The US enforces its ludicrous embargo in more sinister ways than just "nothing to do with a country".
Companies with offices elsewhere can't make bussiness in the US if they trade with Cuba, executives of companies dealing with Cuba have been detained in the US for questioning even if they have no bussiness in the US, citiznes from other countries, for which the US has no jurisdiction, are stopped to enter the US if they have a visa from Cuba stamped on their passport.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg, the only countries that can about get away with things were sworn US enemies or nemesis (like China, who is getting closer to Cuba by the day) or Mexico, because we can (the US is not going to piss off one of its biggest bussiness partners just because Mexico is the best friend Cuba has had on the Western hemisphere).
.... but they teach in school that South America starts in Mexico... I, as a humble citizen of the land of the snaked and the cactus, laugh at it quite often.
They obviously haven deciphered the NAFTA moniker....
Socialist countries do not recognize copyrights and intellectual property.
Copyright granted to individuals or private organizations is abhorrent to a socialist or communist state/
You are chosing to ignore the flipping obvious: if the GPL is based in capitalistic institutions like copyright and Intellectual property it is impossible to equate it in any sensible way with a socialized organization of any kind, the comparision is particularly inept when using communist or socialist states as a point of reference or allegory.
You just ignore the little elephant in the room: there is no recognition of copyright or intellectual property in socialist or communist countries.
The GPL is based precisely in copyright, and since you don;t care to read what the GPL is all about, in many places it is fully documented that people areencouraged to make shitloads of money using GPLed software at the heart of their bussiness model.
But you can't ignore the facts and ejaculate as much propaganda as you want, I am sure that will make you feel better.
People are giving code away for free and opening it to the world for general use as people see fit.
If that is having a big ego then you must know only people with very little self confidence.
Software that is given away in what can only be described a charitable way, is a god's send. If users think it should be improved they can organize themselves, hire some people to put the improvements in place, and be happy.
The problem with you and many other people is that you want the user to keep playing the passive role they are used to when it comes to software.
But freedom implies responsibility and compromise, people that want to be free will always be inconvenienced and will not always have things the way they want them, specially if a lot of people follow the "lock in" inertia that makes them more dependable, albeit certainly with a sense of comfort, akin to an animal in a modern Zoo: it seems like it is free, but the damn fences are still there.
.... in terms of how much you are allowed to leech.
Sorry pal, I don't care how much money you have padi for FOSS, you may have padi thousends but that has not being enough to educate you about what freedom means in the context of free software.
..... used to force Tivo, or any other company, to use other's people software. For free.
They are perfectly free to develop their own OS, but if they want to use other people's work it may be that their current bussiness model may not fit with that (it may very well happen that they continue using GPL 2).
Comparing both is starting from the wrong premise.
If they were the same, we would not have completely different bodies of law to deal with to deal with theft and copying stuff whose rights are assigned to somebody else.
What defines a Socialist country is who owns the means of production and the lack of right to private property.
High taxation, bureaucracy and big public sector are not characteristics exclusive of a socialist country.
Heck, taxation, as a matter of fact, can be low or non existent in a socialist country, since all the services provided by the state do not need to be paid with taxes, but with production output.
.... that the big lables will not play that game? I'll do it again, in case the previous 1000 have not been enough.
They will sell only on fully DRM crippled shops.
They are not stupid, they use their cartel power in order to ensure a product with a clear competitive advantage does not share any "shelf" space with their wares.
The day you work in a big company (which you clearly don't) you'll be able to talk with a bit more authority regarding the big players in the IT world.
That is part of the problem, people thinking they know what they are talking about, but that know squat about the topic.
1.-A responsible government does multitasking. It will have to worry about the citizens' health, but also about the economy keep moving. The amount of people dying would not justify a complete shutdown of all productive activities.
2.- Bird flu is dangerous because it has proben to infect humans, generally with high index of mortality. This by itself is not a problem. The problem is that virus mutate (don't believe idiotic creationists and the like), and eventually one will find a mutation that will allow infection from human to human. I hope you have not forgotten that this virus is highly lethal.
3.- Your cavalier attitude parades your ignorance. You will not need your parrot to get infected, any person infected could infect you in case a pandemic takes place.
