if somebody has me agree that I will not sue them if they attack me, and then sneaks into my house and attacks me, then does their private contract really overrule federal law?
Yes, if the contract was with a corporation. Welcome to the United States.
Given my name here, my vote is fairly predictable.
Lots of gratuitous sex, rape, and violence. Also a fairly interesting plot by American standards. You've kind of a got variation on the whole cyclic metaphysical thing that is common to Eastern philsophy and relgion, but it's combined with Western-style apocalypticism. A great combination.
The caveat: only the first 3 episodes (the first series, in other words) is worth watching unless you're into it just for the sex and violence. Probably the best way to watch Urotsukidoji presently is on the "Urotsukidoji: Perfect Collection" DVD. Watch all of disc 1 and ignore disc 2, whose plot flatly contradicts the first one and smacks of obligatory sequelitis. Apparently they have kept cranking out further sequels -- I guess it's the Friday the 13th or Emmanuelle phenomenon. Furthermore, the "Perfect Collection" is subtitled instead of dubbed, a big plus in my book.
Much of Urotsukidoji is actually quite funny from a visual perspective; the violence is so overdone it is literally cartoonish...but this is the kind of stuff the family values crowd uses to perpetuate the "Rape Man" urban legend about anime. There are other humorous aspects, especially in episode two with the demonic duo, one who can't keep his eyes from slithering out of his head, and the other who wears a baseball cap and has a predilection for freshening his breath with a can of WD-40. And of course there's our plot-driving friend, the only one who doesn't have sex with anything of any species; chastity seems to have addled his wits, because he can't seem to learn the lesson that you're supposed to finish interrogating the bad guys before you kill them.
The third episode is actually almost devoid of sex and violence (but not nudity), because they're so busy resolving the plot. That's actually a good sign; you have to have a little meat on your sandwich...
Anyway, in case you find Urotsukidoji in some other format, the names of the episodes you want to see are Birth of the Overfiend, Legend of the Overfiend, and Final Inferno, in that order. If it's called something else, ignore it.
And you overlook a fundamental principle. People have the right to release their software, music, etc under whatever license they feel appropriate. Just because you don't like the license (ie. don't feel its appropriate) does not give you the right to break the license.
Note to moderator: Restating the thesis of the post to which I replied is redundant, not insightful.:)
The interesting issue is not whether someone does or doesn't "like" a license. The issue is whether the license is appropriate for the product. The penumbra of appropriateness includes questions like "Are the license terms consonant with the intended purpose of copyright law as stated in the Constitution (for U.S. copyrights)?" and "Are the license terms practically enforceable?" The latter question is not some minor point, either. Clauses of contracts are routinely found invalid because their enforcement, if feasible, would demand the compromise of legal or societal norms that are jurisprudentially regarded as more important. For instance, clause three of the erstwhile four-clause BSD license was recently retracted by the Regents of the University of California because it was not enforceable in many (any?) jurisdictions in the United States. The law evolves. Is the GPL, for instance, legally enforceable in all its terms? We don't know yet. At present, it functions more like a social contract. You may *choose* to respect the terms of the GPL, or you may choose not to, and see what happens. In practice, the GPL is flouted every day by some software authors (and, in all likelihood you've heard of their software).
Furthermore, even supportive laws or legal precedents do not equate to moral legitimacy. If you don't believe me, try convincing various BSD advocates of the "moral legitimacy" of the GPL. You may find some minds difficult to change -- and this will be utterly orthogonal to the issue of whether or not they elect to abide by the terms of the GPL or not.
Since corporations have taken it upon themselves to draft legislation for federal and state lawmakers, and then bribe or lobby these laws into ratification (as they have with the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, the Home Recording Act, and UCITA), I think the principle of civil disobedience must apply just as well to large, moneyed interests as it does to governments.
Let me substitue some nouns into your statement: Just because you don't like the war in Vietnam does not give you the right to tear up your draft card.
The simplistic world-view of the corporate apologists cannot stand, or we might as well trade in our constitutional form of government for a Board of Directors.
Say you write some code, GPL it, and release it on the 'Net. Everyone can download it for free, use it, according to the provisions of the license, correct? Now, let's say that someone takes your code and uses it and releases a binary-only version of their software. You contact them, you talk to them, you threaten them, and maybe you get the FSF to help you sue them, I dunno. But, before you get a chance, let's say that some turkey writes a program that enables anyone to transfer this obviously illegal material to anyone else in the world instantaneously, furthering the 'theft' of your ideas, per se. You'd be pretty fscking pissed, right?
Conservative copyright apologists trot this old saw out dozens of times over, everytime an article about digital music distribution is posted to Slashdot. It overlooks a fundamental principle: licensing parameters need to be appropriate to that which is being distributed. The GPL (and other free software licenses) are widely considered appropriate for many (perhaps all) kinds of software. If this were not the case, a site like Slashdot might not even exist.
A piece of software is not a ham sandwich. Until Star Trek's replicators become a reality, I can't duplicate your ham sandwich for myself if I want to eat it -- I have to take yours from you. I can duplicate your copy of GCC without removing yours.
So is a digital audio file closer to a program or a ham sandwich?
