I seriously cannot understand what is so great and original about this movie. Sci-fi meets cowboy theme has already been stretched in 26 episodes (plus a movie) of Cowboy Bebop.
Was Cowboy Bebop good because it was Sci-fi meets western? What about the litany of other simular themes before Cowboy Bebop?
Was Farscape just Muppets in space... and wasn't that already done by, well, Muppets in Space (a somewhat regular segment of The Muppet Show). Wasn't "space" already done ad nausium before Star Wars? And hadn't the idea of a small rag-tag group taking on and winning against a large force already been fielded by The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai before that?
A creative work isn't just it's backdrop. When you try to break it down to such simple terms, no story remains intact. There is something more to Firefly and Serenity than a Sci-fi Western. At least, there is for fans like myself.
Now - whether that something stands up to peers such as Bladerunner... that's an entirely different question. I would suggest answering it would involve defining what makes Bladerunner so noteworthy. And I do agree that Bladerunner should be there. Although... it might amuse you to read the reader reviews of Blade Runner and get an idea of those who don't think the movie rates so high (IMHO they are clueless - but they're entitled to their ignorance:). These reviews count towards what makes it in that list... which explains a lot.
"It appears there is considerable confusion coming from [the] article in The Business about features within Windows Media DRM that allow for single-play of promotional digital materials," a Microsoft spokesperson told me.
So what you're pointing out is that Mirosoft has ALREADY created the read-once DVD.:P
But hey, it got you +5 Insightful on Slashdot, thereby illustrating just how completely meaningless article comments are after all...
Ya know - you could have been informative and shown how usefull article comments are. But instead, you're too busy bashing Slashdot. Pity.
The difference is that they also have an "opt in" program, wherein any publisher can have their works indexed upon request, without being redistributed in full.
Back in the early 90's, that was called the World Wide Web (and search engines). Which puts Yahoo... well... where they began.
Since when was scanning books from libraries and making them available to public for a profit was considered "fair use"?
Since when is Google doing this? As others have pointed out, Google provides a portion of the work to give the search context - 3 pages. In another post, you claim that 3 pages is enough information to invalidate the sale of a book. If this is the case, I would have to seriously question the value of your work. Either that - or take a serious look at public libraries, private loaning, Amazon.com, book stores, and other avenues of viewing those precious 3 pages that apparently cost you sales.
It might be worth noting that no case of "fair use" is clear. Court cases often contradict each other, so there are no clear precidents to follow. However, among common factors potentially in Google's favor is that they:
Provide additional insight in to the work(s)
Provide a service to the public, in many cases providing facts and information
Provide a limited subset of the work
Are not making offensive use of the work
What may not factor in Google's favor include:
Limited modification of the origional work
Potential damage to the market for the work - providing that someone such as yourself can prove that 3 pages is damaging.
Google's behavior may be interpreted as hostile and offend the Court
Having said that - I'm not a lawyer. But then, even experts are occasionally shocked at the outcomes of these cases.
It might be worth noting that fair use does not require notification or permission of the copyright holder. Nor does it require that the one invoking fair use not make a profit.
we will take sale comissions from amazon, buy.com, bn.com, etc. without sharing anything with you
When do authors currently get a cut of sale comissions?
we will show excerpts of your book, so if a researcher is researching on a topic he can find what you have written about a topic without ever having to buy your book, too bad, heh heh, write a fiction book dude
Again - this might stand up in court. Possibly. But note that most examples of this having weight tend to involve images and songs - not books. It may be difficult to prove 3 pages as damaging for a work as large as a book - especially if the damaging material is a fact.
Kudos to yahoo for bringing the open content alliance, gutenberg, and other similar projects to limelight - these are some really nice collections that were hidden by the noise created by 'google print'.
Kudos to Yahoo for coming up with something different to do. But I missed it where the OCA or Yahoo even makes mention of Project Gutenberg. Furthermore, I find it a hard stretch to claim that the "noise created by 'google print'" did anything more to obscure Project Gutenberg than Yahoo's project.
