It's not a contract, it's a software licence, which isn't the same thing in law.
For bonus points, can you please tell us in correct plain English what a "software licence" is in law (and in what jurisdictions)?
And it is stupid to have such things as EULA's which only a lawyer could possibly understand the full meaning and implications of - but haven't all the millions of computer users the world over "agreed" to them without such an understanding?
I rather doubt that. In most places, you can't enter into a contract without being able to understand it, and it's not clear what significance an EULA would have for a user (compare "distributor") of the software unless it's some sort of contractual arrangement. At this point, we start getting into what you're actually paying for when you give a shop money for a shrinkwrapped software package, which copies made during installation would or wouldn't have implied permission, and all that jazz.
The question is whether the GPL (any version) is harder to understand than any other licence. If not, then you don't need a lawyer just for the GPL v3.
At my employer (a software development organisation) the policy is very simple: any use of external software requires prior approval, and in the case of incorporating libraries with open licences within our own software products, that's going to mean an explicit check by the legal team on the exact wording of the licence for the specific use required. It follows that anything that makes a licence more complicated is going to increase the cost of using software with that licence, which in turn makes it less likely that such use will occur.
Those are the kinds of application that should be taking advantage of the hardware, it's true. Whether the software implementations are actually written to do so, and to do it well, is a different question entirely.
The unfortunate reality is that a lot of serious maths software today really doesn't take advantage of parallel processing at all, and even the software that does run multiple jobs concurrently typically does so relatively inefficiently in terms of both overheads and even distribution of work across processing units.
Getting this right is a hard problem, and it's going to take a lot more than hardware support to do it. I'm betting we won't see the benefits, other than in a few higher-end applications for things like graphics and CAD, for several years, and possibly not until some more serious parallel programming techniques and even languages have entered the mainstream.
1. "wealthy" = every artist listed on the top 100 music page on any torrent site.
So you're objecting to a system that makes a whole 100 artists (give or take) wealthy?
2. Zero independent artists.
So because no independent artists get wealthy, you think we should take away what protection they have and let everyone rip off their work?
The law needs to be changed. Once enough people get behind that idea, it will be changed.
Your argument doesn't support changing the law. In fact, it supports enforcing the existing law much more strongly. According to your own post, only a few people are benefiting disproportionately, while many independent artists are not achieving what they might otherwise expect to.
For the growth markets (mobile and high-density servers), performance includes power usage, and x86 does not do as well as some other designs here. [...] As to availability, you might want to check the ratio of mobile phone to desktop and laptop PC sales. Hint: x86 isn't the most popular architecture, just the most popular in a (declining) niche segment.
I'm not sure that's a great metric to consider. It's a bit like judging the popularity of a programming language by how many people are advertising jobs using it: it completely ignores the existing base of people who don't particularly need to move.
Ultimately, most people are never going to have more than a couple of mobile devices (one work, one personal). However, it's not unusual for people to have at least one personal computer at home and a workstation on their desk, plus a lot more general computing hardware at the office. On the other hand, not everyone works at a desk.
I suspect that in the long run we'll see the numbers for both markets converge on around two per person. Then it's a question of whether the decreasing rate of PC turnover slows the churn in that market faster than people learn not to lose their mobile phones every few minutes. I'm not going to call that one...
The thing is, I don't think Firefly was ever that kind of show. It was more Star Trek than B5 or BSG: some poignant moments, but you were always pretty sure the good guys would make it home.
I never imagined Serenity would go all Blake's 7 on us. It wouldn't have been in character. But then again, I thought what they did do was clichéd and unnecessary as well, and obviously you took a different view.
Hmm... Wonder if I can get any more references to sci-fi TV shows into this post before the end?:-)
I wouldn't say I hated the movie, but I was disappointed about some of it.
For a start, the series was about nine characters, and worked with an ensemble cast. The film was basically about three of them.
SPOILERS FOLLOW — If you haven't seen the film, you have been warned.
I thought the second worst sin committed was killing off certain people needlessly. This is always a downer for the audience, and it's done so often these days that it's become a cliché. Sure, it has a short-term shock value, but if there's no story-centric reason to kill someone off (and usually in these cases, there isn't) then this sort of thing spoils back-plots and character development faster than anything else.
I also thought Serenity had the wrong ending. The entire point of The Operative as a bad guy was that he was seriously ruthless and efficient. They went out of their way to demonstrate this early on, not least by having him soundly kick Mal's ass. So at the end, Mal beats the über-baddie on a technicality? Lame, particularly when they're supposed to be showing us how amazingly powerful River really is. Personally, I'd have had her save Mal, then go outside into the room full of enemies just as the doors shut, and walk right back in three seconds later with the enemies all dead. ("Also, I can kill you with my brain.") That would have left more questions than answers, and left scope for future stories where the other character play a bigger role but River isn't "done" yet.
