You obviously didnt get what he was saying. He wasnt looking for hand-holding software - he was bemoaning that any software which wasnt 747-cockpit complex was 'hold-your-hand' - he was bemoaning a lack of sw that doesnt require you to be a photographic scientist, but which doesnt assume you are a drooling moron, either. And I've seen my share of 'drooling moron' software too, most of it with a Microsoft logo on it.
Actually, that distinction is not the key one. The important part is that you do *not* have any pre-existing right to copy a GPL'd program's (or any program's, for that matter) copyrightten source code into *your* program. The GPL, if you choose to accept (all of) its terms, offers you a license to do just that. If you do not like the terms (which are clearly disclosed ahead of time) then you are not required to accept them, and normal copyright law applies.
I'm pretty certain its irrelevant, as the cows and the bulls are penned seperately, and are only put together in pairs, and only at planned times. Since the manpage was a joke anyway, it doesnt matter. (A machine to masturbate bulls may well be useful [and may even already exist], artificial insemination and all that, but I'm sure it would be entirely seperate and entirely different than the cow-milking one)
I had no problem downloading and playing them with mplayer.
Re:E-mail's not good for critical messages
on
Email Turns 34
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· Score: 1
That wasnt the point - the point was that there was never and is not any *guarantee* that a message would be delivered, or even a reliable way to confirm that a message had or had not been delivered, and it was never suitable for critical messages which if not received reliably might cause loss to life, health or money. Yes, email was (and is) still a reasonable way for 'normal office tasks' as long as you choose an email provider that doesnt have a reputation for being a spam sewer - and if you bemoan that you have to choose your provider wisely, compare that with buying a used car or a house, the same scenario applies - let the buyer beware. The only wrongheaded part is blaming the people who are trying to do something about the problem, instead of one's own provider that is making it worse.
*Properly implemented* antispam solutions at least (usually) give a legitimate sender using normal email software an indication that their messages didnt make it through - the recipient mailserver rejects the message with an 5xx SMTP response, and the senders mail server sends them a notice that their messages wasnt delivere Spam filters and systems which just silently drop messages both suffer from the 'false positive with no feedback to the sender' problem. Accept-scan(for spam or viruses)-and-then-bounce, as well as 'challenge-response' systems, both *add* to the problem, by sending as many 'return' messages to invalid addresses and owners of addresses that were forged/faked in the original problem messages.
Re:E-mail's not good for critical messages
on
Email Turns 34
·
· Score: 1
Note that it is the operators of the servers you wanted to send email *to* that decided to refuse mail from your ISP based on the blacklist. And it would have been *your ISP's* fault for choosing to tolerate spammers as customers, instead of booting them away. If you dont want to use email when the policy is 'we refuse email from ISP's that harbor spammers', then that is your choice. Others want to retain emails usefulness while shunning those individuals and organizations that are willing to permit their resources to be used toward making it useless, and the spammers and spam supporting ISP's have seen to it that only by completely refusing to allow them to play will that ever be possible.
Note that you had other options, which included using your influence as a customer to convince your ISP to do the right thing and adopt a 100% spam-intolerant policy, and continuing to use your ISP for connectivity while, depending on your setup, either using outside email, or relaying your email through an outside server (one you were authorized to use, that is).
The fact is, *recipients* have, and should have, complete control over where they accept mail from, using whatever tools they can - for you, or anyone else, to *demand* that a recipient server accept your message when they would chose not to, based on whatever criteria they feel are appropriate, is ludicrous. In fact if you were to insist on that steadfastly, it might make one think that you supported spammers. Your right to 'frea speach' ends at the SMTP port of someone elses mailserver.
Re:E-mail's not good for critical messages
on
Email Turns 34
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Email was never a viable option for guaranteed delivery of messages. Its fast, convenient, easily archivable, and has many other fantastic uses and benefits, but guaranteed delivery of critical messages has *never* been one of them.
And spamming leeches as well as the negligence of certain software makers is directly the cause of the need for admins of servers to restrict the flood. If it *wasnt* for the blacklists email would already be dead - there would be ten thousand spams for every desirable message, and that would just be in mailboxes of the casual/occasional users - regular users would get far more.
