I'm Not A Lawyer, but I believe trademarks "belong" to the first entity to use them in interstate commerce. The FSF was shipping GPL'ed software WAY back before Windows. That, and while I've never seen a "(TM)" or "®" on FSF software, using the name of a reasonably-well known product (in this case, a software liscence) as a trademark of your own in the same field just seems to be asking for trouble.
That said, I agree, the FSF needs a new logo in this style and purpose.
The Capital One people are jerks as far as their website goes. They won't change it until it has a negative financial impact on them, so I encourage people to close accounts with them with an explicit note that their website accesibility in less-popular browsers is an issue that they should correct.
Blocking Moz had some rational, albeit not a very impressive one, when it didn't respect "don't remember passwords on this page" requests. Now that it does, blocking it is just ignorant.
What are the chances people are going to be using IE 30 years from now versus something that originated from the Mozilla codebase? You could make the counter-argument that reasonably small, fast computers weren't even around in the 1970's, and that speculating on what softwarewill be around in the 2030's is an exercise in futility.
My prediction: Neither Mozilla nor IE will be around in 2032 (I might search around the Future Exchange for that, although I don't know what I'll access it with if I'm right and 2032 rolls around - a telnet client, I guess).
I refer you to Dictionary.com, which actually brings up the very subject you mentioned. Note that while it states that "78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in [a manner to denote coincidence]", that means that slightly more than 1 in 5 of their faculty think this usage is just fine, or have no objections to it.
Furthermore, it is no coincidence that we read this story on Slashdot: they post stories here all the time, and people read them. What is "contrary to what was expected" is the number of levels all talking about essentially the same thing. Therefore, this story is ironic, because you REALLY wouldn't expect it.
I'm surprised no one has pointed out how ironic this story is on/.
We're reading a story on a niche news site about a story on a popular news site about a story in a major newspaper (albeit in China) taken from a site that lampoons the news.
I was wondering if K-Parts was the KDE answer to GNOME's bonobo, so I decided to do a google search. I found an article, also on the IBM site (but which does not require registration), which mentions CORBA, so I assume it is. The "advantages vs. disadvantages" section seems very interesting.
The hypothetical situation given deals with a single individual giving another individual a single CD[-R] of binaries for personal use on a non-commercial basis. It's unlikely there's "shipping" going on, and location is hardly the issue. There are no stores, companies, or businesses explicitly mentioned in this example.
Agreed. While the FSF is technically right here, the example is silly. Are any software authors, even the FSF, really going to sue someone for giving binaries as a birthday present to a friend without source? For that matter, what cheapskate would give free software as a gift? This makes no sense even keeping the gratis vs. libre issues in mind.
I dare say that this example may highlight a situation where the GPL needs to be updated. Binary-only distribution to personal aquaintances of unmodified versions should be perfectly fine.
the Japanese love of simulations games ("Go by Train", and "Bass Fishing")
Hey! I still remember playing a Bass Fishing sim on my 16-bit Sega Gen. in the US, and it rocked (even if it was a bit unrealistic)! Don't forget sims that are ultrapopular here, such as the "Deer Hunter" series, and its various spin-offs and clones.
"Go by Train," however, sounds like it wouldn't fly, or chug along, overseas.
There once was the MPAA and things didn't work out their way. Their copy-controls failed, so those people, they jailed. 'cause they didn't believe in fair play.
"[This] is not an interest that is 'more fundamental' than the First Amendment right to freedom of speech or even on equal footing with the national security interests or other vital governmental interests that have previously been found insufficient to justify a prior restraint."
Seriously, since when did the ??AA's become more powerful or important than national security? Who put them on their pedestal? Who died and gave them the monarchy?
Just shows you where this country's priorities are. Trading freedom for security is bad enough. Trading freedom for entertainment is disgusting.
Solaris saved you in your workplace, and yet you treated it like garbage. And that's what you are, the King of Refuse. So bow down to SlashDot if you want.
Dang funny, my complements AC. Is that a copy of the "altered" Slashdot homepage? I can't quite tell which message this post is talking about. Also, complements to chrisd for an interesting headline and story. AOL-keyword-style systems might have made sense years ago, but, as they say in the Dark Tower series, the world has moved on.
And no, inheritance of any sort, in the broadest sense of the term imaginable, does not count. This eliminates gambling, gifts, death of a family member, marriages in certain states and under certain conditions, etc.
You could argue that some people became rich "overnight" when some sort of asset they owned went up dramatically in value. Unless they just started investing and made a miracle trade, such an event would occur within the context of a larger plan, hence they would have really become rich over a longer period of time.