<sigh> Ah, well. They'd probably never have made another Firefly-based film anyway.
OK, I will. I have never done any of the illegal things you describe in your post, not even when I was a kid. In any case, my personal behaviour is irrelevant to the debate.
Your argument ignores the simple ideas that it would not be ethical for no-one to pay the artists for works of value, thus damaging the artists, and neither is it ethical for some to pay the going rate while others do not, thus damaging those who pay properly.
And in this case, freeloader is almost a literal term. If you're paying a flat rate for your broadband connection and ripping music from some P2P network, there is zero real cost to you.
Bottom line: just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and that doesn't change however much you dress it up in clever word games.
Short version: you will be able to buy DRM-free files, which will cost you more, but will also be of higher quality. You will also be able to upgrade existing DRM'd music to the "premium" DRM-free format for a small fee.
Sure, the big vendors would love to sell Vista only. They thought that about XP, too... until several major corporate customers told them where to go. Then, suddenly, places like Dell were still selling Win2K and Microsoft was extending support for older business OSes.
Given that it tooks several years for XP to overtake Win2K, and a very significant proportion of businesses have never made the switch, I'm afraid your/Microsoft's theory that everyone will just move sooner or later may or may not hold. And that's before the big scare stories about how "your computer can be disabled remotely" and so on start really freaking out the big CIOs...
I'm sure that MS Office has some technical capabilities that Openoffice lacks. But I don't know what they are, and it appears that I don't need them.
If you're genuinely interested, I've posted to various previous discussions on OpenOffice and MS Office with lists of specific things one product does better than the other. Most of these related to the suites' respective word processors, though I've mentioned Calc/Excel a few times too. A quick Google for my user name and OpenOffice on site:slashdot.org should find most of the relevant things.
The Windows version of OpenOffice supports OpenType fonts.
Not really. You can't use most of the advanced typesetting features at all, and there's also the killer PDF export bug I've mentioned elsewhere in this discussion.
I wrote a post in a recent Slashdot discussion on computer science that might be of interest. Short version: read around your subject, try to gain a breadth of experience using the resources available at your university, and never stop learning. The linked post is the long version with specific examples. HTH...
to be honest I think that users just find migration really difficult - especially if they have to encounter two systems
That sounds like a reasonable proposition. On the other hand, I look at Firefox—again, a more-or-less drop in replacement for a Microsoft “standard issue” product that most PC users are familiar with—and in that case, almost everyone I’ve seen make the switch has viewed it as an improvement, regardless of computing experience. Those who haven’t are usually concerned with compatibility issues where Firefox doesn't do what they need—in that case, rendering “IE only” web sites usably—and frankly, expecting most users to ever change product because of the developer’s personal philosophy or ethics is daft.
Makes you wonder what other basics of text rendering it doesn't support yet.
Most of OpenType, unfortunately, making all the nice typographical features available in Microsoft's new Vista fonts (not to mention pro fonts from sources like Adobe) effectively inaccessible. Then again, MS missed that boat with Word 2007 too. That seems odd to me, given the emphasis BillG had put on readability issues and the hype surrounding the new fonts shipping and Vista's swanky new UI, but there you go.
Oh, and a decent paragraph justification algorithm. Neither OO Writer nor MS Word have that yet, either. How is it that all these WP programs support double underlining, a typographical monstrosity that absolutely no-one sane ever uses for anything, yet none of them can render a fully justified paragraph neatly, even though that improves both objective reading comprehension in long documents and subjective reader satisfaction?
I could go on, but if it can't do text and it can't do white space, I think it's pretty much toast already!
(I'm sorry, but I refuse to call it "piracy" - let's reserve that term for seafaring murderers)
Why? It's been used in the present context for several centuries, since long before anyone here was born or the RIAA was a gleam in a media executive's eye.
If you don't like the current copyright regime, by all means say so, but please argue based on some sort of ethical or legal basis, and not by playing word-games. There are enough good arguments to be made either way without those games that cluttering the debate isn't really necessary.
What you're describing has been known as "fair use" for a very long time.
That's not true either legally or ethically. Making private copies for personal use (e.g., back-ups or format shifting) falls under fair use or similar exemptions in many places. However, redistribution of entire works to third parties rarely does, and in most places where it is allowed, there's some sting elsewhere (e.g., a levy on all blank media, making the whole system crooked).