You leave/usr/ports/ alone - it blows anything ive ever seen in linux away (nothing against linux, but I would love to have a linux system with something comparable to ports, both in the way it works as well as the completeness)
Ads sent by mail are not nearly as objectionable as email/popup type ads.
Spam costs the sender nothing 'each', leading to untargeted blanket sending, and wastes the space and bandwidth of both ISPs and the recipients, to which the spammer provides nothing. They take time and energy to sort through to extract the junk from the real mail, leading to automated systems that can never be 100% accurate, which often lead to lost legitimate mail.
Mailed advertisements, on the other hand, actually cost the advertiser money, both to actually produce and print the peice, as well as to mail it. This causes them to try to target better (although no targetting can be perfect). I would say pretty much all recipients already have trash (or recycling) service, and a small handfull of paper ads being added doesnt affect the cost at all. The revenue from the mass mailers also enables to post office to keep the price for individual letters quite low (magazines and other periodical mail contributes too) - if it wasnt for the mass mailers, it might cost a couple dollars to mail a letter, instead of 39 cents. So there is a benefit all around.
My motivation for blocking ads is the distraction and annoyance factor, and the use of my resources and time for the advertisers (perceived) gain. I think what ads I think should be blocked might give some insight..
Ads that I wouldnt bother blocking:
- static nonmoving ads which are merely a plain image or text, which do not take more than a small portion of screen space as compared to the primary content and which load quickly without interfering with the primary content
Ads that I wish would go away, and which I consider good targets for blocking:
- anything in flash or any other code which wants to execute on *my* machine - anything animated or moving - anything that tries to resize or move my browser window, or alter its controls or appearance in any manner - bloated image files which load slowly, delaying completion of the page load and wasting bandwidth on the connection *I* pay for - ads inserted in such a manner as to obscure, delay, or otherwise make the actual content of a page more difficult to read or see. This would include images without an appropriate size attribute which are served by overloaded and slow servers. - ads which use cookies on *my* drive for any purpose.
This guy nails it on the head. People giving software away for *free* should not be required to provide any warranties. People who choose to use free (as well as Free) software dont want the authors of it bound to requirements that would end up making the software no longer available.
But if you *charge* for software (or more often, just a restricted right to *use* it ) then yes, there should be mandatory minimum liability for faults.
CDROM drives can read the standard CD audio tracks just fine - unless you are using Windows, and you've allowed the CDROM portion of the disc to install its 'special' driver which recognizes the 'specialness' of the disc and doesnt allow you to do so.
Yet another reason to avoid proprietary software and treacherous computing. *I* control what my computer does.
Once the fuckup fairy turns your music collection into digital hash it doesnt matter what format it was originally? It will play for sure on any player?:PPPP
Presumably you paid by credit card - contact your CC company and tell them you want the charge reversed (chargeback), as you never received what you paid for.
If you want to give Yahoo one more chance (I wouldnt) you could call them and *tell* them you were planning on doing this, as often companies will give in rather than have you do that, since they get charged additional fees by their CC processor for that.
And if you want to listen to your music on an *MP3* player (WMA != MP3, AAC != MP3) none of them work, including iTunes. The only way I'd *ever* pay for music online is if it required *no* proprietary software to either download or play, and was offered in a standard format such as actual MP3.
I decry the dilution of the term 'MP3 player' to mean 'portable audio player which also plays proprietary DRM'ed audio'. If I get an MP3 player, it will *only* play MP3, and for an online music service to get my $$, they'll have to offer that actual format.
And no, I'm not waiting for hell to freeze over. I don't listen to music much.
No, I'm saying the rights reserved for the original author/creator of a work should *only* be the right to *sell* copies of the work. Reading someone a book (technology circa 1800) or making copies of video/audio and letting someone else view/listen (equivalent, modern technology) should not be restricted.
If he is doing this entirely for his own use, it is *NOT* copyright infringement.
Personally, I think it is unfortunate that they chose the term 'copy' right, since at the time 'copying' and 'publishing for sale' were effectively the same thing technologically.
