to get panicked MS sys-admins (who won't or can't upgrade to XP or linux) to stock up on some extra W2K licenses over the next couple quarters. This will boost MS's cash revenues to offset a suddenly more subtle use of "commonly accepted accounting practices" which make the earnings appear any way they want.
...when personal computers in the grade schools had a 1 MHz processor, maybe a 64k of memory, and allowed students to do some simple text editing and also learn to program in Basic. A lot of programmers/engineers got our start on these things. The current generation of palmtops are far more powerful, one tenth the cost, and can still be used for simple text editing and programming in Basic (there's even an open source Basic interpreter for the PalmOS).
I would probably be on mac instead of Linux these days if macintosh had including a c++ compiler, a BASIC interpreter, and HyperCard(HyperCard lite doesn't count.)
You can download gcc for Mac OS X, as well as several free (either as in beer or speech) Basic interpreters. Not sure about HyperCard; but HTML+JavaScript seems to be the modern replacement for that type of application.
Said creator is only obligated to do so if he or she uses a GPLed work within his or her own work, in which case the creator has chosen to accept such a requirement consciously and knowingly.
Has either this, or shrink-wrap licenses, been tested in the courts yet? Does offering software for free (as in $$$), and then holding only certain parties to restrictions on their business model without their signatures seem enforceable (especially internationally, where copyright law varies)? Some types of contracts require an exchange ($1). Does software that one can get for free count as an exchange? Perhaps the a false advertising law might apply (why did you call it "free", as the word is typically interpreted by the software buying public?).
The "restriction" to distribute binaries without source is not a restriction. You never had that right in the first place. If you follow the standard copyright law, you can't copy *anything*.
The BSD license and putting software in the public domain are legal under copyright law (AFAIK IANAL) and do allow you to copy. By comparison GPL is a restriction; GPL's freedom is relative. It's a pretty closed and restrictive license by comparison to many other popular open source licenses (MPL, LGPL, BSD, etc.) But this form of license does have value, just like many closed-source licenses.
IMHO, the biggest (perhaps the only?) problem with patents, is that the duration is not a function of the development cost.
The idea of patents isn't to encourage people to waste as much money as possible on R but to encourage the development of technology that is desirable and useful enough to the public to make it profitable (via royalties, or direct manufacture and sales).
Recently a Slashdot reader hit on a brilliant analogy that ties it all together for me, and I'm not even a bearded linux hippie: patents, he said, are merely a form of industrial pollution. After all, both pollution and patents are economic externalities that can enrich individuals or companies at the expense of society as a whole.
Economic externalities work both ways. A large enough majority of the voters could outlaw all fossil-fuel burning powerplants; but they won't (today) because the effects on their lifestyle is perceived as being even less desirable than the reduction in pollution. Patents may "pollute" the usability of ideas, but the question is whether this pollution is a desirable trade-off given the results of encouraging people and corporations to spend more R&D dollars. Somewhere there is a reasonable balancing point between no patents and too many stupid patents (unless you believe that 18th century official who said that everything has already been invented).
What bugs me is the way they throw out this stat as if it's astounding-- it's not. Look at any system used by numerous people and you'll see about the same distribution. Take the US interstate highway system, for example: I'd lay money that 1% of the drivers thereon account for more than 16% of the traffic. How about campgrounds? 1% of the population accounts for a whopping 90% of campground usage. Their complaint is statistically meaningless.
It might not be astouding but it's perfectly meaningful. Toll roads do take usage into account. Drive across that toll bridge 10 times, pay 10x the toll. Use that private campground for 2 weeks, pay 2x what the 1 week camper pays. etc. Even most public campgrounds have a per-day use fee around here. So the campground "hoggers" do pay more.
Democracy alone is not an overriding ideal. There have been many times in history when 50.0001% of a population would have loved to trod on a currently accepted freedom or constitutional right. The US systems works well in part because there is balance of powers between various bodies. If each body were exactly representative, then they would all tend to be more-or-less the same and there would be no differences to balance. By making each body slightly unrepresentative or undemocratic, but in slightly different ways (terms, regions, jurisdictions, etc.), the resulting balance between bodies actually seems to work better in the long run.