Slashdot featured the Espresso PC a couple of weeks ago. What'd I'd like to see is a StrongARM-based PDA with the external ports that the Espresso PC has: VGA out, S-Video out, PS/2 mouse and keyboard in, and DC power in. The Espresso PC falls shy of greatness because of its power-hungry Intel processor, so it doesn't even try to run on a battery. What would be cool would be a Pocket PC that you can carry around and use but which you can also plug into a full-size keyboard and monitor. It would be nice to see a 6 or 12 GB hard drive on a PDA as well, but I guess you simply can't spin those platters without killing your batteries. A reasonable compromise might be having a large-capacity hard drive inside the case but only using it when external power was supplied. This gives the paranoid user the extra advantage of never having to let his data leave his person to get black-bagged.:) Oh well, I guess they'll come up with my dream portable on of these days, when you can run a 10,000 RPM hard drive for 3 months on a watch battery.:)
I don't plan on letting my kids go to church, surf the 'net, attend political rallies or whatever until they are old enough to be able to formulate their own opinions. In short: until they are cynical, like me.
You're joking, right? They're not going to get cynical until they learn for themselves that the heroic, breast-beating ideologues not only have feet of clay, but often scathing hypocrites.
It's well-known that large moneyed interests typically contributed to both parties in a contested race. That way they assuredly own a piece of the victor. Both Al Gore's and George W. Bush's campaigns have broken the record for presidential campaign contributions. The politicians may change, but the puppet strings of lucre always go back to the same places...
Eugene Volokh's analysis, if correct, applies just as well to most, if not all, free software licenses (when Volokh says "free", he means free of charge, as can be gleaned from the context of his remarks). MIT, BSD (with and without the advertising clause), LGPL, and the GPL. (I haven't analyzed the Artistic license with regards to this issue.)
If the GPL loses in this case, the BSD license will lose as well.
BTW, many versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer were distributed for free. Were they also nonexclusive? Did the license agreement on IE say you couldn't pass the CD around the office? I feel sure it didn't, since MS's goal was to proliferate IE as widely as possible at all costs, but I haven't read the license so I cannot be sure.
If it did not, and at least some version of MSIE was licensed both for free and nonexclusively, then there may be a staggering irony awaiting us. The Internet Exporer license may suffer the same effects as the GPL and BSD licenses. I do not know, however, if Volokh means that just the "irrevocable" part of license would be invalidated (which Microsoft probably wouldn't care about, since they possibly all along planned to start charging big bucks for the browser at some point), or it would apply to the whole license. If the latter, then it would perhaps be in Microsoft's interests, quite ironically, to come to the defense of the GPL in this case, lest it either become open season on IE, or a huge percentage of IE installations worldwide become illegal.
It is very difficult to construe existing copyright law in such a way as to screw over *only* free software licenses -- that's what UCITA is for. So Mattel had better be very careful what they wish for. Big Software would probably be most unhappy with Mattel causing even one clause of their many precious restrictive software licenses to be ruled invalid.
Since Wizards of the Coast, who absorbed TSR, have now been bought by Mattel, I wonder if all this talk of "Open Sourcing" the Dungeons & Dragons game really means anything. If it does, I would urge all employees of WotC to threaten a strike in retaliation for this maneuver. It looks like one branch of Mattel is trying to destroy the business strategy that another branch is trying to employ.
However, unless Volokh was misquoted, I don't think his interpretation will stand -- it is too broad, and would hang a sword of Damocles over free distribution of all sorts of copyrighted works. Companies could send you, unsolicited, free CD's in the mail, then later revoke the "license" and demand an arbitrary amount of money from you in exchange for your continued ownership of such items. I'm sure many other abuses could be thought up.
Then again, who knows? Maybe the judge in this case thinks UCITA is the greatest thing since sliced bread and envisions as wonderful a society where a fee is paid for every word read, and every song heard, each time they are perceived. I suppose ultimately a pharmaceutical company doing DNA research will patent the genes that construct neurons, we will all go about with EEG's strapped to our heads with a satellite uplink, and we will pay a nominal fee for every synapse that fires in our brains.
With the proliferation of wireless devices like this, it seems to be more important than ever to make sure that we aren't sending unencrypted packets between machines.
Does the 802.11 spec cover this, or is it just a connectivity protocol for wireless devices (I assume the latter)?
900 MHz cordless phones have made claims to some sort of encryption for years, but I don't take what they put on the box at face value -- I suspect it's pretty weak stuff.
Can somebody provide some pointers to IP-level cryptography? I'll be wanting to go with an in-home set up like this in the near future but I really chafe at the idea of how trivially easy it would be for people to sniff my packets. I realize that encryption is easily built into higher-level protocols, but I really like the idea of minimum disclosure to eavesdroppers, particularly for signals that otherwise wouldn't even leave my home (not everything is outbound to the ISP, you know).
...without having to do any hardware mods to the player (there are geeks who fear hardware).:)
Slashdot covered this a while back, but what you want is the Apex AD-600A. You can get it at Circuit City for between $150 and $190 (CC has been playing with the price in different parts of the country, a "region-coding" of their own, I guess -- Circuit City can't be all good, now, they've got that DiVX legacy of evil to keep up with).
CC doesn't keep them on the shelves, but just have the sales droid punch in "APX AD-600A" into his terminal if he doesn't know what you're talking about.
