No. The GPL is nothing like an EULA. The GPL is a copyright permission license. An EULA is an END USER license agreement. The GPL covers only distribution.
EULA's most commonly try to contractually remove rights from the end user. Rights that they _do_ have under copyright law.
The GPL grants rights to someone wishing to distribute software _to_ end users (or anyone else). Rights that they do _not_ have under copyright law.
They are wildly different things.
Re:What, no editorial?
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 1
"The problem comes, however, in a commercial environment - those which need the support and for whom this will introduce a huge increase in costing."
No, not really.
Enterprise customers already should have been on the enterprise versions. The old Redhat 7.3-9.0 are pretty much exactly the same as Fedora; not very stable, rapid development, short lifecycle platforms.
If you're ok with that and want to run your enterprise systems on such a platform you even get the updates for free now.
So, Redhat has clarified that they're not taking enterprise level responsibility for those distributions, nor making enterprise level commitments to their lifetime. Well, gee, they never have. It's not a major change apart from the price drop and explicit 'not commercially supported'.
Now, if you're an enterprise customer who's been lazy and cheap and are on the old short-lifecycle products it may force you to reevaluate what you actually want. Are you ok with upgrading every year (which you technically should have been doing already, but probably tried to ignore)? Or do you want a long-term stable platform?
Sure, the long term platform costs money, but frankly I can understand that.
Many claim that the OSS community updates and releases fixes for free software, so it doesnt cost Redhat much to provide these fixes.
That's not entirely true, however. The OSS community releases fixes _for the latest available version_. That means you _have_ to upgrade or backport the fix yourself.
Redhat, on the other hand, (most often) backports and releases updates for the exact version you're already running, which makes it much better for enterprise level stability.
That kind of fix releases consumes resources, but it also gives the enterprise level sysadmin the ability to comfortably deploy patches more or less automatically, without breaking installations. A level of comfort many sysadmins have been unable to find even in the other large commercial unix vendors, and which saves an amount of work easily on the level of what the actual RedHat support contracts costs.
There are multiple sources, read up on for example: this one.. There we're talking error rates in the percentages.
Like I said, biometrics work very well when you have few-few datasets like employees trying to get into a workplace with a database of a few thousands. Or ten suspects and one fingerprint. Or even ten suspects and a 100K database of prints.
It's when you have a 100K database of fingerprints and compare to millions of passengers that the laws of statistics play havoc with your accuracy rates. You dont even have to fool the systems, the builtin failure rate will cause huge numbers of false positives, and as the databases expand it will only get worse.
I dont think badly about the US; having lived there for an extended period, and visited many times and having many american friends I rather like it. I may not like the current direction of the country, nor the actions of the current administration, but that's not the country itself, and most definitely not the people.
But with this, when the chance to get detained, jailed, expelled, or whatever when you get misidentified is in the range of single digit percentages, the risk simply isnt worth it. While I hope the security people would go to some length to verify you're not who the system says you are, I wont depend on that. With the rates they say they're getting of 'people travelling under false identities' I'm wondering if they're always bothering to check. False identity or false positive?
The politicians have been sold snake oil by the biometrics industry. And innocent travellers will be paying the price for that.
I'll prefer not to take my chances. I'm saddened that that may mean I cant visit the US for a long time (until the requirement is removed or biometrics improve to the point that the chance gets significantly better, which will take decades). But there's not much I can do about it.
"In that particular instance that I linked to above, the choice given was stark: if you go to that country, follow the rules *they* impose on your visit, or don't go. Simple as that."
Indeed. I'm choosing the dont go alternative.
"It's not like fingerprinting you is really a big deal in itself, especially if you don't intend staying on in the US. However, the message that this sends out very clearly is that the country no longer welcomes visitors."
It's not really a big deal. Unfortunately, while I can vouch for myself not being in whatever databases the prints are run against, I cant vouch for the other several thousands of people with prints similar enough to mine to trigger a match.
Biometrics, while extremely good for small sample comparisons, absolutely suck for many-to-many comparisons.
So, while the print itself isnt a big deal, the chance of getting mistakenly identified as a criminal is. And as that chance falls into the range of better than one in a thousand, in my opinion it just isnt worth it to visit the US anymore. I'll take my class, workshop, tradeshow and tourist visits somewhere more welcoming.
"Based on the current copyright laws any "copy" that you make, not matter what form it takes, is still covered under the copyright and therefore the property of the copyright holder."
No, not even close. The copy is not in any way or form the property of the copyright holder, nor is the original.
The limited right of being the only one allowed to grant permission for copying is what is infringed.
The sale of copyrighted material is in not in itself a licensing of rights. While software companies attempt to enforce such a 'licensing', that is done through contracts that may, or may not, be enforcable depending on your local laws. CD's, music, or books are (most commonly) not sold with an attached license.