Sort of like the internet, consisting of lots of systems without even parity memory, being more failure resistant in total than having everyone depending on one single high-availability mainframe...
Running a business is a privilege granted by the people (business/vendor license). There are no rights, promises, or guarantees that running a business will earn any profit.
The specific terms of a copyright is also a privilege granted by the government; there is no guarantee that the government will not remove or decare that privilege void by legislation, especially if it can be claimed necessary for national security.
A proof is a proof is a proof. A proof is something that convinces someone that something is true. What is an 'extraordinary' proof? One using surprising methods? One that you didn't expect? One written in a pretty font? If it convinces it convinces. Whether it's extraordinary or not is completely irrelevant.
Proofs *do* convinced people that things are true; but sometimes the "proved" thesis later turns out to be bogus. This most often happens regarding things in which the people already believed or believed in too quickly. Extraordinary proofs convince people of things in which they don't previously or easily believe, and stand the test of later unforeseen ways of checking the methods and results.
There are no degrees of proof. Either it is a proof or it isn't.
Only if there is only person on the planet. But different people require different amounts of convincing. The most simple degree of proof is the percentage of specialists in the field it convinces and over what period of time. Some physics theories required decades before being widely accepted.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I'm pretty sure the rules of "first sale" do not include the right to photo-copy the book and sell the copies or even give them away for free. Or to transcribe the copy to your computer and then distribute it for free over the net. Call me crazy (or ignorant), but I am pretty sure that the current copyright law does NOT allow this.
"First Sale" doctrine may not restrict what you do with your purchased copy of the book, but copyright law certainly can restrict what you do with copies of your copy. The book and the CD are yours; you can sell them or give them away. But that doctrine does not apply to any photo-copies or mp3s you made.
If I have 5000 hours of video in my library, but only 100 hours of that is copyrighted by Hollywood, is the MPAA being fair in their argument that I'm stealing from them?
Only regarding the 100 hours; they don't automatically get rights to your entire 5000 hour collection. If you use 1 minute of someones song in your 50 minute movie, you only have to give the songwriter royalties for the 1 minute of song, not for your entire movie. Asking for unrestricted distribution rights of the entire movie in exchange for a single song is not at all fair or equitable.
The thing I love most about the Palm and the PalmOs is that it works, that it's extremely simple and that it's extremely reliable.
Frankly, if the only direction is more colours, better resolution, more MP3, full feature video and other such assorted crap, then I guess it's time to ditch the Palm and go for a...
PalmOS 5's main purpose is to support ARM processors. ARM processors generally have a better MIPS/mW efficiency, and can thus run native apps using less power, which should result in greater battery life for the simple reliable PIM apps, which will still be there. The new display types are actually more readable under some lighting conditions, which can make using a PalmOS handheld even more simple and reliable for those of use with aging eyeballs. You don't have to use all the new features.
(and you can still read slashdot using lynx from a VT100 terminal...)
Tried that... till I got used to editing, backing up, and searching my documents on a computer. Ever tried to edit long lists in a 49 cent notepad? (cross out till unreadable, copy, recopy, rerecopy, etc.) Ever tried to find a note about something you wrote many months ago? Ever tried to make backup copies of important data in that notepad? How fast can you uncrypt passwords you kept in that notepad? (oh, you kept them in plaintext! how secure... not.) How much time do you spend copying data by hand out of email and web pages into that notepad? Do you carry a flashlight to read that notepad in complete darkness? And, of course, in addition to that notepad, you might also need to carry a calculator and an alarm wristwatch which has such a easy interface with which to set alarms for your aunts birthday (yeah, right.)
I have to admit, for reasons of affordability, the notepad did win back in the days before I could afford my own personal computer.
It should be small enough not only to fit in a small shirt pocket, but maybe even to fit inside a wallet (most people have too many things inside their pockets already) or on ones wrist; have a user interface which one can operate even with a bad hangover; have a battery which lasts at least a week between rechargings; be fashionable looking (so that lots of ordinary people will buy them, thus lowering the production costs); and talk to ones cell phone (no use in having to carry 2 batteries which can reach a local cell tower) and to a local wireless network. It should have multiple input options (pen gesture, handwriting, optional keyboards (tiny and full size), morse code input, user trained voice recognition, etc.) and an open application development SDK. In the future, it should also talk to a virtual HDTV resolution display which I can hide inside my sunglasses.
