They are claiming rights they do not need to perform the services they are providing. It's probably because their lawyer suggested that they claim more rights than they actually need and throw in the "to the extent we think it necessary" clause as a buffer (and not because they plan to use them), but either way it's wrong to do, and I'm going to tell them so.
CC-BY-SA eliminates the need to contact the copyright holder, because the rights have already been granted: the right to publish derivative works, with attribution, under essentially the same license. If someone wants rights beyond that, they going to be disappointed, because people who select CC-BY-SA as the license generally mean it: those rights, but no other rights.
There are all sorts of arguments against dumping it in the Public Domain, many of which can be found in RMS's reasoning behind the GPL. For example, it doesn't ensure that derivative works (e.g. an audio or translated version of the text) would remain free-as-in-speech. I'm all for the development of the Public Domain over time (copyright terms are too damn long), but in the short term, copyright with free licensing (e.g. CC-BY-SA) serves the public good better.
It isn't just the US. There's a current case in Canada in which customs arrested someone for having comicbook images on his laptop which (in the opinion of the agent) depicted illegal sexual activity. They don't arrest people or seize books for depicting fictional illegal violence, however.
Samsung knows they won't get this ban. That isn't their strategy. They just want a cut of the money. You must understand one thing to make any sense of civil corporate law: No one ever wants to go to court; they want a profitable settlement.
After all, if you were a Samsung executive, and you did not suffer from recent substantial brain damage, would you think that hordes of customers who've just been denied the chance to buy the iProduct they've been looking forward to buying are going to reward the company responsible for that?
Since I host my own mail accounts, and don't want to have to maintain my own web interface to them, having a mail client comes in rather handy.
Also, assuming adequately skilled programmers, a purpose-built locally-running app is almost always going to work better than something kludged together in a web browser.
They have (re)invented the color-offset-text menu bar. The same thing that Microsoft has been actively strangling to death in their flagship products. Hallelujah! Someone noticed that it wasn't just a good idea in the 1980s, it's still a good idea!
If you think that modern Christians don't go back to the OT for Rules and Regulations, you don't know actual Christians, just their textbook. They're rather fond of the Ten Commandments (most of which I get behind as well), but many of them find plenty of specific things in (for example) Leviticus that they consider Still Enforceable.
Although I find the double standard for violence vs. sex disappointing (especially being more of a fan of the latter than the former), I'd rather have a double standard than for them to deny them both the full protection of the First Amendment. And the existence of double standards can sometimes be used to leverage equal treatment in the long run (see the civil rights movements, for examples).
The only thing this will accomplish is to force pet dealers to relocate outside the San Francisco city limits, to one of the adjoining cities in The Bay Area. This will inconvenience some number of business owners, and a larger number of pet "companions" (i.e. owners), lose some tax revenue for the city, relinquish any ability by the city to regulate the pet industry, and accomplish absolutely nothing. It'll be like all those "dry" counties that have thriving liquor dealerships just outside their borders.
As fond as I am of the loony left on a personal level, and as much as I appreciate San Francisco in earlier times enacting things that were once seen as "loony" but really aren't (e.g. equal rights for all people), I do wonder sometimes if the loony left government of SF realizes what a laughingstock they've become... pretty much everywhere that isn't San Francisco. Can we stage an intervention?
Wouldn't a Linux or BSD or Haiku or Hack OS X install fix this too? This headline reads a bit like "Flooding requires rebuilding the exact same structure in the annual floodplain",
The manufacturer of a popular motorscooter placed a graphic on the inside of the compartment under the seat (where riders typically store their helmets) which depicted a cat with the universal "no" symbol. Henceforth this compartment has come to be known among scooterists as "the pet carrier".
Cartoonist George du Maurier beat that by about three decades in Punch magazine. The caption:
(Every evening, before going to bed, Pater- and Materfamilias set up an electric camera-obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece, and gladden their eyes with the sight of their children at the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire.) Paterfamilias (in Wilton Place). 'Beatrice, come closer, I want to whisper.' Beatrice (from Ceylon). 'Yes, Papa dear.' Paterfamilias. 'Who is that charming young lady playing on Charlie's side?' Beatrice. 'She's just come over from England, Papa. I'll introduce you to her as soon as the game's over?'
