Insisting that Apple's separately sold software has to be run on Apple's hardware is an unenforceable and illegal tying arrangement under US antitrust law.
They just need to start explicitly selling boxed versions of OS X as upgrades.
While I don't consider Psystar to be doing anything wrong, I'm pretty sure that given the way copyright law is at the moment, Apple's lawsuit is going to render them a smoking crater in fairly short order.
Depends... do you brag about not collecting stamps online a lot and argue all the time with people that do collect stamps because you reject their liking for their stamps?
Difference is, in reality, the people collecting stamps are constantly trying to force their stamp collecting on everyone else.
Or then you could see through his bias, be a better person so to speak, and discuss the rather valid point he's making...
Saying people who enjoy a bit of sex, drugs and intellectual wankery (the college/university "lifestyle") are "amoral" (or have a "bent moral compass") is not a "valid point". Indeed, his venom lacks even a slight nod towards politely-masked bias and just slides straight into an anti-liberal diatribe.
(Aside: I find it extremely difficult to believe such an opinion isn't rooted in religious beliefs, and hence am extremely sceptical of the GP's claims of agnosticism.)
To say nothing of the fact that anyone who actually has been to college/university will know that kids from religious background hit it just as hard - if not harder - that those who aren't. Because, since their "moral compass" is based on fear of, and constant guidance from, their church and/or peers, as soon as that guidance is gone the fact they're often incapable of making their own decisions (especially in 'grey areas') comes to the fore.
Indeed, not only does he have no "valid point", but his argument is completely arse-about-face as well. People whose "moral compass" is not dependent on an outside authority are _vastly_ better equipped to deal with situations where that authority is absent, or is in conflict with reality.
If a piece of test is not worth discussing, then it's not really worth derogatory comments like yours either.
Stupid and poisonous attitudes should be identified as such and beaten down at every opportunity, so as not to infect others.
Or, as has been put more more elegantly in the past, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
Now observe what happens (go to any college or university) when people are freed from religion but not given any other basis for a moral code. They tend to become amoral, hedonistic and because we seem to be preprogrammed to 'need' a religion will fall for the first fruity new age crap that comes their way. Or they become socialists, which is even worse.
Just.... wow.
At least it's good you've gotten your bias out in the open so we know it's pointless trying to have a discussion...
They can say it all day long if it makes them feel better, but reality differs. At least from my observation of the world the unreligious tend to have a bent moral compass.
This statement is utterly worthless without an indication of what you mean by "bent moral compass".
It is a problem as I'm not a religious sort myself, agnostic actually. Almost by definition a successful religion embodies a moral code and a proven method to instill it in new followers.
That does not make said moral code "moral". All those religious fanatics running around killing unbelievers are following the moral code that their religion has instilled in them, but that does not make their behaviour any less evil.
When you talk to people who aren't religious yet have working moral compasses you find most went through a period where they had to work it out for themselves.
Everyone has to "work it out for themselves". The difference is that religiously-derived moral behaviour is based on fear (do the right thing or you're going to hell) whereas non-religiously-derived moral behaviour is not.
We need to find a way to pass on a moral code (that isn't evil) before we try to free too many minds from religion.
It's not hard. You just encourage the same behaviour without the religious brainwashing part.
Far more evil has been done (and continues to be done) in the world in the name of religious beliefs, than not.
What sort of weird legacy-compatibility requirement does the Olympics have, that imposed the we're-forced-into-using-Microsoft-stuff constraint? Because if you don't have that constraint, it simply doesn't make sense to use Windows.
Kids, this is what happens to you when you drink the Slashdot kool-aid.
BSOD's are no longer a problem! They haven't been since Windows XP! BSOD's were only a problem in the Win 9x days!
Strictly speaking BSODs were never a problem in Windows 9x because, originally, BSOD was an NT-specific term for the kernel dump screen.
The explosion of ignorance on the internets in the late '90s, however, means that even the Windows 95 errors that popped up a blue DOS screen are now referred to as BSODs (even though they frequently lacked the "OD" part).
