Our new fucking Missouri senator, McCaskill, whom I voted for so that there would be one fewer Bush lapdog in Congress, voted against telecom immunity. Such a pity that political assassinations are frowned upon. So you are for telecom immunity? I don't get it.
One thing that wasn't made clear by the articles, that I was hoping Mr. Beckerman could clear up. It appeared that the EFF was awarded their motion in spite of the RIAA's attempt to falsely associate you and your blog to them, but there's no indication, that I saw, that the court has been made aware that you and your blog are not at all associated.
Was the false association that the RIAA made between you and the RIAA ever set straight to the court? I know that if anyone tried to falsely associate me to an organization in such a manner, even to an upstanding organization such as EFF, I would be writing all kinds of letters attempting to set the record straight.
Oh yeah.. forgot this:
Well, IBM is not a charity and they don't owe you or anyone else a goddamn thing. Where did I say they did? You said it right here:
If that is the problem IBM should just say so As I said, IBM doesn't owe you a goddamned thing -- including an explanation.
He did not ask that question. Bullshit. He asked: Why would IBM bother to invest the $millions it would take to sanitize, untangle and rewrite huge chunks of an entire dead operating system?
I was involved in a major, many million line source delivered contract project dependent on more than 400 separate licenses that had to be vetted before contract delivery. Good for you. I'm sure you are proud of yourself. However, your experiences aren't everyone's experiences and your situation isn't everyone's situations. I'm also sure you weren't dealing with 15-20 year old source code or, based on the language you used, attempting to change the license of code you co-wrote with someone who isn't exactly chummy with you.
If that is the problem IBM should just say so and not spout general purpose legal FUD. [...] I have a big problem with the ongoing FUD about open sourcing being legally difficult FUD means "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" and implies the manipulation of information to upset the free market (usually) to your own advantage. Microsoft saying "you shouldn't use Linux because you could be sued if it violates patents" is FUD. Saying "we don't want open source because it doesn't make business, technical, or legal sense" is not FUD. IBM didn't have to say anything AT ALL. They didn't give you a detailed set of reasons, but they didn't have to either. They are NOT sowing "fear", "uncertainty", or "doubt" (about OS/2).
People saying that open sourcing source code that they don't fully own or is encumbered by incompatible licenses is not FUD. People say this because it is true. Those people are also not sowing "fear", "uncertainty", or "doubt". If you are going to be throwing terms around, you should know what they mean.
You've utterly failed to answer Waffle Iron's question of "Why would IBM bother?"
Despite your hand-waving, there would be substantial effort in untangling and sanitizing the code along with all the various legal checks to make sure the code is not encumbered by third-party licenses in any way. It would take engineering time to go through all that source code and prepare it to be released. It would take a lot of legal effort to go through the myriads of interlocking legal agreements to make sure IBM wasn't breaking any laws in the process. If all the interlocking contracts and agreements in the SCO debacle were complex, I can imagine that the ones surrounding OS/2 are just as complex, if not more so.
That engineering time is not free to IBM. The legal costs are not free to IBM. What you are demanding is that IBM spend substantial amounts of their time and money to give you something free. Well, IBM is not a charity and they don't owe you or anyone else a goddamn thing.
It takes an unbelievable amount of hubris to reject any reason IBM may give for not releasing OS/2, including one as simple "we don't want to." IBM has spent billions on open source projects. To demand even more from them then deride them when they don't give in makes the open source community seem like a bunch of spoiled children.
So, answer me this bit01 -- Why should IBM bother?
I'm sure the marketing-department will come up with a slick fancy name this year. Yeahup. They just haven't gotten back from their annual ski trip to Whistler yet. However, there's lots of restaunts up there that they haven't used yet.
completely overlooking the fact that it was her choice to let a penis be put inside of her body I'm sure he's pro-'have sex' too. In fact, he may even actively campaign for it.:)
but violent video games make those skills so easy and ready to learn, and a person doesn't need to be seeking out that kind of info in order to get it
People don't need to be taught to be violent. Killing comes as naturally to a human as breathing, sorry to say. We are, afterall, hunter/gatherers in our primal state. In other words, there's nothing in a video game that teaches anyone anything they don't already know. In other words, I didn't need to play Half-Life to know that I could kill someone by bludgeoning him with a crowbar.