When/. covered this product it was mainly over its ability to play MP3's. I don't personally care too much about that, but here's what I do like:
plays CD-R's and CD-RW's (many DVD players can't play CD-R's because of their different optical characteristics
you can assign yourself to any region, including bypass (region 0, which basically means you can only play discs without region protection) from the easter egg "loopholes" menu
you can turn off Macrovision from that same menu -- useful even for people who don't want to copy movies, as it enables you to daisy-chain the DVD player through your VCR to the TV. This can be necessary if you've got a paucity of AV jacks on the set or if you've already filled them up with other crap.
Zoom. Some player manufacturers put this only on higher-end models; I have no idea why. To create a product ghetto, I suppose. Once nice thing is that the Apex (apparently, I haven't been able to verify this personally) will use 16x9 enhancement information for a sharper zoom even on a lousy 4x3 television. A thoughtful touch. I couldn't find a way to pan the zoom window, though.
The price. Though it was offset by a bit since I had to buy some decent cables (see below), my net expenditure *still* came out well below what I would have paid for a "comparable" player, which actually would have been missing several features the Apex has.
The disadvantages, in my opinion:
No optical outputs. Oh well.
No 5.1 outputs, either. The best route to go for high-end sound is an external decoder for AC-3 or DTS, anyway -- this player just makes it mandatory. (Yes, like every other civilized DVD player you can send the raw digital data bitstream out through an RCA jack.)
No jog shuttle.
Forward and reverse on audio CD's is a bit weird. You get an Alvin and the chipmunks effect, and if you move too fast, it can just plain get stuck -- you have to stop and restart.
As others have noted, the menu interface to MP3 CD's leaves a bit to be desired (8.3 filenames only, poor directory navigation).
Changing state between two different playback modes is often a bit dodgy. For instance, there is an "Enter/Play" button in the middle of the menu arrows, in addition to a "Play/Pause" button at the bottom of the remote. Sometimes, only one of those will do what you want. Also, in many cases you can't go straight from, say, "Step" (forward frame-by-frame) to fast-forward. You have to go back to "Play" first.
Ships with a set of really marginal cables. Buy a set of good cables to go with it.
Anyway, many of the above ergonomic limitations could be overcome by revisions to the firmware, I'm sure. And there seems to be enough of a hacker community around this player that people might just end up hacking the firmware (you'd have to buy an EEPROM replacement for the existing firmware chip, though -- while socketed for easy replacement, it is not reprogrammable). I wonder if Apex is nuts enough to open-source their firmware and turn the geeks loose on it?
Oh yeah, how to get to the loopholes menu: without a disc in the player, "SETUP" -> select the preferences item -> "STEP" -> chapter/track back "|<<" -> chapter/track forward ">>|". Have fun...
I knew gaijin was a Japanese word, believe it or not, and I knew that Chiou was not a Japanese name. Chinese names are very, very easy to distinguish from Japanese ones even to an ignorant Westerner like myself. In fact, it's pretty straightforward to learn to distinguish Chinese, Japenese, Korean, and Vietnamese names from each other -- at least the ones I've encountered in history books.
I hope no one except people at LinuxOne and the Anonymous Coward I replied to took offense. Maybe no one else did; you tell me, does it give offense to presume that someone else would take offense when they would not?:)
Finally, you might conclude that a person who took his slashdot username from Urotsukidoji both knew a little bit about Japanese words, and might be inclined to troll.:) I hope you guys had as much fun flaming me as I did flaming the clueless idiot.:)
-- Overfiend, who can tell Hideyoshi from K'ang-hsi even on a bad day
the latest Xfree86 packages (3.3.6) for potato seems to be broken, at least in my system... all fonts are screwed up, and that makes X unusable.
This is the first I've heard of this problem. I've gotten enough feedback already on the 3.3.6 packages to know what the common problems were, and this is the first I've heard of any font trouble. Please file a bug report describing the problem. How exactly are the fonts screwed up? What font packages do you have installed? If you can help me to find out what the problem is, then I can help you to fix it. It could be with your system, or it could actually be a bug in one of the X packages. If the latter, then the sooner you report it, the better, and Debian 2.2 will be improved for everyone.
> You're right; I don't have access to a Debian system right now. (It's on my > laptop, but the screen is having issues.) I can look tomorrow. Sorry, > there's nothing I can do about that.
And yet you continued to make irresponsible (and false) assertions about the limitations of the Debian source package format, when you weren't even in a position to properly investigate your claims.
> But I did look at the source tree on the ftp site, and XFree86 just has the > three files referenced in the documentation. One.orig.tar.gz, one >.diff.gz, and one.dsc. If there are other patches, where are they? In the >.orig.tar.gz file? Like I said, that's even worse -- preserving pristine > sources is important. But actually, they don't seem to be there either. > I'll look at this tomorrow and see if they are created somewhere along the > way if you use dpkg-source.
Well, let's see here. There are three files that comprise the source package in this case: the.dsc, the.orig.tar.gz, and the.diff.gz. If the patches aren't in.orig.tar.gz, you have two more places to look, don't you?
> This isn't FUD, by the way -- FUD the original comment may have been, > because it made an unsubstantiated derogatory comment. I'm not saying that > debian's packaging system is bad in any way -- it certainly handles > dependencies better than RPM. But it's not fair to say that RPM is bad > without having a particular reason why, especially when there are things > that RPM does do very nicely that dpkg apparently doesn't.
Nowhere did I say that RPM is bad; to imply that I did is to put words in my mouth. Again, irresponsible and false.
> You're also using the word "troll" in a weird way. There's nothing in my > message that's a troll in any way.
