Redhat and the others can just sell the exact same thing; the GPL gives them the right to do so. Who is going to buy it from them when Redhat is synonymous to Linux?
Isn't calling free code and deccs for free speech just bullshit really?
Free speech is in the constitution to permit people to criticise leaders. This is really important in a democracy. If this isn't allowed politicians can more easily manipulate the public so they don't know whom they really vote on or what they stand for.
The idea of socialism is that ownership is bad for mans freedom. In a socialist society sharing is the keyword, everybody shall share everything they do with the rest of the community(communism is an ideology where the community comes first, that's why it's called communism). Socialists also believe that without this sharing the public gets unnecessary costs because the companies want profit.
Exactly how do you mean this differs from the goals of the free software foundation? You tell me!
Sharing is the VERY idea of socialism and you tell me that this isn't the goal with Free software?
The socialist idea is that man becomes enslaved under the owners and the prices goes up because they want to make profit. Sharing is supposed to increase the common wealth in socialism.
Sounds to me exact the same as the goals of the free software foundation, or what is the differens? You tell me...
"The greedier and more visibly desperate M$ gets, the better the alternatives look. "
You may not have noticed it but the last years the tech-stocks (microsoft and others) have dropped (allot). This is NOT because they are greedy and make too much money, it's because they are having problems making enough money for their business.
"If you've got a lot of legacy hardware, Linux is the way to go. If not OS X may be your best bet.
Charles-A. The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff."
Software costs aren't really that big to companies. Staffcost to manage the software is typically more.
Guess your haven't followed the stockmarket the last year, right?
" out of encrypting signals in the 1m wire between my computer and my monitor. I have to ask myself one question - WHY?"
Sadly because the majority don't give a damn about the content-providers right. Only their own rights.
" Why are someone allowed to control my pc? "
They wouldn't if people respected other peoples work. A poll in a daily newspaper (don't remember witch one) showed that over 80% of all people thinks it's ok to trade copyrighted mp3s.
It is a sad development. I wish everybody would respect EACH OTHERS rights and we wouldn't have this problem.
For channels that give you huge amounts of commercials, much soapoperas and programs that is cheap to produce you don't have to pay anything. Just watch the commercials.
If you want good quality programs you usually have to pay for them. Sure it sucks to pay, but on the other hand you get quality service, right?
"Speaking as someone who happens to have a "hi, my name is Brent...bla bla bla" website, I can vouch for the fact that we'll be here forever."
There is nothing wrong with homepages, that is _also_ an interesting part of the internet.
My remark was towards the professionally produced hi-quality content that was supposed to be spread to all over the world. It hasn't and will not happen until it can be funded somehow.
"Take Slashdot - can you imagine a better source for this kind of thing? "
Yes, I could:) Anyway, in slashdots case it works because it's the readers that provide the content. It's what this site is about and that's why it can be free and that's fine. If you hire a bunch of professional writers witch you have to pay salaries you need to have revenue, it's as simple as that.
Actually I think the general thinking within the dot-com business has been that market-share is everything and profit is something we will think about later down the line.
This is a problem because now they have made the public used to not paying for anything witch of cause is impossible in the long run.
"Please point out to me where the Constitution or the Bill of Rights (You've heard of these right?) gives MIcro$oft and Time-Warner AOL or any other company/corporation any rights? "
You don't know too much about law, do you? A Company is a juridical person in all western countries. They have the same rights you have. No more, no less (except for a few exceptions but basically that is the case).
"The idea here is that an artificial "right"- that of business to make money at the expense of consumers and competition has been perpetuated on the people of the world by business intrests. "
What are you talking about? What right to make money? Companies definitely have NO right to make money written in law. They have the same rights you do. They have a right to own property, just like you. They have a right to sell whatever they produce, just like you. They have the right to stop theft of their property, just like you do.
"It's time we dispelled that myth. Companies have no rights - people do! "
Hmmm... Do you _really_ think it would be a good thing is this was the case (it isn't)? Trade and competition between companies (witch of cause require that they can own and sell stuff) has given us great wealth in this part of the world compared to the parts of the world where everybody owned everything (communist countries). You don't think that this is a good thing? Remember that copyright law that gives big-corp rights over things they have developed also gives YOU rights over things you developed.
"The idea behind copyright is that every work of art or science is based on other works which have come before, and that nothing exists in a vacuumm and we need that freedom to expand and grow as a world. Personaly I see Napster and others as a tool for protecting my fair use rights. Rights which the RIAA/MPAA are trying to take away by using bought and paid for legslation like the DMCA as a club. "
What? I don't follow you here, what do you mean? What they have a right to do, and should do is protecting their property. So far, so good. They have, however, no right to attack somebody they have encouraged to crack their system and then did so. This is a totally different thing!