Your call for isolationism has a certain appeal. I'm generally a believer that far too many people are overly concerned with whats going on in their neighbor's yard. However, isolationism is not a panacea. Interestingly enough, the US' involvement in the Middle East began within decades of the formation of the US in the form of the Barbary Wars even though the new US Government often expressed a belief in isolationism. Yet they soon discovered that the US interacted in the world around them and could not be separate from it.
That's not to say that the US hasn't managed periods of isolationist policies. US history shows some remarkable stretches of isolationism. But such policies only served to create the hardest lesson in recent US history - World War II. The cost associated with World War II was only increased by attempts to limit direct involvement of the US in what was viewed to be an European affair (although Europeans themselves also contributed with their own reluctance to act).
World War II leads directly in to the Cold War and the US' attempts to curtail Soviet influence. And perhaps that is where the US commits the sins we will be paying for today and tomorrow. Although I find it rather interesting that when critics of US policy point to various fumbles and embarrassments, they fail to note Soviet involvement. Which isn't to say that the US is excused for their actions - but rather some perspective would provide a better understanding of why things were done.
So does the US have a "right" to dictate to others what they can and can not do? Hardly. There is such a thing as a sovereignty. But to claim that the US should have no involvement in the world around it is simply setting up the US to become victim to the day when its people and shores are under attack. I hate to sound anything like the Bush Administration. Yet there are certainly others who have less qualms about rights than the US. And history shows how that turns out for anyone who ignores it.
On Iraq, I mostly agree. The current Administration's handling of the situation is unsettling, to say the least. There seems to be a certain degree of willful ignorance and a lack of understanding and planning that shows itself not only in foreign policy, but domestic policy too.
However, Iraq was bound to happen. While critics of the Bush Administration are, more or less, right to criticize the reasoning given for this war - they tend to gloss over the fact that the Iraq war comes at an end of a CEASE FIRE agreed to in the early '90s. No folks, this is not a new thing; US military personnel have been in the region maintaining vigilance for over a decade without daily CNN coverage. That entire time is under a state of war. And during that time, Saddam willfully defied UN mandates and conditions of that cease fire agreement.
Yet Saddam was probably not intended to stay in power. The Senior Bush was wise enough to not completely dismantle the world's fourth largest standing army, and create a vacuum for neighboring influence (such as Iran). And it was probably wise to try and void the troubles we are facing today by giving the Iraqi people a chance to handle Saddam themselves. But Saddam is exceptionally gifted at survival (and also ruthlessly brutal). It would take direct involvement to remove Saddam's regime after all.
There might be a slim chance that the Iraqi government to be will become a secular democracy, with enough economic power behind it to flourish. There are possible echoes of Germany and Japan. But the reality is that the odds are against this happening. Partly due to external influences. And (arguably) largely due to the planning of the Bush Administration.
What about Iran? I don't find it too surprising that Iran's intentions meet a certain degree of skepticism. It seems odd that Iran's quest for energy would have to involve a process that can be directly applied to acquiring massively powerful weapons when it is itself the World's fourth largest producer of fossil fuel (right behind the US - Iraq is at 14th) as well as having ample opportunity to develop other alternative (and less dangerous) alternative energy systems.
Yes, it is the same flaw. But don't worry. I understand that with all the new work in pricing schemes, DRM, aggressive disregard for industry changes, etc Microsoft will be eliminating a large number of users (and thus Admins), thus creating a much more secure Windows environment.
So they don't want wrong info, and they will provide their own info for FREE soon. They need to protect their trademark for it to be valid. Why is this a problem?
It's important not to forget a couple other interesting bits from the article:
The New York Times reported in June that the MTA has begun registering its colorful route symbols as trademarks and has sent more than 30 cease-and-desist letters to businesses that had been using the route symbols to sell such items as bagels, perfume, T-shirts and tote bags.