The fact is, people need to be taught NOT to be violent - as violence is our natural state. It could be argued that violent videogames impede those lessons, but they do not TEACH violence themselves. It's a subtle, but very important, difference.
Of course, running around like a headless Chicken Little in absurd fits of hysteria is just as ridiculous.
Let's be real here: 1) This is a patent application. It's possible this thing hasn't even been developed. 2) Its not being marketed to anyone. 3) It hasn't been bought by anyone. 4) No one is forcing anyone to wear anything. 5) Even if an employer did try it at some point, the backlash would be so bad that no one would ever repeat the mistake a second time.
So, relax. Don't sweat the imaginary things and concentrate on real ones. That makes a lot more sense.
It's GPL I realize you were setting up a joke, but in reality its far more likely it will be CPL/EPL, not GPL. Don't forget IBM's motivations here. They may be opening the Jazz platform, but IBM will be selling products built on top of Jazz platform they created -- just like IBM sells a bazillion products built on top of the Eclipse platform they created (technically, Jazz is built on top of Eclipse too).
The guy on the street is actually making the copy, whereas with p2p, the recipient is making the copy I certainly understand your point, but I'm not sure the court will share your view in this technicality.
If we want to get to this level of technicality, where is the actual copy being made? It's being made on the uploader's computer just-in-time. One copy stays on the hard drive and the other being transmitted over the network by the uploader -- in this case, by the uploader's digital proxy of the p2p software. I don't think the law really cares at what point in the distribution the copy is actually made (the day before or just-in-time). However, there's no question in my mind that the uploader (and the uploader's software) is doing the copying, not the downloader.
The downloader makes the request and receives the goods, but the downloader does not actually make the copy. The uploader -- which accepts the request, processes the material, and provides the material to the downloader is making the copy.
I will presume for the sake of argument that the uploader willfully installed the software, configured it, and ran it. If this is the case, the p2p software was acting as a proxy for the defendant and the defendant is responsible for it, IMHO. Now, if the downloader broke into the computer and made a copy, the computer was NOT acting as a proxy of its owner and therefore really can't be held responsible.
(BTW, I hold the same view of "the uploader makes the copy" on HTTP servers and FTP servers too. The downloader makes a request, the uploader fulfills the request by making a copy and sending it along.)
If they were to remove any kind of ford badges and mustang badges out of all pictures they would have no problems printing calendar. Not quite. It could easily be argued that the unique styling of a Ford, especially one as iconic and recognizable as the Mustang, is just as much a trademark of Ford as their logo.
Several problems with your arguments. Okay.. let's hear them.
The RIAA employs unlicensed private investigators who are not bound by these restraints Straw man. That's why we have courts. Next!
Second, how do you know that the only possible reason to "make available" a song is for copyright infringement? I didn't even use the term "make available", let alone argue for or against it. I said that the EFF's argument that merely because the downloaders were agents of the RIAA that no copyright violation occured. I said that argument--in and of itself--was weak. My argument was to that one point and that point alone. Just because the agents were authorized, does not mean that no copyright violation occurred. Furthermore, the fact the downloaders were agents of the RIAA makes no difference in this case because the uploader did not know this and was not acting on that information.
I'll concede that its possible that no copyright violation occurred for other reasons (say, inadvertant distribution, for example) but that was far beyond the scope of my argument. Please do not expand my argument above and beyond what I said. Also, please stop putting words in my mouth and then arguing against them. That's called a "straw man" and its really poor style.
Why should the onus be on the defendant to ensure that other people are authorized? Because he's the one distributing it. Plain and simple.
Instead of a bad car analogy, how about a better one:
This is no different than a guy on the street selling pirated DVDs and an undercover officer buys one in a sting operation. The cop is authorized to buy pirated goods as part of the sting, but the seller doesn't know that. That doesn't make the act of selling it to him any less illegal.
In much the same way, the downloader was authorized to download the music, but the distributor didn't know that. That doesn't make the act of distributing it any less illegal. The fact he DIDN'T know that is actually detrimental to his case. He can't reasonably say "the only reason I distributed it to them was because I knew they were allowed to have it". No -- he was distributing it under the assumption those getting it were NOT authorized.