Of course, if you do know a way to make a couple million in the next twenty-four hours starting with only nominal capital, I'd love to hear it. SW needs a new pair of sandals, and the EFF could always use another donation.:)
4. People who have lots of cash generally made it by focussing on short-term, tangible goals. Therefore, they are not likely to spend money on space research.
Sounds more like a consumer mindset to me. After all, in your own model, it's this attitude which is pushing these people to spend on something with no solid possibility of future finacial return.
Everything I've ever read on becoming rich recommends relatively long-term planning over instant gratification, be it a liberal plan (relatively short-term trades in the stock market over a longer period of time, real-estate investing, riskier business venues such MLM, etc) or a conservative plan (long-term investing starting with high-return items moving into lower-risk venues as you age, maybe starting a a more traditional business, so on and so forth). Heck, even get-rich-quick schemes usually don't promise becoming a billionaire overnight.
The rich might enjoy being able to do more things now instead of later, but I don't think there's any evidence that the majority of the rich "got rich quick."
Free software is built on a pre-existing cultural norm - ie hacking - that doesn't exist for these other media.
Maybe it should.
What is hacking? Eric S Raymond has an interesting definition, but I don't think that's what you mean. I think you're talking about the "sharing code" aspect of free and open-source software; this is the sense in which RMS was referred to as "The Last Hacker"
Slashdot has had other stories of people sharing things other than software -- stories, music, etc (note that I am not speaking of Napsteresque file swapping, but of artists who choose to make their work available). Perhaps I am an optimist, since I know of no scientific evidence of this, but I believe that sharing and helping one another are things that people do naturally. Isn't that what society is about? Isn't society all about individuals and small groups mingling together to improve the quality of life for those people? There are different lines of thought regarding internal structure and philosophy which are beyond this discussion, but I have difficulty imagining anyone other than a hard-core collectivist disagreeing with me.
I've had arguments with aquaintances about this. They say (I kid you not) that a libertarian philosophy will never work because almost all people are evil and greedy, that the government must step in and do something (it's interesting that they disagree about what exactly the goverment must do - a liberal, by which I mean a specific liberal and not liberals in general, says that we must redistribute the wealth in the US, and a conservative says that we need a strong military to defend the country, but I disgress). That's not the world I live in. The existance of NGOs and non-profit organizations proves that people will rally behind the causes they believe in, be it making free software, helping people, or stopping torture. It's not a world in which private colleges and universities thrive on grants and donations well out of proportion to their government-funded counterparts. In the real world, people actually do show compassion; while there are certainly heartless people in the world, there are not as many as those projecting friends of mine would have you believe.
What's this got to do with the current topic? If people are willing to share physical property, intellectual property should be even less of a leap. It is therefore a shame that the greedy few, the MPAA, the RIAA, the BSA, and their kin, are placed as an example of what is considered normal. Although it has been bought by an RIAA member, plenty of artists still have their music on MP3.com gratis. A precious few even have music which is libre.
Sharing is everywhere. You just have to know where to look.
Then why not throw out the patent system outright? Either there's enough political power to do so or there isn't (and there isn't). No need trying to take the expensive, less effective, wayward route; that's one of the reasons our government is as screwed up as it is.
And it is high time that the USPTO is made legally responsible for damages caused by patents that are succesfully revoked.
What do you suggest doing to the USPTO? If you throw the people who inspect patents in jail, or fine them, you'll end up with fewer people reviewing patents, making the problem worse, not better. Fining the office as a whole wouldn't help either - the USPTO would either end up with a reduced budget, hence leading once again to forementioned problem, or their budget would expand appropraitely, increasing the federal budget in turn and raising taxes and/or the public debt.
More public exposure for Mr. Kellner's ideas would be most helpful. As the previous story mentioned, he is our "friend" due to his downright draconian opinions. Any guesses on how long it will take Copyleft or Thinkgeek to do something like this? I know 2600 used to have an anti-Jack-Valenti shirt.
A USENET newsgroup cannot be slashdotted, although it could get a flood of posts from the people coming off of/., which could lead to problems. Theoretically, if a newserver had enough Slashdot readers using it, the server could crash or become unavailable from everyone rushing from/. to comment on the group, however, the newsgroup would still be available on other newservers.
See http://www.osdn.com/terms.shtml to see what I mean by "verbose." It might not be a 1040-GvMny, but it isn't "don't do anything stupid" either.