You at first stated and then implied that is was impossible to do with Debian source packages what I was claiming, when casual investigation on your part would prove that I was saying nothing untrue. That is FUD, and that is trolling. It is an attempt to impugn the quality of Debian's packaging system in contrast to RPM -- not on the grounds of actual limitations, but invented ones.
> And I didn't say that you didn't have to > open the SRPM to get at the patches -- just that when you do, they're > clearly differentiated and in seperate files, which is nice when you're > making local changes. How would you go about doing this on Debian?
I told you.
dpkg-source *.dsc
If you want to establish the truth of my assertion on a system that doesn't have the dpkg-source program available, I suggest running the diffstat program against the.diff.gz (after gunzipping it, of course), or simply reading the.diff.gz file.
Again, not all Debian source packages do bother to separate out all their changes into separate patch files. But this true of SRPM's as well (you can have a.spec file that applies one huge.diff against many different files in the source tree).
Both packaging systems *permit* the application of multiple patches to the source tree at build time, but neither mandate it.
> (It's possible that you're right, although I can't find any information to > correlate what you're saying. Even though there _is_ good documentation on > making debian packages, it doesn't really seem to talk about this issue.)
Perhaps you could refer me to the piece of documentation you referenced; it might be fruitful for me to suggest a change to appropriate maintainer that would make such things clearer.
In the future, I think you should be less quick to make assertions without verifying their accuracy first. It is sound rhetorical practice in general, not just in packaging system debates on slashdot.
You obviously didn't bother to unarchive the source package.
dpkg-source -x *.dsc
For the XFree86 source package, take a look in debian/patches and tell me what you think those are.
And please don't troll. Red Hat doesn't keep their multiple patch files separate from the source archive. You have to open up the SRPM to get to them. Likewise with Debian source packages.
Not that anyone will read this now...since the article has fallen off the front page. Score one more point for Red Hat FUD.
there are some things RPM does better too. For example, it allows multiple patches per package, which is crucial for organizing a derivative (either for public or local use) distribution.
BZZZT. Thank you for playing.
For examples of Debian packages that contain multiple patches, and apply them at run time, see the Debian source packages of the GNU Compiler Collection, the GNU C Library, and XFree86.
What Debian doesn't do is make you cram all package-system-specific data into a.spec file.
It's not fair -- or responsible -- to make blanket statements like yours without justification.
It's not fair -- or responsible -- to make blatantly wrong statements like yours.
A very cogent analysis. Now then, in whose interests would it be to ensure that "the message that the peaceful protestors wanted to get out...is going to be pretty much lost in the noise."?
Does anyone have the resources to promote those interests?
Is it possible someone (or many someones) acted to behalf of those interests to help bring about this outcome?
I think it will be some time before we have any real facts to go along with the data of store lootings, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and curfews.
However, considering you support the protest, it's unlikely you are intrigued by facts.
If fallacious (hint: Composition) thinking like this is typical of WTO advocates, rational thought may perhaps be more easily found outside the convention center.
What gives? Are the Debian people just perfectionists or something? All other distributions seem to release new versions a LOT more often.
All the other distributions are beholden to their marketing departments (or even shareholders) to keep the profits rolling in. That means a steady revenue stream. That means quarterly releases. That means things like version number jumps because the other guy is using "6". That means things like releases going out half-baked because you're losing revenue to some knock-off product.
All that said, most Debian developers do feel that we could stand to release more often. I am one of them, and along with Joey Hess and others I hope to spend some time coming up with an updated version of slink before the end of the year. It would collect all the security fixes (which I hasten to add are available on websites all over the world and are even burned onto CD's by vendors in most cases), pull in a 2.2.x kernel, maybe an updated glibc, definitely an upgraded XFree86 if I have anything to do with it, etc. Kind of a "slinky potato", if you will.
No need to recompile. If you need sound (like a warning when Apache crashes, cron quits, or even if you Internet connection quits), then you can simply do:
echo -e "\a"
Not in ash. And we can all thank Herbert Xu for that.
Doesn't do much good to preview your post if you can't catch your own damn typos. Then again, maybe it was a Freudian slip and betrayed my guilty conscience...:)
Corel is not basing their distribution on slink. At least, if they are, they're modifiying the heck out of it. A little bird told me that one of their developers was cursing my name because in my opinion I wasn't fast enough in releasing XFree86 3.3.5.debs to potato. Apparently Corel wants/wanted to ship 3.3.5 with their second beta. I don't know yet if they actually did.
I don't mind a bit of delay, as XFree86 3.3.6 should be out soon, and I'd really rather ship the new version of Debian with as recent a version of XFree86 as possible.
Someone should moderate that AC down to "Flamebait".
I run a Debian system, and hey, lookee here: glibc 2.1.2, kernel 2.2.12, and XFree86 3.3.5.
Gosh, you're right, Debian is outdated as hell, and people have no way of tracking the bleeding edge. My roster of installed package versions is just the product of hallucinogenic drugs.
While other distros are engaged in version number inflation and letting their marketing departments make ever more product decisions, Debian is releasing nothing before its time. SMP lockups are still being tracked down in the latest stable Linux kernel, for instance (see kernel-traffic). It's good that Debian is taking its time to release.
Want to know how to have an influence on Debian's release schedule? Become a developer and exercise one voice among 500.
Another person already explained how to do it from dselect.