The only difference is that under US law, our street seller is committing a crime (personal gain involved) where as our defendant committed a tort (no personal gain). However, other than that, the situation is the same.
A major part of their argument is that when the authorized agents of the copyright holders downloaded the material as part of the investigation that this did not violate the Copyright Act. I think this is one of the weakest arguments I've ever heard. Unless the defendant knew (or had reason to know) that the parties downloading the material were authorized to obtain the material, then any agreements the downloaders may or may not have with the RIAA is completely moot as the defendant was not a party to, or privy to, this third-party agreement.
The uploads by the defendant took place in spite of any authorizations given to the downloaders by the RIAA, not because of them.
Only a fucking tool bag piece of shit would: * spend 10-20 minutes calling me names over IRC, * not have the balls to say any of that to my face, You know, the irony of this bit alone just makes me wanna giggle like a schoolgirl.
Tis cool. The Eclipse SDK (the Java IDE) is only one Eclipse application. The problem is that most people think of Eclipse as only the IDE application and do not realize that SDK application was originally written to help write other applications for the platform. As for the SDK itself, I agree that there's nothing terribly innovative about it. It's an IDE. It does its job. However, I wasn't really talking about the IDE application. I was more talking about the platform it was built on top of.
The true innovation, in my mind, is the OSGi service model it builds upon. In Eclipse application, everything--including itself--is a plug-in. It's not like most extensible applications where there's a monolithic core application that you can extend off of using some API or scripting language. Because everything is a plug-in and all plug-ins can contribute to and extend other plug-ins, this allows you to do some neat things.
Let's take the game example. Let's say we are writing a peer-to-peer board game system (something I just made up off the top of my head). I write an application (master) plug-in that sets up things how I like it, a peer-to-peer networking plug-in, and a Monopoly plug-in. It needs some preferences, so I simply extend off of an existing preferences plug-in and I have have preferences. The game plays well and all is good. However, we need help pages. I take an existing help plug-in and toss it on. I now have 'Help' on the title bar. I didn't have to change any of my code to add 'Help'. It just works. We also want to have our Monopoly players get the latest updates to the game so I throw in an auto-update plug-in. Now the code will check for updates. Again, the actual Monopoly game is blissfully unaware of all of it. No code changes and it just works.
I release the whole thing into the wild. People love it and want to write their own games. So they write their own plug-ins. Some guy who I don't know wants to write a Risk plug-in for it. He writes his own plug-in that extends off my 'boardgame' plug-in extension point (which is self-documented), leverages the networking plug-in, and releases it. People can then use their update plug-in to discover the new game and have both Monopoly and Risk. It goes without saying that the Risk help pages and preferences will magically appear as well. Thing is, for all this to happen I had to code exactly.... none of it. It all comes as part of the platform, and I would hate to have write any of it from scratch.
If you aren't interested in extensibility or updates or application lifecycle management or service-based component structures, Eclipse is not the best fit for your needs. It's not a panacea. But for what it was designed for, it's top notch.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that there have been other systems that do very similar things. However, its innovation comes in its maturity and sophistication. I recommend reading the OSGi homepage and an Eclipse FAQ.
(Oh yeah, if we later want to put our game on the web, we can do that using the Eclipse Ajax Platform, too).
Nowhere near innovative, you just never learned Smalltalk. ...and you obviously don't know what you are talking about since you are comparing apples to oranges.
Maybe you should take a look at some of the interesting things the Eclipse community is working on, then get back to me on how they were ALL done back in the 70's.
An IBM supporter would tell you that Lotus Notes could do that years ago. Which is true, even though the Notes solution sucks (IMO), it *can* do that. What's funny is that both the latest version of Notes *AND* Domino are now Eclipse-based applications.
Having used all of the above, what's especially innovative about any of them? Okay, I'll bite back. I can't speak to Hibernate or Spring, but I will speak to Eclipse.
Eclipse is a fully mature, OSGi-compliant tools platform that just happens to be, in its default form, a self-hosted Java IDE. However, Eclipse itself can be transmogrified into anything you want it to be, including application servers, games, smart clients, and software that helps run both the Dutch railway and NASA's Mars rovers. That seems pretty innovative to me.
put Windows in a feak'n sandbox/VM But that STILL means that the Australian government is mandating that all businesses MUST purchase a Microsoft product under the threat of being fined if they don't.