"But that does not give anyone the right to steal IP from people who own it."
It is not 'theft' any more than someone camping on your lawn without permission is 'theft'. It's not legal, but it's a violation of a government granted temporary limited right to control copying, not theft.
"Some of the same people that act like stealing music is justified because of the "evil" record company's behavior would probably vehmently argue for the defense of the GPL were it to be violated."
It's not theft.
Even so, there's quite a difference between people making personal copies (of GPL software or music) and mass copying for profit in violation of someones copyright, which makes it possible to argue both sides with consistent logic. I dont think you'll find many people arguing that mass copying copyrighted material and selling it without permission should be legal.
The GPL violations that cause vehement arguing fall into the category of mass violations for profit. That would be comparable with someone setting up their own distribution chain and selling CD's with material they havent been granted permission to copy.
If someone gets caught sharing GPL software on Kazaa or DirectConnect, I think you'll find the level of outrage to be quite mellow.
Frankly, I think 'cable' as it is today will be killed off by then, and replaced with just internet connections.
The way I'd like to see it working, you could order content from media brokers. The programming providers may want to keep a certain release schedule, so if you subscribe to, for example, Star Trek, 24, or whatever the content will get downloaded to your media server at release time, and you'll be able to watch it when you want (but earliest at release time). Repeat for movies, news, music, etc.
It'll take a while, but eventually I think that's the next step in the evolution of media.
Of course, there are some industries I wouldnt want to own stock in as that change occurs.
"Honestly, out of the 100 channels you get, how many do you spend more than a fraction of a second surfing past? I probably only watch 20% of the channels I get."
And, honestly, how many percent of the programming on those channels do you watch? So, why should we have to pay for the rest of the crap that's on?
Why not just skip the middle men and just buy the content we want?
Channels? Unbundle the friggin programming already. Why should I have to pay full price for a channel when I'm interested in 2% of their content?
Re:Have not yet found life on Mars...so ...
on
Mars Terraforming Debate
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"One day we will all move to mars, and use Earth as a big garbage dump..."
Well, strike that 'all' and replace with 'some select few'.
The logistics of evacuating a planet are simply near impossible. At our current population level you'd have to transport more than 1.7 million people per day, every day, for a decade. As we're rather unlikely to reach that orbital boost capacity in a very long time, if ever, the vast majority is stuck, no matter how many planets we have.
So, while your plan is nice, I suspect the massive majority of stragglers will object to the trashdumps and corpse pollution.
"If you simple let them be, someone will eventually come along and do something better."
Sure.
"By allowing Microsoft to go along their merry way, they will stop being innovative and then superior products will begin to overtake the giant."
Nope.
Anticompetetive practices means you are preventing this from happening. Superior products cannot overtake a monopolist engaging in anticompetetive practices simply because the monopolist has enough market control to prevent them from successfully doing so, no matter how superior the new products are. The monopolist can engage in anything from price dumping and product tying (as everyone is _forced_ to pay for the bundled products in Windows, they'll get their R&D costs back however much they spend on the R&D, and everyone interested in the competitors product will have to pay MS either way), to intimidation of sales channels (ship their product with your new sales and your price on Windows will double).
No competitor, no matter how innovative, can successfully compete against a monopolist engaging in anticompetetive practices. That's why we have competition regulation.
"The problem is that AMD and Intel custom design their chips to perform better at different tasks/instructions. Then there is the problem of compilers. Was the SpecIntBase compiled with AMD and/or Intel specific instructions? Which versions?"
If they can get a better score on SPEC by using another compiler, go right ahead. You're meant to compile the spec suite for the computer you're testing anyway.
Wether or not specific applications take new features into account is really not relevant to baseline system benchmarking. That one is, as always, something the customer has to take up with his application provider and research himself.
There was a bad batch for _several years_, they knew about it and didnt fix the problem, keeping producing the bad drives and selling them.
A bad batch is acceptable, I can live with it and eat the cost and pain of replacement. Everyone has bad batches and I have backups.
But dont expect me to trust devices that have a history of coverups. How do I know they've fixed it now, and are not still going to keep producing crap, selling it to me and 'doing the market spin' to deal with the actual problem instead?
This is not a simple bad batch issue. This is a trust issue, and when you sell devices you know to be broken for an extended period, you have no trust anymore.
I've gotten burned enough by the deathstar disks to stay away from them completely now. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 5 times, well, that makes me really annoyed with myself and I'm just not going through the pain of disk replacements due to falling for that one _again_. RMA is all fine and nice, but the returned disks cant be trusted either.
