What I want is the ability to use it and not be told my customers can't.
So long as you pass on to your customers the benefits that you gained by adopting GPL'd software, no problem. They can use it. If you want to pass on a version with additional restrictions on what they can do with the software, then no, you can't do that. And that's the entire point of the GPL. Is it so hard to understand?
You're either for personal freedom or you're not. Civil rights stop me from enslaving people, therefore I'm not free.
If I release some "free software", then someone else comes along and entangles it with their own proprietary software and adds their own restrictions, then the part that is my contribution is no longer free. The software itself is not free, in the same way that a slave is not free. The software has been enslaved. So allowing people to do whatever they want to my software is contrary to my software's freedom.
So split it into many smaller areas, where smaller battles of 20 vs 20 can take place, but make the whole zone a war zone. Or make an engine that allows transitions between such areas seamlessly. And not just a duel arena, but a war ground between major factions. Still, sounds primarily like shoddy programming.
No, sounds like an inevitable consequence of an MMO. That first M? That stands for "Massive". Not "Up to 20". As soon as you put in changeable worlds, a bunch of trolls will flock to a single point and make a fort the shape of a penis.
Blizz also tries to avoid implementing mechanics that encourages everyone to join up in a few large guilds. Sure, large guilds do have advantages, but right now, they aren't overwhelming.
That's actually the biggest problem I have with the latest expansion - it has practically destroyed small guilds. All the active players are consolidating into the big guilds with all the perks. And those that aren't consolidating are finding it hard to get raid places, as you need 75% of the raid to be guild members in order to get guild credit for raid kills.
That's an incredibly difficult goal for a game with tens of thousands of players on a server, all trying to change the world. Unless they stick with their "instanced world", but that isn't really an MMO, it's a single-player or small-group game with "3d avatar chat rooms" called "towns". What I like about WoW is that you can bump into people doing stuff while you are out there doing stuff. I've made friends by seeing someone having a tough time in a fight and going and helping them out. That never happens in GW. Having that flexibility and a dynamic world seems impossible to me, but I hope I'm proved wrong some day.
The whole apple music thing has always confused me. Why didn't they go with something already existing? This would make sense, but we know Apple is out to make dollars. By whatever means possible of course.
Yes, Apple is a business, with shareholders and employees. They are out to make money. Not just dollars, either, they'll take euros, sterling, yen, roubles, pretty much anything.
They may not be under any obligation to actively support something, but specifically taking measures to change their customers' devices so that they can no longer purchase from Real is another thing entirely.
Because the civil settlement attempts to change copyright law by allowing Google to continue violating the copyright of people who have never heard of this lawsuit. The class, in effect, does not have the right to strike the deal that they want to.
OK I was thinking about the costs of e-publishing, rather than a digital version of an already-published book. But in any case it's unreasonable to place all of the cost-recovery on physical books and expect no cost-recovery from e-book sales, and $100 as the cost of releasing a digital version is... a little optimistic.
Imagine you have been handed an iPhone with no instruction manual and no prior experience of it.
The UI is completely unintuitive and non-discoverable. That sucks.
I don't have to imagine. I got mine and started using it without reading any instructions. Oh, except my sister in law had to show me how to open the SIM tray, but that's tricky on just about all phones if you don't know how.
(it's bad enough that paperbacks are $9; to charge that same price that costs you NOTHING to duplicate, NOTHING to store, NOTHING to ship, NOTHING to advertise is...hard to swallow),
Advertisement is still a cost, and they have to make back their up-front costs such as advances, layout, editing, and proofreading. If that cost them $50,000 and they expect to sell 10,000 copies, then that sets the price at $5 minimum just to recoup their costs. I have no idea about costs or sales numbers but I expect a big selling author will sell a lot more than that, but again they have to offset that against authors that don't pan out.
I agree about your other points, though, Amazon have never behaved in an ethical manner, which is why I've never bought anything from them. Well, I think I might have bought one book back in the early days. Not sure.
My frequent re-watch list, roughly in order of frequency: Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2 Kung Fu Hustle Firefly The Princess Bride Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon LOTR 1, 2 & 3 Fantasia Hook Usually a week doesn't go by without me watching one out of that list, sometimes as many as three or four of them. Haven't watched Hook or Fantasia for a long time and my VCR chews tapes nowadays, but they used to be top of the list.
I've lost interest in this discussion, I can't even remember what I'm arguing for or against. It isn't really relevant whether they have a monopoly or not anyway. There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly.