UAC isn't implementing application security. It's giving Microsoft a way to blame the user for his security breaches, because he either OK'd the access (as the interface trains you to automatically click OK on all the myriad dialog boxes) or because he disabled UAC (as you get sick of automatically clicking OK on all the myriad dialog boxes).
That's because it is the user's fault.
UAC is doing exactly the same thing sudo, et al, does. Facilitating on-demand elevation of privilege.
XP hit 20% of the market in less than a year, and was at 40% by the 24 month mark.
XP was a major upgrade (especially from the ignorant end-user perspective) over the existing Windows 98, Vista is not.
That's a dismal performance by any standards, but for a monopoly OS that was seven years in development, it's an astonishing failure.
The only people who think Vista should be storming the market, are those who take some sort of perverse pleasure highlighting that it is not doing so. Everyone else understands that it will be a gradual process of attrition.
It is just the unfortunate situation that English, the world's working technical language [catb.org], has two very different definitions mapped to the same word. Other languages make the distinction with the different words "gratis" and "libre".
Free as in "no cost" and free as in "freedom", in English, are rarely difficult to discern using context.
Stallman's problem is twofold - first, the context of his usage of "free" points to the "no cost" definition. Second, his actual intended meaning - as in "freedom" - does not actually match what most people would consider "freedom" as it has potentially significant restrictions and obligations attached.
The "confusion" around "Free Software" is wholely and solely the fault of its advocates. By deliberately choosing terminology with well-understood meanings, just so appeals to emotion ("free as in freedom") could be used, Stallman was acting in the same way - and for the reasons - as politicians who come up with names for bills which are different to their actual content.
We can agree to disagree on which is 'vastly' better, [...]
One is only accurate when taken within a very small, unintuitive and non-standard definition of "non-free". The other is an accurate description of the situation - "open source".
[...] but claiming Stallman's purpose and motivation has changed really doesn't hold up against the plethora of his writings dating back quite a few years.
I didn't say anything about his purpose changing, I said his terminology required a redefinition of "free" to be meaningful.
Stallman clearly chose the term "free" for political reasons - that is, so he could leverage emotive statements like "free as in freedom" (we shall ignore the innacuracy of that phrase for the moment). Because of this, he has no-one to blame but himself when people don't understand what he's trying to say.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Yes. You'll notice they're talking about the freedom of the State, not self defence for the individual.
You have convinced me to abandon my methods, as your method (calling people Bigots) sounds like a sure-fire way to convince people to change their minds and hearts. I now understand why reasoned debate like mine gets ignored, because reporters would rather quote someone like you, and then like at a playground fight chant fight fight fight./sighsounds like a sure-fire way to convince people to change their minds and hearts. I now understand why reasoned debate like mine gets ignored, because reporters would rather quote someone like you, and then like at a playground fight chant fight fight fight./sigh
If you can come up with a "reasoned debate" why a secular state would have any concern about the gender of two people entering a legal agreement whose primary benefit is financial, I'm prepared to listen.
Richard Stallman's defense of the idea of 'free software' which stresses freedom of use, versus its 'redefining' as 'open source' which Microsoft appears to be all too comfortable with embracing to the 'Letter of the Law'.
Had Stallman not tried to redefine "free" in the first place, there wouldn't have been a problem. "Open Source" is not only a _vastly_ more accurate and relevant terminology, but also avoids the politics that Stallman tried to inject.
The 2cd Amendment right to bear arms in the 'Spirt of the Law' defines your right to protect your self, your family, and your home. But is slowly being 'redefined' to include restrictions like it must be unloaded, and must be trigger locked, etc. which makes one virtually useless but is keeping with the 'Letter of the Law'.
I'm not American, but I'm pretty sure that self-defence was not the primary objective of the Second Amendment.
In many places, judges are 'redefining' marriage from Husband & Wife, to Partner A & Partner B.
Not in anywhere near as many places as they are redefining it specifically as Husband and Wife (or one Man and one Woman, or one Male and one Female) so as to enshrine that discrimination in law and remove ambiguity allowing things like "civil partnerships".
If you just felt a knee-jerk reaction on this one, take a second to think about it. If you really cared about homosexual marriage, then you should go about it in the correct manner.
