to purchase or use MS software is already used to getting screwed over by MS. Why should this be anything new?
You can choose to continue to do it the way MS wants you to, with little to no control over how your own computer operates, or you can ditch MS and their 'we-know-whats-good-for-you' attitude entirely, and use software that lets you control your own computer, that,incidentally, is often completely free of charge as well.
*IF* the owner of the device, using some sort of key or password, had complete control of which computers were 'authorized', this might be a great way to discourage theft of iPods.
Obviously, if the owner did not have control, then it is utter crap user-hostile technology.
And just for the record 'traceroute' has absolutely no bearing on 'tracing' someone and isnt really relevnt to findout out who or what exists at a particular address. 'whois' with an appropriate RIR would be appropriate
'traceroute' is a network troubleshooting tool, and its similarity to the word 'trace' as used in 'tracing a call' is an unfortunate accident.
It isnt that the closed codec is better, its that the provider of the data they want to use is choosing to provide it only in that format. The recipient of the data has no choice - they can find software that decodes it, or not use it.
There *are* better (and open) video formats, if only you could get the companies and sites publishing video to use them.
Unfortunately, thats the only way to do it, becuase how the codecs work is 'trade secret'. If there was some documentation somewhere that would allow a Free implmenetation, trust me, someone would have done it by now. Also, even if there was, then there probably would be a patent problem as well.
Basically, there are two choices:
1. Support proprietary, undocumented codecs by allowing end-users to (possibly illegally) copying the Windows DLL's (Users will complain about the legalage, even tho, strangely, they dont have a problem with the scary click-through EULA's that most proprietary software has)
2. Dont support proprietary undocumented codecs at all. (Users will gripe that they can't play files in those formats)
The owners of these proprietary codecs will neither support nor even allow a Free implementation of them, specifically because they want to use them to further their own proprietary control of software and software platforms, and that control doesn't benefit by any furtherance of Free software.
The real solution is for publishers of media to stop using proprietary undocumented codecs, then there will be less demand for software that plays them.
If and when proprietary software is no longer monopolizes the mainstream, then perhaps open, documented data formats will be the norm, and this whole problem will go away.
I want something different too. I dont want higher speed, I want more range. I want one or two megabits at 30 miles NLOS. Either simple point-to-point, with many different 'channels' for seperation, or point-to-multipoint. Of course, the question of wether such a thing is technically possible is irrelevant, because the telco's would kill it in its crib anyway.
Wether they are capable or not is not the point. (Although quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned, most MS software is bloated crap - and that includes Windows)
They are afraid of ODF because, unlike with the MS proprietary formats, one does not have to buy MS Software to be able to read and write it. This means that if ODF becomes popular or even mandatory in some cases, they then have to compete for real in that market, which they'd really rather not have to do.
Ok, I can see arguing with you is lost cause. You are obviously an MS fanboy who'd like all computers to run proprietary for-profit software that sucks becuase the company has a monopoly and couldnt give a flying fuck about making it work well because its not like anyone can choose to use anything else.
The current state of the 'computing technology' market and MS near-monopoly control over it (at least the end-user. general purpose computing portion of it) is an extreme and unhealthy aberration, and it will take an extreme correction (which the GPL3 is just one piece of) to correct it. If and when this market ever becomes healthy and has normal competition where no player has the ability to exclude all others, then maybe the GPL3 might be considered overly extreme. And you can bet if and when that day ever comes, I will be having a party.
How their network and service works has nothing to do with software (say a sudoku game, to refer to the original idea) on the phone.
Also, either way you *are* paying for the phone (wether its with cash up front or an obligation to pay for service for two years).
In any case, you argument applies equally to the authors of software that might choose to distribute it under GPL3. Their software, their rules. You (or a telco) want to use their software on your device, they have to abide by the terms. And with GPL3, that includes giving the user the right to modify that GPL3 software *and* be able to install modified versions on any device that software was originally distributed on.
No one is forcing anyone to distribute their code as GPL (2 or 3), nor is anyone forced to use GPL software. But those that choose to do so (in both cases) do so because the license terms fit their needs. And the argument that it prevents companies from taking GPL code and putting it in their own proprietary code is utter straw man. If instead of the GPL is was distributed under the MS EULA terms, theyd have never even gotten to SEE the code, let alone even CONSIDER using it in their software. (And by use I mean actually copy the code, not just 'running it')
Interesting that you refer to a (cell)phone that a particular user paid for (either cash outright, or by agreeing to a long-term contract for service with a hefty termination fee) as 'their' (referring to the phone company) phone.
