Amazon.co.uk will ship to the US. Due to the crashing value of the dollar,
The dollar may be "crashing", but it hasn't shifted much that I've noticed against the pound in the last 12 months. I don't know what that says about the strength of the pound...
All games consoles run proprietary software. And last I heard, Microsoft was bleeding money out of XBox sales. I mean, I'm as much of a free software zealot as RMS, but do you really expect people to forswear buying console games entirely to strike a blow for free software?
And here we'd have a situation where a lot of people who won't have any use for wi-fi will be forced to pay for it.
You keep saying "forced". I do not think it means what you think it means. Technically, you are not forced to pay for it, because you can always move to another municipality which does not have municipal wi-fi.
And - by the way - if you don't like democracy, you can damned well move to Somalia, or some other godforsaken hellhole that doesn't have a functioning democracy.
(Note: This post may or may not reflect what I actually believe. I'm just reworking right-wing arguments and throwing them right back at ya.)
They are distributing software. They are making copies of it and giving it to people. That is distribution!
Why do you think all those router manufacturers have settled after being threatened with being sued under the GPL for not providing source code to their Linux kernels? Because they were distributing, that's why!
I don't think computer stores who neglect to educate their customers are guilty of believing the broken window fallacy. I think they're just do it because they believe they will get more money that way, which is probably correct on average.
You can do whatever the hell you want to computers. Nobody cares.
That's not actually true. In the UK, the Computer Misuse Act prevents you doing pretty much anything on someone else's computer without authorisation. While this probably isn't enforcable against a computer repair shop installing anti-spyware software, it certainly is enforceable against hackers/crackers, and those who knowingly distribute viruses and trojan horses.
The scsi driver belongs in place of the block device layer but linus' ego prevents him putting it there
What are you saying? IDE should be ditched? Or, every block device driver in existence should be rewritten to pretend that it's a SCSI device? I don't follow.
The UK justice system is in a horrible mess, with a lot of prisoners getting better living conditions behind bars than they do when they're on the streets
That's an argument for an Unconditional Citizen's Income, not an argument for making prisons more unpleasant than they are already.
You write a program and make it freely available, including source code.
Someone takes that program, makes a few changes and releases it as their own.
You take legal action against them for "GPL violation"
Although *technically* you are justified for taking action, in reality, all you're really doing is being a prick.
I think you missed the money aspect of it here. Personally, if someone's going to make money out of selling the product of my labour, I'm willing to let it go if they abide by the GPL - but if they don't abide by the GPL and they're making money out of it, I want to see some of that money. And/or I want them to stop.
I think that people from most political ideologies - from free market to Marxist - can agree that for another person to take the product of your labour, and sell it without your permission, and give you nothing in recompense, is immoral. Who exactly is being a prick here?
Also, the whole point of the GPL, the intention of it, is to stop things like this happening. Putting the GPL on something is like putting a big sign on it saying "DO NOT TURN THIS INTO PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!"
It's not a technicality. It's the whole point of the GPL!
We geniuses are constantly brought down by the idiots all around. Just imagine how much faster the world would progress if all those idiots weren't the ones responsible for the progress!
A "right to profit" - and we're talking about a govt. entity here! What an absurd concept. No-one has a "right to profit" - least of all not-for-profit or governmental organisations.
If there is no incentive to invest in a new ideas, those that need capital to develop may never come into existence.
If there is no incentive for private companies to invest in an idea (and please show why this would have been the case here!) - if, accepting your hypothesis as correct - even then, that does not imply that there would be no incentive for governments or even private foundations to invest in an idea.
I agree with him. Relying on proprietary BIOSes is the way to get something like Palladium snuck into your computer and suddenly preventing you from running anything on it the manufacturer doesn't approve of. Goodbye general purpose computing.
I don't believe the end of general purpose computing for the masses is a realistic danger. What you're describing sounds like transforming the world into a society like China almost overnight!
OK, so the people who bought at those erroneous rates didn't lose their money. But what about the people who sold at those erroneous rates and made plans based on the money they believed they had made?
I think this is unjust, personally. I think stock exchanges should never cancel erroneous trades, because that penalises those who took advantage of errors, but does not penalise the source of the error. The source of the error should be penalised, on the "it's your fault, you pay for it" principle - which would encourage greater care in the development of trading software.
As a bonus, big corporations might go bust if they didn't implement proper checks, which would be highly amusing to me.
