I do think it's a major shortsightedness... GNOME makes Linux (and not-so-Linux) easier to use for people. That's a big plus. The fact that it's a server version means that only technically competent people will be using it; this part of your post I agree with.
However, I can't figure out whether your meaning is 1) "server admins don't use gnome", or 2) "server admins know how to compile their own gnome".
In the first case, I can say that you're probably wrong... I know experienced linux guys who use KDE 1.x series, still... because it came with their distro...
which leads me to #2.
Gnome is not exactly easy to compile from source, and good luck finding a binary "gnome distribution" for Caldera OpenNotLinux. I realize that anyone who is technically competant is capable of compiling gnome. However, last time I did just that, it took me about two full days to get every source file and meet all the dependancies. There were (I think) about 60 individual source packages, that had to be compiled in a certain order (yet strangely... a different order than they are organized on GNOME's source download page, at least on Slackware 7.1). Not fun.
That brings me right to my realization that most of my opinions only work in theory and not in practice.
I think you're completely right - given the opportunity to police themselves, consumers will probably do what is easiest. That is, never pay for anything.
And that is the sad state that humanity, but especially focusing on the American consumer, is in today.
It's been nice talking to you... very insightful. Somebody should mod up our entire discussion.:)
Wow... this has got to be the most blatant anti-RMS post I have ever read that didn't even state opinions about Free software and Open Source.:)
Something tells me that Richard Stallman, the original author of GNU Emacs and the champion of Free Software, would object to your use of the word "warez" to describe Free software of any kind. Ever.
I don't understand how it can be "unreleased". Did somebody release the source code? Is it part of the dev tree? A CVS snapshot? Seems to me that it could not possibly qualify as "warez" or even "unreleased".
Why would you want to save WEP? It was a bad protocal to begin with, and it was an incredibly weak encryption.
The people who designed it knew that it would be broken, and it was only a matter of time.
The point is that you are supposed to use strong encryption in software over such a link, if you care about security at all. WEP was really a false sense of security in the first place.
And a false sense of security (non-broken WEP) is worse than no security at all (broken WEP).
I tend to make a distinction between "real property" and "intellectual property" whereas you do not, from what I can tell.
I do not believe "intellectual property" is property at all. There is nothing physically there. A song can be converted into a series of mathematical equations and back again. It has no substance.
A movie theater has substance. (Still grey though, because you're watching a movie).
Meat has substance. Period. You take it... then it's GONE. It isn't there anymore.
When you "take" an mp3 from a record company, they still have the song. You haven't taken anything from them.
Also, my point about giving artists to money who need it is not the actual point. It's not what I meant to say. What I should've said was:
Give money to artists who deserve it, whether they're already rich or not. Manufactured money-machine pop music is only there for the purpose of taking your money, and I have no problem ethically with not paying for that.
Bands that do not need my money, but still deserve it are:
The Who
The (surviving) Grateful Dead
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and/or Neil Young
"Artists" who do not deserve my money are:
Britney Spears
The Backstreet Boys
Sean "Puffy" Combs
Will Smith (although I like his acting)
and these are people I have no ethical problem trading mp3's of occasionally.
I believe this is what napster tried to "label themselves as" when they first started - a chat program that could share mp3's.
Very quickly, the mp3 sharing portion of the program became hugely popular, and the chat portion was forgotten about entirely.
I think the focus of the program changed over time to suit the rapidly-expanding userbase, who wanted to trade mp3's. This is what got Napster into trouble.
Aside from the fact that they did have mp3 trading in their program from the beginning, anyway...
In the case of the movie theater, I would say that it is easier to think of it as morally wrong because you are physically watching the movie. When you go to a theater, you aren't just paying for the intellectual property in the movie; you're paying for use of the theater.
The second example, taking meat from a grocery store, is a clear moral wrong. The fact that it would have gone to waste is irrelevant. It was still theirs, and you did not have a right to take it from them.
My point is that you have a right to "copy" something, because you do not take anything from anyone.
In the case of the mp3, you do not physically do anything.
In the case of the movie theater, it's a gray area; you're physically using their theater, regardless of the movie that's playing.
In the case of the steak, you have physically taken their steak. They no longer have it. Clearly wrong.
Having said that, I think that screwing over your favorite bands by not buying their albums is wrong. If you listen to the music a lot, you could certainly help out the band.
Note that this does not apply for "pop sensations" like Britney Spears, but really only applies for true artists. The ones who are not doing it for the money, but can still appreciate it. The ones to whom ten bucks now and then will actually make a difference.:)
This is excellent. I love this comment. This seems like exactly what I've been trying to put into words lately.