The thinner PalmOS units have about half these needed features, so that's what I use currently.
If they really did nothing, then there's nothing for you to want to download. So why do you care?
But if I download a song on a P2P, the copyright holders have done absolutely nothing for me personally. They didn't write the music for me. They didn't perform it for me. And they didn't even have to make the copy for me.
They obviously did do something for you personally. Before they created and recorded their work, you didn't want it. Now that they have, and people you know who've paid for a copy have it and you don't, now you want to buy it or steal a copy of it. If they really did nothing for you and your mind, then *you* could ignore the fact the song even exists.
This is just crap. Ever hear of Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven? They're these old dead guys who used to write some tunes. A lot of them, in fact. They even got paid for it. And they didn't have copyrights.
They certainly did, just by another name. If you tried to sneak into one of their patrons private symphoney halls (the only place you could hear music before electronic reproduction), you would probably get thrown into a dungeon.
> Content that would not exist in a world without copyrights.
This is wrong also. Content would certainly exist, just less of it. There are people who will create stuff for free, there are people who can't create anything of value no matter what the price, and their are people who create that which makes them sufficient money or even the most money. The later would probably spend less time on original music, art, software, whatever, and maybe more time on making tv commercials instead. What a wonderful world.
So, does every country that's at war have the right to spy on you now?
Most countries at war assume they have the right to *kill* people! Spying, if the combatents have the capability, is just another method of more efficient targetting.
I don't care how they look at me, if they want my business (and they do) they will send me their sales document in the format that I specify it.
Not so good if your company wants to do business with them, or you're already contracted to do business with them, or it's someone in your own company (who happens to be higher ranking or more valuable to the company than you, but in a non-techy skilled area), or it's your (very rich) aunt who doesn't want geeks fiddling with her (it just works) Mac.
While the GPL is a legal licensing agreement, the BSA is not likely to enforce it.
Nah... what the BSA might do is to add some important mods and bug fixes to every popular GPL'd package... and retain full copyright.
Then after waiting a few months, legally go after every little end-user with open share, or who sends a program in email to a friend, etc., and sue because they didn't comply with all the GPL fine print (what's source code? how would I send a copy to my mom?). Make sure not to settle without a $$$ costly software audit surpervised by BSA laywers. This will not only reap a ton of legal fees; but will make GPL software *really* popular among end-users.
The GPL is really a *grant*, because it takes no rights away from the user, but allows you to do things normally forbidden by copyright law.
The GPL only looks like a grant if you consider the covered source code to be considered to be closed, restricted or proprietary. Then it gives you rights you might not have (without paying a fee). But because the GPL is often used on stuff misnamed "free software", it actually takes away rights from a software distributor which the more "free" BSD-style license, or the MPL, or truly free public domain material, would allow.
So go ahead and say the GPL is a grant; but then please call the stuff it covers closed source (closed to all software developers who can not or do not accept its acquisitional terms for whatever reasons.)
I give you permission to use MY code, FOR ANYTHING, as long as you redistribute MY code + whatever modifcations you want to make as source code.
That's the MPL, not the GPL. The GPL tries to steal OTHER peoples source code in the same source tree as yours which merely happens to be statically linked into a distributed binary instead of dynamically linked. The MPL only requires that modifications to YOUR source code need be redistributed.
Slashdot Mirror
to get panicked MS sys-admins (who won't or can't upgrade to XP or linux) to stock up on some extra W2K licenses over the next couple quarters. This will boost MS's cash revenues to offset a suddenly more subtle use of "commonly accepted accounting practices" which make the earnings appear any way they want.
...when personal computers in the grade schools had a 1 MHz processor, maybe a 64k of memory, and allowed students to do some simple text editing and also learn to program in Basic. A lot of programmers/engineers got our start on these things. The current generation of palmtops are far more powerful, one tenth the cost, and can still be used for simple text editing and programming in Basic (there's even an open source Basic interpreter for the PalmOS).