...
BART's letter to Bright read in part, "There is a widespread belief that materials published by public agencies such as BART are in the public domain. This belief is incorrect."
So it's not just about accuracy of information. It's about money. Or, more specifically, licensing deals.
This brings about the question of whether a public agency should be able to restrict the use of such graphics and symbology developed with public funds. It even lends toward the larger question of whether our society is strenghtened or weakened by every aspect of creativity falling under some restriction.
I'll agree with other posters - if you go in to the movie cold, you will get enough to not be completely left behind. And then if you like what you see, I would highly suggest seeing the series. There's lots of nice bits and pieces in there that, while not revelations, might explain why Firefly fans like the characters so much.
As an aside - Whedon made a rather smart decision in splitting out 2 members of the TV series' crew. The characters are good, and even favored by many fans. But distancing them from the film's primary storyline enables Whedon to bring the neophyte viewer (more or less) up to speed without also having to cover the more complex ground that these 2 former crew members present. Although I suppose more critical newcomer viewers might notice some minor faultlines where these characters slip in with the crew.
You might be interested in watching the movie then. The story as presented begins with population density issues - that spawns the push to colonize space. So I suppose that problem is solved by scattering Earth's population around the cosmos. And it looks like other problems get solved too. The "core planets" seem fairly "clean" and show no real obvious issues with energy scarcity or resource scarcity. So you would think everything is fine and dandy.
These core planets for the Alliance. But not everyone is on the core planets for various reasons. One of those reasons is, as one character notes, the Alliance "meddles". So those who wish to avoid such involvement scatter to the outer reaches... where logistics tend to have a toll on the ample supply of resources (though perhapse not so much on energy).
Sure - a clean, utopian future is attractive. But I tend to feel that one with a bit more grime and grunge, at least around the edges, is more realistic.
Now one could argue that if all the music is deleted, the goods have been returned, but then again, you face the fact that after listening to the latest Green Day CD illegally 100 times in a row, little Johny might not be as anxious as he was to have his own copy, so the music might be consider "used" in that sense, but how the heck do you place a value on that.
Of course, you can't return any goods because no goods were taken to begin with. This isn't theft, it is breach of copyright. There is no property. There is no "new" or "used". Trying to rationalize this within property law is silly as it has nothing to do with property (despite the "intellectual property" misnomer). No wonder it's so hard to place value.
Gaah. I don't tend to bother about slashdot, because quite frankly, the whole _point_ of slashdot is to have this big public wanking session with people getting together and making their own "insightful" comment on any random topic, whether they know anything about it or not.
[ And don't get me wrong - I follow slashdot too, exactly because it's fun
to see people argue. I'm not complaining;]
This may sound stupid, but how is the GPL *not* viral? If you link your code to GPL'd code, your code becomes GPL'd.
As a former physiologist, I know viral is the wrong word, but the meaning is quite clear.
Keep in mind we're not discussing development of code here. And that's where the "viral" label is exceptionally deceptive. Microsoft's campaign implied that simple use of what they labled as "viral" licensed software would alter the license of other software owned by that entity. Not so. It might also be worth stressing that the GPL is not a EULA - there is no requirements from the GPL levied on the end user at all (things change if the user becomes a distributer / vendor or developer).
So what if we DO talk about development? You've already noted that use of GPL code is voluntary. GPL code doesn't simply sneak in to a project. It doesn't hop from file to file without the willfull act of human intervention.
Like any software license, the GPL has requirements that must be met (if there were no requirements - it would have no license and be released to the public domain). Microsoft did have an inkling of a good point - people should understand that the GPL (and other licensing schemes) are not public domain code and should be well aware of the licensing terms.
It might be noted that we have seen several cases now where companies failed to comply with the GPL for one reason or another. This did not cause all their own copyrighted works be released under the GPL. Instead, companies had the choice of either pulling their product and removing GPLed components or releasing the appropriate code as required by the GPL. Even at this point, companies still had a choice. If they had used proprietary licensed code under the same situation, they would have had a much simular choice. In any case, the "viral" label fails here too.