Also, recent versions of apt can be configured to always turn this option on when dpkg is invoked. I have forgotten how, though, since I never have to use --force-depends.:) man apt.conf should explain it.
Never underestimate the configurability of a Debian system. I've been a happy Debian user for almost four years. I notice elsewhere in this thread that people are having to reboot their Red Hat and SuSE boxes when transitioning from glibc 2.0 to 2.1. Whatever for? Is this true? The only time I ever have to reboot my Debian system is to boot a different kernel or when I suspect the local electric company is going to use a thunderstorm as an excuse to deprive me of service. Time to invest in a UPS, I think...
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if somebody has me agree that I will not sue them if they attack me, and then sneaks into my house and attacks me, then does their private contract really overrule federal law?
Yes, if the contract was with a corporation. Welcome to the United States.
Given my name here, my vote is fairly predictable.
Lots of gratuitous sex, rape, and violence. Also a fairly interesting plot by American standards. You've kind of a got variation on the whole cyclic metaphysical thing that is common to Eastern philsophy and relgion, but it's combined with Western-style apocalypticism. A great combination.
The caveat: only the first 3 episodes (the first series, in other words) is worth watching unless you're into it just for the sex and violence. Probably the best way to watch Urotsukidoji presently is on the "Urotsukidoji: Perfect Collection" DVD. Watch all of disc 1 and ignore disc 2, whose plot flatly contradicts the first one and smacks of obligatory sequelitis. Apparently they have kept cranking out further sequels -- I guess it's the Friday the 13th or Emmanuelle phenomenon. Furthermore, the "Perfect Collection" is subtitled instead of dubbed, a big plus in my book.
Much of Urotsukidoji is actually quite funny from a visual perspective; the violence is so overdone it is literally cartoonish...but this is the kind of stuff the family values crowd uses to perpetuate the "Rape Man" urban legend about anime. There are other humorous aspects, especially in episode two with the demonic duo, one who can't keep his eyes from slithering out of his head, and the other who wears a baseball cap and has a predilection for freshening his breath with a can of WD-40. And of course there's our plot-driving friend, the only one who doesn't have sex with anything of any species; chastity seems to have addled his wits, because he can't seem to learn the lesson that you're supposed to finish interrogating the bad guys before you kill them.
The third episode is actually almost devoid of sex and violence (but not nudity), because they're so busy resolving the plot. That's actually a good sign; you have to have a little meat on your sandwich...
Anyway, in case you find Urotsukidoji in some other format, the names of the episodes you want to see are Birth of the Overfiend, Legend of the Overfiend, and Final Inferno, in that order. If it's called something else, ignore it.
And you overlook a fundamental principle. People have the right to release their software, music, etc under whatever license they feel appropriate. Just because you don't like the license (ie. don't feel its appropriate) does not give you the right to break the license.
Note to moderator: Restating the thesis of the post to which I replied is redundant, not insightful. :)
The interesting issue is not whether someone does or doesn't "like" a license. The issue is whether the license is appropriate for the product. The penumbra of appropriateness includes questions like "Are the license terms consonant with the intended purpose of copyright law as stated in the Constitution (for U.S. copyrights)?" and "Are the license terms practically enforceable?" The latter question is not some minor point, either. Clauses of contracts are routinely found invalid because their enforcement, if feasible, would demand the compromise of legal or societal norms that are jurisprudentially regarded as more important. For instance, clause three of the erstwhile four-clause BSD license was recently retracted by the Regents of the University of California because it was not enforceable in many (any?) jurisdictions in the United States. The law evolves. Is the GPL, for instance, legally enforceable in all its terms? We don't know yet. At present, it functions more like a social contract. You may *choose* to respect the terms of the GPL, or you may choose not to, and see what happens. In practice, the GPL is flouted every day by some software authors (and, in all likelihood you've heard of their software).
Furthermore, even supportive laws or legal precedents do not equate to moral legitimacy. If you don't believe me, try convincing various BSD advocates of the "moral legitimacy" of the GPL. You may find some minds difficult to change -- and this will be utterly orthogonal to the issue of whether or not they elect to abide by the terms of the GPL or not.
Since corporations have taken it upon themselves to draft legislation for federal and state lawmakers, and then bribe or lobby these laws into ratification (as they have with the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, the Home Recording Act, and UCITA), I think the principle of civil disobedience must apply just as well to large, moneyed interests as it does to governments.
Let me substitue some nouns into your statement: Just because you don't like the war in Vietnam does not give you the right to tear up your draft card.
The simplistic world-view of the corporate apologists cannot stand, or we might as well trade in our constitutional form of government for a Board of Directors.
Say you write some code, GPL it, and release it on the 'Net. Everyone can download it for free, use it, according to the provisions of the license, correct? Now, let's say that someone takes your code and uses it and releases a binary-only version of their software. You contact them, you talk to them, you threaten them, and maybe you get the FSF to help you sue them, I dunno. But, before you get a chance, let's say that some turkey writes a program that enables anyone to transfer this obviously illegal material to anyone else in the world instantaneously, furthering the 'theft' of your ideas, per se. You'd be pretty fscking pissed, right?
Conservative copyright apologists trot this old saw out dozens of times over, everytime an article about digital music distribution is posted to Slashdot. It overlooks a fundamental principle: licensing parameters need to be appropriate to that which is being distributed. The GPL (and other free software licenses) are widely considered appropriate for many (perhaps all) kinds of software. If this were not the case, a site like Slashdot might not even exist.