That is the whole point of it, the phone, once paid for, belongs to the user, not the phone company. Why shouldnt the user of a phone, which has GPL3 software running on it, have a right to modify that software, and use the modified copy on the same device?
In any case, regardless of your answer to that question, thats the main thing GPL3 does in that respect - it says that the right to modify software includes the right to run the modified software on any device that it was originally distributed on. And that is (one of) the rights that an author choosing to distribute their work under GPL3 wants their users to have. If you, as a software author, dont want to guarantee your users that right, then so be it.
The Digital Restrictions Management *IS* the problem. If they would just make plain Mpegs (or AVI's, or whatever) available, the entire problem of having to choose what 'platforms' to support goes away.
When BBC broadcasts over-the-air, there is no requirement that only Brand X TV's are able to receive the signal, and Brand Y VCR's are unable to receive it and record it to tapes which can subsequently be copied. Why does there need to be this requirement for shows transmitted over a packet network?
Neither hardware nor data should be locked to (a) specific brand(s) of software.
As far as your 'DAB radio' comment, sure, you need a 'DAB radio' - but you dont need any specific brand of one. The specification for that type of broadcast is fully and clearly documented, and anyone that has the appropriate skillset could build one. BBC doesnt design their content for specific brands of hardware, they comply with a public spec, and anyone is free to implement it. They should do the same with all their content, and they should be software neutral as well. They shouldnt be designing software either for one OS only, *OR* for multiple ones, they should be producing shows, and broadcasting/distributing them in formats that are publically documented that anyone can write software to display.
Hrm. I'm not sure I buy that. If AT&T were subsidizing the iPhone in order to lock it in to their network, why wouldnt it cost a bit less?
I'm wondering if maybe no one wanted to provide service for it without exclusivity, and Apple had to pick a carrier and went with AT&T because they were a big name (I mean really, is there any major telco/cellco that would be a great choice to be *locked* into?)
.. does requiring their use to be done in an open manner prevent AT&T from bidding on them?
That AT&T doesnt want to do anything open is THEIR problem, and if they choose to spurn new spectrum if that is part of their requirement then that is there choice.
We, the public, WANT open access wireless, we WANT there to be healthy and robust competition
Take the iPhone. Now why Apple chose to let it be locked (at least until its hacked) into AT&T only for service I dont know. But there is no question why AT&T wanted it. And as far as I'm concerned it reduces the desirablity of an iPhone to below zero (at least until its fully hacked, *maybe*[ becuase maybe I'd like to get a device that is supposed to be open, as opposed to one that had to be hacked to be so])
AT&T (and Verizon, and all the other monopoly-bells, and hell Microsoft, and Yahoo[although they are in bed with AT&T anyway]) only whine about Google becuase Google might actually have the balls and the cash to do what people want, and to begin to put just the tiniest crack into the monopoly telecom and computing monopolies.
And Google is NOT a monopoly. I cant think of any instance where one person (or company) choosing to use any of Google's services or products makes it impossible for someone else to communicate or do business with them to use anything other than Google (Im talking about proprietary non-standard undocumented MS file formats and network protocols here), nor are there any cases where Google has exclusive control over some critical resources that the existence of was financed by regulated non-competition (I'm talking about last mile copper here) that prevents anyone else from using it.
Timeshifting? Format shifting? Playing a movie on a different DVD player if yours is broken or you forgot to bring it on vacation? Hell, letting a friend borrow a movie that you *PAID* for? Not having to pay each time you view a movie, or even part of it?
Sure, they say its only to prevent copying and piracy, but it is useless against the professional pirates, who run their own DVD factories anyway. Just like CSS was useless.
These are specifically allowed and expected, reasonmable uses and ones that the current monopolisitic media would love to eliminate. That is what they see in the future for DRM - locking customers into pay-per-everything and only allowing consumption on registered locked-down proprietary devices. Hopefully enough people wont just sit there and take it, and this vision wont come to pass.