One final point - there are plenty of companies who use GPL code in their products. They comply with the terms of the GPL and release the appropriate code. However, those products often include considerable amounts of proprietary code that very legally avoids the requirement of being licensed under the GPL. Again - the "viral" label proves to be misleading.
I can understand the idea of the "viral" label. Heck - it's kind of catchy. But ultimately it's inaccurate and its introduction was designed to mislead rather than provide a catchy way of informing.
Services for Unix includes around a dozen GNU utilities, all GPLed (mixed in with BSD tools). More can be found elsewhere in the discussion... or you can google Slashdot for my name - I've posted rather detailed information on this before.:)
There's a difference, at least in MS's eyes, between using 'free components' and commercial apps being carbon copied and released for free.
True - there's a difference. But that's not what we're talking about. From Steve Ballmer's Sun Times interview:
The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.
Microsoft's executives (Ballmer, Gates, Mundie) had been pushing a rather alarmist interpretation as to what the GPL (and other licenses they labled as "viral") really meant. Meanwhile, Microsoft itself had been making use of GPLed code for years without any of their dire warnings coming true. There's your hypocracy on MS's part.
As far as making carbon-copies of existing applications... that doesn't take the GPL or other so-called "viral" licenses to do this. It could be done just as well with, say, the BSD license which Microsoft seems to favor within the Open Source world. And, of course, it could also be done just as easily with any form of proprietary license. And it has been done - by Microsoft and dozens of others. Welcome to the software industry.
Yep. GPL. A cancer. A looming danger to any commercial enterprise who even uses it. Anything the GPL touches get's absorbed. Yet Microsoft's own Services for Unix has used GPLed software for years. And they've maintained their proprietary licensing and intellectual property. Huh. Odd, that.
Re:the C. P. Snow Divide of Sciences and Humanitie
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 2, Informative
There's obviously people who are very happy with the products. Or they wouldn't be where they are. But that doesn't mean there isn't a change in the industry.
I work in a large enterprise. We have people who are absolute Microsoft fanboys (and outright zealots in some cases). We have folks who are indifferent. We have folks who range from dislike to absolute hate of the company and anything it produces. The "dislike" column has been increasing over the years. In fact, it's become a rather popular notion.
So hey - if it's not felt in your neck of the woods, fair enough. Glad you're doing fine over there. It either means you're avoiding some hassle or missing out. Time will tell.
There was still a good amount of Hollywood interpretation going on in the movie. But it touched closer to reality than most do. And it was a pretty decent movie, too.
You might be noticing that Microsoft's glossies are now pushing "security". They also talk it a lot. And they pass out hansom rewards for anyone who makes bad press by releasing a successful worm in to the wild.
Interesting. So what you're saying is that private enterprise has some way of protecting their facilities from natural disasters that isn't available to the federal government?
Slashdot Mirror
Was Cowboy Bebop good because it was Sci-fi meets western? What about the litany of other simular themes before Cowboy Bebop?
Was Farscape just Muppets in space... and wasn't that already done by, well, Muppets in Space (a somewhat regular segment of The Muppet Show). Wasn't "space" already done ad nausium before Star Wars? And hadn't the idea of a small rag-tag group taking on and winning against a large force already been fielded by The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai before that?
A creative work isn't just it's backdrop. When you try to break it down to such simple terms, no story remains intact. There is something more to Firefly and Serenity than a Sci-fi Western. At least, there is for fans like myself.
Now - whether that something stands up to peers such as Bladerunner... that's an entirely different question. I would suggest answering it would involve defining what makes Bladerunner so noteworthy. And I do agree that Bladerunner should be there. Although... it might amuse you to read the reader reviews of Blade Runner and get an idea of those who don't think the movie rates so high (IMHO they are clueless - but they're entitled to their ignorance
You probably meant the Windows version of Firefox. You see - I'm using a PC too. It runs Linux.