They probably are more stable with better temperatures, but I'm not investing in climate control just because one manufacturer has serious quality issues. They should be able to function when climate is within specs.
Of course, coincidentally, 27.75 days sounds approximately like the MTBF of the deathstars.
"Effictive? Maybe. Probably more than current methods."
It would be even worse if it was effective. Imagine the first time some joined corps get hit by a distributed reflection DOS attack and their little vigilante group of automated systems take out CNN, AOL, Yahoo, Google, etc in the counterstrike.
The biggest BS part with these taxes is that the rightful owners of the actual pirated material arent the ones getting the money.
Statistics have shown that the _vast_ majority of pirated material on the net is pr0n. The pr0n industry should step up and demand they get their fair massive majority share of this money.
This thriving and vibrant economic culture has driven the point of internet commerce, been largely responsible for the adoption of high speed internet and has brought content online when the RIAA and MPAA has been dragged kicking and screaming into the new century. Their valuable and innovative intellectual property, if anyones, deserves to recieve a fair share of the money from these 'piracy' taxes.
"He compares his fight with Linux supporters to the time when his family caught thieves stealing cattle from their ranch in Utah."
From Darls current actions I suspect that what actually happened was that Darls family figured out they couldnt live on the one poor mishandled cow they had, so they sued the neighbours, claiming the neighbours cattle were actually theirs (because their cow had one dark night given birth to several thousand fully grown cattle who had then snuck into the neighbours ranch), and then went on to threatening with suing anyone eating beef unless they paid Darls family.
At least, then it would be a more comparable story.
"Mail servers could accept 'free' mail from each other, perhaps. ISP A and ISP B each know each others policies regarding relaying and have some faith that they are making sure customers are not abusing their respective systems. Well these two companies whitelist each others mail servers and the client is not asked to perform a calculation."
So, how does this differ from using RBL's or simply basing all mail reception off whitelists? You cant trust a relay server to have enforced the wait anyway.
"You're a mail server hosted inside of an AOL IP block? You're giving me a 100+ digit prime for every email you even speculate thinking about sending, bitch."
So just block any AOL IP today (or if you wanna let a few through, set a limit on the number of untrusted mails per day). You'll end up having to differentiate between legit AOL IP block mail servers and the spam hosts wether you do any calculation or not. You might as well skip the calculation part and just use one of the many available methods for differentiating the legit from the illicit ones today. It's not the calculating part that does the difference, it's the explicit trust that does it. The calculation part is just a silly obfuscation of the actual issue, which is unlimited trust that any mail server is a legit mail server.
Re:Cha ching, reloaded.
on
Gates on Spam
·
· Score: 1
"That way, spammers HAVE to perform the expensive computation, which significantly slows their mass-mailing efforts."
No they dont. They relay their mail via a server that doesnt require the calculations.
So then we dont trust servers that dont require the calculations? Oh, wait, that sounds just like RBL's...
Ideas like this are pointless and just obfuscate the problem. I'm sure it would slow down the outlook viruses, but frankly, so would adding a simple delay to outlook. It wont do shit for spamming.
There is only one single certain solution to spamming in the end (disregarding 'smart' filtering), and that is opt-in mail reception. Anything else is simply obfuscating the issue and trying to get people to pay for a solution that basically requires opt-in mail reception to be effective, which is pointless as the actual opt-in would be what solves the issue anyway.
"Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager."
Enlightenment had that back in 97-98 some time.My current pager in Gnome does too, it's just not turned on by default (I presume it's considered resource intensive or something).
"For instance, with 4 virtual desktops, they describe a scaled view where each desktop is essentially 1/4 of the screen."
In other words, a really big pager. Many pagers support resizing so nope... no invention there either (not that I see how resizing a window could be considered an invention (except, of course, the USPTO appears to exist in Bizarro world a lot of the time)).
"So there is a risk only if the GPL does not fulfill all of the Apache License's requirements. This is what is meant by the term "GPL compatibility": that a license contains only requirements that are also fulfilled by the GPL, so it is possible to distribute that code under the GPL."
"The Apache License 2.0 contains a patent termination clause that might also affect the use of the program."
You're right, of course, it works both ways. But wether or not it's possible to fulfill the terms of the GPL depends on the iffiness of the patent termination clause. Either the Apache licensers have to say (and write) straight out that the Apache code can be distributed under the terms of the GPL, no ifs or buts about it (and no patent termination clause), as an alternative to the apache license, or the problem will arise the first time someone gets annoyed by joined distribution of GPL and Apache licensed code.
The GPL gets close to the Apache license in its own restrictions on distributing patented code, but I'm not sure it would be a 100% overlap (the Apache license may terminate rights in some circumstance the GPL would not), and any restriction beyond the GPL renders the joined distribution dubious.
