Actually, it's interesting to hear how other countries handle things. I don't envy you your laws, especially if, like in the United States, things like the design of buildings, cars, and chairs can be copyrighted.
Your message contains a number of clearly wrong statements. At least, wrong
given my fairly large assumption: that we're discussing United States law. If
you're discussing a different country, my apologies, I know very little about
other countries copyright laws beyond the general guidelines set down by the
Berne Convention.
The only thing that permits you to enjoy the copyright holder's
rights, under copyright law, is a license granted to you by the copyright
holder.
Sure enough. Of course under copyright law the rights exclusively granted
to the copyright holder boil down to the right to distribute new copies. There
are a few other details like restrictions on "public performance," but in a
nutshell copyright is about limiting who is allowed to distribute copies.
Feel free to check out the U.S Copyright Office's "What is Copyright?"
It's a pretty good summary of what the copyright holder's rights are.
In copyright law the concept of sale deals exclusively with the
sale of copyright (i.e. transfer to another copyright holder); the only
alternative to this, in which the original holder retains his/her copyright, is
a license.
That is erroneous. There is a third option, the option used in 99% of all
transactions involving a copyright protected work. This option is used
whenever you visit a local store and purchase a book, CD, or DVD. With this
option, I purchase a single instance, a single copy of the work. Copyright remains with the original holder. That
particular copy becomes mine, it is my property, and I'm free to dispose of it
as I wish. This is only restricted by laws governing my actions. Under the
DMCA I'm not allowed to break any encryption on the DVD. Under various laws,
I'm not allowed to sharpen the disc into a razor point and kill people with it.
And under copyright law I'm not allow to make copies and distribute those newly
made copies. Beyond various laws like that, I'm free to do a great deal with
my property, be it a chair, a car, or a DVD. I can resell it, loan it out,
give it away, destroy it, make copies for personal use, will it to my
inheritors, look at it, show it to my friends, or throw it away.
Unless a law specifically forbids me from doing something, I'm legally
allowed to do it. Copyright law specifically forbids be from distributing new
copies of works protected by copyright. (Unless I am the copyright holder, in
which case even that restriction is lifted.) Copyright law specifies no
licenses, be they implicit or explicit.
Again, please check out the U.S Copyright Office's "What is Copyright?" You'll notice the decided lack of commentary on licenses, loans, and other powers you have incorrectly assigned to copyright holders.
So I believe the question is: does Copyright law permit a license fee model, or does it require the sale of discrete licenses?
You're starting with an incorrect assumption: that when I purchase a copyright protected work that I've purchased a license of some sort. That is not the case (in general). If I purchase a book from my local bookstore, I don't need any license of any sort to read it, loan it out, read it to my kids, tear out pages I don't like, give it away, write witty comments in the margins, or resell it. In fact, just about the only thing I can't do distribute copies of the book. That retriction has nothing to do with a license and everything to do with copyright law.
The Doctrine of First Sale isn't about transferring a license, it's about transferring physical property. I purchased this book / CD / DVD / lithograph fair and square, that particular copy is now my property. As my property, I'm free to dispose of it as I wish, including reselling it or loaning it out.
The copyright industries are trying to spread this misunderstanding. They want citizens to believe that people aren't actually allowed to own anything. Once you've convince people that they don't actually own any of the shelves of books, CDs, DVDs, it's an easy step to convince people they loaning out works, or reselling works is illegal. Fight the misinformation!
(To be fair, some works are licensed, not sold. With the exception of the relativelt immature software industry, you sign contracts to acquire these licenses. There is no confusion that you're purchasing a license, not a copy of the work.)
You could always just tell them, "No". I always did.
So what? Most people are in the habit of doing what they're told. Your average person isn't aware that their information is being sold without their knowledge. Many people would object if they thought about it, but it's easier to reply than to consider the ramifications. If too many people get into this habit we'll move toward a society where it is expected and required. If I can't purchase books and health supplies without being tracked, democracy is going to have some problems.
All that said, I "Just Say No" myself. I'm always amused at the cashier's response. It usually takes a second for the cashier to realise that I've said "I'd rather not", snapping them out of their automated work mode. You can also tell the places that get alot of flack about it. Best Buy's cashiers are all used to being told No when asking for a zip code. The casher Party USA was completely baffled and had to call over a manager ("What do I punch in?"). Depending on my mood, I'll occasionally make up information. I usually did for Radio Shack since they were so insistant.
Similarly, I shed no tears for people who "demand" their "rights" to play the latest DVD on platform X.
I totally agree. And to heck with those people "demand" their "rights" to
unionize. If you know a particular company is union hostile, find a different
job. And those people of arab heritage who "demand" their "right" to travel on
airplanes. If you know a particular airline is racially profiling, pick a
different one. And those blasted civil rights protestors who "demand" their
"rights" to equal service. If you know the lunch counter won't serve you
because you're black, try another one.
(Clue for the clueless: The above is sarcasm.)
But now that it's clear what the license holders are demanding, I find it crazy to demand that you have a "right" to play, say, next-year's DVDs on a given OS.
How can you possibly believe this?