I wouldn't want to eat any of the wildlife around Chernobyl. Even here in the UK, I think we had to cull a load of sheep that had eaten contaminated grass after the Chernobyl meltdown. But I don't think that USian nuclear reactors are prone to the kind of problem that Chernobyl had.
"Public perception" is not a phrase I've used so I don't feel inclined to defend it. "Market perception" is more like it. And I would say that if Microsoftstill has a monopoly with Windows then it is fading, but they definitely still did 10 years ago. It took the alternatives (many of which failed, such as OS/2, NeXT, Solaris, etc.) a long time to gain a foothold.
Economics is all about perception. A stranglehold on a market can only be maintained while people believe that it is maintained. And I still think that the tablet computer market is far too immature to make a call as to whether there is a monopoly. In some ways it isn't fair to even call it a market yet, it's just too new. One of the characteristics of a monopoly is that there is a barrier to entry. If that were true, people would be saying that there's no point in Google releasing a tablet version of Android because it's doomed to fail and be crushed by the iOS juggernaut. I work in IT and I've only ever seen one iPad. Some juggernaut.
...one could argue that each individual word in a book is such a "fact," and that copying a book is just copying a series of facts and therefore not a copyright violation.
Er, no, I don't think one could do that. That's stretching the concept beyond reason. A word is not a fact, and that's a fact. Because it's a sentence. Not just a collection of words.
I heard on the news yesterday that the Japanese government were specifically not asking for humanitarian aid at this stage, just for search & rescue and other logistical expertise.
It is simply not the case that any individual or company currently considering what tablet to buy would think that the iPad is the only viable choice, in the way that most people still think that Windows is the only viable choice of desktop operating system and that Microsoft Office is the only viable choice of office suite (less so this last one, OpenOffice is making significant inroads in personal use). If someone turned up in the office with a Xoom, I wouldn't think "that's a brave, independent-minded choice" in the way that I would think that of someone turning up with a GNU/Linux laptop.
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What I want is the ability to use it and not be told my customers can't.
So long as you pass on to your customers the benefits that you gained by adopting GPL'd software, no problem. They can use it. If you want to pass on a version with additional restrictions on what they can do with the software, then no, you can't do that. And that's the entire point of the GPL. Is it so hard to understand?
You're either for personal freedom or you're not. Civil rights stop me from enslaving people, therefore I'm not free.
If I release some "free software", then someone else comes along and entangles it with their own proprietary software and adds their own restrictions, then the part that is my contribution is no longer free. The software itself is not free, in the same way that a slave is not free. The software has been enslaved. So allowing people to do whatever they want to my software is contrary to my software's freedom.
Now it maxes out at...80 vs 80, as I recall.
So split it into many smaller areas, where smaller battles of 20 vs 20 can take place, but make the whole zone a war zone. Or make an engine that allows transitions between such areas seamlessly. And not just a duel arena, but a war ground between major factions. Still, sounds primarily like shoddy programming.
No, sounds like an inevitable consequence of an MMO. That first M? That stands for "Massive". Not "Up to 20". As soon as you put in changeable worlds, a bunch of trolls will flock to a single point and make a fort the shape of a penis.
Blizz also tries to avoid implementing mechanics that encourages everyone to join up in a few large guilds. Sure, large guilds do have advantages, but right now, they aren't overwhelming.
That's actually the biggest problem I have with the latest expansion - it has practically destroyed small guilds. All the active players are consolidating into the big guilds with all the perks. And those that aren't consolidating are finding it hard to get raid places, as you need 75% of the raid to be guild members in order to get guild credit for raid kills.
That's an incredibly difficult goal for a game with tens of thousands of players on a server, all trying to change the world. Unless they stick with their "instanced world", but that isn't really an MMO, it's a single-player or small-group game with "3d avatar chat rooms" called "towns". What I like about WoW is that you can bump into people doing stuff while you are out there doing stuff. I've made friends by seeing someone having a tough time in a fight and going and helping them out. That never happens in GW. Having that flexibility and a dynamic world seems impossible to me, but I hope I'm proved wrong some day.
The whole apple music thing has always confused me. Why didn't they go with something already existing? This would make sense, but we know Apple is out to make dollars. By whatever means possible of course.
Yes, Apple is a business, with shareholders and employees. They are out to make money. Not just dollars, either, they'll take euros, sterling, yen, roubles, pretty much anything.
They may not be under any obligation to actively support something, but specifically taking measures to change their customers' devices so that they can no longer purchase from Real is another thing entirely.