Copyright should be renamed (and redesigned, in keeping with today's technology) to allow limited rights to 'publish for profit'. If the intention of today's copyright was translated into yesterdays technology - it would be illegal for one person to read a book to another - each 'recipient' of the story contained in a book would have to have their own 'license'.
Becuase of course no one would ever consider that one person might develop software, and then a user of that software might want to make changes to it, and perhaps contribute to it, right? The 'Users' and 'Developers' never overlap, is that it?
In any case, the GPL doesnt put restrictions on the developer of software that chooses to use the GPL. GPL is a tool, that a developer of software can use, to guarantee certain freedoms to both users of that software, as well as to others who might want to further develop or modify that software, and to prohibit others from enhancing his work and profiting from it without providing those same freedoms.
The GPL does *not* restrict the original developer of a program - the original developer *chooses* to use the GPL (or not, as the case may be)
In this case, the Office 12 format license is incompatible in that it prohibits a developer of software that implements the format from giving users or other developers the freedoms in respect to his software that the GPL license would guarantee.
The GPL was written to guarantee users of software certain freedoms.
The license for the 'Office 12' document format specifically restricts (and requires that authors of software implementing the format restrict) users freedoms in a manner which the GPL does not permit.
Therefore, one cannot write software which can use/read/write the 'Office 12' formats and release it under the GPL while complying with all the terms of the GPL.
And be especially wary of the malicious ignorant. They are too stupid to do it right if they had motive to do so, and they have many motives *not* to do so. (The incumbents, that is)
So you couldnt get out of a 1 year contract for *phone service* if SBC decides to double their prices? Only if the change DSL prices?
You really expect people to have time to sit and *listen* to what I am sure is a half an hour recording before ordering phone service? No, SBC knows full well that no one listens to it, and I doubt they offer any option for you to receive and read a printed copy of it (or if they do, that they dont mention that unless someone specifically asks), and they know full well that a certain portion of people that sign up will be unhappy, and cancel, and that SBC gets to collect this fee which is their way of being 'entitled' to profits even if their service sucks. And regardless of wether they do the bare minimum for it to be *legal* or not, it is still sleazy and underhanded.
And the monopolies I am talking about are the one prior to the 1998 act, and the one prior to the AT&T breakup- where there was *NO* choice for wired phone service, and the companies *were* regulated, and *were* a government guaranteed monopoly. The 1998 act provided just a sliver of an option for there to not be a monopoly, and over the past few years the ILEC's have vastly exaggerated how much 'competition' there is to weasel out of as much regulation as they can, even the very regulation that enables that competition to barely continue to survive. Their view is that *any* competition is a *huge* amount of competition, so of course now its fair to allow them to use their still-existing exclusive control of the wires to blast the newcomers out of business.
MS is also a monopoly, but is held in place wth different pins. They suck, and so does their platform, and while I wouldnt mind them being forced to fully document their 'Office' file formats and all their networking protocols so as to allow for true interoperability with anyone that cared to implement them, I am starting to feel hopeful that MS will be undone anyway. I look for the Massachusets decisions to start the barrel rolling away from MS 'DOC' as the de-facto format for exchanging info.
And yes I know you dont have to use a wired phone, but its the only type of phone that will stay on with no power, and the ILEC's talk out both sides of their mouth. If the subject is about them sharing the copper, they say the copper is obsolete anyway, and that competitors should be forced to build their own network (which they know is economically impossible). Then when the subject is either marketing their services, or regulation of the newcomers, they talk about how only a copper line can provide reliability, and want to force competitiors such as VoIP to provide equivalant service, such as 911.
Im sure as an employee of SBC you either beleive or are required to beleive they are not an evil monopoly, but trust me, they are. And I look forward to holding just as big of a grave-dancing party for SBC as I will for MS.
My point was, are you sure that 'the service not being available yet' is the fault of the newcomer, and not the incumbent dragging their feet on allowing the newcomer access to its facilities? The new competitor is reliant on the incumbent to give it access to and configure a critical portion of its infrastructure - it (the incumbent) could easily promise availability by a certain date, upon with the newcomer relies when advertising, and then fail to do so, or provide the resourse, but have it missing some vital part or configured incorrectly, causing delays.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously didnt get what he was saying. He wasnt looking for hand-holding software - he was bemoaning that any software which wasnt 747-cockpit complex was 'hold-your-hand' - he was bemoaning a lack of sw that doesnt require you to be a photographic scientist, but which doesnt assume you are a drooling moron, either. And I've seen my share of 'drooling moron' software too, most of it with a Microsoft logo on it.