They are not license holders. They are copyright holders. DVDs are not
licensed products. They are sold products. Once I've purchased a sold
product, I'm (generally) free to do whatever I want with it. The only
restrictions are those placed on my by the government (this includes not using
the product to hurt people, and not distributing copies of works protected by
copyright). The copyright holders are free to demand whatever they want, but
the only demand I care about is the price tag. Once I've paid them, they're
free to kiss my ass. This only changed because of the grossly bad DMCA, and
part of the point is that we should be fighting to get the DMCA overturned or
replaced with better laws.
By the way, "you" might want to reconder your "use" of "scare quotes." It's childish. If you want to challenge the existence of a right, say so in as many words, "I don't believe you have a right to play DVDs on platforms of your choice." See how simple it is?
If you don't like the conditions that are being attached to a
product...don't buy it, don't go to the theater, don't listen to their songs on
the radio, and don't hype it on your website. That is the surest, best, and
most honest way to get the MPAA, RIAA, etc. to listen to your demands.
Hahahahaha. You're a very funny man. Meanwhile, here on Earth, boycotts
usually fail. It's extremely difficult to rally enough support for your effort
to make a difference. A far more effective use of our time is to fight against
those conditions, to argue that they aren't legal, that they aren't moral. By
doing so, we also help raise public awareness, so a boycott may work in the
future.
Another anology: I might not like the terms of some GPL'ed product, thinking it "really" should be under a BSD license. Does that give me the RIGHT to use it under a BSD license ?
Within the confines of your own home, you're free to replace the COPYING
file with "I can do whatever I want with this and the Free Software Foundation
is a bunch of idiots." This isn't a matter of licensing. I have not licensed
a movie when I purchase a DVD. This is a matter of using things I purchased as
I see fit.
I almost forgot two more reasons I love my Palm Vx:
1. Password safe. I use STRIP, but alot of people like GPG keyring. It's really handy to have the horde of passwords I need to remember stored on my Palm, encrypted with AES and protected by my physical security (take my Palm and I beat you up.:-)
2. The backlight in a surprisingly effective flashlight in a pinch.
I'd like to off-topically point out that "see left frame for link" is a good example of one of the problems with frames. With framed pages linking directly to something is hard.
I've owned three PalmOS devices over the years and I would
hate to live without one. However, I don't think PDAs are for
everyone. Too many people are thinking "hey, neat" and
purchasing one without thinking about why they want one
and what they're going to do with it.
When I purchased my first PalmOS device, I had a number of
very specific goals: I was already carrying a little addressbook
in which I recorded appointments, phone numbers, addresses, and
various notes (shopping lists, books to consider, ideas for
stories). I knew I needed the book (it replaced my existing
habit of having pockets full of scraps of paper with nodes), but
I had problems with it. I was frustrated that as the book filled
and the year passed, I needed to purchase a new book and
transcribe everything into it. (I could get a book with
removable pages, but they were too large to be comfortable to
always carry.) The book certainly wasn't large enough for my
never ending stream of notes (my list of restaurants, movies, and
video games that others have recommended I check out, my notes of
my flash of insight into something I'm doing at work). Also, as
a geek, I was uncomfortable having that one book not be safely
backed up somewhere else. (True, I could transcribe it, taking
up my time, or photocopy it, but if I lose or damage the original
my restore process involves buying a new book and transcribing.)
Finally, my little book couldn't remind me that I was missing an
appointment.
So, when I looked seriously at my first PalmOS device (a Palm
III), I knew specifically what it would do for me. It would hold
as much information as I could practically throw at it. It would
be backed up to my computer frequently, ensuring the safety of my
data. I would never transcribe by hand from one source to
another, once it's digital I can copy it easily. And it can beep
when appointments come up. Sure enough, it worked perfectly.
Of course, once I always had a small computer at my side, I
started doing additional things with it. While I'm not a big fan
of reading books on the small screen, when I'm forced to wait for
something (picking up a friend at the airport and the flight is
delayed, doctor's appointment, etc), having something to read of
my choice is certainly convient. And it turns out that with the
keyboard, it's still much smaller than a laptop computer, but
powerful enough to do real writing on.
In fact, the only thing I dislike about various PDAs is the
size. Most PDAs, including much of Palm's line, are
uncomfortably large. As a result, I upgraded to the much slimmer
Palm V. I know other people who purchased the Handspring Razor
for the same reason. These days any PDA is more than powerful
enough for my needs. I don't need 16MB of memory, 8 is plenty
(and if I'm a bit more picky about what books I upload into my
PDA, 2 is plenty). I certainly don't need color, I'm just
reading text. I need a long battery life and a small size. I
will not trade any battery life or size for
memory or color.
Sure, lots of clueless people purchased various PDAs but have
no use for them. But there are plenty of people who love their
PDAs, use them frequently, and would be very disorganized without
them. I know. I am such a person.
Sorry, a library is not a daycare that you can dump your kids at and ignore. It isn't a Disneyland created to keep your children safe at all costs. Libraries exist to help create a well educated public, to encourage the spread of information and to support the spread of new ideas necessary to keep democracy flourishing. To support these goals, information that you may object to your children seeing must be available to adults. Any restriction on this information for adults is unacceptable.