I only have one thing to add... there is one thing I see that demonstrates very clearly how copyright law has become twisted and corrupt, and that is how hard it is for smaller record labels to survive. Usually they only can if they are associated with a major artist, like Luaka Bop.
Seems to me that a system that benefits big corporations and screws over smaller ones cannot be the best system for the consumer and the public. ESPECIALLY considering that this is no ordinary "product" we're talking about here, but what is still considered by some to be a real art form.
See the Luaka Bop page if you disagree that music is art.
That's funny... the 3600 code red infection attempts that have hit me have ALL been from "home machines". You know, the ones running the copy of Windows 2000 Server that somebody brought home from work? Or the ones that have IIS installed, but don't know what it is, so they haven't removed it?
These are apparently way more common than I thought, because I'm being flooded with hits from Cable/DSL users, and especially Sprint Broadband (my ISP).
Of course I'm running Apache... and I've already had numerous friends who were misinformed similarly about the virus...
One friend heard about it on CNN that it "affected Windows" and he thought he HAD the virus, because he has Windows 98 and it started to slow down.
One friend runs Windows 2000, but he's a bit smarter - he does not have IIS installed, and has a firewall. And his firewall has big logs of people trying to infect him.:)
Something tells me that with many people, it simply is not an issue of right or wrong.
Many people do not consider morals at all when "stealing intellectual property" simply because the idea of intellectual property is counterintuitive.
When you steal something physical, there is an obvious moral wrong associated with it. You are taking something away from someone else - they no longer have it.
When you copy a song, many people (especially those who do not follow the issues such as DMCA but do use Napster and other P2P apps) do not realize that they are "stealing" something. Normally when one steals something, they have taken it away from something else.
The reason there is no moral wrong associated with copying intellectual property is because you never take something away from someone else. They have not lost anything - so how could you have "stolen" something from them?
I sometimes wonder why moderators like comments like this one.
This is not a matter of opinion; it is a simple fact that the injustices the parent comment is referring to is not
"making copied cd's illegal"
it's "arresting people for writing software".
The fact is that these guys were not arrested for copying cd's illegally. They were arrested for writing a program that people CAN use to pirate music. I can use FTP, IRC, or even Apache and a web browser to do this.
The exploding point for the issue is when people who write web servers and ftp servers are legally responsible for what people use them for - and the authors of Apache are arrested for "sharing illegal content".
Well, who knows about the engineering quality of this processor?
The "intelligent and talented" people you speak of are not exactly the ones designing the processor, they're the ones paying for and selling it.
Keep in mind that anything can be sold given enough time and money. It's like the monkeys with typewriters thing. People will buy anything if it can look good.
Maybe I'm just being too cynical - but I'd like to see a list of "intelligent and talented" engineers who designed the processor; to see former Intel (pentium) designers working on this would validate it in my opinion.
Also, before you flame me for that last thing about Intel designers, keep in mind that the good ones are the ones that left before the Pentium 4.:)
Actually, this one was posted first. When the top-level comment only had a score of 2. I figured people would not see it here, so I posted it top-level.
It also seemed more appropriate to post top-level (when I started thinking about it) because it was not really related to the parent at all.
Well, there is a difference between file formats and codecs.
Right now, there is a Vorbis file format (the only format that uses the Vorbis codec) and an MP3 file format (the only file format that uses the MP3 codec).
Why use the MP3 file format for Vorbis-encoded files? They still won't play with an mp3 decoder. And they won't play with any existing Vorbis decoders either.
My point is, there really isn't any point to making it in the mp3 file format as opposed to its existing one.
That sounds a lot like a prime example for one suggestion in the Slashdot FAQ, "Can we please separate the mod score (-1, or +1) from the adjective part (informative, troll, etc.)"
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I have seen every Trek movie recently; my friend has the entire set in a colletor's edition VHS tape set.
:)
I thought the Wrath of Khan, and the Search for Spock were decent...
But I'm probably way too much of a trekkie.
By the way... i'm buying this DVD when it comes out. I suggest you all do as well.
(VOICE STYLE="klingon")
"Today is a good day to buy!"
(/VOICE)
I do think it's a major shortsightedness... GNOME makes Linux (and not-so-Linux) easier to use for people. That's a big plus. The fact that it's a server version means that only technically competent people will be using it; this part of your post I agree with.
However, I can't figure out whether your meaning is 1) "server admins don't use gnome", or 2) "server admins know how to compile their own gnome".
In the first case, I can say that you're probably wrong... I know experienced linux guys who use KDE 1.x series, still... because it came with their distro...
which leads me to #2.