So what you're pointing out is that Mirosoft has ALREADY created the read-once DVD.
Ya know - you could have been informative and shown how usefull article comments are. But instead, you're too busy bashing Slashdot. Pity.
So what if Microsoft DOES buy AOL as has been rumored last month?
Back in the early 90's, that was called the World Wide Web (and search engines). Which puts Yahoo... well... where they began.
Since when is Google doing this? As others have pointed out, Google provides a portion of the work to give the search context - 3 pages. In another post, you claim that 3 pages is enough information to invalidate the sale of a book. If this is the case, I would have to seriously question the value of your work. Either that - or take a serious look at public libraries, private loaning, Amazon.com, book stores, and other avenues of viewing those precious 3 pages that apparently cost you sales.
It might be worth noting that no case of "fair use" is clear. Court cases often contradict each other, so there are no clear precidents to follow. However, among common factors potentially in Google's favor is that they:
What may not factor in Google's favor include:
Having said that - I'm not a lawyer. But then, even experts are occasionally shocked at the outcomes of these cases.
It might be worth noting that fair use does not require notification or permission of the copyright holder. Nor does it require that the one invoking fair use not make a profit.
When do authors currently get a cut of sale comissions?
Again - this might stand up in court. Possibly. But note that most examples of this having weight tend to involve images and songs - not books. It may be difficult to prove 3 pages as damaging for a work as large as a book - especially if the damaging material is a fact.
Kudos to Yahoo for coming up with something different to do. But I missed it where the OCA or Yahoo even makes mention of Project Gutenberg. Furthermore, I find it a hard stretch to claim that the "noise created by 'google print'" did anything more to obscure Project Gutenberg than Yahoo's project.
Way to hijack a conversation. :P
Your call for isolationism has a certain appeal. I'm generally a believer that far too many people are overly concerned with whats going on in their neighbor's yard. However, isolationism is not a panacea. Interestingly enough, the US' involvement in the Middle East began within decades of the formation of the US in the form of the Barbary Wars even though the new US Government often expressed a belief in isolationism. Yet they soon discovered that the US interacted in the world around them and could not be separate from it.
That's not to say that the US hasn't managed periods of isolationist policies. US history shows some remarkable stretches of isolationism. But such policies only served to create the hardest lesson in recent US history - World War II. The cost associated with World War II was only increased by attempts to limit direct involvement of the US in what was viewed to be an European affair (although Europeans themselves also contributed with their own reluctance to act).
World War II leads directly in to the Cold War and the US' attempts to curtail Soviet influence. And perhaps that is where the US commits the sins we will be paying for today and tomorrow. Although I find it rather interesting that when critics of US policy point to various fumbles and embarrassments, they fail to note Soviet involvement. Which isn't to say that the US is excused for their actions - but rather some perspective would provide a better understanding of why things were done.
So does the US have a "right" to dictate to others what they can and can not do? Hardly. There is such a thing as a sovereignty. But to claim that the US should have no involvement in the world around it is simply setting up the US to become victim to the day when its people and shores are under attack. I hate to sound anything like the Bush Administration. Yet there are certainly others who have less qualms about rights than the US. And history shows how that turns out for anyone who ignores it.
On Iraq, I mostly agree. The current Administration's handling of the situation is unsettling, to say the least. There seems to be a certain degree of willful ignorance and a lack of understanding and planning that shows itself not only in foreign policy, but domestic policy too.
However, Iraq was bound to happen. While critics of the Bush Administration are, more or less, right to criticize the reasoning given for this war - they tend to gloss over the fact that the Iraq war comes at an end of a CEASE FIRE agreed to in the early '90s. No folks, this is not a new thing; US military personnel have been in the region maintaining vigilance for over a decade without daily CNN coverage. That entire time is under a state of war. And during that time, Saddam willfully defied UN mandates and conditions of that cease fire agreement.