There's plenty I want to keep away from my kids while they are kids.
And somewhere there is someone who wants to keep your kids away from things you think are perfectly safe. When the paranoid religious group decides to bar links to Harry Potter fan sites as "Occult" or breast cancer information sites as "Sexual". It's not possible for a library to come up with a perfect filter for everyone. Unless you filter to the extreme, some parents will be horrified that their child has access to to information about halloween. Unless you have no filter, some parent will find some information filtered that they want their child to have access to. (And do you think a child that encounters a "Access Denied" is going to ask the librarian to unblock it? Heck, most adults would be too embarrassed to do so!)
No system will work for everyone. Heck, no system will work for most people. And any system will irritate many patrons doing legitimate research.
Ultimately responsibility for filtering what you child sees is your responsibility. If you're not confident that you child is mature enough to handle whatever he comes across, you are responsible for keeping your eye on him. Even before the internet, you could find novels with graphic descriptions of sex and violence and books encouraging racism and violence, yet you don't seem to worry about that.
Your child is your responsibility. Just because you're too lazy to keep an eye on your child is no reason that my library experience should be diminished.
...it's fun to see where they flubb because it is so rare. And these can only get better with time.
Censorware can't work. It simply can't. The internet is growing too fast to restrict. New pages with "bad" content are being added rightnow, and new pages with "good" content are being added. Censorware has no hope to keep up. Search engines with an easier job (find everything, and try to find everything) can't keep up. How can a censorware manufacturer accurately make all of those decisions? Deciding that a given page is "reasonable political commentary" or "hate speech" is extremely difficultt, even for humans. A computer has no hope. Check out Michael Sims' "Why Censorware Can't Work" article for more details. Furthermore, censorware must filter any web site that could possibly redisplay content from another web site. This means that all censorware must always restrict translation software web pages. There are a number of articles documenting this problem, here are just a few: "BabelFish blocked by censorware", "SmartFilter's Greatest Evils", and BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censoreware vs privacy & anonymity"
Yes, Linux is harder than Windows at the moment. But it's not the epic
quest you make it out to be. For 90% of the software I use, I don't bother
with tarballs and compiling anymore. I just grab an RPM and install it and am
on my way. For all of the traditional "desktop" software I use
(spreadsheet,
word processor,
personal finance software,
web browser,
email client,
I simply rely on what comes with
Red Hat Linux
and
Ximian Desktop. Everyone once in a while I run
Red Carpet, select all of the updates and hit "Next." Amazingly easy, freeing me up to do more interesting things (like writing new software).
You bizarrely claim that 99.1% of people who are attracted to free software
and are willing to accept that is is harder to use end up giving up. If the
above is "too hard", then they weren't really ready for something harder to use
than Windows. (Heck, they probably aren't ready for something as exciting as
installing Windows from scratch.) You're making numbers up and you know it.
The figures prove what? That an operating system and supporting software
developed by people with a fraction of the budget and advertising of Apple are
successfully gaining market share? That it's impossible for any operating
system (even the heavily hyped MacOS X) to make serious inroads against the
Microsoft monopoly? You can't prove anything with the figures other
than Microsoft owns the game, Apple keeps a sizable minority, and Linux slowly
grows. We can't know that if the reason Linux has such a small share is
because people are trapped by the Microsoft monopoly, aren't aware of Linux due
to lack of advertising, have actually tried Linux but found it too difficult,
aren't interesting in exploring new options because their system shipped with
Windows and works fine for now.
Your parents run Windows for a reason, and trust me -- it's not because it looks that incredible. It's just easier to use, and easier to get support for. End of story.
Bwuhuhahahahaha! Sure. Fine. Not.
My parents loath Microsoft and Windows. The "support" they've gotten is
entirely "try rebooting" and "try reinstalling". My dad recently spent a
weekend fighting with various drivers unsuccessfully. My dad purchases a great
deal of maintenance software to try and keep his system stable. My mom
struggles to keep her old games working under new Windows operating systems.
(And before you complain, "but it's third party publishers that are the
problem", the same is true for Linux. If you stick with your distribution's
publisher (and perhaps Ximian), you'll find you get a very easy to install and
use system that's stable.)
My parents don't use Windows because they like it or that they feel it's
easy to use. They use Windows because it's all they've ever known.
Finally, yes, IRC is full of assholes. Duh. Big shock. It turns out that
most of IRC is full of assholes, including the non-Linux channels. The Windows
support channels are full of assholes. The music dicussion channels are full
of assholes. The abuse support channels are full of assholes. It's the nature
of anonymous communication. Fortunately, I haven't bothered looking at IRC for
a long time. When I run into problems I check the mailing list archives and
the FAQ. If I don't find details, then a politely phrased query to a mailing
list provides useful answers. And I only ever need go to this trouble when I
chose to be daring and try software that didn't come with my distribution. And
only if the software has problems (less than 1% of the time). This is an
exceptional case, not the general one (unless your general case involves lots
of trying experimental software).
Why not just get the good stuff and maybe he won't need so many comptuers.