Why is the webmaster of groklaw entitled to more privacy than, say, Jeff Gannon, the Runaway Bride, Robert Bork, the Runaway Bride, Gary Hart, or Linda Tripp?
Well, we can have a debate about that, but what's not debatable was that the offending MoG article was totally over the line. It included spurious details about this woman's aged mother, and her religion, and calling her an "elusive harridan". What possible relevance do those things have to the content of Groklaw?
Bit of a giveaway name though, isn't it. I mean - SysCon Media - translates to me as "Systematically Conning people". Couldn't they be a little less obvious?
Uhh, I don't have a driving license, and I don't intend to get one either. I don't want to drive a greenhouse-gas spewing, asthma-inducing vehicle. What about me?
Slashdot Mirror
Persecuted, where you? Did they tie you to the rack?
The dollar may be "crashing", but it hasn't shifted much that I've noticed against the pound in the last 12 months. I don't know what that says about the strength of the pound...
Bullshit.
Tell that to the Iranian bloggers who have been arrested merely for publishing their political views.
That's the textbook definition of censorship.
And Iran actually purports to be a democracy. Countries like Saudi Arabia don't even pretend to have democratic scruples.
It may be a small difference, but it is an important one - it speaks to the intent of the journalists concerned.
You keep saying "forced". I do not think it means what you think it means. Technically, you are not forced to pay for it, because you can always move to another municipality which does not have municipal wi-fi.
And - by the way - if you don't like democracy, you can damned well move to Somalia, or some other godforsaken hellhole that doesn't have a functioning democracy.
(Note: This post may or may not reflect what I actually believe. I'm just reworking right-wing arguments and throwing them right back at ya.)
"Why's that Perl code so obfuscated?"
"Oh, that's just a Perl geek showing off - you'll get used to it."
Why do you think all those router manufacturers have settled after being threatened with being sued under the GPL for not providing source code to their Linux kernels? Because they were distributing, that's why!
That's not actually true. In the UK, the Computer Misuse Act prevents you doing pretty much anything on someone else's computer without authorisation. While this probably isn't enforcable against a computer repair shop installing anti-spyware software, it certainly is enforceable against hackers/crackers, and those who knowingly distribute viruses and trojan horses.
What are you saying? IDE should be ditched? Or, every block device driver in existence should be rewritten to pretend that it's a SCSI device? I don't follow.
That's an argument for an Unconditional Citizen's Income, not an argument for making prisons more unpleasant than they are already.
Although *technically* you are justified for taking action, in reality, all you're really doing is being a prick.
I think you missed the money aspect of it here. Personally, if someone's going to make money out of selling the product of my labour, I'm willing to let it go if they abide by the GPL - but if they don't abide by the GPL and they're making money out of it, I want to see some of that money. And/or I want them to stop.
I think that people from most political ideologies - from free market to Marxist - can agree that for another person to take the product of your labour, and sell it without your permission, and give you nothing in recompense, is immoral. Who exactly is being a prick here?
Also, the whole point of the GPL, the intention of it, is to stop things like this happening. Putting the GPL on something is like putting a big sign on it saying "DO NOT TURN THIS INTO PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION!"
It's not a technicality. It's the whole point of the GPL!
Well, precisely!
Where may I subscribe to your newsletter?
There is a grain of truth in that. But the reason we fail is because the tools we use just aren't good enough!
(Note: The above is a semi-serious self-parody.)
A "right to profit" - and we're talking about a govt. entity here! What an absurd concept. No-one has a "right to profit" - least of all not-for-profit or governmental organisations.
If there is no incentive to invest in a new ideas, those that need capital to develop may never come into existence.
If there is no incentive for private companies to invest in an idea (and please show why this would have been the case here!) - if, accepting your hypothesis as correct - even then, that does not imply that there would be no incentive for governments or even private foundations to invest in an idea.
I don't believe the end of general purpose computing for the masses is a realistic danger. What you're describing sounds like transforming the world into a society like China almost overnight!
I think this is unjust, personally. I think stock exchanges should never cancel erroneous trades, because that penalises those who took advantage of errors, but does not penalise the source of the error. The source of the error should be penalised, on the "it's your fault, you pay for it" principle - which would encourage greater care in the development of trading software.
As a bonus, big corporations might go bust if they didn't implement proper checks, which would be highly amusing to me.
Well, we can have a debate about that, but what's not debatable was that the offending MoG article was totally over the line. It included spurious details about this woman's aged mother, and her religion, and calling her an "elusive harridan". What possible relevance do those things have to the content of Groklaw?