If you really care that much about homosexual marriage, then accept that what the law should consider marriage and what particular religions should consider marriage are two separate things. The US has (ostensibly, at least) a secular Government. Because of that, there is zero justification whatsoever for the Government to introduce blatantly discriminating laws about what is - as far as it's concerned - a financial and legal arrangement between two people.
There are only three types of people who are bothered by homosexual marriage:
1. People that are just set in their ways. They grumble and mutter under their breath, but at the end of the day, are prepared to live and let live.
2. Bigots who want to see their particular set of morals enshrined in law.
3. Bigots who want to see their particular set of morals enshrined in law, but try to disguise it using a smokescreen of either other broken laws (welfare seems to be a favourite) or slippery slope fallacies ("legal bestiality" seems to be a favourite) as justification.
The Liberal Party is conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues.
You have that back to front. The Libs are "Liberal" in their economic policies (ie: pro-free-market, free trade, anti-union, etc).
They _are_ conservative in their social policies, but I'm pretty sure that (originally, at least) has more to do with the type of people their primary beliefs attract, rather than any specific attempt at being so.
But he's a right-wing "free market" advocate! Right!
One must remember calling someone "right wing" in France is like calling someone "left wing" in the US. It means they might _just_ be getting close to the centre.
"Without obligation" pretty much isn't going to happen unless the item under discussion is public domain. Probably the most important obligation you are under as a developer is the Visual Studio EULA, here [google.com]. Section 3 especially has a tremendous pile of obligation related to building stuff with its DLLs.
None of which are as onerous as having to open up your source code to the world.
Additionally, they are regarding redistributing shared libraries, not building against them.
Finally, anything in that EULA is completely irrelevant if you aren't using VS to develop your applications.
The easiest proof of this comes from the well-known study that showed if everyone one Earth consumed the same resources as the average American, we would need 3 Earths to generate the basic inputs of materials and energy - clearly an impossibility.
OTOH, the average American could probably halve their effective resource usage without a significant negative - if any - impact to their lifestyle.
Thank you Bruce. I've been saying this since a year before Vista even shipped. Folks complain about a lot of different things in Vista (some of it fairly, I think) but I see most of those "features" as mere pains-in-the-ass that I could begrudgingly live with. What really gets me and why I won't be installing Vista on any servers or desktops at work is the DRM. To me it's reminiscent of the campaign slogan from a few years ago - "It's the DRM Stupid!"
DRM is either useful if you have DRM-encumbered media, or irrelevant if you don't.
About the only bigger non-argument against Vista than "DRM" is "hardware requirements".
In general, commercial shared libraries are "all rights reserved". They do not provide you with the right to link with or distribute them at all until you pay a royalty.
Rrrrrrright. Which explains why, say, Windows is chock-full of shared libraries which any developer is allowed - nay, encouraged - to leverage without obligation.
So, your assertion that commercial libraries give more rights is false, [...]
What kind of self-delusion do you need to be engaging in where linking to shared libraries anytime except when they're GPLed even requires a second thought ?
[...] and against that you are putting up a rather silly assumption that any court anywhere could pay a king's ransom of code in exchange for a fingernail's worth of GPL code.
No, that was what we call an "example". Not a given. Not an assumption. It was an (admittedly extreme, but I find those tend to be necessary to get the point across quickly) example of how the GPL has the potential to be extremely unfair, because it's scope is primarily *outside* the code it is directly applied to.
Compare this to, say, the BSDL or LGPL, whose scope and focus is restricted only to the code it is directly applied to, inherently reducing their ability to impose unfair obligations or restrictions.
Slashdot Mirror
Insisting that Apple's separately sold software has to be run on Apple's hardware is an unenforceable and illegal tying arrangement under US antitrust law.
They just need to start explicitly selling boxed versions of OS X as upgrades.
None of which are in the public domain nor BSD, yet Psystar is distributing.
You misspelled "reselling".
While I don't consider Psystar to be doing anything wrong, I'm pretty sure that given the way copyright law is at the moment, Apple's lawsuit is going to render them a smoking crater in fairly short order.
Depends... do you brag about not collecting stamps online a lot and argue all the time with people that do collect stamps because you reject their liking for their stamps?