It's so very very close to compatibility, but it's so very very close on the wrong side that I wouldnt bet on it.
"OK, so Jim sues everyone for distributing GPLed code under the GPL?"
Together with, and linked to, non-GPL compatible code. Which you're not allowed to under the GPL. Which means they wouldnt be be distributing the GPL code according to the terms the GPL.
However, often it's not about the software ending up better, it's about it ending up different.
Take, for example, a printer driver box with BSD code. Say the BSD code had an annoying bug that caused the lpd to hang once a day. Now, that got fixed in the BSD code as soon as it became apparent.
But for the buyers of that printer driver box it does them no good that they can get the fix in the main tree; they cant run that code on the printer box anyway.
The original code remaining free sometimes isnt good enough. As I would personally be annoyed if users got stung from a bug of mine when I would in such a case be powerless to help them, I tend to prefer GPL or LGPL licensing.
And as I've been on the recieving end of a 'no, we're not gonna fix that' from a large software company where originally BSD licensed code was involved that I could have fixed myself had I had the code, I know how unfun that is.
Because what the Apache license says isnt what is at issue. The Apache license could claim GPL compatiblity until it turns blue, but as long as the GPL isnt compatible with it you cant distribute GPL code together with, and linked to it.
Say John writes some Apache licensed code, and Jim writes some GPL covered code. Then Joe comes along, takes Jim's code, writes an Apache module that includes Jim's code (after all, the Apache license says it's ok). Joe's module becomes popular and gets included in the big distributions.
At that point, however, Jim gets an offer he cant refuse from our darling Darl, and promptly sues every Linux distributor he can think of for copyright infringement since he doesnt consider the GPL terms on distributing his code fulfilled.
IBM is claiming in the 6th counterclaim that IBM has rights to GPL code that SCO has engaged in distributing. IBM claims that SCO has breached the GPL, and thus has lost its right to distribute, and wants SCO's rights to distribute under the GPL license to be declared as being terminated.
IBM needs a declaration that SCO is not in complicance with the GPL as that is the only thing that allows SCO to distribute copyrighted material (to lay the ground for counterclaim 8 ).
Counterclaim 7 regarding promissory estoppel is, as far as I can tell, related to SCO's attempt to claim rights to copyrighted material it has agreed to by the terms of the GPL not to try to enforce. In most GPL cases it wouldnt be relevant, but as SCO tries to claim rights to IBM code it has distributed itself under the terms of the GPL, and brought action against IBM on those claims despite its agreement not to, it is relevant here.
And, of course, then you have counterclaim 8 which is the main point, claims of past, current and intent of future copyright violations.
I see nothing in IBM's claims that says anything but what I've said.
"Go to Cem Kaner's siteand you'll see that the newest proposals for additions to the Uniform Commercial Code are contained within UCITA. The Code deals with contractual provisions for software - what you can and cannot put in the license."
The UCITA is irrelevant in this case; contractual provisions for software applies when you wish to limit what the recepient of the software can do. The GPL places no restrictions at all on the recepient. When you receive GPL software you're not agreeing to refrain from anything.
The vast majority of software licenses do not work that way. They place restrictions or attempt to place restrictions on the rights of the user, and the UCITA, as far as I can recall, is intended to govern those restrictions.
The GPL covers _only_ distribution. That is covered by copyright law. By default, as I'm sure you're very well aware of, you cannot distribute someone elses copyrighted material without permission. The GPL is what grants that permission.
"If a license is involved, the breach of the license is what would make CONTINUED (NOT PAST !) use of the work a copyright violation as of the date of the violation of the license."
But _USE_ of the work is not covered by the GPL. And continued, past, or indeed _any_ distribution is by default copyright violation unless you have obtained permission.
"The nice thing is that you DO NOT NEED TO HAVE REGISTERED YOUR COPYRIGHT to bring an action based upon a license violation. Why? BECAUSE THE LEGAL ELEMENTS DO NOT REQUIRE IT."
You cannot bring a contractual action for a 'GPL license violation'. There is nothing a recepient can do with the software that they're not allowed to do (except such things that are forbidden under copyright law, like distribution).
"Why people try to describe the GPL as "not a contract" is beyond me - you WANT the GPL to be a contract so you can ENFORCE IT IN COURT."
Well, if it contained any terms that would need enforcing, indeed. The thing is, it doesnt;
GPL Snippet: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."
I know you're not making this stuff up off the top of your head, and I understand you are very well versed in the issues of various forms of intellectual property.
But I'm not making this stuff up off the top of my head either, and I think you're a bit misled by how software licenses usually work.
I think you are right about part of the GPL tho, as there actually is one part of the GPL that would not be governed by copyright law only, and that is the warranty disclaimers. They're a bit beside the point for enforcement tho.