Identifying "good stuff" is very hard and certainly not something that can be automated. Furthermore, "good stuff" is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps Jane's web page dedicated to her kittens in useless to almost everyone in the world. However, to Jane's great-great granddaughter who hasn't been born yet, it might provide a fascinating look into her own past. A historian a hundred years from now analyzing the first twenty years of the web would certainly want to know that porn and popups were so pervasive.
So while the site looks fine with CSS, without CSS you get maybe stark gray...
Very few web sits voluntarily chose a grey background. In fact, that
glorious grey is the browser's default background color. If fact, if you visit
webstandards.org without CSS support,
you're getting the colors, fonts, and layout you asked for. Don't
like it, take a trip to Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Colors. Click the
button for "Background" and change it to something you like. See, control in
your hands.
So what's actually going on here is not a case of these developers adhering to web standards, but rather, they are picking and choosing the standards they want to use, such as by not making use of HTML completely and correctly.
Actually, they're making use of the latest version of HTML completely and
correctly. Using the various color tags and techniques from previous versions
would in fact be violating the correct use of HTML. When you break standards
you end up having to do dozens of special cases for the quirks of each browser.
If you stick to baseline modern HTML with CSS, all modern browsers will display
the same thing looking good, older browsers will degrade gracefully.
You argue that by not supporting out of date HTML you're somehow
discriminating against people with older computers. That's a bizarre claim.
By using out of date HTML, you're making it harder for anyone to use
it. Modern HTML makes it easier to render a web page in lynx, or on your WebTV, or on a braille
display, or be read aloud by a text to speech program. CSS makes it easier to
keep your HTML small, speeding up the browsing experience for people with lower
quality phone lines or working over an expensive wireless link. Modern HTML
degrades gracefully. The old hackery HTML turns into a mess when forced to
degrade. The webstandards.org page you complain about may not look pretty, but
it's sure as hell usable. It'll work fine under lynx and a text to speech
reader will easily and accurate speak the page for a blind person. As someone
who occasionally must fall back on extremely low end systems and extremely slow
connections, I appreciate how well webstandards.org degrade and curse how
poorly most "old HTML" sites do.
Zeldmanistas...intentionally set it to something different than what is set in CSS.... So while the site looks fine with CSS, without CSS you get... black with black text over it.
Actually, anyone playing this sort of game is most certainly not a believer in Web Standards. Setting the background color at all in HTML (instead of CSS) is not invalid by the standard. No, those people are just assholes.
As for why it's OK to break the licensing agreement, I point out (again) that hardware is NOT licensed, it's owned. I do not RENT my console. I own it.
I strongly support the "I bought it, I'll hack it as I wish" attitude. It's my right to play DVDs under Linux, add mod chips to my consoles, and disable macrovision and region coding from my DVD player.
But.
This isn't about your hardware. This is about a service you pay for (and agree to a license for up front). You're welcome to hack your X-Box, but Microsoft is free to decline to let you onto their service. Seems reasonable to me.
...being developed [is] the fourth instalment in the Monkey Island series of games.
Oh, they torture me so. For a brief moment I thought I could expect a New Monkey Island game. But then I realized that the fourth game is already out...
(Shameless plug: want to play the old 2d Lucasarts adventures but your system isn't compatible (lacks ancient sound card or video card or DOS), or you want to play under Linux or on your WinCE box? Try ScummVM! (Requires legal copy of original games.)
Stop skimming and start reading. It clearly documents their attempt to transition from Unix to Windows. This was a test case, they hoped to collect their findings and use it to support real startups converting from Unix to Windows. From that standpoint, it makes perfect sense to treat Hotmail as an independant startup. This is why the document says things like "Although there were no costs to the Hotmail project, as a Microsoft department, the team did consider the software costs in order to make the conversion a useful model for future customers." The goal was to build up documentation showing external customers why switching to Windows from Unix is a good idea and easy. It's a well researched and presented paper that honestly shows that Windows 2000 has a number of problems in this situation and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of the move.
The lack of an snprintf method in the DevStudio standard C lib...
From my time as a Windows developer, I have alot of grudges against Microsoft.
(I've even publically
aired some of them.) But I can't complain about lack of a snprintf. It's
right here, and has been for at least five years. If an obvious function
appears to be missing, look for a version prefixed with an underscore. (Of
course, it seems stupid to me that it's prefixed with an underscore, instead of
conforming to other systems, but that's a different issue.)
Why did you single out Catholics as being opposed to birth control?
My apologies, I meant no offense. I was simply looking for examples and that happened to be something I found. I took sex ed at a Catholic high school, so I'm intimately familiar with the Catholic church's official teachings on the matter. (Not to denegrate the high school, the local diocese wasn't entirely pleased with the high school because it, in part, explained the church's position, then gave clear explanations on the effectiveness of various birth control methods and basically said, "You're too young, but if you're going to, use a condom.")
Sure we have a single head of our church (the Pope for the clueless), but we have not considered his opinions infallibale for hundreds of years.
Interestingly, based on personal experiences, there is an increasingly large number of people who identify themselves as Catholic, but maintain beliefs that go contrary to official church policy. A lot of "the core religion is good, but some of the beuracracy has become detached from the Truth." I place alot of hope in the rejuvination of the church by these people.