Difference is, in reality, the people collecting stamps are constantly trying to force their stamp collecting on everyone else.
Or then you could see through his bias, be a better person so to speak, and discuss the rather valid point he's making...
Saying people who enjoy a bit of sex, drugs and intellectual wankery (the college/university "lifestyle") are "amoral" (or have a "bent moral compass") is not a "valid point". Indeed, his venom lacks even a slight nod towards politely-masked bias and just slides straight into an anti-liberal diatribe.
(Aside: I find it extremely difficult to believe such an opinion isn't rooted in religious beliefs, and hence am extremely sceptical of the GP's claims of agnosticism.)
To say nothing of the fact that anyone who actually has been to college/university will know that kids from religious background hit it just as hard - if not harder - that those who aren't. Because, since their "moral compass" is based on fear of, and constant guidance from, their church and/or peers, as soon as that guidance is gone the fact they're often incapable of making their own decisions (especially in 'grey areas') comes to the fore.
Indeed, not only does he have no "valid point", but his argument is completely arse-about-face as well. People whose "moral compass" is not dependent on an outside authority are _vastly_ better equipped to deal with situations where that authority is absent, or is in conflict with reality.
If a piece of test is not worth discussing, then it's not really worth derogatory comments like yours either.
Stupid and poisonous attitudes should be identified as such and beaten down at every opportunity, so as not to infect others.
Or, as has been put more more elegantly in the past, "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
Atheism is in itself a belief system. The belief that there is no God.
Like the way not collecting stamps is a hobby ?
Now observe what happens (go to any college or university) when people are freed from religion but not given any other basis for a moral code. They tend to become amoral, hedonistic and because we seem to be preprogrammed to 'need' a religion will fall for the first fruity new age crap that comes their way. Or they become socialists, which is even worse.
Just.... wow.
At least it's good you've gotten your bias out in the open so we know it's pointless trying to have a discussion...
They can say it all day long if it makes them feel better, but reality differs. At least from my observation of the world the unreligious tend to have a bent moral compass.
This statement is utterly worthless without an indication of what you mean by "bent moral compass".
It is a problem as I'm not a religious sort myself, agnostic actually. Almost by definition a successful religion embodies a moral code and a proven method to instill it in new followers.
That does not make said moral code "moral". All those religious fanatics running around killing unbelievers are following the moral code that their religion has instilled in them, but that does not make their behaviour any less evil.
When you talk to people who aren't religious yet have working moral compasses you find most went through a period where they had to work it out for themselves.
Everyone has to "work it out for themselves". The difference is that religiously-derived moral behaviour is based on fear (do the right thing or you're going to hell) whereas non-religiously-derived moral behaviour is not.
We need to find a way to pass on a moral code (that isn't evil) before we try to free too many minds from religion.
It's not hard. You just encourage the same behaviour without the religious brainwashing part.
Far more evil has been done (and continues to be done) in the world in the name of religious beliefs, than not.
It's not uncommon to get a BSOD from time to time [...]
It's only "not uncommon" if you don't bother to find the cause and fix it.
None of my systems have seen a BSOD for nigh-on a decade.
What sort of weird legacy-compatibility requirement does the Olympics have, that imposed the we're-forced-into-using-Microsoft-stuff constraint? Because if you don't have that constraint, it simply doesn't make sense to use Windows.
Kids, this is what happens to you when you drink the Slashdot kool-aid.
BSOD's are no longer a problem! They haven't been since Windows XP! BSOD's were only a problem in the Win 9x days!
Strictly speaking BSODs were never a problem in Windows 9x because, originally, BSOD was an NT-specific term for the kernel dump screen.
The explosion of ignorance on the internets in the late '90s, however, means that even the Windows 95 errors that popped up a blue DOS screen are now referred to as BSODs (even though they frequently lacked the "OD" part).
The interface took several steps back. I have to jump through unnecessary hoops to find dialogs.
For example ?
UAC isn't implementing application security. It's giving Microsoft a way to blame the user for his security breaches, because he either OK'd the access (as the interface trains you to automatically click OK on all the myriad dialog boxes) or because he disabled UAC (as you get sick of automatically clicking OK on all the myriad dialog boxes).
