinian state (also by U.N. resolution) but the day the resolution to create Israel was passed, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Jordan (i forget who else was involved) attacked israel. The disputed lands were captured during this (and about 5 other) wars between israel and their neighbors.
what hollywood movie are you claiming portrays all arabs as evil islamic terrorists?
Pirates have been given a bad rap, historically. History is written by the victors, remember. Many of the pirates from the great sailing age freed slaves and the indentured, set up their own kingless mini-republics and functional anarchies, and would appear more modern to us than their other contemporaries
I'll freely admit to not being an authority on the subject of pirates, but i cannot think of a single pirate who set up a functional anarchy. Most pirate ships were pure democracies. They were also equal opportunity employers (well, kinda). Black slaves were freed and many joined the pirates. There were even a few female pirates (though they hid their gender from their fellow pirates).
Pirates were also endorsed by governments against their adversaries (England supported many pirates against the Spanish in the Carribean. That is, until they were no longer needed. then they were arrested and killed)
That being said, there's not really a relationship between traditional pirates and what are now being called pirates.
I have more money than you, I will grind you into oblivion. Seems like a winning strategy to me
unless you're a monopoly. Then it might well be illegal.
I have Windows XP because i had no choice when i bought my laptop. I need some version of windows just to do cross platform testing on stuff i create.
There do appear to be some other differences though. I have a bitch of a time getting folders shared over lans from win2k boxes to show up in network neighborhood (and other irritating lan issues).
It is entirely possible that my problems with that are configuration issues or something. The issue is so minor for my uses that i've never been annoyed enough to really research the issue. It doesnt interfere with my ability to play games at lan parties.
but if there's not a fix available for the problem, you do pay for the call?
microsoft has invented phone roulette. i can now no longer say they dont innovate.
Most major companies try to make you jump thru hoops to get information, robotic voice machines parroting useless info, clueless tech support,and many other iditic blocks to solutions
That doesnt vindicate any of them for treating their customers like shit.
My opinion is both are good. I have no problem with people using RBLs to categorically block addresses that are known to produce spam in large quantities or whose output is primarily spam.
I also have no problem with people sorting their mail automatically and deciding for themselves what to keep and what to dump.
With respect to ISPs, I think it is appropriate for them to use RBLs as long as it is disclosed to the users. The people affected by the blocking to have a right to know the specifics of the limitations being put on their service by their provider.
in my opinion, it is absolutely appropriate and fair for a company (or individual if he controls the server) to block access to it's mail server for any reason they choose.
(with the exception of government servers. The government has the additional responsibility of ensuring their servers do not block any speech that would be protected by the constitution, and that would probably make blacklists impossible for them)
In the case of an ISP, I do think it should be disclosed to their clients so that those clients who disapprove of that choice can move to another provider (or possibly, if there is enough demand, the isp can set up another server that allows anything through).
I think having software that checks for spam once it arrives in your inbox is good too and people should be allowed to use it also.
The only exception i can imagine to this would be if the ISP had a monopoly on internet connectivity. Otherwise, it's just their business policy and the customers can approve or disapprove with where they spend their money.
true, and that is a good point.
however, if the software is widely used, it is reasonable to expect that it will be picked up and maintained by someone in it's user community out of need or desire for the program.
if it is not used much or isnt a popular program, it might deserve it's death.
Fundamentally, if there is no community for the package, it is either not a good package or it is a very small niche piece of software. In the first case, there may well be another package you could switch to that is better. In the second case, you'll probably have to maintain it yourself, if you're the only one who needs it.
In that second case, there probably isnt much in the way of proprietary solutions either since there probably isnt a market for them.
Linux does no different, except the price it "sells" its wares for is zero. Certainly it is taking a loss, and if you ask people its explicit purpose is to shut out a competitor. At the point where Linux "sales" exceed Microsoft's sales, will that make Linux the "wrong thing" because it "sells its products at a loss to shut out a smaller competitor"?
"Linux" is not a company. "Linux" is not a business entity. "Linux" is not subject to rules and regulations like it was one of those things, because it isnt. Microsoft is.
Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, Mandrake....they are all businesses. They sell sevices and some proprietary software in their distributions. None of them are selling under their costs to try to shut out a competitor.
It isnt dumping for linux to be free (as in beer).
Plus, the creators of Microsoft have a motivation to make their products solid first time,
I cannot think of a single software product from microsoft that was solid the first time. There's a reason for the saying that you should never install a microsoft product before it hits version 3.
because they'll lose sales otherwise.
Unless they're a monopoly and can dictate terms to the clients.
The makers of free software presently have competition, and so are motivated to compete.
The makers of free software will always have competition because they compete with each other. If there is an ideological disagreement or a methodological disagreement, the project will be forked and compete against itself.
But once they've knocked down that competition, I suspect they'll get lazy and start releasing buggy versions first time out of the box, making me pay if I want a working version.
If they get lazy and start releasing buggy versions, they'll lose their project to another maintainer or it'll be forked and continue under more competent leadership.