Woah, relax. Yes, stores and businesses already do try to track you with discount cards, credit card numbers, checking account numbers, rebate requests, and the ilk. I object to those as well. I strongly support laws that restrict tracking people by social security number, credit card number, checking account number, and other tricks. Myself, I try to live on cash. I find it useful for crude budgeting (hmmm, that last withdrawal of $100 didn't last as long as it should, time to cut back a bit), and makes me harder to track. I refuse discount cards and rebates.
Will you need to hire someone capable of handling open source software and how much will he cost per year?
And someone skilled at handling proprietary software will be cheaper? Sure, you can get someone cheaper, but you get what you pay for.
What if something breaks and a service is down for a while, there will be no company to hold up their software and support it, it is now up to you.
If you think a local high school computer class teacher (who is usually the entire schools "computer guy") is going to get any sort of support from a large proprietary software company, you've got some strange conceptions. Instead you're going to get the clueless "Try rebooting, try reinstalling" we all face when we call the outsourced support centers of various companies. And while you're getting the barely useful support, you are stuck on the phone dealing with it. Not much of a win.
It's a great idea, but out in the real world, people use commercial software. If kids aren't educated in how to use it, they won't be able to compete.
Bah, Humbug! If the kid is educated with general computer knowledge and general categories of applications, he'll be fine. If you only train him to a specific piece of software, he'll be out of luck when the software changes. For heavens sake, let's look at the software my generation learned in grade school and high school: DOS, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3. By the time we got into the real world, all three were dead and buried.
Part of the problem is that too much training is focused on "learn this one, highly specific thing". The result is a growing number of people who are completely unable to handle new technologies and software. The solution is "learn how computers and software work in general, learn how general categories of software work, and learn how to explore and understand unfamiliar software." Teaching to specific software is a stupid as only teaching how to drive Ford cars in driver's ed., and only teaching how to repair Honda cars in auto shop class. We don't need more generations of whiners, "but I was trained on the FooBarQux 3, not FooBarQux 5." We need people willing to dive and explore and learn for themselves!
Fortunately as increasing numbers of kids are exposed to computers at all, this becomes less important to worry about. Kids like exploring new things, so new software doesn't scare them. They're taught early on that computers are something that they should be comfortable with.
Teach both, and let the kids decide what's best.
Teach kids lots of different things and encourage kids to identify common patterns and solutions. A kid shouldn't really need to decide on what's best today, we just need to get him thinking about the world with a good baseline of knowledge so he can make those decisions given the new technologies and problems that await him when he enters the workforce.
why would they want to stop this free advertising?
True capitalism with lots of healthy competition requires that consumers have access to lots of information so that they can make educated decisions. If consumer access to information is restricted, consumers are unable to make educated decisions and the market becomes distorted. Successful businesses have every bit of incentive to restrict your access to information. If it's harder to find competing products, or harder to compare prices, consumers will tend to stick with existing suppliers and products (because it costs time and sometimes money to find out about other options). If information is easily available, smaller and newer providers have a much easier time gaining customers.
Ultimately, successful capitalists are the greatest danger to capitalism. This is why we have anti-trust laws. This is why we need to fight hard against attempts to limit information on products, be it pricing information or reviews and benchmarks (as many software EULAs prohibit).
Great! "Hmmm, I wonder if I can afford the nice steaks or it's ground chuck tonight... oh my, my stocks just went through the floor, I guess it's ground chuck tonight."
No, wait, that's a stupid idea.
Some people seems to have forgotten that you first identify a problem, then you provide a solution. Providing a solution, then looking for a problem is usually doomed to failure. I fail to see a realistic case where getting stock quotes in the supermarket solves anyones problem.
For those privacy advocates out there, do you REALLY care that the managers of a supermarket know you buy a pack of pringles every shopping trip?
The problem isn't that the manager knows. The problem is that any number of "trusted" employees will know. One or more of employees may be willing to resell (or just give away) your information. Heck, for the right amount of money I'm sure the store will happily sell the information. I for one purchase personal hygiene and pharmacy products at my local supermarket. If I'm a politician trying to appease a rigid Catholic demographic, I might prefer that my political opponents not be able to prove that I purchase of condoms or birth control pills. I'd rather my health insurance didn't have the opportunity to analyze my buying habits of aspirin and antacids to decide if I've become too risky. Or even if my health insurance decides I buy too much junk food, my auto insurance decides that I buy too much alcohol. Or perhaps my opponent for a county board seat will get the information and claim, "Bob sure buys alot of alcohol, are you sure you want someone who buys that much alcohol on the board?" A potential employer might make collecting such information part of their check on me before hiring me.
The probably isn't that the store knows. To the store I'm only interesting as a relatively anonymous consumer. The problem is that once the information is collected that it will become available to other people who may be interested in me personally. There is a serious risk of abuse. If government agents who have been specifically screened for security purposes occasionally decide to abuse the information (like Robert Hanseen, a few Michigan police, amoung other cases), why should I trust the night shift manager at my local supermarket who hates his job at my local supermarket?