Slashdot Mirror
No. The GPL is nothing like an EULA. The GPL is a copyright permission license. An EULA is an END USER license agreement. The GPL covers only distribution.
EULA's most commonly try to contractually remove rights from the end user. Rights that they _do_ have under copyright law.
The GPL grants rights to someone wishing to distribute software _to_ end users (or anyone else). Rights that they do _not_ have under copyright law.
They are wildly different things.
"The problem comes, however, in a commercial environment - those which need the support and for whom this will introduce a huge increase in costing."
No, not really.
Enterprise customers already should have been on the enterprise versions. The old Redhat 7.3-9.0 are pretty much exactly the same as Fedora; not very stable, rapid development, short lifecycle platforms.
If you're ok with that and want to run your enterprise systems on such a platform you even get the updates for free now.
So, Redhat has clarified that they're not taking enterprise level responsibility for those distributions, nor making enterprise level commitments to their lifetime. Well, gee, they never have. It's not a major change apart from the price drop and explicit 'not commercially supported'.
Now, if you're an enterprise customer who's been lazy and cheap and are on the old short-lifecycle products it may force you to reevaluate what you actually want. Are you ok with upgrading every year (which you technically should have been doing already, but probably tried to ignore)? Or do you want a long-term stable platform?
Sure, the long term platform costs money, but frankly I can understand that.
Many claim that the OSS community updates and releases fixes for free software, so it doesnt cost Redhat much to provide these fixes.
That's not entirely true, however. The OSS community releases fixes _for the latest available version_. That means you _have_ to upgrade or backport the fix yourself.
Redhat, on the other hand, (most often) backports and releases updates for the exact version you're already running, which makes it much better for enterprise level stability.
That kind of fix releases consumes resources, but it also gives the enterprise level sysadmin the ability to comfortably deploy patches more or less automatically, without breaking installations. A level of comfort many sysadmins have been unable to find even in the other large commercial unix vendors, and which saves an amount of work easily on the level of what the actual RedHat support contracts costs.
There are multiple sources, read up on for example: this one.. There we're talking error rates in the percentages.
Like I said, biometrics work very well when you have few-few datasets like employees trying to get into a workplace with a database of a few thousands. Or ten suspects and one fingerprint. Or even ten suspects and a 100K database of prints.
It's when you have a 100K database of fingerprints and compare to millions of passengers that the laws of statistics play havoc with your accuracy rates. You dont even have to fool the systems, the builtin failure rate will cause huge numbers of false positives, and as the databases expand it will only get worse.
I dont think badly about the US; having lived there for an extended period, and visited many times and having many american friends I rather like it. I may not like the current direction of the country, nor the actions of the current administration, but that's not the country itself, and most definitely not the people.
But with this, when the chance to get detained, jailed, expelled, or whatever when you get misidentified is in the range of single digit percentages, the risk simply isnt worth it. While I hope the security people would go to some length to verify you're not who the system says you are, I wont depend on that. With the rates they say they're getting of 'people travelling under false identities' I'm wondering if they're always bothering to check. False identity or false positive?
The politicians have been sold snake oil by the biometrics industry. And innocent travellers will be paying the price for that.
I'll prefer not to take my chances. I'm saddened that that may mean I cant visit the US for a long time (until the requirement is removed or biometrics improve to the point that the chance gets significantly better, which will take decades). But there's not much I can do about it.
"In that particular instance that I linked to above, the choice given was stark: if you go to that country, follow the rules *they* impose on your visit, or don't go. Simple as that."
Indeed. I'm choosing the dont go alternative.
"It's not like fingerprinting you is really a big deal in itself, especially if you don't intend staying on in the US. However, the message that this sends out very clearly is that the country no longer welcomes visitors."
It's not really a big deal. Unfortunately, while I can vouch for myself not being in whatever databases the prints are run against, I cant vouch for the other several thousands of people with prints similar enough to mine to trigger a match.
Biometrics, while extremely good for small sample comparisons, absolutely suck for many-to-many comparisons.
So, while the print itself isnt a big deal, the chance of getting mistakenly identified as a criminal is. And as that chance falls into the range of better than one in a thousand, in my opinion it just isnt worth it to visit the US anymore. I'll take my class, workshop, tradeshow and tourist visits somewhere more welcoming.
"Based on the current copyright laws any "copy" that you make, not matter what form it takes, is still covered under the copyright and therefore the property of the copyright holder."
No, not even close. The copy is not in any way or form the property of the copyright holder, nor is the original.
The limited right of being the only one allowed to grant permission for copying is what is infringed.