While a podcast is referred to on the article page, the link in the /.summary is in fact a link to an actual ordinary 8Meg MP3 file.
Actually, that distinction is not the key one. The important part is that you do *not* have any pre-existing right to copy a GPL'd program's (or any program's, for that matter) copyrightten source code into *your* program. The GPL, if you choose to accept (all of) its terms, offers you a license to do just that. If you do not like the terms (which are clearly disclosed ahead of time) then you are not required to accept them, and normal copyright law applies.
I'm pretty certain its irrelevant, as the cows and the bulls are penned seperately, and are only put together in pairs, and only at planned times. Since the manpage was a joke anyway, it doesnt matter. (A machine to masturbate bulls may well be useful [and may even already exist], artificial insemination and all that, but I'm sure it would be entirely seperate and entirely different than the cow-milking one)
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutwo rds/cows
I had no problem downloading and playing them with mplayer.
That wasnt the point - the point was that there was never and is not any *guarantee* that a message would be delivered, or even a reliable way to confirm that a message had or had not been delivered, and it was never suitable for critical messages which if not received reliably might cause loss to life, health or money. Yes, email was (and is) still a reasonable way for 'normal office tasks' as long as you choose an email provider that doesnt have a reputation for being a spam sewer - and if you bemoan that you have to choose your provider wisely, compare that with buying a used car or a house, the same scenario applies - let the buyer beware. The only wrongheaded part is blaming the people who are trying to do something about the problem, instead of one's own provider that is making it worse.
*Properly implemented* antispam solutions at least (usually) give a legitimate sender using normal email software an indication that their messages didnt make it through - the recipient mailserver rejects the message with an 5xx SMTP response, and the senders mail server sends them a notice that their messages wasnt delivere Spam filters and systems which just silently drop messages both suffer from the 'false positive with no feedback to the sender' problem. Accept-scan(for spam or viruses)-and-then-bounce, as well as 'challenge-response' systems, both *add* to the problem, by sending as many 'return' messages to invalid addresses and owners of addresses that were forged/faked in the original problem messages.
Note that it is the operators of the servers you wanted to send email *to* that decided to refuse mail from your ISP based on the blacklist. And it would have been *your ISP's* fault for choosing to tolerate spammers as customers, instead of booting them away. If you dont want to use email when the policy is 'we refuse email from ISP's that harbor spammers', then that is your choice. Others want to retain emails usefulness while shunning those individuals and organizations that are willing to permit their resources to be used toward making it useless, and the spammers and spam supporting ISP's have seen to it that only by completely refusing to allow them to play will that ever be possible.
Note that you had other options, which included using your influence as a customer to convince your ISP to do the right thing and adopt a 100% spam-intolerant policy, and continuing to use your ISP for connectivity while, depending on your setup, either using outside email, or relaying your email through an outside server (one you were authorized to use, that is).
The fact is, *recipients* have, and should have, complete control over where they accept mail from, using whatever tools they can - for you, or anyone else, to *demand* that a recipient server accept your message when they would chose not to, based on whatever criteria they feel are appropriate, is ludicrous. In fact if you were to insist on that steadfastly, it might make one think that you supported spammers. Your right to 'frea speach' ends at the SMTP port of someone elses mailserver.
Email was never a viable option for guaranteed delivery of messages. Its fast, convenient, easily archivable, and has many other fantastic uses and benefits, but guaranteed delivery of critical messages has *never* been one of them.
And spamming leeches as well as the negligence of certain software makers is directly the cause of the need for admins of servers to restrict the flood. If it *wasnt* for the blacklists email would already be dead - there would be ten thousand spams for every desirable message, and that would just be in mailboxes of the casual/occasional users - regular users would get far more.