More importantly, you should have a pool to guess which distro will first become as good, usable, and easy to install as Win2k is.
Easy to install? The last few versions of Red Hat I've installed (6.2 and 7.2) were significantly easier than my last few installs of Win2K. Do I have the right drivers? How many times will I need to reboot to get working drivers installed? Anyone who has ever installed Windows 2000 has all of the skill necessary to install Red Hat 8.0.
Usable? Well, after installing Windows 2000 out of the box, I have an email client, a web browser, a few games, a nearly useless stripped down word processor (Write), and not much else. Without purchasing additional software, Windows 2000 isn't terribly useful for much other that basic internet access. With Red Hat 8, I get a word processor, spreadsheet, photo editor, and bunch of other useful, usable software. The various productivity packages that ship with Red Hat may not be perfect, but they're good enough for 95% of users and come with the operating system.
Good? That's in the eye of the beholder. I am certainly much happier with Red Hat than Windows. Sounds good to me.
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Actually, it's interesting to hear how other countries handle things. I don't envy you your laws, especially if, like in the United States, things like the design of buildings, cars, and chairs can be copyrighted.
Your message contains a number of clearly wrong statements. At least, wrong given my fairly large assumption: that we're discussing United States law. If you're discussing a different country, my apologies, I know very little about other countries copyright laws beyond the general guidelines set down by the Berne Convention.
Sure enough. Of course under copyright law the rights exclusively granted to the copyright holder boil down to the right to distribute new copies. There are a few other details like restrictions on "public performance," but in a nutshell copyright is about limiting who is allowed to distribute copies.
Feel free to check out the U.S Copyright Office's "What is Copyright?" It's a pretty good summary of what the copyright holder's rights are.
That is erroneous. There is a third option, the option used in 99% of all transactions involving a copyright protected work. This option is used whenever you visit a local store and purchase a book, CD, or DVD. With this option, I purchase a single instance, a single copy of the work. Copyright remains with the original holder. That particular copy becomes mine, it is my property, and I'm free to dispose of it as I wish. This is only restricted by laws governing my actions. Under the DMCA I'm not allowed to break any encryption on the DVD. Under various laws, I'm not allowed to sharpen the disc into a razor point and kill people with it. And under copyright law I'm not allow to make copies and distribute those newly made copies. Beyond various laws like that, I'm free to do a great deal with my property, be it a chair, a car, or a DVD. I can resell it, loan it out, give it away, destroy it, make copies for personal use, will it to my inheritors, look at it, show it to my friends, or throw it away.
Unless a law specifically forbids me from doing something, I'm legally allowed to do it. Copyright law specifically forbids be from distributing new copies of works protected by copyright. (Unless I am the copyright holder, in which case even that restriction is lifted.) Copyright law specifies no licenses, be they implicit or explicit.
Again, please check out the U.S Copyright Office's "What is Copyright?" You'll notice the decided lack of commentary on licenses, loans, and other powers you have incorrectly assigned to copyright holders.
You're starting with an incorrect assumption: that when I purchase a copyright protected work that I've purchased a license of some sort. That is not the case (in general). If I purchase a book from my local bookstore, I don't need any license of any sort to read it, loan it out, read it to my kids, tear out pages I don't like, give it away, write witty comments in the margins, or resell it. In fact, just about the only thing I can't do distribute copies of the book. That retriction has nothing to do with a license and everything to do with copyright law.
The Doctrine of First Sale isn't about transferring a license, it's about transferring physical property. I purchased this book / CD / DVD / lithograph fair and square, that particular copy is now my property. As my property, I'm free to dispose of it as I wish, including reselling it or loaning it out.
The copyright industries are trying to spread this misunderstanding. They want citizens to believe that people aren't actually allowed to own anything. Once you've convince people that they don't actually own any of the shelves of books, CDs, DVDs, it's an easy step to convince people they loaning out works, or reselling works is illegal. Fight the misinformation!
(To be fair, some works are licensed, not sold. With the exception of the relativelt immature software industry, you sign contracts to acquire these licenses. There is no confusion that you're purchasing a license, not a copy of the work.)
So what? Most people are in the habit of doing what they're told. Your average person isn't aware that their information is being sold without their knowledge. Many people would object if they thought about it, but it's easier to reply than to consider the ramifications. If too many people get into this habit we'll move toward a society where it is expected and required. If I can't purchase books and health supplies without being tracked, democracy is going to have some problems.
All that said, I "Just Say No" myself. I'm always amused at the cashier's response. It usually takes a second for the cashier to realise that I've said "I'd rather not", snapping them out of their automated work mode. You can also tell the places that get alot of flack about it. Best Buy's cashiers are all used to being told No when asking for a zip code. The casher Party USA was completely baffled and had to call over a manager ("What do I punch in?"). Depending on my mood, I'll occasionally make up information. I usually did for Radio Shack since they were so insistant.
I totally agree. And to heck with those people "demand" their "rights" to unionize. If you know a particular company is union hostile, find a different job. And those people of arab heritage who "demand" their "right" to travel on airplanes. If you know a particular airline is racially profiling, pick a different one. And those blasted civil rights protestors who "demand" their "rights" to equal service. If you know the lunch counter won't serve you because you're black, try another one.