The sale of copyrighted material is in not in itself a licensing of rights. While software companies attempt to enforce such a 'licensing', that is done through contracts that may, or may not, be enforcable depending on your local laws. CD's, music, or books are (most commonly) not sold with an attached license.
"But that does not give anyone the right to steal IP from people who own it."
It is not 'theft' any more than someone camping on your lawn without permission is 'theft'. It's not legal, but it's a violation of a government granted temporary limited right to control copying, not theft.
"Some of the same people that act like stealing music is justified because of the "evil" record company's behavior would probably vehmently argue for the defense of the GPL were it to be violated."
It's not theft.
Even so, there's quite a difference between people making personal copies (of GPL software or music) and mass copying for profit in violation of someones copyright, which makes it possible to argue both sides with consistent logic. I dont think you'll find many people arguing that mass copying copyrighted material and selling it without permission should be legal.
The GPL violations that cause vehement arguing fall into the category of mass violations for profit. That would be comparable with someone setting up their own distribution chain and selling CD's with material they havent been granted permission to copy.
If someone gets caught sharing GPL software on Kazaa or DirectConnect, I think you'll find the level of outrage to be quite mellow.
Frankly, I think 'cable' as it is today will be killed off by then, and replaced with just internet connections.
The way I'd like to see it working, you could order content from media brokers. The programming providers may want to keep a certain release schedule, so if you subscribe to, for example, Star Trek, 24, or whatever the content will get downloaded to your media server at release time, and you'll be able to watch it when you want (but earliest at release time). Repeat for movies, news, music, etc.
It'll take a while, but eventually I think that's the next step in the evolution of media.
Of course, there are some industries I wouldnt want to own stock in as that change occurs.
"Honestly, out of the 100 channels you get, how many do you spend more than a fraction of a second surfing past? I probably only watch 20% of the channels I get."
And, honestly, how many percent of the programming on those channels do you watch? So, why should we have to pay for the rest of the crap that's on?
Why not just skip the middle men and just buy the content we want?
Channels? Unbundle the friggin programming already. Why should I have to pay full price for a channel when I'm interested in 2% of their content?
"One day we will all move to mars, and use Earth as a big garbage dump..."
Well, strike that 'all' and replace with 'some select few'.
The logistics of evacuating a planet are simply near impossible. At our current population level you'd have to transport more than 1.7 million people per day, every day, for a decade. As we're rather unlikely to reach that orbital boost capacity in a very long time, if ever, the vast majority is stuck, no matter how many planets we have.
So, while your plan is nice, I suspect the massive majority of stragglers will object to the trashdumps and corpse pollution.
"If you simple let them be, someone will eventually come along and do something better."
Sure.
"By allowing Microsoft to go along their merry way, they will stop being innovative and then superior products will begin to overtake the giant."
Nope.
Anticompetetive practices means you are preventing this from happening. Superior products cannot overtake a monopolist engaging in anticompetetive practices simply because the monopolist has enough market control to prevent them from successfully doing so, no matter how superior the new products are. The monopolist can engage in anything from price dumping and product tying (as everyone is _forced_ to pay for the bundled products in Windows, they'll get their R&D costs back however much they spend on the R&D, and everyone interested in the competitors product will have to pay MS either way), to intimidation of sales channels (ship their product with your new sales and your price on Windows will double).
No competitor, no matter how innovative, can successfully compete against a monopolist engaging in anticompetetive practices. That's why we have competition regulation.
"The problem is that AMD and Intel custom design their chips to perform better at different tasks/instructions. Then there is the problem of compilers. Was the SpecIntBase compiled with AMD and/or Intel specific instructions? Which versions?"
If they can get a better score on SPEC by using another compiler, go right ahead. You're meant to compile the spec suite for the computer you're testing anyway.
Wether or not specific applications take new features into account is really not relevant to baseline system benchmarking. That one is, as always, something the customer has to take up with his application provider and research himself.
There was a bad batch for _several years_, they knew about it and didnt fix the problem, keeping producing the bad drives and selling them.
A bad batch is acceptable, I can live with it and eat the cost and pain of replacement. Everyone has bad batches and I have backups.
But dont expect me to trust devices that have a history of coverups. How do I know they've fixed it now, and are not still going to keep producing crap, selling it to me and 'doing the market spin' to deal with the actual problem instead?
This is not a simple bad batch issue. This is a trust issue, and when you sell devices you know to be broken for an extended period, you have no trust anymore.
I've gotten burned enough by the deathstar disks to stay away from them completely now. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 5 times, well, that makes me really annoyed with myself and I'm just not going through the pain of disk replacements due to falling for that one _again_. RMA is all fine and nice, but the returned disks cant be trusted either.
They probably are more stable with better temperatures, but I'm not investing in climate control just because one manufacturer has serious quality issues. They should be able to function when climate is within specs.