Or, perhaps,
"Users complain about this extra step, and their IT department installs OpenOffice on their PC. Presto, no more extra step"
You leave /usr/ports/ alone - it blows anything ive ever seen in linux away (nothing against linux, but I would love to have a linux system with something comparable to ports, both in the way it works as well as the completeness)
Ads sent by mail are not nearly as objectionable as email/popup type ads.
Spam costs the sender nothing 'each', leading to untargeted blanket sending, and wastes the space and bandwidth of both ISPs and the recipients, to which the spammer provides nothing. They take time and energy to sort through to extract the junk from the real mail, leading to automated systems that can never be 100% accurate, which often lead to lost legitimate mail.
Mailed advertisements, on the other hand, actually cost the advertiser money, both to actually produce and print the peice, as well as to mail it. This causes them to try to target better (although no targetting can be perfect). I would say pretty much all recipients already have trash (or recycling) service, and a small handfull of paper ads being added doesnt affect the cost at all. The revenue from the mass mailers also enables to post office to keep the price for individual letters quite low (magazines and other periodical mail contributes too) - if it wasnt for the mass mailers, it might cost a couple dollars to mail a letter, instead of 39 cents. So there is a benefit all around.
My motivation for blocking ads is the distraction and annoyance factor, and the use of my resources and time for the advertisers (perceived) gain. I think what ads I think should be blocked might give some insight..
Ads that I wouldnt bother blocking:
- static nonmoving ads which are merely a plain image or text, which do not take more than a small portion of screen space as compared to the primary content and which load quickly without interfering with the primary content
Ads that I wish would go away, and which I consider good targets for blocking:
- anything in flash or any other code which wants to execute on *my* machine
- anything animated or moving
- anything that tries to resize or move my browser window, or alter its controls or appearance in any manner
- bloated image files which load slowly, delaying completion of the page load and wasting bandwidth on the connection *I* pay for
- ads inserted in such a manner as to obscure, delay, or otherwise make the actual content of a page more difficult to read or see. This would include images without an appropriate size attribute which are served by overloaded and slow servers.
- ads which use cookies on *my* drive for any purpose.
This guy nails it on the head. People giving software away for *free* should not be required to provide any warranties. People who choose to use free (as well as Free) software dont want the authors of it bound to requirements that would end up making the software no longer available.
But if you *charge* for software (or more often, just a restricted right to *use* it ) then yes, there should be mandatory minimum liability for faults.
CDROM drives can read the standard CD audio tracks just fine - unless you are using Windows, and you've allowed the CDROM portion of the disc to install its 'special' driver which recognizes the 'specialness' of the disc and doesnt allow you to do so.
Yet another reason to avoid proprietary software and treacherous computing. *I* control what my computer does.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html
Once the fuckup fairy turns your music collection into digital hash it doesnt matter what format it was originally? It will play for sure on any player? :PPPP
Presumably you paid by credit card - contact your CC company and tell them you want the charge reversed (chargeback), as you never received what you paid for.
If you want to give Yahoo one more chance (I wouldnt) you could call them and *tell* them you were planning on doing this, as often companies will give in rather than have you do that, since they get charged additional fees by their CC processor for that.
And if you want to listen to your music on an *MP3* player (WMA != MP3, AAC != MP3) none of them work, including iTunes. The only way I'd *ever* pay for music online is if it required *no* proprietary software to either download or play, and was offered in a standard format such as actual MP3.
I decry the dilution of the term 'MP3 player' to mean 'portable audio player which also plays proprietary DRM'ed audio'. If I get an MP3 player, it will *only* play MP3, and for an online music service to get my $$, they'll have to offer that actual format.
And no, I'm not waiting for hell to freeze over. I don't listen to music much.
No, I'm saying the rights reserved for the original author/creator of a work should *only* be the right to *sell* copies of the work. Reading someone a book (technology circa 1800) or making copies of video/audio and letting someone else view/listen (equivalent, modern technology) should not be restricted.
If he is doing this entirely for his own use, it is *NOT* copyright infringement.
Personally, I think it is unfortunate that they chose the term 'copy' right, since at the time 'copying' and 'publishing for sale' were effectively the same thing technologically.