<sarcasm> Yes, because only tyrants benefit from copyright. Those citizens who draw, write, play, compose, program or otherwise create art semi-professionally aren't really people at all, and anyway, they are few in number compared to the huge, mega-rich pop stars and the big media corps who back them. </sarcasm>
Slashdot Mirror
For bonus points, can you please tell us in correct plain English what a "software licence" is in law (and in what jurisdictions)?
I rather doubt that. In most places, you can't enter into a contract without being able to understand it, and it's not clear what significance an EULA would have for a user (compare "distributor") of the software unless it's some sort of contractual arrangement. At this point, we start getting into what you're actually paying for when you give a shop money for a shrinkwrapped software package, which copies made during installation would or wouldn't have implied permission, and all that jazz.
At my employer (a software development organisation) the policy is very simple: any use of external software requires prior approval, and in the case of incorporating libraries with open licences within our own software products, that's going to mean an explicit check by the legal team on the exact wording of the licence for the specific use required. It follows that anything that makes a licence more complicated is going to increase the cost of using software with that licence, which in turn makes it less likely that such use will occur.
Those are the kinds of application that should be taking advantage of the hardware, it's true. Whether the software implementations are actually written to do so, and to do it well, is a different question entirely.
The unfortunate reality is that a lot of serious maths software today really doesn't take advantage of parallel processing at all, and even the software that does run multiple jobs concurrently typically does so relatively inefficiently in terms of both overheads and even distribution of work across processing units.
Getting this right is a hard problem, and it's going to take a lot more than hardware support to do it. I'm betting we won't see the benefits, other than in a few higher-end applications for things like graphics and CAD, for several years, and possibly not until some more serious parallel programming techniques and even languages have entered the mainstream.
Who needs guns when you can kill someone with your brain? ;-)
So you're objecting to a system that makes a whole 100 artists (give or take) wealthy?
So because no independent artists get wealthy, you think we should take away what protection they have and let everyone rip off their work?
Your argument doesn't support changing the law. In fact, it supports enforcing the existing law much more strongly. According to your own post, only a few people are benefiting disproportionately, while many independent artists are not achieving what they might otherwise expect to.
I'm not sure that's a great metric to consider. It's a bit like judging the popularity of a programming language by how many people are advertising jobs using it: it completely ignores the existing base of people who don't particularly need to move.
Ultimately, most people are never going to have more than a couple of mobile devices (one work, one personal). However, it's not unusual for people to have at least one personal computer at home and a workstation on their desk, plus a lot more general computing hardware at the office. On the other hand, not everyone works at a desk.
I suspect that in the long run we'll see the numbers for both markets converge on around two per person. Then it's a question of whether the decreasing rate of PC turnover slows the churn in that market faster than people learn not to lose their mobile phones every few minutes. I'm not going to call that one...
I'm going to go with:
Did I miss anything?
Sure, but you can write a character out of a story without killing them just because the actor isn't available to continue the original role.
(Cf. Ivanova, Capt. Susan; Crusher, Dr. Beverly)
The thing is, I don't think Firefly was ever that kind of show. It was more Star Trek than B5 or BSG: some poignant moments, but you were always pretty sure the good guys would make it home.
I never imagined Serenity would go all Blake's 7 on us. It wouldn't have been in character. But then again, I thought what they did do was clichéd and unnecessary as well, and obviously you took a different view.
Hmm... Wonder if I can get any more references to sci-fi TV shows into this post before the end? :-)
I wouldn't say I hated the movie, but I was disappointed about some of it.
For a start, the series was about nine characters, and worked with an ensemble cast. The film was basically about three of them.
SPOILERS FOLLOW — If you haven't seen the film, you have been warned.
I thought the second worst sin committed was killing off certain people needlessly. This is always a downer for the audience, and it's done so often these days that it's become a cliché. Sure, it has a short-term shock value, but if there's no story-centric reason to kill someone off (and usually in these cases, there isn't) then this sort of thing spoils back-plots and character development faster than anything else.
I also thought Serenity had the wrong ending. The entire point of The Operative as a bad guy was that he was seriously ruthless and efficient. They went out of their way to demonstrate this early on, not least by having him soundly kick Mal's ass. So at the end, Mal beats the über-baddie on a technicality? Lame, particularly when they're supposed to be showing us how amazingly powerful River really is. Personally, I'd have had her save Mal, then go outside into the room full of enemies just as the doors shut, and walk right back in three seconds later with the enemies all dead. ("Also, I can kill you with my brain.") That would have left more questions than answers, and left scope for future stories where the other character play a bigger role but River isn't "done" yet.
<sigh> Ah, well. They'd probably never have made another Firefly-based film anyway.
You think that's bad?
<spoiler>
Mal is River's father.