That's because it is the user's fault.
UAC is doing exactly the same thing sudo, et al, does. Facilitating on-demand elevation of privilege.
XP hit 20% of the market in less than a year, and was at 40% by the 24 month mark.
XP was a major upgrade (especially from the ignorant end-user perspective) over the existing Windows 98, Vista is not.
That's a dismal performance by any standards, but for a monopoly OS that was seven years in development, it's an astonishing failure.
The only people who think Vista should be storming the market, are those who take some sort of perverse pleasure highlighting that it is not doing so. Everyone else understands that it will be a gradual process of attrition.
I'm confused, since when is pro-free-market, anti-union considered liberal?
We are not using the American definition of "Liberal" here, nor is it being used as a general description, but one specific to economic policies.
It might make more sense if you know that the opposing party is 'Labor', who are pro-union, pro-government-ownership, controlled economy, etc.
He didn't try to redefine "free": [...]
Yes, he did. "GNU/free" is not "free".
It is just the unfortunate situation that English, the world's working technical language [catb.org], has two very different definitions mapped to the same word. Other languages make the distinction with the different words "gratis" and "libre".
Free as in "no cost" and free as in "freedom", in English, are rarely difficult to discern using context.
Stallman's problem is twofold - first, the context of his usage of "free" points to the "no cost" definition. Second, his actual intended meaning - as in "freedom" - does not actually match what most people would consider "freedom" as it has potentially significant restrictions and obligations attached.
The "confusion" around "Free Software" is wholely and solely the fault of its advocates. By deliberately choosing terminology with well-understood meanings, just so appeals to emotion ("free as in freedom") could be used, Stallman was acting in the same way - and for the reasons - as politicians who come up with names for bills which are different to their actual content.
We can agree to disagree on which is 'vastly' better, [...]
One is only accurate when taken within a very small, unintuitive and non-standard definition of "non-free". The other is an accurate description of the situation - "open source".
[...] but claiming Stallman's purpose and motivation has changed really doesn't hold up against the plethora of his writings dating back quite a few years.
I didn't say anything about his purpose changing, I said his terminology required a redefinition of "free" to be meaningful.
Stallman clearly chose the term "free" for political reasons - that is, so he could leverage emotive statements like "free as in freedom" (we shall ignore the innacuracy of that phrase for the moment). Because of this, he has no-one to blame but himself when people don't understand what he's trying to say.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Yes. You'll notice they're talking about the freedom of the State, not self defence for the individual.
You have convinced me to abandon my methods, as your method (calling people Bigots) sounds like a sure-fire way to convince people to change their minds and hearts. I now understand why reasoned debate like mine gets ignored, because reporters would rather quote someone like you, and then like at a playground fight chant fight fight fight. /sighsounds like a sure-fire way to convince people to change their minds and hearts. I now understand why reasoned debate like mine gets ignored, because reporters would rather quote someone like you, and then like at a playground fight chant fight fight fight. /sigh
If you can come up with a "reasoned debate" why a secular state would have any concern about the gender of two people entering a legal agreement whose primary benefit is financial, I'm prepared to listen.
Richard Stallman's defense of the idea of 'free software' which stresses freedom of use, versus its 'redefining' as 'open source' which Microsoft appears to be all too comfortable with embracing to the 'Letter of the Law'.
Had Stallman not tried to redefine "free" in the first place, there wouldn't have been a problem. "Open Source" is not only a _vastly_ more accurate and relevant terminology, but also avoids the politics that Stallman tried to inject.
The 2cd Amendment right to bear arms in the 'Spirt of the Law' defines your right to protect your self, your family, and your home. But is slowly being 'redefined' to include restrictions like it must be unloaded, and must be trigger locked, etc. which makes one virtually useless but is keeping with the 'Letter of the Law'.
I'm not American, but I'm pretty sure that self-defence was not the primary objective of the Second Amendment.
In many places, judges are 'redefining' marriage from Husband & Wife, to Partner A & Partner B.