(Clue for the clueless: The above is sarcasm.)
How can you possibly believe this?
They are not license holders. They are copyright holders. DVDs are not licensed products. They are sold products. Once I've purchased a sold product, I'm (generally) free to do whatever I want with it. The only restrictions are those placed on my by the government (this includes not using the product to hurt people, and not distributing copies of works protected by copyright). The copyright holders are free to demand whatever they want, but the only demand I care about is the price tag. Once I've paid them, they're free to kiss my ass. This only changed because of the grossly bad DMCA, and part of the point is that we should be fighting to get the DMCA overturned or replaced with better laws.
By the way, "you" might want to reconder your "use" of "scare quotes." It's childish. If you want to challenge the existence of a right, say so in as many words, "I don't believe you have a right to play DVDs on platforms of your choice." See how simple it is?
Hahahahaha. You're a very funny man. Meanwhile, here on Earth, boycotts usually fail. It's extremely difficult to rally enough support for your effort to make a difference. A far more effective use of our time is to fight against those conditions, to argue that they aren't legal, that they aren't moral. By doing so, we also help raise public awareness, so a boycott may work in the future.
Within the confines of your own home, you're free to replace the COPYING file with "I can do whatever I want with this and the Free Software Foundation is a bunch of idiots." This isn't a matter of licensing. I have not licensed a movie when I purchase a DVD. This is a matter of using things I purchased as I see fit.
I almost forgot two more reasons I love my Palm Vx: 1. Password safe. I use STRIP, but alot of people like GPG keyring. It's really handy to have the horde of passwords I need to remember stored on my Palm, encrypted with AES and protected by my physical security (take my Palm and I beat you up. :-)
2. The backlight in a surprisingly effective flashlight in a pinch.
Unless you're a PalmOS user, in which case, everyone uses the same strokes.
I'd like to off-topically point out that "see left frame for link" is a good example of one of the problems with frames. With framed pages linking directly to something is hard.
I've owned three PalmOS devices over the years and I would hate to live without one. However, I don't think PDAs are for everyone. Too many people are thinking "hey, neat" and purchasing one without thinking about why they want one and what they're going to do with it.
When I purchased my first PalmOS device, I had a number of very specific goals: I was already carrying a little addressbook in which I recorded appointments, phone numbers, addresses, and various notes (shopping lists, books to consider, ideas for stories). I knew I needed the book (it replaced my existing habit of having pockets full of scraps of paper with nodes), but I had problems with it. I was frustrated that as the book filled and the year passed, I needed to purchase a new book and transcribe everything into it. (I could get a book with removable pages, but they were too large to be comfortable to always carry.) The book certainly wasn't large enough for my never ending stream of notes (my list of restaurants, movies, and video games that others have recommended I check out, my notes of my flash of insight into something I'm doing at work). Also, as a geek, I was uncomfortable having that one book not be safely backed up somewhere else. (True, I could transcribe it, taking up my time, or photocopy it, but if I lose or damage the original my restore process involves buying a new book and transcribing.) Finally, my little book couldn't remind me that I was missing an appointment.
So, when I looked seriously at my first PalmOS device (a Palm III), I knew specifically what it would do for me. It would hold as much information as I could practically throw at it. It would be backed up to my computer frequently, ensuring the safety of my data. I would never transcribe by hand from one source to another, once it's digital I can copy it easily. And it can beep when appointments come up. Sure enough, it worked perfectly.
Of course, once I always had a small computer at my side, I started doing additional things with it. While I'm not a big fan of reading books on the small screen, when I'm forced to wait for something (picking up a friend at the airport and the flight is delayed, doctor's appointment, etc), having something to read of my choice is certainly convient. And it turns out that with the keyboard, it's still much smaller than a laptop computer, but powerful enough to do real writing on.
In fact, the only thing I dislike about various PDAs is the size. Most PDAs, including much of Palm's line, are uncomfortably large. As a result, I upgraded to the much slimmer Palm V. I know other people who purchased the Handspring Razor for the same reason. These days any PDA is more than powerful enough for my needs. I don't need 16MB of memory, 8 is plenty (and if I'm a bit more picky about what books I upload into my PDA, 2 is plenty). I certainly don't need color, I'm just reading text. I need a long battery life and a small size. I will not trade any battery life or size for memory or color.
Sure, lots of clueless people purchased various PDAs but have no use for them. But there are plenty of people who love their PDAs, use them frequently, and would be very disorganized without them. I know. I am such a person.
Sorry, a library is not a daycare that you can dump your kids at and ignore. It isn't a Disneyland created to keep your children safe at all costs. Libraries exist to help create a well educated public, to encourage the spread of information and to support the spread of new ideas necessary to keep democracy flourishing. To support these goals, information that you may object to your children seeing must be available to adults. Any restriction on this information for adults is unacceptable.