Only one slight nitpick - hampering DRM isn't about reducing the effectiveness of copyright. Its about preventing distributors from overstepping the rights they have with copyright, and taking rights away from recipients of the distributed materials that copyright says they are allowed to have.
That is already the case - the Samba developers have to catch-up and reverse engineer MS protocols. And they do a pretty decent job, from what I hear. The new version of Samba becoming GPL3 wont change that. But the old version of Samba WONT GET any new work or reverse engineering that they do, so will be stuck at its current level of interoperability. So when MS implements incompatible changes, the new version of Samba might be able to work, but the old one never will.
The new versions of Samba will be just as good as Samba always was.
Perhaps I misunderstood your original post. You seemed to be complaining that a nice -19 process was getting higher priority than pretty much anything else, when that is exactly what it is supposed to do. That is also exactly what the man page says it does.
If, using your same script above, you ran:
# nice 19./loop... then you'd hardly notice its impact at all, and other processes would get higher priority.
If you want to be able to *use* your system and let a compile/build progresss at *low* priority in the background, use nice 19 - NOT nice negative 19.
Run COMMAND with an adjusted niceness, which affects process scheduling. With no COMMAND, print the current niceness. Nicenesses range from -20 (most favorable scheduling) to 19 (least favorable). I stand corrected. -19 isnt the top priority, -20 is. But both still have way higher priority than anything at the default. You want positive numbers to de-prioritize a process, not negative ones.
Sounds like you need to read the man page for 'nice'
nice -19 is very much NOT nice. Its negative nice. -19 gives top priority to the process that is -19. If you want to give the build *LOW* priority, then nice it to 19 (or some other positive number), not *negative* 19.
I went to the link, and all that is there is an 'abstract' of this paper, a 'suggested citation' and some other nonsense. There is something that appears to be a link to 'Download Paper' that doesnt do anything when clicked, in fact, it seems to be a link to the same URL given here - where is the actual text of this essay?
Slashdot Mirror
to purchase or use MS software is already used to getting screwed over by MS. Why should this be anything new?
You can choose to continue to do it the way MS wants you to, with little to no control over how your own computer operates, or you can ditch MS and their 'we-know-whats-good-for-you' attitude entirely, and use software that lets you control your own computer, that,incidentally, is often completely free of charge as well.
*IF* the owner of the device, using some sort of key or password, had complete control of which computers were 'authorized', this might be a great way to discourage theft of iPods.
Obviously, if the owner did not have control, then it is utter crap user-hostile technology.
And just for the record 'traceroute' has absolutely no bearing on 'tracing' someone and isnt really relevnt to findout out who or what exists at a particular address. 'whois' with an appropriate RIR would be appropriate
'traceroute' is a network troubleshooting tool, and its similarity to the word 'trace' as used in 'tracing a call' is an unfortunate accident.
'kahuz' is not a word, as far as I know. At least, not in English.
The word you were looking for is 'cahoots'.
http://www.answers.com/topic/cahoots
Right, becuase looking at porn online is so old-school.
It isnt that the closed codec is better, its that the provider of the data they want to use is choosing to provide it only in that format. The recipient of the data has no choice - they can find software that decodes it, or not use it.
There *are* better (and open) video formats, if only you could get the companies and sites publishing video to use them.
Unfortunately, thats the only way to do it, becuase how the codecs work is 'trade secret'. If there was some documentation somewhere that would allow a Free implmenetation, trust me, someone would have done it by now. Also, even if there was, then there probably would be a patent problem as well.
Basically, there are two choices:
1. Support proprietary, undocumented codecs by allowing end-users to (possibly illegally) copying the Windows DLL's
(Users will complain about the legalage, even tho, strangely, they dont have a problem with the scary click-through EULA's that most proprietary software has)
2. Dont support proprietary undocumented codecs at all. (Users will gripe that they can't play files in those formats)
The owners of these proprietary codecs will neither support nor even allow a Free implementation of them, specifically because they want to use them to further their own proprietary control of software and software platforms, and that control doesn't benefit by any furtherance of Free software.
The real solution is for publishers of media to stop using proprietary undocumented codecs, then there will be less demand for software that plays them.
If and when proprietary software is no longer monopolizes the mainstream, then perhaps open, documented data formats will be the norm, and this whole problem will go away.