4.- If you think all is hype you clearly need to broaden your education, it is sorely lacking.
In the UK that would mean 1 200 000 dead. Out of 60 000 000
Terrible? Yes.
Will the economy collapse? Unlikely, the other 58000000 would keep trying to do whatever they do, which would be greatly facilitated by satying at home earning a living (for as many people as possible).
If anything, the number you are giving above would be lower in developped countries. As always the poor countries would take the worst part of such a disaster, and this, as sad as it is, would create eocnomic incentives elsewhere.
SO as amatter of fact some industries and countries would even benefit. That is economic fact.
Instead of piling the irony and cynicism typical of the/. crowd, we should be listening and doing positive contributions, since in as much as we would like to believe this is scaremongering, the reality is that if we want to be relatively unnafected by such a massive problem we need to do planning.
As the Economist said in relation to Steve Jobs recent position about DRM, he may be self serving, but he is correct. Ditto for Telcos warning that we may need better resources if we want the Internet to be a useful tool during emergencies.
It is not the medieval times you know, we have a bit more knowledge about these things.
It would be nasty, but the economy will keep moving, and there will be people making sure it happens, even if loved ones are sick when one keeps performing his job.
Slashdot Mirror
The US enforces its ludicrous embargo in more sinister ways than just "nothing to do with a country".
Companies with offices elsewhere can't make bussiness in the US if they trade with Cuba, executives of companies dealing with Cuba have been detained in the US for questioning even if they have no bussiness in the US, citiznes from other countries, for which the US has no jurisdiction, are stopped to enter the US if they have a visa from Cuba stamped on their passport.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg, the only countries that can about get away with things were sworn US enemies or nemesis (like China, who is getting closer to Cuba by the day) or Mexico, because we can (the US is not going to piss off one of its biggest bussiness partners just because Mexico is the best friend Cuba has had on the Western hemisphere).
.... but they teach in school that South America starts in Mexico... I, as a humble citizen of the land of the snaked and the cactus, laugh at it quite often.
They obviously haven deciphered the NAFTA moniker....
IP laws, as you ingonratnly call them, are the foundation of the GPL licensing model.
Stop spinning things matey, the more you defend your baseless argument the more uninformed you look.
You want to have your cake and eat it matey.
Socialist countries do not recognize copyrights and intellectual property.
Copyright granted to individuals or private organizations is abhorrent to a socialist or communist state/
You are chosing to ignore the flipping obvious: if the GPL is based in capitalistic institutions like copyright and Intellectual property it is impossible to equate it in any sensible way with a socialized organization of any kind, the comparision is particularly inept when using communist or socialist states as a point of reference or allegory.
You just ignore the little elephant in the room: there is no recognition of copyright or intellectual property in socialist or communist countries.
The GPL is based precisely in copyright, and since you don;t care to read what the GPL is all about, in many places it is fully documented that people areencouraged to make shitloads of money using GPLed software at the heart of their bussiness model.
But you can't ignore the facts and ejaculate as much propaganda as you want, I am sure that will make you feel better.
Really pal, you are out of order.
People are giving code away for free and opening it to the world for general use as people see fit.
If that is having a big ego then you must know only people with very little self confidence.
Software that is given away in what can only be described a charitable way, is a god's send. If users think it should be improved they can organize themselves, hire some people to put the improvements in place, and be happy.
The problem with you and many other people is that you want the user to keep playing the passive role they are used to when it comes to software.
But freedom implies responsibility and compromise, people that want to be free will always be inconvenienced and will not always have things the way they want them, specially if a lot of people follow the "lock in" inertia that makes them more dependable, albeit certainly with a sense of comfort, akin to an animal in a modern Zoo: it seems like it is free, but the damn fences are still there.
.... in terms of how much you are allowed to leech.
Sorry pal, I don't care how much money you have padi for FOSS, you may have padi thousends but that has not being enough to educate you about what freedom means in the context of free software.
.... to leech and to use other people's work against them.
Paint me unimpressed in regards to your argument.
..... used to force Tivo, or any other company, to use other's people software. For free.