Gnome is not exactly easy to compile from source, and good luck finding a binary "gnome distribution" for Caldera OpenNotLinux. I realize that anyone who is technically competant is capable of compiling gnome. However, last time I did just that, it took me about two full days to get every source file and meet all the dependancies. There were (I think) about 60 individual source packages, that had to be compiled in a certain order (yet strangely... a different order than they are organized on GNOME's source download page, at least on Slackware 7.1). Not fun.
And how does this Meaning of Life make you feel?
Well... there is the part about time.
:)
I am taking 5 AP classes in high school this year. I'll be lucky if I still have time to read slashdot in about 2 weeks.
But you're right. I should look into possibilities for this. I'm just lazy, and i'll admit it.
Yeah, I know... I was thinking just that when I posted. But there is very little I can do as a high school student.
:)
Eventually i'll be able to contribute to this type of stuff fincancially.
I know... the post was meant to be a joke. :)
This could similarly be applied to Phoenix, Arizona (where I live).
The ground is pretty much flat, due to the city being in a valley.
There is a bit of sprawl though, so not as dense.
I have been waiting for this sort of thing to pop up... it will only be a matter of time now.
But... what is to prevent evil corporations from overtaking these rogue networks, now that their encryption is broken? :P
That brings me right to my realization that most of my opinions only work in theory and not in practice.
:)
I think you're completely right - given the opportunity to police themselves, consumers will probably do what is easiest. That is, never pay for anything.
And that is the sad state that humanity, but especially focusing on the American consumer, is in today.
It's been nice talking to you... very insightful. Somebody should mod up our entire discussion.
Wow... this has got to be the most blatant anti-RMS post I have ever read that didn't even state opinions about Free software and Open Source. :)
Something tells me that Richard Stallman, the original author of GNU Emacs and the champion of Free Software, would object to your use of the word "warez" to describe Free software of any kind. Ever.
I don't understand how it can be "unreleased". Did somebody release the source code? Is it part of the dev tree? A CVS snapshot? Seems to me that it could not possibly qualify as "warez" or even "unreleased".
If it's on the web, then it's released.
If it's Free software, it's not warez.
Right?
Why would you want to save WEP? It was a bad protocal to begin with, and it was an incredibly weak encryption.
The people who designed it knew that it would be broken, and it was only a matter of time.
The point is that you are supposed to use strong encryption in software over such a link, if you care about security at all. WEP was really a false sense of security in the first place.
And a false sense of security (non-broken WEP) is worse than no security at all (broken WEP).
I tend to make a distinction between "real property" and "intellectual property" whereas you do not, from what I can tell.
I do not believe "intellectual property" is property at all. There is nothing physically there. A song can be converted into a series of mathematical equations and back again. It has no substance.
A movie theater has substance. (Still grey though, because you're watching a movie).
Meat has substance. Period. You take it... then it's GONE. It isn't there anymore.
When you "take" an mp3 from a record company, they still have the song. You haven't taken anything from them.
Also, my point about giving artists to money who need it is not the actual point. It's not what I meant to say. What I should've said was:
Give money to artists who deserve it, whether they're already rich or not. Manufactured money-machine pop music is only there for the purpose of taking your money, and I have no problem ethically with not paying for that.
Bands that do not need my money, but still deserve it are:
The Who
The (surviving) Grateful Dead
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and/or Neil Young
"Artists" who do not deserve my money are:
Britney Spears
The Backstreet Boys
Sean "Puffy" Combs
Will Smith (although I like his acting)
and these are people I have no ethical problem trading mp3's of occasionally.
I believe this is what napster tried to "label themselves as" when they first started - a chat program that could share mp3's.
Very quickly, the mp3 sharing portion of the program became hugely popular, and the chat portion was forgotten about entirely.
I think the focus of the program changed over time to suit the rapidly-expanding userbase, who wanted to trade mp3's. This is what got Napster into trouble.
Aside from the fact that they did have mp3 trading in their program from the beginning, anyway...
In the case of the movie theater, I would say that it is easier to think of it as morally wrong because you are physically watching the movie. When you go to a theater, you aren't just paying for the intellectual property in the movie; you're paying for use of the theater.
:)
The second example, taking meat from a grocery store, is a clear moral wrong. The fact that it would have gone to waste is irrelevant. It was still theirs, and you did not have a right to take it from them.
My point is that you have a right to "copy" something, because you do not take anything from anyone.
In the case of the mp3, you do not physically do anything.
In the case of the movie theater, it's a gray area; you're physically using their theater, regardless of the movie that's playing.
In the case of the steak, you have physically taken their steak. They no longer have it. Clearly wrong.