The majority of the public is frightened by the concept of cloning but do most of them really understand what it means?
When gene researchers talk about cloning they generally mean cloning an embryo that will live only a short time. Is this really so bad? Abortions are made every day around the globe and in big numbers.
Just to speculate those cloned embryos might be 1 in 1000 embryos killed. And those few would give us great opportunities to find genetic deceases that is very hard to find in other ways.
Cancer, autoimmune deceases and others are no kid's play and I fear we have lost one of our best possibilities to fight them.
I could agree that cloning people and let them grow up is wrong and should be outlawed.
Well, good points but I don't agree with your conclusion.
They are indeed threatened by the medium, no question about it. They had no possibilities to go after bland tapes, that's the reason they didn't. Don't believe artists didn't loose money on bland tapes, they certainly did. It was however, some hassle with copying tapes so music sold anyway (but a little less).
The problem with the internet and sharing is the size of it. If everyone gets fast connection and the quality increases (mp3 destroys the song to much) artists and everybody else working with music will not be compensated. It IS reasonable that people get paid for their work.
I believe the DMCA was adopted because of the scope of threat sharing on the internet is to peoples property, work and trading in general.
I would guess most people (including me) think that the artists get a to small share of the slice. The record companies takes too much.
But this doesn't mean that no compensation AT ALL (napster etc) is a good alternative for artists, it is far worse.
I think the RIAA was right about napster and some other cases, it was more than anything else a tool for theft. Not just individuals and the public has rights, businesses has rights to.
On the other end they must recognise that the public and individuals also has rights if they are going to be able to get some sympathy at all. I think they fail to do so over and over again with this kind of clearly misdirected attacks, if you tell people to hack something you can't bitch on them for doing so.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you think they could do this?
Redhat and the others can just sell the exact same thing; the GPL gives them the right to do so. Who is going to buy it from them when Redhat is synonymous to Linux?
You must be kidding, right? The VCs has pumped in enormous amount of money into this.
Don't you at least think they have the right to do whatever they want with it, for what's its worth?
You did notice that the Linux system was 4 times as expensive as the win2k, right?
The OS cost in DB land are typically only a smaller part of the total cost. Not that big deal.
"don't even seem to be open source"
Don't even? How do you suggest these people should pay their bills?
Isn't calling free code and deccs for free speech just bullshit really?
Free speech is in the constitution to permit people to criticise leaders. This is really important in a democracy. If this isn't allowed politicians can more easily manipulate the public so they don't know whom they really vote on or what they stand for.
How have ripping of DVD anything to do with this?
Do you know what socialism is?
The idea of socialism is that ownership is bad for mans freedom. In a socialist society sharing is the keyword, everybody shall share everything they do with the rest of the community(communism is an ideology where the community comes first, that's why it's called communism). Socialists also believe that without this sharing the public gets unnecessary costs because the companies want profit.
Exactly how do you mean this differs from the goals of the free software foundation? You tell me!
Why do you say he is trolling?
Sharing is the VERY idea of socialism and you tell me that this isn't the goal with Free software?
The socialist idea is that man becomes enslaved under the owners and the prices goes up because they want to make profit. Sharing is supposed to increase the common wealth in socialism.
Sounds to me exact the same as the goals of the free software foundation, or what is the differens? You tell me...
Wish I had some modpoints to mod that up.
Beats me too, it really isn't that big.
But still, $7 million for 23%!
By the way, how much money did the folks that developed jabber first make? Or where they just free (gratis) labour?
"The greedier and more visibly desperate M$ gets, the better the alternatives look. "
You may not have noticed it but the last years the tech-stocks (microsoft and others) have dropped (allot). This is NOT because they are greedy and make too much money, it's because they are having problems making enough money for their business.
"If you've got a lot of legacy hardware, Linux is the way to go. If not OS X may be your best bet.
Charles-A. The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff."
Software costs aren't really that big to companies. Staffcost to manage the software is typically more.
Or 60% dont have time to upgrade. Managing your installed software base often is the biggest costs.
I really hope the slashdot crowd will not nag about this one since software-as-a-service is what they want.
"game of profit-maximizing makes buissiness"
Guess your haven't followed the stockmarket the last year, right?
" out of encrypting signals in the 1m wire between my computer and my monitor. I have to ask myself one question - WHY?"
Sadly because the majority don't give a damn about the content-providers right. Only their own rights.
" Why are someone allowed to control my pc? "
They wouldn't if people respected other peoples work. A poll in a daily newspaper (don't remember witch one) showed that over 80% of all people thinks it's ok to trade copyrighted mp3s.
It is a sad development. I wish everybody would respect EACH OTHERS rights and we wouldn't have this problem.
"HP and Sun both seem to think that Gnome rocks. "
That is really beyond me! Have those boys ever compared GTK and QT?