I want something different too. I dont want higher speed, I want more range. I want one or two megabits at 30 miles NLOS. Either simple point-to-point, with many different 'channels' for seperation, or point-to-multipoint. Of course, the question of wether such a thing is technically possible is irrelevant, because the telco's would kill it in its crib anyway.
Wether they are capable or not is not the point. (Although quite frankly, as far as I'm concerned, most MS software is bloated crap - and that includes Windows)
They are afraid of ODF because, unlike with the MS proprietary formats, one does not have to buy MS Software to be able to read and write it. This means that if ODF becomes popular or even mandatory in some cases, they then have to compete for real in that market, which they'd really rather not have to do.
Ok, I can see arguing with you is lost cause. You are obviously an MS fanboy who'd like all computers to run proprietary for-profit software that sucks becuase the company has a monopoly and couldnt give a flying fuck about making it work well because its not like anyone can choose to use anything else.
The current state of the 'computing technology' market and MS near-monopoly control over it (at least the end-user. general purpose computing portion of it) is an extreme and unhealthy aberration, and it will take an extreme correction (which the GPL3 is just one piece of) to correct it. If and when this market ever becomes healthy and has normal competition where no player has the ability to exclude all others, then maybe the GPL3 might be considered overly extreme. And you can bet if and when that day ever comes, I will be having a party.
How their network and service works has nothing to do with software (say a sudoku game, to refer to the original idea) on the phone.
Also, either way you *are* paying for the phone (wether its with cash up front or an obligation to pay for service for two years).
In any case, you argument applies equally to the authors of software that might choose to distribute it under GPL3. Their software, their rules. You (or a telco) want to use their software on your device, they have to abide by the terms. And with GPL3, that includes giving the user the right to modify that GPL3 software *and* be able to install modified versions on any device that software was originally distributed on.
No one is forcing anyone to distribute their code as GPL (2 or 3), nor is anyone forced to use GPL software. But those that choose to do so (in both cases) do so because the license terms fit their needs. And the argument that it prevents companies from taking GPL code and putting it in their own proprietary code is utter straw man. If instead of the GPL is was distributed under the MS EULA terms, theyd have never even gotten to SEE the code, let alone even CONSIDER using it in their software. (And by use I mean actually copy the code, not just 'running it')
Interesting that you refer to a (cell)phone that a particular user paid for (either cash outright, or by agreeing to a long-term contract for service with a hefty termination fee) as 'their' (referring to the phone company) phone.
That is the whole point of it, the phone, once paid for, belongs to the user, not the phone company. Why shouldnt the user of a phone, which has GPL3 software running on it, have a right to modify that software, and use the modified copy on the same device?
In any case, regardless of your answer to that question, thats the main thing GPL3 does in that respect - it says that the right to modify software includes the right to run the modified software on any device that it was originally distributed on. And that is (one of) the rights that an author choosing to distribute their work under GPL3 wants their users to have. If you, as a software author, dont want to guarantee your users that right, then so be it.
The Digital Restrictions Management *IS* the problem. If they would just make plain Mpegs (or AVI's, or whatever) available, the entire problem of having to choose what 'platforms' to support goes away.
When BBC broadcasts over-the-air, there is no requirement that only Brand X TV's are able to receive the signal, and Brand Y VCR's are unable to receive it and record it to tapes which can subsequently be copied. Why does there need to be this requirement for shows transmitted over a packet network?
Neither hardware nor data should be locked to (a) specific brand(s) of software.
You miss the point.
As far as your 'DAB radio' comment, sure, you need a 'DAB radio' - but you dont need any specific brand of one. The specification for that type of broadcast is fully and clearly documented, and anyone that has the appropriate skillset could build one. BBC doesnt design their content for specific brands of hardware, they comply with a public spec, and anyone is free to implement it. They should do the same with all their content, and they should be software neutral as well. They shouldnt be designing software either for one OS only, *OR* for multiple ones, they should be producing shows, and broadcasting/distributing them in formats that are publically documented that anyone can write software to display.
Hrm. I'm not sure I buy that. If AT&T were subsidizing the iPhone in order to lock it in to their network, why wouldnt it cost a bit less?