"Antiquing"? Is this a "euphemism", or just what it says?
Because the civil settlement attempts to change copyright law by allowing Google to continue violating the copyright of people who have never heard of this lawsuit. The class, in effect, does not have the right to strike the deal that they want to.
OK I was thinking about the costs of e-publishing, rather than a digital version of an already-published book. But in any case it's unreasonable to place all of the cost-recovery on physical books and expect no cost-recovery from e-book sales, and $100 as the cost of releasing a digital version is... a little optimistic.
Imagine you have been handed an iPhone with no instruction manual and no prior experience of it.
The UI is completely unintuitive and non-discoverable. That sucks.
I don't have to imagine. I got mine and started using it without reading any instructions. Oh, except my sister in law had to show me how to open the SIM tray, but that's tricky on just about all phones if you don't know how.
(it's bad enough that paperbacks are $9; to charge that same price that costs you NOTHING to duplicate, NOTHING to store, NOTHING to ship, NOTHING to advertise is...hard to swallow),
Advertisement is still a cost, and they have to make back their up-front costs such as advances, layout, editing, and proofreading. If that cost them $50,000 and they expect to sell 10,000 copies, then that sets the price at $5 minimum just to recoup their costs. I have no idea about costs or sales numbers but I expect a big selling author will sell a lot more than that, but again they have to offset that against authors that don't pan out.
I agree about your other points, though, Amazon have never behaved in an ethical manner, which is why I've never bought anything from them. Well, I think I might have bought one book back in the early days. Not sure.
What's up with the font on Lendle's web page? It's awful! I'm using Firefox 3.6.10 on XP.
My frequent re-watch list, roughly in order of frequency:
Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2
Kung Fu Hustle
Firefly
The Princess Bride
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
LOTR 1, 2 & 3
Fantasia
Hook
Usually a week doesn't go by without me watching one out of that list, sometimes as many as three or four of them. Haven't watched Hook or Fantasia for a long time and my VCR chews tapes nowadays, but they used to be top of the list.
I've lost interest in this discussion, I can't even remember what I'm arguing for or against. It isn't really relevant whether they have a monopoly or not anyway. There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly.
I wouldn't want to eat any of the wildlife around Chernobyl. Even here in the UK, I think we had to cull a load of sheep that had eaten contaminated grass after the Chernobyl meltdown. But I don't think that USian nuclear reactors are prone to the kind of problem that Chernobyl had.
I'm guessing he's in some 1st world country filled with aggressive lunatics like himself, probably the USA.
"Public perception" is not a phrase I've used so I don't feel inclined to defend it. "Market perception" is more like it. And I would say that if Microsoftstill has a monopoly with Windows then it is fading, but they definitely still did 10 years ago. It took the alternatives (many of which failed, such as OS/2, NeXT, Solaris, etc.) a long time to gain a foothold.
Economics is all about perception. A stranglehold on a market can only be maintained while people believe that it is maintained. And I still think that the tablet computer market is far too immature to make a call as to whether there is a monopoly. In some ways it isn't fair to even call it a market yet, it's just too new. One of the characteristics of a monopoly is that there is a barrier to entry. If that were true, people would be saying that there's no point in Google releasing a tablet version of Android because it's doomed to fail and be crushed by the iOS juggernaut. I work in IT and I've only ever seen one iPad. Some juggernaut.
"You are wrong" is pretty much in the same ballpark as Godwin's Law. You bring that phrase into a discussion and it's over.
...one could argue that each individual word in a book is such a "fact," and that copying a book is just copying a series of facts and therefore not a copyright violation.
Er, no, I don't think one could do that. That's stretching the concept beyond reason. A word is not a fact, and that's a fact. Because it's a sentence. Not just a collection of words.
I heard on the news yesterday that the Japanese government were specifically not asking for humanitarian aid at this stage, just for search & rescue and other logistical expertise.
No, you are wrong.
It is simply not the case that any individual or company currently considering what tablet to buy would think that the iPad is the only viable choice, in the way that most people still think that Windows is the only viable choice of desktop operating system and that Microsoft Office is the only viable choice of office suite (less so this last one, OpenOffice is making significant inroads in personal use). If someone turned up in the office with a Xoom, I wouldn't think "that's a brave, independent-minded choice" in the way that I would think that of someone turning up with a GNU/Linux laptop.
Gandhi didn't change the world. He helped rid India of an occupier, but most of what he strove for didn't come to pass.