Copyright should be renamed (and redesigned, in keeping with today's technology) to allow limited rights to 'publish for profit'. If the intention of today's copyright was translated into yesterdays technology - it would be illegal for one person to read a book to another - each 'recipient' of the story contained in a book would have to have their own 'license'.
Becuase of course no one would ever consider that one person might develop software, and then a user of that software might want to make changes to it, and perhaps contribute to it, right? The 'Users' and 'Developers' never overlap, is that it?
In any case, the GPL doesnt put restrictions on the developer of software that chooses to use the GPL. GPL is a tool, that a developer of software can use, to guarantee certain freedoms to both users of that software, as well as to others who might want to further develop or modify that software, and to prohibit others from enhancing his work and profiting from it without providing those same freedoms.
The GPL does *not* restrict the original developer of a program - the original developer *chooses* to use the GPL (or not, as the case may be)
In this case, the Office 12 format license is incompatible in that it prohibits a developer of software that implements the format from giving users or other developers the freedoms in respect to his software that the GPL license would guarantee.
Try:
The GPL was written to guarantee users of software certain freedoms.
The license for the 'Office 12' document format specifically restricts (and requires that authors of software implementing the format restrict) users freedoms in a manner which the GPL does not permit.
Therefore, one cannot write software which can use/read/write the 'Office 12' formats and release it under the GPL while complying with all the terms of the GPL.
And be especially wary of the malicious ignorant. They are too stupid to do it right if they had motive to do so, and they have many motives *not* to do so. (The incumbents, that is)
So you couldnt get out of a 1 year contract for *phone service* if SBC decides to double their prices? Only if the change DSL prices?
You really expect people to have time to sit and *listen* to what I am sure is a half an hour recording before ordering phone service? No, SBC knows full well that no one listens to it, and I doubt they offer any option for you to receive and read a printed copy of it (or if they do, that they dont mention that unless someone specifically asks), and they know full well that a certain portion of people that sign up will be unhappy, and cancel, and that SBC gets to collect this fee which is their way of being 'entitled' to profits even if their service sucks. And regardless of wether they do the bare minimum for it to be *legal* or not, it is still sleazy and underhanded.
And the monopolies I am talking about are the one prior to the 1998 act, and the one prior to the AT&T breakup- where there was *NO* choice for wired phone service, and the companies *were* regulated, and *were* a government guaranteed monopoly. The 1998 act provided just a sliver of an option for there to not be a monopoly, and over the past few years the ILEC's have vastly exaggerated how much 'competition' there is to weasel out of as much regulation as they can, even the very regulation that enables that competition to barely continue to survive. Their view is that *any* competition is a *huge* amount of competition, so of course now its fair to allow them to use their still-existing exclusive control of the wires to blast the newcomers out of business.
MS is also a monopoly, but is held in place wth different pins. They suck, and so does their platform, and while I wouldnt mind them being forced to fully document their 'Office' file formats and all their networking protocols so as to allow for true interoperability with anyone that cared to implement them, I am starting to feel hopeful that MS will be undone anyway. I look for the Massachusets decisions to start the barrel rolling away from MS 'DOC' as the de-facto format for exchanging info.
And yes I know you dont have to use a wired phone, but its the only type of phone that will stay on with no power, and the ILEC's talk out both sides of their mouth. If the subject is about them sharing the copper, they say the copper is obsolete anyway, and that competitors should be forced to build their own network (which they know is economically impossible). Then when the subject is either marketing their services, or regulation of the newcomers, they talk about how only a copper line can provide reliability, and want to force competitiors such as VoIP to provide equivalant service, such as 911.
Im sure as an employee of SBC you either beleive or are required to beleive they are not an evil monopoly, but trust me, they are. And I look forward to holding just as big of a grave-dancing party for SBC as I will for MS.
My point was, are you sure that 'the service not being available yet' is the fault of the newcomer, and not the incumbent dragging their feet on allowing the newcomer access to its facilities? The new competitor is reliant on the incumbent to give it access to and configure a critical portion of its infrastructure - it (the incumbent) could easily promise availability by a certain date, upon with the newcomer relies when advertising, and then fail to do so, or provide the resourse, but have it missing some vital part or configured incorrectly, causing delays.