I'm wondering if maybe no one wanted to provide service for it without exclusivity, and Apple had to pick a carrier and went with AT&T because they were a big name (I mean really, is there any major telco/cellco that would be a great choice to be *locked* into?)
.. does requiring their use to be done in an open manner prevent AT&T from bidding on them?
That AT&T doesnt want to do anything open is THEIR problem, and if they choose to spurn new spectrum if that is part of their requirement then that is there choice.
We, the public, WANT open access wireless, we WANT there to be healthy and robust competition
Take the iPhone. Now why Apple chose to let it be locked (at least until its hacked) into AT&T only for service I dont know. But there is no question why AT&T wanted it. And as far as I'm concerned it reduces the desirablity of an iPhone to below zero (at least until its fully hacked, *maybe*[ becuase maybe I'd like to get a device that is supposed to be open, as opposed to one that had to be hacked to be so])
AT&T (and Verizon, and all the other monopoly-bells, and hell Microsoft, and Yahoo[although they are in bed with AT&T anyway]) only whine about Google becuase Google might actually have the balls and the cash to do what people want, and to begin to put just the tiniest crack into the monopoly telecom and computing monopolies.
And Google is NOT a monopoly. I cant think of any instance where one person (or company) choosing to use any of Google's services or products makes it impossible for someone else to communicate or do business with them to use anything other than Google (Im talking about proprietary non-standard undocumented MS file formats and network protocols here), nor are there any cases where Google has exclusive control over some critical resources that the existence of was financed by regulated non-competition (I'm talking about last mile copper here) that prevents anyone else from using it.
Timeshifting? Format shifting? Playing a movie on a different DVD player if yours is broken or you forgot to bring it on vacation? Hell, letting a friend borrow a movie that you *PAID* for? Not having to pay each time you view a movie, or even part of it?
Sure, they say its only to prevent copying and piracy, but it is useless against the professional pirates, who run their own DVD factories anyway. Just like CSS was useless.
These are specifically allowed and expected, reasonmable uses and ones that the current monopolisitic media would love to eliminate. That is what they see in the future for DRM - locking customers into pay-per-everything and only allowing consumption on registered locked-down proprietary devices. Hopefully enough people wont just sit there and take it, and this vision wont come to pass.
Only one slight nitpick - hampering DRM isn't about reducing the effectiveness of copyright. Its about preventing distributors from overstepping the rights they have with copyright, and taking rights away from recipients of the distributed materials that copyright says they are allowed to have.
Now I see what you are saying.
Clearer usage might be 'nice -n 19' vs 'nice -n -19'
That is already the case - the Samba developers have to catch-up and reverse engineer MS protocols. And they do a pretty decent job, from what I hear. The new version of Samba becoming GPL3 wont change that. But the old version of Samba WONT GET any new work or reverse engineering that they do, so will be stuck at its current level of interoperability. So when MS implements incompatible changes, the new version of Samba might be able to work, but the old one never will.
The new versions of Samba will be just as good as Samba always was.
Perhaps I misunderstood your original post. You seemed to be complaining that a nice -19 process was getting higher priority than pretty much anything else, when that is exactly what it is supposed to do. That is also exactly what the man page says it does.
./loop ... then you'd hardly notice its impact at all, and other processes would get higher priority.
If, using your same script above, you ran:
# nice 19
If you want to be able to *use* your system and let a compile/build progresss at *low* priority in the background, use nice 19 - NOT nice negative 19.
From 'man nice': DESCRIPTION
Run COMMAND with an adjusted niceness, which affects process scheduling. With no COMMAND, print the current niceness. Nicenesses range from -20 (most favorable scheduling) to 19 (least favorable). I stand corrected. -19 isnt the top priority, -20 is. But both still have way higher priority than anything at the default. You want positive numbers to de-prioritize a process, not negative ones.
Sounds like you need to read the man page for 'nice'
nice -19 is very much NOT nice. Its negative nice. -19 gives top priority to the process that is -19. If you want to give the build *LOW* priority, then nice it to 19 (or some other positive number), not *negative* 19.
Nevermind, I found it.
I went to the link, and all that is there is an 'abstract' of this paper, a 'suggested citation' and some other nonsense. There is something that appears to be a link to 'Download Paper' that doesnt do anything when clicked, in fact, it seems to be a link to the same URL given here - where is the actual text of this essay?