A piece of software is not a ham sandwich. Until Star Trek's replicators become a reality, I can't duplicate your ham sandwich for myself if I want to eat it -- I have to take yours from you. I can duplicate your copy of GCC without removing yours.
So is a digital audio file closer to a program or a ham sandwich?
Slashdot featured the Espresso PC a couple of weeks ago. What'd I'd like to see is a StrongARM-based PDA with the external ports that the Espresso PC has: VGA out, S-Video out, PS/2 mouse and keyboard in, and DC power in. The Espresso PC falls shy of greatness because of its power-hungry Intel processor, so it doesn't even try to run on a battery. What would be cool would be a Pocket PC that you can carry around and use but which you can also plug into a full-size keyboard and monitor. It would be nice to see a 6 or 12 GB hard drive on a PDA as well, but I guess you simply can't spin those platters without killing your batteries. A reasonable compromise might be having a large-capacity hard drive inside the case but only using it when external power was supplied. This gives the paranoid user the extra advantage of never having to let his data leave his person to get black-bagged. :) Oh well, I guess they'll come up with my dream portable on of these days, when you can run a 10,000 RPM hard drive for 3 months on a watch battery. :)
I don't plan on letting my kids go to church, surf the 'net, attend political rallies or whatever until they are old enough to be able to formulate their own opinions. In short: until they are cynical, like me.
You're joking, right? They're not going to get cynical until they learn for themselves that the heroic, breast-beating ideologues not only have feet of clay, but often scathing hypocrites.
It's well-known that large moneyed interests typically contributed to both parties in a contested race. That way they assuredly own a piece of the victor. Both Al Gore's and George W. Bush's campaigns have broken the record for presidential campaign contributions. The politicians may change, but the puppet strings of lucre always go back to the same places...
Eugene Volokh's analysis, if correct, applies just as well to most, if not all, free software licenses (when Volokh says "free", he means free of charge, as can be gleaned from the context of his remarks). MIT, BSD (with and without the advertising clause), LGPL, and the GPL. (I haven't analyzed the Artistic license with regards to this issue.)
If the GPL loses in this case, the BSD license will lose as well.
BTW, many versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer were distributed for free. Were they also nonexclusive? Did the license agreement on IE say you couldn't pass the CD around the office? I feel sure it didn't, since MS's goal was to proliferate IE as widely as possible at all costs, but I haven't read the license so I cannot be sure.
If it did not, and at least some version of MSIE was licensed both for free and nonexclusively, then there may be a staggering irony awaiting us. The Internet Exporer license may suffer the same effects as the GPL and BSD licenses. I do not know, however, if Volokh means that just the "irrevocable" part of license would be invalidated (which Microsoft probably wouldn't care about, since they possibly all along planned to start charging big bucks for the browser at some point), or it would apply to the whole license. If the latter, then it would perhaps be in Microsoft's interests, quite ironically, to come to the defense of the GPL in this case, lest it either become open season on IE, or a huge percentage of IE installations worldwide become illegal.
It is very difficult to construe existing copyright law in such a way as to screw over *only* free software licenses -- that's what UCITA is for. So Mattel had better be very careful what they wish for. Big Software would probably be most unhappy with Mattel causing even one clause of their many precious restrictive software licenses to be ruled invalid.
Since Wizards of the Coast, who absorbed TSR, have now been bought by Mattel, I wonder if all this talk of "Open Sourcing" the Dungeons & Dragons game really means anything. If it does, I would urge all employees of WotC to threaten a strike in retaliation for this maneuver. It looks like one branch of Mattel is trying to destroy the business strategy that another branch is trying to employ.
However, unless Volokh was misquoted, I don't think his interpretation will stand -- it is too broad, and would hang a sword of Damocles over free distribution of all sorts of copyrighted works. Companies could send you, unsolicited, free CD's in the mail, then later revoke the "license" and demand an arbitrary amount of money from you in exchange for your continued ownership of such items. I'm sure many other abuses could be thought up.
Then again, who knows? Maybe the judge in this case thinks UCITA is the greatest thing since sliced bread and envisions as wonderful a society where a fee is paid for every word read, and every song heard, each time they are perceived. I suppose ultimately a pharmaceutical company doing DNA research will patent the genes that construct neurons, we will all go about with EEG's strapped to our heads with a satellite uplink, and we will pay a nominal fee for every synapse that fires in our brains.
Long live the American plutocracy!
With the proliferation of wireless devices like this, it seems to be more important than ever to make sure that we aren't sending unencrypted packets between machines.
Does the 802.11 spec cover this, or is it just a connectivity protocol for wireless devices (I assume the latter)?
900 MHz cordless phones have made claims to some sort of encryption for years, but I don't take what they put on the box at face value -- I suspect it's pretty weak stuff.
Can somebody provide some pointers to IP-level cryptography? I'll be wanting to go with an in-home set up like this in the near future but I really chafe at the idea of how trivially easy it would be for people to sniff my packets. I realize that encryption is easily built into higher-level protocols, but I really like the idea of minimum disclosure to eavesdroppers, particularly for signals that otherwise wouldn't even leave my home (not everything is outbound to the ISP, you know).