You can download gcc for Mac OS X, as well as several free (either as in beer or speech) Basic interpreters. Not sure about HyperCard; but HTML+JavaScript seems to be the modern replacement for that type of application.
Has either this, or shrink-wrap licenses, been tested in the courts yet? Does offering software for free (as in $$$), and then holding only certain parties to restrictions on their business model without their signatures seem enforceable (especially internationally, where copyright law varies)? Some types of contracts require an exchange ($1). Does software that one can get for free count as an exchange? Perhaps the a false advertising law might apply (why did you call it "free", as the word is typically interpreted by the software buying public?).
IANAL. YMMV.
The BSD license and putting software in the public domain are legal under copyright law (AFAIK IANAL) and do allow you to copy. By comparison GPL is a restriction; GPL's freedom is relative. It's a pretty closed and restrictive license by comparison to many other popular open source licenses (MPL, LGPL, BSD, etc.) But this form of license does have value, just like many closed-source licenses.
So, after the browser was "integrated" with the OS, why didn't Sypglass go after a percentage of Windows selling price?
The idea of patents isn't to encourage people to waste as much money as possible on R but to encourage the development of technology that is desirable and useful enough to the public to make it profitable (via royalties, or direct manufacture and sales).
Economic externalities work both ways. A large enough majority of the voters could outlaw all fossil-fuel burning powerplants; but they won't (today) because the effects on their lifestyle is perceived as being even less desirable than the reduction in pollution. Patents may "pollute" the usability of ideas, but the question is whether this pollution is a desirable trade-off given the results of encouraging people and corporations to spend more R&D dollars. Somewhere there is a reasonable balancing point between no patents and too many stupid patents (unless you believe that 18th century official who said that everything has already been invented).
It might not be astouding but it's perfectly meaningful. Toll roads do take usage into account. Drive across that toll bridge 10 times, pay 10x the toll. Use that private campground for 2 weeks, pay 2x what the 1 week camper pays. etc. Even most public campgrounds have a per-day use fee around here. So the campground "hoggers" do pay more.
Democracy alone is not an overriding ideal. There have been many times in history when 50.0001% of a population would have loved to trod on a currently accepted freedom or constitutional right. The US systems works well in part because there is balance of powers between various bodies. If each body were exactly representative, then they would all tend to be more-or-less the same and there would be no differences to balance. By making each body slightly unrepresentative or undemocratic, but in slightly different ways (terms, regions, jurisdictions, etc.), the resulting balance between bodies actually seems to work better in the long run.
Sort of like the internet, consisting of lots of systems without even parity memory, being more failure resistant in total than having everyone depending on one single high-availability mainframe...
The specific terms of a copyright is also a privilege granted by the government; there is no guarantee that the government will not remove or decare that privilege void by legislation, especially if it can be claimed necessary for national security.
IANAL, etc.
Proofs *do* convinced people that things are true; but sometimes the "proved" thesis later turns out to be bogus. This most often happens regarding things in which the people already believed or believed in too quickly. Extraordinary proofs convince people of things in which they don't previously or easily believe, and stand the test of later unforeseen ways of checking the methods and results.
There are no degrees of proof. Either it is a proof or it isn't.
Only if there is only person on the planet. But different people require different amounts of convincing. The most simple degree of proof is the percentage of specialists in the field it convinces and over what period of time. Some physics theories required decades before being widely accepted.
What they should do is cut out a few inefficient layers of middlemen; which should drive prices to the buyer down, and prices to the sellers up.
"First Sale" doctrine may not restrict what you do with your purchased copy of the book, but copyright law certainly can restrict what you do with copies of your copy. The book and the CD are yours; you can sell them or give them away. But that doctrine does not apply to any photo-copies or mp3s you made.
Only regarding the 100 hours; they don't automatically get rights to your entire 5000 hour collection. If you use 1 minute of someones song in your 50 minute movie, you only have to give the songwriter royalties for the 1 minute of song, not for your entire movie. Asking for unrestricted distribution rights of the entire movie in exchange for a single song is not at all fair or equitable.