Why is so much attention given to EULA/*PL's, and not website TOS's?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm Not A Lawyer, but I believe trademarks "belong" to the first entity to use them in interstate commerce. The FSF was shipping GPL'ed software WAY back before Windows. That, and while I've never seen a "(TM)" or "®" on FSF software, using the name of a reasonably-well known product (in this case, a software liscence) as a trademark of your own in the same field just seems to be asking for trouble.
That said, I agree, the FSF needs a new logo in this style and purpose.
The Capital One people are jerks as far as their website goes. They won't change it until it has a negative financial impact on them, so I encourage people to close accounts with them with an explicit note that their website accesibility in less-popular browsers is an issue that they should correct.
Blocking Moz had some rational, albeit not a very impressive one, when it didn't respect "don't remember passwords on this page" requests. Now that it does, blocking it is just ignorant.
Heh, someone posted a link to the exact same comic 13 minutes after you did: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=34847&cid=376
Pi equals 3!.
What are the chances people are going to be using IE 30 years from now versus something that originated from the Mozilla codebase?
You could make the counter-argument that reasonably small, fast computers weren't even around in the 1970's, and that speculating on what softwarewill be around in the 2030's is an exercise in futility.
My prediction: Neither Mozilla nor IE will be around in 2032 (I might search around the Future Exchange for that, although I don't know what I'll access it with if I'm right and 2032 rolls around - a telnet client, I guess).
I refer you to Dictionary.com, which actually brings up the very subject you mentioned. Note that while it states that "78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in [a manner to denote coincidence]", that means that slightly more than 1 in 5 of their faculty think this usage is just fine, or have no objections to it.
Furthermore, it is no coincidence that we read this story on Slashdot: they post stories here all the time, and people read them. What is "contrary to what was expected" is the number of levels all talking about essentially the same thing. Therefore, this story is ironic, because you REALLY wouldn't expect it.
I'm surprised no one has pointed out how ironic this story is on /.
We're reading a story on a niche news site about a story on a popular news site about a story in a major newspaper (albeit in China) taken from a site that lampoons the news.
I was wondering if K-Parts was the KDE answer to GNOME's bonobo, so I decided to do a google search. I found an article, also on the IBM site (but which does not require registration), which mentions CORBA, so I assume it is. The "advantages vs. disadvantages" section seems very interesting.
Jbn-o,
The hypothetical situation given deals with a single individual giving another individual a single CD[-R] of binaries for personal use on a non-commercial basis. It's unlikely there's "shipping" going on, and location is hardly the issue. There are no stores, companies, or businesses explicitly mentioned in this example.
"Are any software authors" should read "any free/open-source authors"
Darn it, that's what happens when I skip around while editing.
Agreed. While the FSF is technically right here, the example is silly. Are any software authors, even the FSF, really going to sue someone for giving binaries as a birthday present to a friend without source? For that matter, what cheapskate would give free software as a gift? This makes no sense even keeping the gratis vs. libre issues in mind.
I dare say that this example may highlight a situation where the GPL needs to be updated. Binary-only distribution to personal aquaintances of unmodified versions should be perfectly fine.
Hey! I still remember playing a Bass Fishing sim on my 16-bit Sega Gen. in the US, and it rocked (even if it was a bit unrealistic)! Don't forget sims that are ultrapopular here, such as the "Deer Hunter" series, and its various spin-offs and clones.
"Go by Train," however, sounds like it wouldn't fly, or chug along, overseas.
Seriously, since when did the ??AA's become more powerful or important than national security? Who put them on their pedestal? Who died and gave them the monarchy?
Just shows you where this country's priorities are. Trading freedom for security is bad enough. Trading freedom for entertainment is disgusting.
Dang funny, my complements AC. Is that a copy of the "altered" Slashdot homepage? I can't quite tell which message this post is talking about. Also, complements to chrisd for an interesting headline and story. AOL-keyword-style systems might have made sense years ago, but, as they say in the Dark Tower series, the world has moved on.
That's old news. I thought you were suppose to know obvious things like that.
Just as a recap for those who don't know, california non-profit directors are suppose to have access to this type of information (previous
How?
:)
And no, inheritance of any sort, in the broadest sense of the term imaginable, does not count. This eliminates gambling, gifts, death of a family member, marriages in certain states and under certain conditions, etc.
You could argue that some people became rich "overnight" when some sort of asset they owned went up dramatically in value. Unless they just started investing and made a miracle trade, such an event would occur within the context of a larger plan, hence they would have really become rich over a longer period of time.