It's bad enough your "leader" has declared himself an Internet expert. And when he visited the US some time ago, played a round of golf, and then declared to his people he made 18 holes-in one I will never take your country, let alone your judicial system seriously while you spew stupid bullshit like this. That was Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader of North Korea, not China. Besides, he only claimed to have made 11 holes in one -- much more realistic;)
Slashdot Mirror
One thing that wasn't made clear by the articles, that I was hoping Mr. Beckerman could clear up. It appeared that the EFF was awarded their motion in spite of the RIAA's attempt to falsely associate you and your blog to them, but there's no indication, that I saw, that the court has been made aware that you and your blog are not at all associated.
Was the false association that the RIAA made between you and the RIAA ever set straight to the court? I know that if anyone tried to falsely associate me to an organization in such a manner, even to an upstanding organization such as EFF, I would be writing all kinds of letters attempting to set the record straight.
People saying that open sourcing source code that they don't fully own or is encumbered by incompatible licenses is not FUD. People say this because it is true. Those people are also not sowing "fear", "uncertainty", or "doubt". If you are going to be throwing terms around, you should know what they mean.
You've utterly failed to answer Waffle Iron's question of "Why would IBM bother?"
Despite your hand-waving, there would be substantial effort in untangling and sanitizing the code along with all the various legal checks to make sure the code is not encumbered by third-party licenses in any way. It would take engineering time to go through all that source code and prepare it to be released. It would take a lot of legal effort to go through the myriads of interlocking legal agreements to make sure IBM wasn't breaking any laws in the process. If all the interlocking contracts and agreements in the SCO debacle were complex, I can imagine that the ones surrounding OS/2 are just as complex, if not more so.
That engineering time is not free to IBM. The legal costs are not free to IBM. What you are demanding is that IBM spend substantial amounts of their time and money to give you something free. Well, IBM is not a charity and they don't owe you or anyone else a goddamn thing.
It takes an unbelievable amount of hubris to reject any reason IBM may give for not releasing OS/2, including one as simple "we don't want to." IBM has spent billions on open source projects. To demand even more from them then deride them when they don't give in makes the open source community seem like a bunch of spoiled children.
So, answer me this bit01 -- Why should IBM bother?
but violent video games make those skills so easy and ready to learn, and a person doesn't need to be seeking out that kind of info in order to get it
People don't need to be taught to be violent. Killing comes as naturally to a human as breathing, sorry to say. We are, afterall, hunter/gatherers in our primal state. In other words, there's nothing in a video game that teaches anyone anything they don't already know. In other words, I didn't need to play Half-Life to know that I could kill someone by bludgeoning him with a crowbar.
The fact is, people need to be taught NOT to be violent - as violence is our natural state. It could be argued that violent videogames impede those lessons, but they do not TEACH violence themselves. It's a subtle, but very important, difference.
Of course, running around like a headless Chicken Little in absurd fits of hysteria is just as ridiculous.
Let's be real here: 1) This is a patent application. It's possible this thing hasn't even been developed. 2) Its not being marketed to anyone. 3) It hasn't been bought by anyone. 4) No one is forcing anyone to wear anything. 5) Even if an employer did try it at some point, the backlash would be so bad that no one would ever repeat the mistake a second time.
So, relax. Don't sweat the imaginary things and concentrate on real ones. That makes a lot more sense.
If we want to get to this level of technicality, where is the actual copy being made? It's being made on the uploader's computer just-in-time. One copy stays on the hard drive and the other being transmitted over the network by the uploader -- in this case, by the uploader's digital proxy of the p2p software. I don't think the law really cares at what point in the distribution the copy is actually made (the day before or just-in-time). However, there's no question in my mind that the uploader (and the uploader's software) is doing the copying, not the downloader.
The downloader makes the request and receives the goods, but the downloader does not actually make the copy. The uploader -- which accepts the request, processes the material, and provides the material to the downloader is making the copy.
I will presume for the sake of argument that the uploader willfully installed the software, configured it, and ran it. If this is the case, the p2p software was acting as a proxy for the defendant and the defendant is responsible for it, IMHO. Now, if the downloader broke into the computer and made a copy, the computer was NOT acting as a proxy of its owner and therefore really can't be held responsible.