Yet Saddam was probably not intended to stay in power. The Senior Bush was wise enough to not completely dismantle the world's fourth largest standing army, and create a vacuum for neighboring influence (such as Iran). And it was probably wise to try and void the troubles we are facing today by giving the Iraqi people a chance to handle Saddam themselves. But Saddam is exceptionally gifted at survival (and also ruthlessly brutal). It would take direct involvement to remove Saddam's regime after all.
There might be a slim chance that the Iraqi government to be will become a secular democracy, with enough economic power behind it to flourish. There are possible echoes of Germany and Japan. But the reality is that the odds are against this happening. Partly due to external influences. And (arguably) largely due to the planning of the Bush Administration.
What about Iran? I don't find it too surprising that Iran's intentions meet a certain degree of skepticism. It seems odd that Iran's quest for energy would have to involve a process that can be directly applied to acquiring massively powerful weapons when it is itself the World's fourth largest producer of fossil fuel (right behind the US - Iraq is at 14th) as well as having ample opportunity to develop other alternative (and less dangerous) alternative energy systems.
Yes, it is the same flaw. But don't worry. I understand that with all the new work in pricing schemes, DRM, aggressive disregard for industry changes, etc Microsoft will be eliminating a large number of users (and thus Admins), thus creating a much more secure Windows environment.
Years ago, someone posted to Slashdot some advice that I've rather liked and (over the years) seen no reason to disagree with:
Your career belongs to you. Your job belongs to your employer. Don't confuse the two.
If you RTFA you would note that the map was downloaded and reformated for use on an ipod. What you get from the link you noted is not the same.
It's important not to forget a couple other interesting bits from the article:
So it's not just about accuracy of information. It's about money. Or, more specifically, licensing deals.
This brings about the question of whether a public agency should be able to restrict the use of such graphics and symbology developed with public funds. It even lends toward the larger question of whether our society is strenghtened or weakened by every aspect of creativity falling under some restriction.
I'll agree with other posters - if you go in to the movie cold, you will get enough to not be completely left behind. And then if you like what you see, I would highly suggest seeing the series. There's lots of nice bits and pieces in there that, while not revelations, might explain why Firefly fans like the characters so much.
As an aside - Whedon made a rather smart decision in splitting out 2 members of the TV series' crew. The characters are good, and even favored by many fans. But distancing them from the film's primary storyline enables Whedon to bring the neophyte viewer (more or less) up to speed without also having to cover the more complex ground that these 2 former crew members present. Although I suppose more critical newcomer viewers might notice some minor faultlines where these characters slip in with the crew.
You might be interested in watching the movie then. The story as presented begins with population density issues - that spawns the push to colonize space. So I suppose that problem is solved by scattering Earth's population around the cosmos. And it looks like other problems get solved too. The "core planets" seem fairly "clean" and show no real obvious issues with energy scarcity or resource scarcity. So you would think everything is fine and dandy.
These core planets for the Alliance. But not everyone is on the core planets for various reasons. One of those reasons is, as one character notes, the Alliance "meddles". So those who wish to avoid such involvement scatter to the outer reaches... where logistics tend to have a toll on the ample supply of resources (though perhapse not so much on energy).
Sure - a clean, utopian future is attractive. But I tend to feel that one with a bit more grime and grunge, at least around the edges, is more realistic.
Of course, you can't return any goods because no goods were taken to begin with. This isn't theft, it is breach of copyright. There is no property. There is no "new" or "used". Trying to rationalize this within property law is silly as it has nothing to do with property (despite the "intellectual property" misnomer). No wonder it's so hard to place value.
From Linus' email:
Huh. Sounds like he likes Slashdot to me.
It also seems like he's on to posts like yours.