...without having to do any hardware mods to the player (there are geeks who fear hardware). :)
Slashdot covered this a while back, but what you want is the Apex AD-600A. You can get it at Circuit City for between $150 and $190 (CC has been playing with the price in different parts of the country, a "region-coding" of their own, I guess -- Circuit City can't be all good, now, they've got that DiVX legacy of evil to keep up with).
CC doesn't keep them on the shelves, but just have the sales droid punch in "APX AD-600A" into his terminal if he doesn't know what you're talking about.
When /. covered this product it was mainly over its ability to play MP3's. I don't personally care too much about that, but here's what I do like:
The disadvantages, in my opinion:
Anyway, many of the above ergonomic limitations could be overcome by revisions to the firmware, I'm sure. And there seems to be enough of a hacker community around this player that people might just end up hacking the firmware (you'd have to buy an EEPROM replacement for the existing firmware chip, though -- while socketed for easy replacement, it is not reprogrammable). I wonder if Apex is nuts enough to open-source their firmware and turn the geeks loose on it?
Oh yeah, how to get to the loopholes menu: without a disc in the player, "SETUP" -> select the preferences item -> "STEP" -> chapter/track back "|<<" -> chapter/track forward ">>|". Have fun...
I knew gaijin was a Japanese word, believe it or not, and I knew that Chiou was not a Japanese name. Chinese names are very, very easy to distinguish from Japanese ones even to an ignorant Westerner like myself. In fact, it's pretty straightforward to learn to distinguish Chinese, Japenese, Korean, and Vietnamese names from each other -- at least the ones I've encountered in history books.
I hope no one except people at LinuxOne and the Anonymous Coward I replied to took offense. Maybe no one else did; you tell me, does it give offense to presume that someone else would take offense when they would not? :)
Finally, you might conclude that a person who took his slashdot username from Urotsukidoji both knew a little bit about Japanese words, and might be inclined to troll. :) I hope you guys had as much fun flaming me as I did flaming the clueless idiot. :)
-- Overfiend, who can tell Hideyoshi from K'ang-hsi even on a bad day
Oh yeah, moderate down the parent post just because it is a little different than the normal Slashdot opinion.
Oh, come on, this has to be a troll.
Maybe if you all pulled your heads out of Richard Stallman's dirty asshole you'd have a more rational worldview.
What a load of crap... I'm out of here.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out...on second thought, do. :)
Only time will tell if Mr. Chiou's attempt to sucker the gaijin pans out...
the latest Xfree86 packages (3.3.6) for potato seems to be broken, at least in my system... all fonts are screwed up, and that makes X unusable.
This is the first I've heard of this problem. I've gotten enough feedback already on the 3.3.6 packages to know what the common problems were, and this is the first I've heard of any font trouble. Please file a bug report describing the problem. How exactly are the fonts screwed up? What font packages do you have installed? If you can help me to find out what the problem is, then I can help you to fix it. It could be with your system, or it could actually be a bug in one of the X packages. If the latter, then the sooner you report it, the better, and Debian 2.2 will be improved for everyone.
Branden Robinson, Debian XFree86 package maintainer
> You're right; I don't have access to a Debian system right now. (It's on my
.orig.tar.gz, one .diff.gz, and one .dsc. If there are other patches, where are they? In the .orig.tar.gz file? Like I said, that's even worse -- preserving pristine
.dsc, the .orig.tar.gz, and the .diff.gz. If the .orig.tar.gz, you have two more places to look, don't
.diff.gz (after gunzipping it, of course), or simply .diff.gz file.
.spec file that applies one huge .diff against many different
> laptop, but the screen is having issues.) I can look tomorrow. Sorry,
> there's nothing I can do about that.
And yet you continued to make irresponsible (and false) assertions about
the limitations of the Debian source package format, when you weren't even
in a position to properly investigate your claims.
> But I did look at the source tree on the ftp site, and XFree86 just has the
> three files referenced in the documentation. One
>
>
> sources is important. But actually, they don't seem to be there either.
> I'll look at this tomorrow and see if they are created somewhere along the
> way if you use dpkg-source.
Well, let's see here. There are three files that comprise the source
package in this case: the
patches aren't in
you?
> This isn't FUD, by the way -- FUD the original comment may have been,
> because it made an unsubstantiated derogatory comment. I'm not saying that
> debian's packaging system is bad in any way -- it certainly handles
> dependencies better than RPM. But it's not fair to say that RPM is bad
> without having a particular reason why, especially when there are things
> that RPM does do very nicely that dpkg apparently doesn't.
Nowhere did I say that RPM is bad; to imply that I did is to put words in
my mouth. Again, irresponsible and false.
> You're also using the word "troll" in a weird way. There's nothing in my
> message that's a troll in any way.
You at first stated and then implied that is was impossible to do with
Debian source packages what I was claiming, when casual investigation on
your part would prove that I was saying nothing untrue. That is FUD, and
that is trolling. It is an attempt to impugn the quality of Debian's
packaging system in contrast to RPM -- not on the grounds of actual
limitations, but invented ones.
> And I didn't say that you didn't have to
> open the SRPM to get at the patches -- just that when you do, they're
> clearly differentiated and in seperate files, which is nice when you're
> making local changes. How would you go about doing this on Debian?
I told you.
dpkg-source *.dsc
If you want to establish the truth of my assertion on a system that doesn't
have the dpkg-source program available, I suggest running the diffstat
program against the
reading the
Again, not all Debian source packages do bother to separate out all their
changes into separate patch files. But this true of SRPM's as well (you
can have a
files in the source tree).