They are perfectly free to develop their own OS, but if they want to use other people's work it may be that their current bussiness model may not fit with that (it may very well happen that they continue using GPL 2).
Comparing both is starting from the wrong premise.
If they were the same, we would not have completely different bodies of law to deal with to deal with theft and copying stuff whose rights are assigned to somebody else.
Global Climate Change deniers.
DRM supporters.
The same bloody side of the coin.
Linux is not the de facto desktop standard (yet) for marketing reasons and monopolic practices.
It has nothing to do with the fucking CLI being difficult or not.
Any computer literate person should be able to type the command and hit enter.
As if the Windows way was more natural and the cryptic dialogs where any better.
An end user can cut and paste a command like the one explained earlier.
He does not need to know what it does or to do any debugging.
What defines a Socialist country is who owns the means of production and the lack of right to private property.
High taxation, bureaucracy and big public sector are not characteristics exclusive of a socialist country.
Heck, taxation, as a matter of fact, can be low or non existent in a socialist country, since all the services provided by the state do not need to be paid with taxes, but with production output.
.... that the big lables will not play that game? I'll do it again, in case the previous 1000 have not been enough.
They will sell only on fully DRM crippled shops.
They are not stupid, they use their cartel power in order to ensure a product with a clear competitive advantage does not share any "shelf" space with their wares.
If Jobs is for openess he can open what is Apple's.
Removing DRM and allowing free copying of the OS (as Sun has done with Solaris) is the best recipe to get rid of the Pirates.
The only thing Apple would need to do is to say that there is no support for people without proof of purchase.
That is the difference. If you are in the office most traffic remains there.
.... that is not even funny.
The day you work in a big company (which you clearly don't) you'll be able to talk with a bit more authority regarding the big players in the IT world.
That is part of the problem, people thinking they know what they are talking about, but that know squat about the topic.
1.-A responsible government does multitasking. It will have to worry about the citizens' health, but also about the economy keep moving. The amount of people dying would not justify a complete shutdown of all productive activities.
2.- Bird flu is dangerous because it has proben to infect humans, generally with high index of mortality. This by itself is not a problem. The problem is that virus mutate (don't believe idiotic creationists and the like), and eventually one will find a mutation that will allow infection from human to human. I hope you have not forgotten that this virus is highly lethal.
3.- Your cavalier attitude parades your ignorance. You will not need your parrot to get infected, any person infected could infect you in case a pandemic takes place.
4.- If you think all is hype you clearly need to broaden your education, it is sorely lacking.
That is 2% of the population (give or take).
/. crowd, we should be listening and doing positive contributions, since in as much as we would like to believe this is scaremongering, the reality is that if we want to be relatively unnafected by such a massive problem we need to do planning.
In the UK that would mean 1 200 000 dead. Out of 60 000 000
Terrible? Yes.
Will the economy collapse? Unlikely, the other 58000000 would keep trying to do whatever they do, which would be greatly facilitated by satying at home earning a living (for as many people as possible).
If anything, the number you are giving above would be lower in developped countries. As always the poor countries would take the worst part of such a disaster, and this, as sad as it is, would create eocnomic incentives elsewhere.
SO as amatter of fact some industries and countries would even benefit. That is economic fact.
Instead of piling the irony and cynicism typical of the
As the Economist said in relation to Steve Jobs recent position about DRM, he may be self serving, but he is correct. Ditto for Telcos warning that we may need better resources if we want the Internet to be a useful tool during emergencies.
People would not fall like flies.
It is not the medieval times you know, we have a bit more knowledge about these things.
It would be nasty, but the economy will keep moving, and there will be people making sure it happens, even if loved ones are sick when one keeps performing his job.
.... to do something about it.
I would refer you to the early XXth century virus pandemic, but if you want to educate yourself at least make an effor googling for it.
You refer to people that you know, or have anough reasons to assume, that they know what they are talking about.
That is not reference to authority.
That is refering to authoritative knowledge, which is completely different.
.... you are the least indicated to comment regarding this topic.
Interesting experience but completely unrealted to the experience of 99.9999% of the rest of the populous.
Those are to treat depression, they are not happy pills.