For channels that give you huge amounts of commercials, much soapoperas and programs that is cheap to produce you don't have to pay anything. Just watch the commercials.
If you want good quality programs you usually have to pay for them. Sure it sucks to pay, but on the other hand you get quality service, right?
"Speaking as someone who happens to have a "hi, my name is Brent...bla bla bla" website, I can vouch for the fact that we'll be here forever."
:) Anyway, in slashdots case it works because it's the readers that provide the content. It's what this site is about and that's why it can be free and that's fine. If you hire a bunch of professional writers witch you have to pay salaries you need to have revenue, it's as simple as that.
There is nothing wrong with homepages, that is _also_ an interesting part of the internet.
My remark was towards the professionally produced hi-quality content that was supposed to be spread to all over the world. It hasn't and will not happen until it can be funded somehow.
"Take Slashdot - can you imagine a better source for this kind of thing? "
Yes, I could
Actually I think the general thinking within the dot-com business has been that market-share is everything and profit is something we will think about later down the line.
This is a problem because now they have made the public used to not paying for anything witch of cause is impossible in the long run.
Actually!
The lack of possibility to fund good/hi class content providing has made the internet filled with almost 100% crap.
With charging I think we will see much more real content on the internet and just not "hi, my name is John...bla bla bla" homepages.
Yes, and that may become a problem for content providers in the future. I'm all for fair use but stealing peoples work is not fair use.
"Insightful"
?! Who mods a post that has incorrect statements as insightful??
"Please point out to me where the Constitution or the Bill of Rights (You've heard of these right?) gives MIcro$oft and Time-Warner AOL or any other company/corporation any rights? "
You don't know too much about law, do you? A Company is a juridical person in all western countries. They have the same rights you have. No more, no less (except for a few exceptions but basically that is the case).
"The idea here is that an artificial "right"- that of business to make money at the expense of consumers and competition has been perpetuated on the people of the world by business intrests. "
What are you talking about? What right to make money? Companies definitely have NO right to make money written in law. They have the same rights you do. They have a right to own property, just like you. They have a right to sell whatever they produce, just like you. They have the right to stop theft of their property, just like you do.
"It's time we dispelled that myth. Companies have no rights - people do! "
Hmmm... Do you _really_ think it would be a good thing is this was the case (it isn't)? Trade and competition between companies (witch of cause require that they can own and sell stuff) has given us great wealth in this part of the world compared to the parts of the world where everybody owned everything (communist countries). You don't think that this is a good thing?
Remember that copyright law that gives big-corp rights over things they have developed also gives YOU rights over things you developed.
"The idea behind copyright is that every work of art or science is based on other works which have come before, and that nothing exists in a vacuumm and we need that freedom to expand and grow as a world. Personaly I see Napster and others as a tool for protecting my fair use rights. Rights which the RIAA/MPAA are trying to take away by using bought and paid for legslation like the DMCA as a club. "
What? I don't follow you here, what do you mean? What they have a right to do, and should do is protecting their property. So far, so good. They have, however, no right to attack somebody they have encouraged to crack their system and then did so. This is a totally different thing!
The majority of the public is frightened by the concept of cloning but do most of them really understand what it means?
When gene researchers talk about cloning they generally mean cloning an embryo that will live only a short time. Is this really so bad? Abortions are made every day around the globe and in big numbers.
Just to speculate those cloned embryos might be 1 in 1000 embryos killed. And those few would give us great opportunities to find genetic deceases that is very hard to find in other ways.
Cancer, autoimmune deceases and others are no kid's play and I fear we have lost one of our best possibilities to fight them.
I could agree that cloning people and let them grow up is wrong and should be outlawed.
Blank tapes...Sorry :)
Well, good points but I don't agree with your conclusion.
They are indeed threatened by the medium, no question about it. They had no possibilities to go after bland tapes, that's the reason they didn't. Don't believe artists didn't loose money on bland tapes, they certainly did. It was however, some hassle with copying tapes so music sold anyway (but a little less).
The problem with the internet and sharing is the size of it. If everyone gets fast connection and the quality increases (mp3 destroys the song to much) artists and everybody else working with music will not be compensated. It IS reasonable that people get paid for their work.
I believe the DMCA was adopted because of the scope of threat sharing on the internet is to peoples property, work and trading in general.
I would guess most people (including me) think that the artists get a to small share of the slice. The record companies takes too much.
But this doesn't mean that no compensation AT ALL (napster etc) is a good alternative for artists, it is far worse.
I think the RIAA was right about napster and some other cases, it was more than anything else a tool for theft. Not just individuals and the public has rights, businesses has rights to.
On the other end they must recognise that the public and individuals also has rights if they are going to be able to get some sympathy at all. I think they fail to do so over and over again with this kind of clearly misdirected attacks, if you tell people to hack something you can't bitch on them for doing so.