Both packaging systems *permit* the application of multiple patches to the
source tree at build time, but neither mandate it.
> (It's possible that you're right, although I can't find any information to
> correlate what you're saying. Even though there _is_ good documentation on
> making debian packages, it doesn't really seem to talk about this issue.)
Perhaps you could refer me to the piece of documentation you referenced; it
might be fruitful for me to suggest a change to appropriate maintainer
that would make such things clearer.
In the future, I think you should be less quick to make assertions without
verifying their accuracy first. It is sound rhetorical practice in
general, not just in packaging system debates on slashdot.
You obviously didn't bother to unarchive the source package.
dpkg-source -x *.dsc
For the XFree86 source package, take a look in debian/patches and tell me what you think those are.
And please don't troll. Red Hat doesn't keep their multiple patch files separate from the source archive. You have to open up the SRPM to get to them. Likewise with Debian source packages.
Not that anyone will read this now...since the article has fallen off the front page. Score one more point for Red Hat FUD.
there are some things RPM does better too. For example, it allows multiple patches per package, which is crucial for organizing a derivative (either for public or local use) distribution.
BZZZT. Thank you for playing.
For examples of Debian packages that contain multiple patches, and apply them at run time, see the Debian source packages of the GNU Compiler Collection, the GNU C Library, and XFree86.
What Debian doesn't do is make you cram all package-system-specific data into a .spec file.
It's not fair -- or responsible -- to make blanket statements like yours without justification.
It's not fair -- or responsible -- to make blatantly wrong statements like yours.
Maybe this just demonstrates the intellectual and creative bankruptcy of the Left in the US?
So how long have you been an Objectivist? :)
A very cogent analysis. Now then, in whose interests would it be to ensure that "the message that the peaceful protestors wanted to get out...is going to be pretty much lost in the noise."?
Does anyone have the resources to promote those interests?
Is it possible someone (or many someones) acted to behalf of those interests to help bring about this outcome?
I think it will be some time before we have any real facts to go along with the data of store lootings, tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and curfews.
However, considering you support the protest, it's unlikely you are intrigued by facts.
If fallacious (hint: Composition) thinking like this is typical of WTO advocates, rational thought may perhaps be more easily found outside the convention center.
What gives? Are the Debian people just perfectionists or something? All other distributions seem to release new versions a LOT more often.
All the other distributions are beholden to their marketing departments (or even shareholders) to keep the profits rolling in. That means a steady revenue stream. That means quarterly releases. That means things like version number jumps because the other guy is using "6". That means things like releases going out half-baked because you're losing revenue to some knock-off product.
All that said, most Debian developers do feel that we could stand to release more often. I am one of them, and along with Joey Hess and others I hope to spend some time coming up with an updated version of slink before the end of the year. It would collect all the security fixes (which I hasten to add are available on websites all over the world and are even burned onto CD's by vendors in most cases), pull in a 2.2.x kernel, maybe an updated glibc, definitely an upgraded XFree86 if I have anything to do with it, etc. Kind of a "slinky potato", if you will.
No need to recompile. If you need sound (like a warning when Apache crashes, cron quits, or even if you Internet connection quits), then you can simply do:
echo -e "\a"
Not in ash. And we can all thank Herbert Xu for that.
Er, in his opinion.
Doesn't do much good to preview your post if you can't catch your own damn typos. Then again, maybe it was a Freudian slip and betrayed my guilty conscience... :)
Corel is not basing their distribution on slink. At least, if they are, they're modifiying the heck out of it. A little bird told me that one of their developers was cursing my name because in my opinion I wasn't fast enough in releasing XFree86 3.3.5 .debs to potato. Apparently Corel wants/wanted to ship 3.3.5 with their second beta. I don't know yet if they actually did.
I don't mind a bit of delay, as XFree86 3.3.6 should be out soon, and I'd really rather ship the new version of Debian with as recent a version of XFree86 as possible.
Someone should moderate that AC down to "Flamebait".
I run a Debian system, and hey, lookee here: glibc 2.1.2, kernel 2.2.12, and XFree86 3.3.5.
Gosh, you're right, Debian is outdated as hell, and people have no way of tracking the bleeding edge. My roster of installed package versions is just the product of hallucinogenic drugs.
While other distros are engaged in version number inflation and letting their marketing departments make ever more product decisions, Debian is releasing nothing before its time. SMP lockups are still being tracked down in the latest stable Linux kernel, for instance (see kernel-traffic). It's good that Debian is taking its time to release.
Want to know how to have an influence on Debian's release schedule? Become a developer and exercise one voice among 500.
Of course there is.
dpkg --install --force-depends whatever.deb
Another person already explained how to do it from dselect.
Also, recent versions of apt can be configured to always turn this option on when dpkg is invoked. I have forgotten how, though, since I never have to use --force-depends. :) man apt.conf should explain it.
Never underestimate the configurability of a Debian system. I've been a happy Debian user for almost four years. I notice elsewhere in this thread that people are having to reboot their Red Hat and SuSE boxes when transitioning from glibc 2.0 to 2.1. Whatever for? Is this true? The only time I ever have to reboot my Debian system is to boot a different kernel or when I suspect the local electric company is going to use a thunderstorm as an excuse to deprive me of service. Time to invest in a UPS, I think...