Of course, coincidentally, 27.75 days sounds approximately like the MTBF of the deathstars.
"Effictive? Maybe. Probably more than current methods."
It would be even worse if it was effective. Imagine the first time some joined corps get hit by a distributed reflection DOS attack and their little vigilante group of automated systems take out CNN, AOL, Yahoo, Google, etc in the counterstrike.
"That said... I do think these taxes are BS."
The biggest BS part with these taxes is that the rightful owners of the actual pirated material arent the ones getting the money.
Statistics have shown that the _vast_ majority of pirated material on the net is pr0n. The pr0n industry should step up and demand they get their fair massive majority share of this money.
This thriving and vibrant economic culture has driven the point of internet commerce, been largely responsible for the adoption of high speed internet and has brought content online when the RIAA and MPAA has been dragged kicking and screaming into the new century. Their valuable and innovative intellectual property, if anyones, deserves to recieve a fair share of the money from these 'piracy' taxes.
"He compares his fight with Linux supporters to the time when his family caught thieves stealing cattle from their ranch in Utah."
From Darls current actions I suspect that what actually happened was that Darls family figured out they couldnt live on the one poor mishandled cow they had, so they sued the neighbours, claiming the neighbours cattle were actually theirs (because their cow had one dark night given birth to several thousand fully grown cattle who had then snuck into the neighbours ranch), and then went on to threatening with suing anyone eating beef unless they paid Darls family.
At least, then it would be a more comparable story.
"Mail servers could accept 'free' mail from each other, perhaps. ISP A and ISP B each know each others policies regarding relaying and have some faith that they are making sure customers are not abusing their respective systems. Well these two companies whitelist each others mail servers and the client is not asked to perform a calculation."
So, how does this differ from using RBL's or simply basing all mail reception off whitelists? You cant trust a relay server to have enforced the wait anyway.
"You're a mail server hosted inside of an AOL IP block? You're giving me a 100+ digit prime for every email you even speculate thinking about sending, bitch."
So just block any AOL IP today (or if you wanna let a few through, set a limit on the number of untrusted mails per day). You'll end up having to differentiate between legit AOL IP block mail servers and the spam hosts wether you do any calculation or not. You might as well skip the calculation part and just use one of the many available methods for differentiating the legit from the illicit ones today. It's not the calculating part that does the difference, it's the explicit trust that does it. The calculation part is just a silly obfuscation of the actual issue, which is unlimited trust that any mail server is a legit mail server.
"That way, spammers HAVE to perform the expensive computation, which significantly slows their mass-mailing efforts."
No they dont. They relay their mail via a server that doesnt require the calculations.
So then we dont trust servers that dont require the calculations? Oh, wait, that sounds just like RBL's...
Ideas like this are pointless and just obfuscate the problem. I'm sure it would slow down the outlook viruses, but frankly, so would adding a simple delay to outlook. It wont do shit for spamming.
There is only one single certain solution to spamming in the end (disregarding 'smart' filtering), and that is opt-in mail reception. Anything else is simply obfuscating the issue and trying to get people to pay for a solution that basically requires opt-in mail reception to be effective, which is pointless as the actual opt-in would be what solves the issue anyway.
"Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager."
Enlightenment had that back in 97-98 some time.My current pager in Gnome does too, it's just not turned on by default (I presume it's considered resource intensive or something).
"For instance, with 4 virtual desktops, they describe a scaled view where each desktop is essentially 1/4 of the screen."
In other words, a really big pager. Many pagers support resizing so nope... no invention there either (not that I see how resizing a window could be considered an invention (except, of course, the USPTO appears to exist in Bizarro world a lot of the time)).
"So there is a risk only if the GPL does not fulfill all of the Apache License's requirements. This is what is meant by the term "GPL compatibility": that a license contains only requirements that are also fulfilled by the GPL, so it is possible to distribute that code under the GPL."
"The Apache License 2.0 contains a patent termination clause that might also affect the use of the program."
You're right, of course, it works both ways. But wether or not it's possible to fulfill the terms of the GPL depends on the iffiness of the patent termination clause. Either the Apache licensers have to say (and write) straight out that the Apache code can be distributed under the terms of the GPL, no ifs or buts about it (and no patent termination clause), as an alternative to the apache license, or the problem will arise the first time someone gets annoyed by joined distribution of GPL and Apache licensed code.
The GPL gets close to the Apache license in its own restrictions on distributing patented code, but I'm not sure it would be a 100% overlap (the Apache license may terminate rights in some circumstance the GPL would not), and any restriction beyond the GPL renders the joined distribution dubious.
It's so very very close to compatibility, but it's so very very close on the wrong side that I wouldnt bet on it.