Having said that, I think that screwing over your favorite bands by not buying their albums is wrong. If you listen to the music a lot, you could certainly help out the band.
Note that this does not apply for "pop sensations" like Britney Spears, but really only applies for true artists. The ones who are not doing it for the money, but can still appreciate it. The ones to whom ten bucks now and then will actually make a difference.
This is excellent. I love this comment. This seems like exactly what I've been trying to put into words lately.
I only have one thing to add... there is one thing I see that demonstrates very clearly how copyright law has become twisted and corrupt, and that is how hard it is for smaller record labels to survive. Usually they only can if they are associated with a major artist, like Luaka Bop.
Seems to me that a system that benefits big corporations and screws over smaller ones cannot be the best system for the consumer and the public. ESPECIALLY considering that this is no ordinary "product" we're talking about here, but what is still considered by some to be a real art form.
See the Luaka Bop page if you disagree that music is art.
That's funny... the 3600 code red infection attempts that have hit me have ALL been from "home machines". You know, the ones running the copy of Windows 2000 Server that somebody brought home from work? Or the ones that have IIS installed, but don't know what it is, so they haven't removed it?
:)
These are apparently way more common than I thought, because I'm being flooded with hits from Cable/DSL users, and especially Sprint Broadband (my ISP).
Of course I'm running Apache... and I've already had numerous friends who were misinformed similarly about the virus...
One friend heard about it on CNN that it "affected Windows" and he thought he HAD the virus, because he has Windows 98 and it started to slow down.
One friend runs Windows 2000, but he's a bit smarter - he does not have IIS installed, and has a firewall. And his firewall has big logs of people trying to infect him.
Something tells me that with many people, it simply is not an issue of right or wrong.
Many people do not consider morals at all when "stealing intellectual property" simply because the idea of intellectual property is counterintuitive.
When you steal something physical, there is an obvious moral wrong associated with it. You are taking something away from someone else - they no longer have it.
When you copy a song, many people (especially those who do not follow the issues such as DMCA but do use Napster and other P2P apps) do not realize that they are "stealing" something. Normally when one steals something, they have taken it away from something else.
The reason there is no moral wrong associated with copying intellectual property is because you never take something away from someone else. They have not lost anything - so how could you have "stolen" something from them?
I sometimes wonder why moderators like comments like this one.
This is not a matter of opinion; it is a simple fact that the injustices the parent comment is referring to is not
"making copied cd's illegal"
it's "arresting people for writing software".
The fact is that these guys were not arrested for copying cd's illegally. They were arrested for writing a program that people CAN use to pirate music. I can use FTP, IRC, or even Apache and a web browser to do this.
The exploding point for the issue is when people who write web servers and ftp servers are legally responsible for what people use them for - and the authors of Apache are arrested for "sharing illegal content".
Get your facts straight.
:)
You've been living in a hole or something.
Russia has not been communist in over 10 years.
They've been a "democracy" since then, just like us. I'll go on my "we are not a democracy, but a fucked-up republic" rant another time.
Well, who knows about the engineering quality of this processor?
:)
The "intelligent and talented" people you speak of are not exactly the ones designing the processor, they're the ones paying for and selling it.
Keep in mind that anything can be sold given enough time and money. It's like the monkeys with typewriters thing. People will buy anything if it can look good.
Maybe I'm just being too cynical - but I'd like to see a list of "intelligent and talented" engineers who designed the processor; to see former Intel (pentium) designers working on this would validate it in my opinion.
Also, before you flame me for that last thing about Intel designers, keep in mind that the good ones are the ones that left before the Pentium 4.
Coward! Dare you approach me as a real user? :)
Actually, this one was posted first. When the top-level comment only had a score of 2. I figured people would not see it here, so I posted it top-level.
It also seemed more appropriate to post top-level (when I started thinking about it) because it was not really related to the parent at all.
They only thought they broke a record.
:)
They just now realized that they miscalculated, due to an error converting between metric and fscked-up units.
Actually, they only thought they broke the record.
It was later found out that they miscalculated, using standard units instead of metric.
Well, there is a difference between file formats and codecs.
Right now, there is a Vorbis file format (the only format that uses the Vorbis codec) and an MP3 file format (the only file format that uses the MP3 codec).
Why use the MP3 file format for Vorbis-encoded files? They still won't play with an mp3 decoder. And they won't play with any existing Vorbis decoders either.
My point is, there really isn't any point to making it in the mp3 file format as opposed to its existing one.
That sounds a lot like a prime example for one suggestion in the Slashdot FAQ, "Can we please separate the mod score (-1, or +1) from the adjective part (informative, troll, etc.)"
or something like that.
Here it is.