Because then they'd have to deal with all the hardware support and driver incompatibility bullshit that Microsoft and Apple and the Linux crew have to deal with. Not everybody wants to code at the metal level.
In the 1970s they could have done it for $6 million, and gotten another leg, an arm, and an eye in the bargain. And they wouldn't have to sit around waiting for muscles to grow. It was on TV and everything.
"The important thing that IBM did was create open standards, so anyone could make compatible hardware, and software. "
Nice try, but not really true.
When IBM created their Personal Computer, it was not an "open standard". They did not want other people to make compatible systems, and were assholey enough about it that competitors had to settle for making computers that were only sort of compatible. They designed machines using similar components, and licensed MS-DOS (from Microsoft, not IBM) to run on them. Application software that only made calls to the OS (rather than attempting to access the hardware directly, which was much more efficient) would run on them, but usually not the apps that people actually wanted to run. It wasn't until Compaq broke out with a 100% compatible BIOS that the IBM PC became an open hardware standard that anyone could duplicate.
IBM responded by creating a new closed architecture which they could better protect (the Micro-Channel Architecture of the PS/2 line). It failed in the marketplace.
(It's worth noting that the open expansion slots in the IBM PC – if that's what you were thinking of – weren't new either. The Apple II and various CP/M-running systems had similar slots, and third-party manufacturers were always encouraged to produce hardware for them.)
Bottom line: IBM didn't create an open standard; they created a proprietary standard that got opened up against their will... which worked out to their advantage for a while, but ultimately... well, seen any IBM-brand personal computers lately?
Regardless of what US case law may say on the subject, corporations are not, in fact, persons. Therefore, computers sold to corporations are not "personal computers".
The PC and the XT had the same keyboard layout. It kinda sucked. The AT keyboard finally made some changes (most of them for the better). IBM finally got the key layout right with the PS/2 keyboard (essentially the same one every desktop computer has used for the past 15 years).
But that's the layout. Mechanically, all of these keyboards were glorious, because IBM was a company that also made typewriters, and knew how to build keyboards right. Theirs were superior to those on any contemporary personal computer (some of which had XT-level-atrocious layouts as well), and so much better than the plastic crapboards we put up with today.
Slashdot Mirror
"even the tabloid itself probably frowned on what one individual did"
As you put it: Really?
They are claiming rights they do not need to perform the services they are providing. It's probably because their lawyer suggested that they claim more rights than they actually need and throw in the "to the extent we think it necessary" clause as a buffer (and not because they plan to use them), but either way it's wrong to do, and I'm going to tell them so.
CC-BY-SA eliminates the need to contact the copyright holder, because the rights have already been granted: the right to publish derivative works, with attribution, under essentially the same license. If someone wants rights beyond that, they going to be disappointed, because people who select CC-BY-SA as the license generally mean it: those rights, but no other rights.
There are all sorts of arguments against dumping it in the Public Domain, many of which can be found in RMS's reasoning behind the GPL. For example, it doesn't ensure that derivative works (e.g. an audio or translated version of the text) would remain free-as-in-speech. I'm all for the development of the Public Domain over time (copyright terms are too damn long), but in the short term, copyright with free licensing (e.g. CC-BY-SA) serves the public good better.
IANAL, but I got better LSAT scores (without studying) than most of them did, and I have a few sharks in my family.
The parent AC response is entirely correct
It isn't just the US. There's a current case in Canada in which customs arrested someone for having comicbook images on his laptop which (in the opinion of the agent) depicted illegal sexual activity. They don't arrest people or seize books for depicting fictional illegal violence, however.
Of course you can create a commercial hit this way.
Whether you can create Art this way is another question altogether.
Samsung knows they won't get this ban. That isn't their strategy. They just want a cut of the money. You must understand one thing to make any sense of civil corporate law: No one ever wants to go to court; they want a profitable settlement.
After all, if you were a Samsung executive, and you did not suffer from recent substantial brain damage, would you think that hordes of customers who've just been denied the chance to buy the iProduct they've been looking forward to buying are going to reward the company responsible for that?
Since I host my own mail accounts, and don't want to have to maintain my own web interface to them, having a mail client comes in rather handy.
Also, assuming adequately skilled programmers, a purpose-built locally-running app is almost always going to work better than something kludged together in a web browser.
They have (re)invented the color-offset-text menu bar. The same thing that Microsoft has been actively strangling to death in their flagship products. Hallelujah! Someone noticed that it wasn't just a good idea in the 1980s, it's still a good idea!