"OK, so Jim sues everyone for distributing GPLed code under the GPL?"
Together with, and linked to, non-GPL compatible code. Which you're not allowed to under the GPL. Which means they wouldnt be be distributing the GPL code according to the terms the GPL.
However, often it's not about the software ending up better, it's about it ending up different.
Take, for example, a printer driver box with BSD code. Say the BSD code had an annoying bug that caused the lpd to hang once a day. Now, that got fixed in the BSD code as soon as it became apparent.
But for the buyers of that printer driver box it does them no good that they can get the fix in the main tree; they cant run that code on the printer box anyway.
The original code remaining free sometimes isnt good enough. As I would personally be annoyed if users got stung from a bug of mine when I would in such a case be powerless to help them, I tend to prefer GPL or LGPL licensing.
And as I've been on the recieving end of a 'no, we're not gonna fix that' from a large software company where originally BSD licensed code was involved that I could have fixed myself had I had the code, I know how unfun that is.
Because what the Apache license says isnt what is at issue. The Apache license could claim GPL compatiblity until it turns blue, but as long as the GPL isnt compatible with it you cant distribute GPL code together with, and linked to it.
Say John writes some Apache licensed code, and Jim writes some GPL covered code. Then Joe comes along, takes Jim's code, writes an Apache module that includes Jim's code (after all, the Apache license says it's ok). Joe's module becomes popular and gets included in the big distributions.
At that point, however, Jim gets an offer he cant refuse from our darling Darl, and promptly sues every Linux distributor he can think of for copyright infringement since he doesnt consider the GPL terms on distributing his code fulfilled.
So, are you feeling lucky today?
IBM is claiming in the 6th counterclaim that IBM has rights to GPL code that SCO has engaged in distributing. IBM claims that SCO has breached the GPL, and thus has lost its right to distribute, and wants SCO's rights to distribute under the GPL license to be declared as being terminated.
IBM needs a declaration that SCO is not in complicance with the GPL as that is the only thing that allows SCO to distribute copyrighted material (to lay the ground for counterclaim 8 ).
Counterclaim 7 regarding promissory estoppel is, as far as I can tell, related to SCO's attempt to claim rights to copyrighted material it has agreed to by the terms of the GPL not to try to enforce. In most GPL cases it wouldnt be relevant, but as SCO tries to claim rights to IBM code it has distributed itself under the terms of the GPL, and brought action against IBM on those claims despite its agreement not to, it is relevant here.
And, of course, then you have counterclaim 8 which is the main point, claims of past, current and intent of future copyright violations.
I see nothing in IBM's claims that says anything but what I've said.
"Go to Cem Kaner's siteand you'll see that the newest proposals for additions to the Uniform Commercial Code are contained within UCITA. The Code deals with contractual provisions for software - what you can and cannot put in the license."
The UCITA is irrelevant in this case; contractual provisions for software applies when you wish to limit what the recepient of the software can do. The GPL places no restrictions at all on the recepient. When you receive GPL software you're not agreeing to refrain from anything.
The vast majority of software licenses do not work that way. They place restrictions or attempt to place restrictions on the rights of the user, and the UCITA, as far as I can recall, is intended to govern those restrictions.
The GPL covers _only_ distribution. That is covered by copyright law. By default, as I'm sure you're very well aware of, you cannot distribute someone elses copyrighted material without permission. The GPL is what grants that permission.
"If a license is involved, the breach of the license is what would make CONTINUED (NOT PAST !) use of the work a copyright violation as of the date of the violation of the license."
But _USE_ of the work is not covered by the GPL. And continued, past, or indeed _any_ distribution is by default copyright violation unless you have obtained permission.
"The nice thing is that you DO NOT NEED TO HAVE REGISTERED YOUR COPYRIGHT to bring an action based upon a license violation. Why? BECAUSE THE LEGAL ELEMENTS DO NOT REQUIRE IT."
You cannot bring a contractual action for a 'GPL license violation'. There is nothing a recepient can do with the software that they're not allowed to do (except such things that are forbidden under copyright law, like distribution).
"Why people try to describe the GPL as "not a contract" is beyond me - you WANT the GPL to be a contract so you can ENFORCE IT IN COURT."
Well, if it contained any terms that would need enforcing, indeed. The thing is, it doesnt;
GPL Snippet:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."
I know you're not making this stuff up off the top of your head, and I understand you are very well versed in the issues of various forms of intellectual property.
But I'm not making this stuff up off the top of my head either, and I think you're a bit misled by how software licenses usually work.
I think you are right about part of the GPL tho, as there actually is one part of the GPL that would not be governed by copyright law only, and that is the warranty disclaimers. They're a bit beside the point for enforcement tho.