And they cannot make you pay for a working version because of the licensing scheme. The only way they could do that is if the copyright holder on it released a buggy version under GPL and a non-buggy version under a proprietary license. The result from that would simply be that the buggy version would be fixed by the community who uses it and would replace the proprietary version and the original copyright holder would be ostracised for his underhandedness.
In my opinion IBM is absolutely clued in. They understand that openness and consumer freedom in the personal computer market is necessary. The fact that they are invested in mainframes and some proprietary solutions doesnt affect this because those solutions are in a different market. There is no conflict of interests between the two segments of IBM.
The major corporate areas that they are selling as400s and proprietary solutions to need (or at least want) something that the open consumer market will not provide because the consumer market has different needs.
Microsoft views the computing world as a bunch of feet that need to be shoehorned into one type of shoe regardless of where you plan on walking.
IBM is not viewing the computing world as a bunch of feet that need different shoes for different uses and environments.
IBM is trying to provide all the types of shoes. Microsoft keeps offering the same shoe with a different tread pattern and different coloured laces.
and yet you cared enough to post about it on slashdot...
He uses windows NT to connect to a Plan 9 server. The Plan 9 server is where the work is happening. his NT server is mostly a gui terminal.
Also, he's in management now. He needs the NT box so he can read all the microsoft format documents he has to interact with for work.
he mentions these things on the link you, posted. Were you being intentionally misleading, or did you just not read it?
i live in Austin, actually.
The border jumpers thing is probably an urban legend. I've lived in texas since i was 6mo old and i dont recall ever hearing about that from a reputable source.
> The article also fails to mention that Farechaser was sentenced to death by lethal injection in the same decision...
they fell victim to a rarely used section of the "he needed killin" clause.
in Texas, it's ok to pop somebody as long as "he needed killin"
>Hmmm.... I guess that Solaris x86 doesn't count?
I mentioned this in another post, but it bears repeating.
Solaris for x86 is probably ignored because Sun probably didnt license the term UNIX from SCO for use with Solaris for x86.
Their statement is probably technically accurate but completely ignores the existance of Unix-like operating systems that are equivalent to UNIX, but do not license the term UNIX from SCO.
Well, i just took a cursory look at the solaris on x86 product page at Sun's website and i didnt see the term UNIX on it.
They probably are ignoring Solaris because Sun doesnt license the term UNIX to apply it to Solaris.
Therefore, Solaris isnt a UNIX "flavour" on intel-based systems. It's a Unix-like os.
what a completely bullshit answer.
That's like saying the mafia's control of construction contracts in New York should have been ok because nobody is forcing you to build a building in New York.
but if you were average joe user and you just got opera because a more technical friend recommended it or something, you would think, "it always looked ok in IE. i wonder what else i cannot see with this Opera browser. I'm going back to IE."
Alternately, if that web page is valuable to you for some reason, you would abandon Opera to get that page to work correctly.
>I think it is a bit silly to say, "Someone would have to write software to tie our bios initiatives to DRM," as if such a probability is extremely remote.
>I think the correct answer might have been:
>"If we weren't including and supporting these bios initiatives, there'd be nothing in our bios anyone could tie to a DRM software inititiative."
I think you are quite skillfully missing the point on your own last statement there.
The answer wouldnt be:
"If we weren't including and supporting these bios initiatives, there'd be nothing in our bios anyone could tie to a DRM software initiative."
The answer would be:
"Our bios isnt included on your motherboard because the motherboard vendor wanted a bios with TCPA support and we refused to provide one."
That's not a tenable answer for a company, if it wants to survive.
The ethical vacuum you want to attach to AMI attaches more nicely to the motherboard vendors and possibly the OEMs. The question is are the motherboard vendors being pressured to support TCPA for fear of losing OEM clients?
To a large degree I agree that being morally clean is more important than being financially successful, there's still an issue of survival.
Also, if TCPA has other legitimate uses that could be valuable, villifying the tool becomes eerily similar to the villification of things like DeCSS.
This will be where the argument about DeCSS being designed for legal fair use purposes while DRM is created specifically in opposition to fair use. While I might agree with that statement, I believe the intent in creating the tool is less relevent than the use of the tool.
nobody, except possibly market forces, is forcing microsoft to release their source under an open source license.
What they are doing is saying "I wrote this. I've opened it's source so that others can use it. However, if you want to do so, you have to play by my rules."
Microsoft is saying "We wrote this. We keep the source closed and if you want to use it, you have to play by our rules."
This whole "viral" thing is misleading. Nobody just wakes up with gpl code in their project and goes "damn, now i have to gpl it if i want to distribute it." If you dont want to gpl code you intend to distribute, build your own library or look for one under a license like the bsd license. Just dont cry because the mean programmer wont let you use his code.
Personally, i find it incredibly hypocritical of Microsoft to complain about gpl not letting them use other people's code while they continually obscure file formats and communication protocols specifically to not allow people to interoperate with their code.
I guess "it's our code. we can do what we want with it" is only an acceptable answer when it's coming from their lawyers.
it really is a great book. (as is everything Neil Gaiman writes)
I understand that it is based on a series he did for the bbc. I wonder if they used any abandoned stations for location filming.
Anyone ever seen the series?