If you think that modern Christians don't go back to the OT for Rules and Regulations, you don't know actual Christians, just their textbook. They're rather fond of the Ten Commandments (most of which I get behind as well), but many of them find plenty of specific things in (for example) Leviticus that they consider Still Enforceable.
Although I find the double standard for violence vs. sex disappointing (especially being more of a fan of the latter than the former), I'd rather have a double standard than for them to deny them both the full protection of the First Amendment. And the existence of double standards can sometimes be used to leverage equal treatment in the long run (see the civil rights movements, for examples).
The only thing this will accomplish is to force pet dealers to relocate outside the San Francisco city limits, to one of the adjoining cities in The Bay Area. This will inconvenience some number of business owners, and a larger number of pet "companions" (i.e. owners), lose some tax revenue for the city, relinquish any ability by the city to regulate the pet industry, and accomplish absolutely nothing. It'll be like all those "dry" counties that have thriving liquor dealerships just outside their borders.
As fond as I am of the loony left on a personal level, and as much as I appreciate San Francisco in earlier times enacting things that were once seen as "loony" but really aren't (e.g. equal rights for all people), I do wonder sometimes if the loony left government of SF realizes what a laughingstock they've become... pretty much everywhere that isn't San Francisco. Can we stage an intervention?
I'm sure Microsoft paid good money to become the official videoconferencing system of the US Congress.
Wouldn't a Linux or BSD or Haiku or Hack OS X install fix this too? This headline reads a bit like "Flooding requires rebuilding the exact same structure in the annual floodplain",
The manufacturer of a popular motorscooter placed a graphic on the inside of the compartment under the seat (where riders typically store their helmets) which depicted a cat with the universal "no" symbol. Henceforth this compartment has come to be known among scooterists as "the pet carrier".
But du Maurier's doesn't imagine that it's done with magic.
Cartoonist George du Maurier beat that by about three decades in Punch magazine. The caption:
The idea of the videophone almost predates science fiction: 1879 cartoon
I think I liked Sharks vs. Jets better. Better names.
Because then they'd have to deal with all the hardware support and driver incompatibility bullshit that Microsoft and Apple and the Linux crew have to deal with. Not everybody wants to code at the metal level.
In the 1970s they could have done it for $6 million, and gotten another leg, an arm, and an eye in the bargain. And they wouldn't have to sit around waiting for muscles to grow. It was on TV and everything.
"The important thing that IBM did was create open standards, so anyone could make compatible hardware, and software. "
Nice try, but not really true.
When IBM created their Personal Computer, it was not an "open standard". They did not want other people to make compatible systems, and were assholey enough about it that competitors had to settle for making computers that were only sort of compatible. They designed machines using similar components, and licensed MS-DOS (from Microsoft, not IBM) to run on them. Application software that only made calls to the OS (rather than attempting to access the hardware directly, which was much more efficient) would run on them, but usually not the apps that people actually wanted to run. It wasn't until Compaq broke out with a 100% compatible BIOS that the IBM PC became an open hardware standard that anyone could duplicate.
IBM responded by creating a new closed architecture which they could better protect (the Micro-Channel Architecture of the PS/2 line). It failed in the marketplace.
(It's worth noting that the open expansion slots in the IBM PC – if that's what you were thinking of – weren't new either. The Apple II and various CP/M-running systems had similar slots, and third-party manufacturers were always encouraged to produce hardware for them.)
Bottom line: IBM didn't create an open standard; they created a proprietary standard that got opened up against their will... which worked out to their advantage for a while, but ultimately... well, seen any IBM-brand personal computers lately?
Regardless of what US case law may say on the subject, corporations are not, in fact, persons. Therefore, computers sold to corporations are not "personal computers".
The PC and the XT had the same keyboard layout. It kinda sucked. The AT keyboard finally made some changes (most of them for the better). IBM finally got the key layout right with the PS/2 keyboard (essentially the same one every desktop computer has used for the past 15 years).
But that's the layout. Mechanically, all of these keyboards were glorious, because IBM was a company that also made typewriters, and knew how to build keyboards right. Theirs were superior to those on any contemporary personal computer (some of which had XT-level-atrocious layouts as well), and so much better than the plastic crapboards we put up with today.