Keep in mind we're not discussing development of code here. And that's where the "viral" label is exceptionally deceptive. Microsoft's campaign implied that simple use of what they labled as "viral" licensed software would alter the license of other software owned by that entity. Not so. It might also be worth stressing that the GPL is not a EULA - there is no requirements from the GPL levied on the end user at all (things change if the user becomes a distributer / vendor or developer).
So what if we DO talk about development? You've already noted that use of GPL code is voluntary. GPL code doesn't simply sneak in to a project. It doesn't hop from file to file without the willfull act of human intervention.
Like any software license, the GPL has requirements that must be met (if there were no requirements - it would have no license and be released to the public domain). Microsoft did have an inkling of a good point - people should understand that the GPL (and other licensing schemes) are not public domain code and should be well aware of the licensing terms.
It might be noted that we have seen several cases now where companies failed to comply with the GPL for one reason or another. This did not cause all their own copyrighted works be released under the GPL. Instead, companies had the choice of either pulling their product and removing GPLed components or releasing the appropriate code as required by the GPL. Even at this point, companies still had a choice. If they had used proprietary licensed code under the same situation, they would have had a much simular choice. In any case, the "viral" label fails here too.
One final point - there are plenty of companies who use GPL code in their products. They comply with the terms of the GPL and release the appropriate code. However, those products often include considerable amounts of proprietary code that very legally avoids the requirement of being licensed under the GPL. Again - the "viral" label proves to be misleading.
I can understand the idea of the "viral" label. Heck - it's kind of catchy. But ultimately it's inaccurate and its introduction was designed to mislead rather than provide a catchy way of informing.
Services for Unix includes around a dozen GNU utilities, all GPLed (mixed in with BSD tools). More can be found elsewhere in the discussion... or you can google Slashdot for my name - I've posted rather detailed information on this before.
True - there's a difference. But that's not what we're talking about. From Steve Ballmer's Sun Times interview:
Microsoft's executives (Ballmer, Gates, Mundie) had been pushing a rather alarmist interpretation as to what the GPL (and other licenses they labled as "viral") really meant. Meanwhile, Microsoft itself had been making use of GPLed code for years without any of their dire warnings coming true. There's your hypocracy on MS's part.
As far as making carbon-copies of existing applications... that doesn't take the GPL or other so-called "viral" licenses to do this. It could be done just as well with, say, the BSD license which Microsoft seems to favor within the Open Source world. And, of course, it could also be done just as easily with any form of proprietary license. And it has been done - by Microsoft and dozens of others. Welcome to the software industry.
Yep. GPL. A cancer. A looming danger to any commercial enterprise who even uses it. Anything the GPL touches get's absorbed. Yet Microsoft's own Services for Unix has used GPLed software for years. And they've maintained their proprietary licensing and intellectual property. Huh. Odd, that.
There's obviously people who are very happy with the products. Or they wouldn't be where they are. But that doesn't mean there isn't a change in the industry.
I work in a large enterprise. We have people who are absolute Microsoft fanboys (and outright zealots in some cases). We have folks who are indifferent. We have folks who range from dislike to absolute hate of the company and anything it produces. The "dislike" column has been increasing over the years. In fact, it's become a rather popular notion.
So hey - if it's not felt in your neck of the woods, fair enough. Glad you're doing fine over there. It either means you're avoiding some hassle or missing out. Time will tell.
Why - the movie, of course. :)
:)
There was still a good amount of Hollywood interpretation going on in the movie. But it touched closer to reality than most do. And it was a pretty decent movie, too.
Kudos on mentioning Tron though.
You might be noticing that Microsoft's glossies are now pushing "security". They also talk it a lot. And they pass out hansom rewards for anyone who makes bad press by releasing a successful worm in to the wild.
It didn't used to be that way.
How could you not include Wargames?
Interesting. So what you're saying is that private enterprise has some way of protecting their facilities from natural disasters that isn't available to the federal government?
Assuming they have an economic structure that can hold. There are doubts.