(BTW, I hold the same view of "the uploader makes the copy" on HTTP servers and FTP servers too. The downloader makes a request, the uploader fulfills the request by making a copy and sending it along.)
I'll concede that its possible that no copyright violation occurred for other reasons (say, inadvertant distribution, for example) but that was far beyond the scope of my argument. Please do not expand my argument above and beyond what I said. Also, please stop putting words in my mouth and then arguing against them. That's called a "straw man" and its really poor style.
Instead of a bad car analogy, how about a better one:
This is no different than a guy on the street selling pirated DVDs and an undercover officer buys one in a sting operation. The cop is authorized to buy pirated goods as part of the sting, but the seller doesn't know that. That doesn't make the act of selling it to him any less illegal.
In much the same way, the downloader was authorized to download the music, but the distributor didn't know that. That doesn't make the act of distributing it any less illegal. The fact he DIDN'T know that is actually detrimental to his case. He can't reasonably say "the only reason I distributed it to them was because I knew they were allowed to have it". No -- he was distributing it under the assumption those getting it were NOT authorized.
The only difference is that under US law, our street seller is committing a crime (personal gain involved) where as our defendant committed a tort (no personal gain). However, other than that, the situation is the same.
The uploads by the defendant took place in spite of any authorizations given to the downloaders by the RIAA, not because of them.
* spend 10-20 minutes calling me names over IRC,
* not have the balls to say any of that to my face, You know, the irony of this bit alone just makes me wanna giggle like a schoolgirl.
Tis cool. The Eclipse SDK (the Java IDE) is only one Eclipse application. The problem is that most people think of Eclipse as only the IDE application and do not realize that SDK application was originally written to help write other applications for the platform. As for the SDK itself, I agree that there's nothing terribly innovative about it. It's an IDE. It does its job. However, I wasn't really talking about the IDE application. I was more talking about the platform it was built on top of.
The true innovation, in my mind, is the OSGi service model it builds upon. In Eclipse application, everything--including itself--is a plug-in. It's not like most extensible applications where there's a monolithic core application that you can extend off of using some API or scripting language. Because everything is a plug-in and all plug-ins can contribute to and extend other plug-ins, this allows you to do some neat things.
Let's take the game example. Let's say we are writing a peer-to-peer board game system (something I just made up off the top of my head). I write an application (master) plug-in that sets up things how I like it, a peer-to-peer networking plug-in, and a Monopoly plug-in. It needs some preferences, so I simply extend off of an existing preferences plug-in and I have have preferences. The game plays well and all is good. However, we need help pages. I take an existing help plug-in and toss it on. I now have 'Help' on the title bar. I didn't have to change any of my code to add 'Help'. It just works. We also want to have our Monopoly players get the latest updates to the game so I throw in an auto-update plug-in. Now the code will check for updates. Again, the actual Monopoly game is blissfully unaware of all of it. No code changes and it just works.
I release the whole thing into the wild. People love it and want to write their own games. So they write their own plug-ins. Some guy who I don't know wants to write a Risk plug-in for it. He writes his own plug-in that extends off my 'boardgame' plug-in extension point (which is self-documented), leverages the networking plug-in, and releases it. People can then use their update plug-in to discover the new game and have both Monopoly and Risk. It goes without saying that the Risk help pages and preferences will magically appear as well. Thing is, for all this to happen I had to code exactly.... none of it. It all comes as part of the platform, and I would hate to have write any of it from scratch.
If you aren't interested in extensibility or updates or application lifecycle management or service-based component structures, Eclipse is not the best fit for your needs. It's not a panacea. But for what it was designed for, it's top notch.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that there have been other systems that do very similar things. However, its innovation comes in its maturity and sophistication. I recommend reading the OSGi homepage and an Eclipse FAQ.
(Oh yeah, if we later want to put our game on the web, we can do that using the Eclipse Ajax Platform, too).
Maybe you should take a look at some of the interesting things the Eclipse community is working on, then get back to me on how they were ALL done back in the 70's.
Eclipse is a fully mature, OSGi-compliant tools platform that just happens to be, in its default form, a self-hosted Java IDE. However, Eclipse itself can be transmogrified into anything you want it to be, including application servers, games, smart clients, and software that helps run both the Dutch railway and NASA's Mars rovers. That seems pretty innovative to me.