Not in anywhere near as many places as they are redefining it specifically as Husband and Wife (or one Man and one Woman, or one Male and one Female) so as to enshrine that discrimination in law and remove ambiguity allowing things like "civil partnerships".
If you just felt a knee-jerk reaction on this one, take a second to think about it. If you really cared about homosexual marriage, then you should go about it in the correct manner.
If you really care that much about homosexual marriage, then accept that what the law should consider marriage and what particular religions should consider marriage are two separate things. The US has (ostensibly, at least) a secular Government. Because of that, there is zero justification whatsoever for the Government to introduce blatantly discriminating laws about what is - as far as it's concerned - a financial and legal arrangement between two people.
There are only three types of people who are bothered by homosexual marriage:
1. People that are just set in their ways. They grumble and mutter under their breath, but at the end of the day, are prepared to live and let live.
2. Bigots who want to see their particular set of morals enshrined in law.
3. Bigots who want to see their particular set of morals enshrined in law, but try to disguise it using a smokescreen of either other broken laws (welfare seems to be a favourite) or slippery slope fallacies ("legal bestiality" seems to be a favourite) as justification.
The Liberal Party is conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues.
You have that back to front. The Libs are "Liberal" in their economic policies (ie: pro-free-market, free trade, anti-union, etc).
They _are_ conservative in their social policies, but I'm pretty sure that (originally, at least) has more to do with the type of people their primary beliefs attract, rather than any specific attempt at being so.
But he's a right-wing "free market" advocate! Right!
One must remember calling someone "right wing" in France is like calling someone "left wing" in the US. It means they might _just_ be getting close to the centre.
"Without obligation" pretty much isn't going to happen unless the item under discussion is public domain. Probably the most important obligation you are under as a developer is the Visual Studio EULA, here [google.com]. Section 3 especially has a tremendous pile of obligation related to building stuff with its DLLs.
None of which are as onerous as having to open up your source code to the world.
Additionally, they are regarding redistributing shared libraries, not building against them.
Finally, anything in that EULA is completely irrelevant if you aren't using VS to develop your applications.
The easiest proof of this comes from the well-known study that showed if everyone one Earth consumed the same resources as the average American, we would need 3 Earths to generate the basic inputs of materials and energy - clearly an impossibility.
OTOH, the average American could probably halve their effective resource usage without a significant negative - if any - impact to their lifestyle.
A smaller population wouldn't hurt, of course.
Has he done the world more good giving away his money than he did in the process of earning it? Think about that one for a while.
Unquestionably.
On the one hand, we have money being made by selling software to willing customers. On the other, we have money being spent saving people from dying.
I find it amazing anyone even feels the need to ask such a stupid question.
Thank you Bruce. I've been saying this since a year before Vista even shipped. Folks complain about a lot of different things in Vista (some of it fairly, I think) but I see most of those "features" as mere pains-in-the-ass that I could begrudgingly live with. What really gets me and why I won't be installing Vista on any servers or desktops at work is the DRM. To me it's reminiscent of the campaign slogan from a few years ago - "It's the DRM Stupid!"
DRM is either useful if you have DRM-encumbered media, or irrelevant if you don't.
About the only bigger non-argument against Vista than "DRM" is "hardware requirements".
In general, commercial shared libraries are "all rights reserved". They do not provide you with the right to link with or distribute them at all until you pay a royalty.
Rrrrrrright. Which explains why, say, Windows is chock-full of shared libraries which any developer is allowed - nay, encouraged - to leverage without obligation.
So, your assertion that commercial libraries give more rights is false, [...]
What kind of self-delusion do you need to be engaging in where linking to shared libraries anytime except when they're GPLed even requires a second thought ?
[...] and against that you are putting up a rather silly assumption that any court anywhere could pay a king's ransom of code in exchange for a fingernail's worth of GPL code.
No, that was what we call an "example". Not a given. Not an assumption. It was an (admittedly extreme, but I find those tend to be necessary to get the point across quickly) example of how the GPL has the potential to be extremely unfair, because it's scope is primarily *outside* the code it is directly applied to.
Compare this to, say, the BSDL or LGPL, whose scope and focus is restricted only to the code it is directly applied to, inherently reducing their ability to impose unfair obligations or restrictions.