Of course, if you do know a way to make a couple million in the next twenty-four hours starting with only nominal capital, I'd love to hear it. SW needs a new pair of sandals, and the EFF could always use another donation.
Sounds more like a consumer mindset to me. After all, in your own model, it's this attitude which is pushing these people to spend on something with no solid possibility of future finacial return.
Everything I've ever read on becoming rich recommends relatively long-term planning over instant gratification, be it a liberal plan (relatively short-term trades in the stock market over a longer period of time, real-estate investing, riskier business venues such MLM, etc) or a conservative plan (long-term investing starting with high-return items moving into lower-risk venues as you age, maybe starting a a more traditional business, so on and so forth). Heck, even get-rich-quick schemes usually don't promise becoming a billionaire overnight.
The rich might enjoy being able to do more things now instead of later, but I don't think there's any evidence that the majority of the rich "got rich quick."
I'm curious to know how career predictions from 1992 held up. 1982? 1972?
Maybe it should.
What is hacking? Eric S Raymond has an interesting definition, but I don't think that's what you mean. I think you're talking about the "sharing code" aspect of free and open-source software; this is the sense in which RMS was referred to as "The Last Hacker"
Slashdot has had other stories of people sharing things other than software -- stories, music, etc (note that I am not speaking of Napsteresque file swapping, but of artists who choose to make their work available). Perhaps I am an optimist, since I know of no scientific evidence of this, but I believe that sharing and helping one another are things that people do naturally. Isn't that what society is about? Isn't society all about individuals and small groups mingling together to improve the quality of life for those people? There are different lines of thought regarding internal structure and philosophy which are beyond this discussion, but I have difficulty imagining anyone other than a hard-core collectivist disagreeing with me.
I've had arguments with aquaintances about this. They say (I kid you not) that a libertarian philosophy will never work because almost all people are evil and greedy, that the government must step in and do something (it's interesting that they disagree about what exactly the goverment must do - a liberal, by which I mean a specific liberal and not liberals in general, says that we must redistribute the wealth in the US, and a conservative says that we need a strong military to defend the country, but I disgress). That's not the world I live in. The existance of NGOs and non-profit organizations proves that people will rally behind the causes they believe in, be it making free software, helping people, or stopping torture. It's not a world in which private colleges and universities thrive on grants and donations well out of proportion to their government-funded counterparts. In the real world, people actually do show compassion; while there are certainly heartless people in the world, there are not as many as those projecting friends of mine would have you believe.
What's this got to do with the current topic? If people are willing to share physical property, intellectual property should be even less of a leap. It is therefore a shame that the greedy few, the MPAA, the RIAA, the BSA, and their kin, are placed as an example of what is considered normal. Although it has been bought by an RIAA member, plenty of artists still have their music on MP3.com gratis. A precious few even have music which is libre.
Sharing is everywhere. You just have to know where to look.
Then why not throw out the patent system outright? Either there's enough political power to do so or there isn't (and there isn't). No need trying to take the expensive, less effective, wayward route; that's one of the reasons our government is as screwed up as it is.
And it is high time that the USPTO is made legally responsible for damages caused by patents that are succesfully revoked.
What do you suggest doing to the USPTO? If you throw the people who inspect patents in jail, or fine them, you'll end up with fewer people reviewing patents, making the problem worse, not better. Fining the office as a whole wouldn't help either - the USPTO would either end up with a reduced budget, hence leading once again to forementioned problem, or their budget would expand appropraitely, increasing the federal budget in turn and raising taxes and/or the public debt.
More public exposure for Mr. Kellner's ideas would be most helpful. As the previous story mentioned, he is our "friend" due to his downright draconian opinions. Any guesses on how long it will take Copyleft or Thinkgeek to do something like this? I know 2600 used to have an anti-Jack-Valenti shirt.
n ti-Kellner
Also: There is an anti-Kellner Open Directory Section. It seems rather sparse though. http://www.dmoz.org/Arts/Television/Networks/WB/A
The sites mention the cancelation of the Animaniacs, but nothing too serious.
A USENET newsgroup cannot be slashdotted, although it could get a flood of posts from the people coming off of /., which could lead to problems. Theoretically, if a newserver had enough Slashdot readers using it, the server could crash or become unavailable from everyone rushing from /. to comment on the group, however, the newsgroup would still be available on other newservers.
See http://www.osdn.com/terms.shtml to see what I mean by "verbose." It might not be a 1040-GvMny, but it isn't "don't do anything stupid" either.
Why is so much attention given to EULA/*PL's, and not website TOS's?