Frankly, if the only direction is more colours, better resolution, more MP3, full feature video and other such assorted crap, then I guess it's time to ditch the Palm and go for a
PalmOS 5's main purpose is to support ARM processors. ARM processors generally have a better MIPS/mW efficiency, and can thus run native apps using less power, which should result in greater battery life for the simple reliable PIM apps, which will still be there. The new display types are actually more readable under some lighting conditions, which can make using a PalmOS handheld even more simple and reliable for those of use with aging eyeballs. You don't have to use all the new features.
(and you can still read slashdot using lynx from a VT100 terminal...)
Tried that... till I got used to editing, backing up, and searching my documents on a computer. Ever tried to edit long lists in a 49 cent notepad? (cross out till unreadable, copy, recopy, rerecopy, etc.) Ever tried to find a note about something you wrote many months ago? Ever tried to make backup copies of important data in that notepad? How fast can you uncrypt passwords you kept in that notepad? (oh, you kept them in plaintext! how secure... not.) How much time do you spend copying data by hand out of email and web pages into that notepad? Do you carry a flashlight to read that notepad in complete darkness? And, of course, in addition to that notepad, you might also need to carry a calculator and an alarm wristwatch which has such a easy interface with which to set alarms for your aunts birthday (yeah, right.)
I have to admit, for reasons of affordability, the notepad did win back in the days before I could afford my own personal computer.
The thinner PalmOS units have about half these needed features, so that's what I use currently.
If they really did nothing, then there's nothing for you to want to download. So why do you care?
But if I download a song on a P2P, the copyright holders have done absolutely nothing for me personally. They didn't write the music for me. They didn't perform it for me. And they didn't even have to make the copy for me.
They obviously did do something for you personally. Before they created and recorded their work, you didn't want it. Now that they have, and people you know who've paid for a copy have it and you don't, now you want to buy it or steal a copy of it. If they really did nothing for you and your mind, then *you* could ignore the fact the song even exists.
They certainly did, just by another name. If you tried to sneak into one of their patrons private symphoney halls (the only place you could hear music before electronic reproduction), you would probably get thrown into a dungeon.
> Content that would not exist in a world without copyrights.
This is wrong also. Content would certainly exist, just less of it. There are people who will create stuff for free, there are people who can't create anything of value no matter what the price, and their are people who create that which makes them sufficient money or even the most money. The later would probably spend less time on original music, art, software, whatever, and maybe more time on making tv commercials instead. What a wonderful world.
Most countries at war assume they have the right to *kill* people! Spying, if the combatents have the capability, is just another method of more efficient targetting.
Not so good if your company wants to do business with them, or you're already contracted to do business with them, or it's someone in your own company (who happens to be higher ranking or more valuable to the company than you, but in a non-techy skilled area), or it's your (very rich) aunt who doesn't want geeks fiddling with her (it just works) Mac.
Nah... what the BSA might do is to add some important mods and bug fixes to every popular GPL'd package... and retain full copyright.
Then after waiting a few months, legally go after every little end-user with open share, or who sends a program in email to a friend, etc., and sue because they didn't comply with all the GPL fine print (what's source code? how would I send a copy to my mom?). Make sure not to settle without a $$$ costly software audit surpervised by BSA laywers. This will not only reap a ton of legal fees; but will make GPL software *really* popular among end-users.
The GPL only looks like a grant if you consider the covered source code to be considered to be closed, restricted or proprietary. Then it gives you rights you might not have (without paying a fee). But because the GPL is often used on stuff misnamed "free software", it actually takes away rights from a software distributor which the more "free" BSD-style license, or the MPL, or truly free public domain material, would allow.
So go ahead and say the GPL is a grant; but then please call the stuff it covers closed source (closed to all software developers who can not or do not accept its acquisitional terms for whatever reasons.)
That's the MPL, not the GPL. The GPL tries to steal OTHER peoples source code in the same source tree as yours which merely happens to be statically linked into a distributed binary instead of dynamically linked. The MPL only requires that modifications to YOUR source code need be redistributed.