</spoiler>
OK, I will. I have never done any of the illegal things you describe in your post, not even when I was a kid. In any case, my personal behaviour is irrelevant to the debate.
Your argument ignores the simple ideas that it would not be ethical for no-one to pay the artists for works of value, thus damaging the artists, and neither is it ethical for some to pay the going rate while others do not, thus damaging those who pay properly.
And in this case, freeloader is almost a literal term. If you're paying a flat rate for your broadband connection and ripping music from some P2P network, there is zero real cost to you.
Bottom line: just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and that doesn't change however much you dress it up in clever word games.
As I write this, the BBC have a "breaking news" article that appears to confirm that EMI are dropping mandatory DRM.
Short version: you will be able to buy DRM-free files, which will cost you more, but will also be of higher quality. You will also be able to upgrade existing DRM'd music to the "premium" DRM-free format for a small fee.
You've got to be joking!
<glances at date>
Hey, great idea, man! :-)
Sure, the big vendors would love to sell Vista only. They thought that about XP, too... until several major corporate customers told them where to go. Then, suddenly, places like Dell were still selling Win2K and Microsoft was extending support for older business OSes.
Given that it tooks several years for XP to overtake Win2K, and a very significant proportion of businesses have never made the switch, I'm afraid your/Microsoft's theory that everyone will just move sooner or later may or may not hold. And that's before the big scare stories about how "your computer can be disabled remotely" and so on start really freaking out the big CIOs...
If you're genuinely interested, I've posted to various previous discussions on OpenOffice and MS Office with lists of specific things one product does better than the other. Most of these related to the suites' respective word processors, though I've mentioned Calc/Excel a few times too. A quick Google for my user name and OpenOffice on site:slashdot.org should find most of the relevant things.
Not really. You can't use most of the advanced typesetting features at all, and there's also the killer PDF export bug I've mentioned elsewhere in this discussion.
I wrote a post in a recent Slashdot discussion on computer science that might be of interest. Short version: read around your subject, try to gain a breadth of experience using the resources available at your university, and never stop learning. The linked post is the long version with specific examples. HTH...
That sounds like a reasonable proposition. On the other hand, I look at Firefox—again, a more-or-less drop in replacement for a Microsoft “standard issue” product that most PC users are familiar with—and in that case, almost everyone I’ve seen make the switch has viewed it as an improvement, regardless of computing experience. Those who haven’t are usually concerned with compatibility issues where Firefox doesn't do what they need—in that case, rendering “IE only” web sites usably—and frankly, expecting most users to ever change product because of the developer’s personal philosophy or ethics is daft.
LaTeX uses the standard AMS representation?
I'm not sure that's giving enough credit to Knuth, Lamport et al.
Most of OpenType, unfortunately, making all the nice typographical features available in Microsoft's new Vista fonts (not to mention pro fonts from sources like Adobe) effectively inaccessible. Then again, MS missed that boat with Word 2007 too. That seems odd to me, given the emphasis BillG had put on readability issues and the hype surrounding the new fonts shipping and Vista's swanky new UI, but there you go.
Oh, and a decent paragraph justification algorithm. Neither OO Writer nor MS Word have that yet, either. How is it that all these WP programs support double underlining, a typographical monstrosity that absolutely no-one sane ever uses for anything, yet none of them can render a fully justified paragraph neatly, even though that improves both objective reading comprehension in long documents and subjective reader satisfaction?
I could go on, but if it can't do text and it can't do white space, I think it's pretty much toast already!
So the way to support an artist whose work I value is not to pay them for it?!
So, I have just two questions:
Firstly, does anyone have a useful, user-focused summary of the new features, instead of the cryptic mess on the development site?
And secondly, have they fixed PDF export bug in Writer that we were discussing here the other day? The bug database suggests not. :-(
Why? It's been used in the present context for several centuries, since long before anyone here was born or the RIAA was a gleam in a media executive's eye.
If you don't like the current copyright regime, by all means say so, but please argue based on some sort of ethical or legal basis, and not by playing word-games. There are enough good arguments to be made either way without those games that cluttering the debate isn't really necessary.
That's not true either legally or ethically. Making private copies for personal use (e.g., back-ups or format shifting) falls under fair use or similar exemptions in many places. However, redistribution of entire works to third parties rarely does, and in most places where it is allowed, there's some sting elsewhere (e.g., a levy on all blank media, making the whole system crooked).
<sarcasm> Yes, because only tyrants benefit from copyright. Those citizens who draw, write, play, compose, program or otherwise create art semi-professionally aren't really people at all, and anyway, they are few in number compared to the huge, mega-rich pop stars and the big media corps who back them. </sarcasm>