And somewhere there is someone who wants to keep your kids away from things you think are perfectly safe. When the paranoid religious group decides to bar links to Harry Potter fan sites as "Occult" or breast cancer information sites as "Sexual". It's not possible for a library to come up with a perfect filter for everyone. Unless you filter to the extreme, some parents will be horrified that their child has access to to information about halloween. Unless you have no filter, some parent will find some information filtered that they want their child to have access to. (And do you think a child that encounters a "Access Denied" is going to ask the librarian to unblock it? Heck, most adults would be too embarrassed to do so!)
No system will work for everyone. Heck, no system will work for most people. And any system will irritate many patrons doing legitimate research.
Ultimately responsibility for filtering what you child sees is your responsibility. If you're not confident that you child is mature enough to handle whatever he comes across, you are responsible for keeping your eye on him. Even before the internet, you could find novels with graphic descriptions of sex and violence and books encouraging racism and violence, yet you don't seem to worry about that.
Your child is your responsibility. Just because you're too lazy to keep an eye on your child is no reason that my library experience should be diminished.
Censorware can't work. It simply can't. The internet is growing too fast to restrict. New pages with "bad" content are being added rightnow, and new pages with "good" content are being added. Censorware has no hope to keep up. Search engines with an easier job (find everything, and try to find everything) can't keep up. How can a censorware manufacturer accurately make all of those decisions? Deciding that a given page is "reasonable political commentary" or "hate speech" is extremely difficultt, even for humans. A computer has no hope. Check out Michael Sims' "Why Censorware Can't Work" article for more details. Furthermore, censorware must filter any web site that could possibly redisplay content from another web site. This means that all censorware must always restrict translation software web pages. There are a number of articles documenting this problem, here are just a few: "BabelFish blocked by censorware", "SmartFilter's Greatest Evils", and BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censoreware vs privacy & anonymity"
The hell?
Yes, Linux is harder than Windows at the moment. But it's not the epic quest you make it out to be. For 90% of the software I use, I don't bother with tarballs and compiling anymore. I just grab an RPM and install it and am on my way. For all of the traditional "desktop" software I use (spreadsheet, word processor, personal finance software, web browser, email client, I simply rely on what comes with Red Hat Linux and Ximian Desktop. Everyone once in a while I run Red Carpet, select all of the updates and hit "Next." Amazingly easy, freeing me up to do more interesting things (like writing new software).
You bizarrely claim that 99.1% of people who are attracted to free software and are willing to accept that is is harder to use end up giving up. If the above is "too hard", then they weren't really ready for something harder to use than Windows. (Heck, they probably aren't ready for something as exciting as installing Windows from scratch.) You're making numbers up and you know it.
The figures prove what? That an operating system and supporting software developed by people with a fraction of the budget and advertising of Apple are successfully gaining market share? That it's impossible for any operating system (even the heavily hyped MacOS X) to make serious inroads against the Microsoft monopoly? You can't prove anything with the figures other than Microsoft owns the game, Apple keeps a sizable minority, and Linux slowly grows. We can't know that if the reason Linux has such a small share is because people are trapped by the Microsoft monopoly, aren't aware of Linux due to lack of advertising, have actually tried Linux but found it too difficult, aren't interesting in exploring new options because their system shipped with Windows and works fine for now.
Bwuhuhahahahaha! Sure. Fine. Not.
My parents loath Microsoft and Windows. The "support" they've gotten is entirely "try rebooting" and "try reinstalling". My dad recently spent a weekend fighting with various drivers unsuccessfully. My dad purchases a great deal of maintenance software to try and keep his system stable. My mom struggles to keep her old games working under new Windows operating systems. (And before you complain, "but it's third party publishers that are the problem", the same is true for Linux. If you stick with your distribution's publisher (and perhaps Ximian), you'll find you get a very easy to install and use system that's stable.)
My parents don't use Windows because they like it or that they feel it's easy to use. They use Windows because it's all they've ever known.
Finally, yes, IRC is full of assholes. Duh. Big shock. It turns out that most of IRC is full of assholes, including the non-Linux channels. The Windows support channels are full of assholes. The music dicussion channels are full of assholes. The abuse support channels are full of assholes. It's the nature of anonymous communication. Fortunately, I haven't bothered looking at IRC for a long time. When I run into problems I check the mailing list archives and the FAQ. If I don't find details, then a politely phrased query to a mailing list provides useful answers. And I only ever need go to this trouble when I chose to be daring and try software that didn't come with my distribution. And only if the software has problems (less than 1% of the time). This is an exceptional case, not the general one (unless your general case involves lots of trying experimental software).
Identifying "good stuff" is very hard and certainly not something that can be automated. Furthermore, "good stuff" is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps Jane's web page dedicated to her kittens in useless to almost everyone in the world. However, to Jane's great-great granddaughter who hasn't been born yet, it might provide a fascinating look into her own past. A historian a hundred years from now analyzing the first twenty years of the web would certainly want to know that porn and popups were so pervasive.
Very few web sits voluntarily chose a grey background. In fact, that glorious grey is the browser's default background color. If fact, if you visit webstandards.org without CSS support, you're getting the colors, fonts, and layout you asked for. Don't like it, take a trip to Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Colors. Click the button for "Background" and change it to something you like. See, control in your hands.
Actually, they're making use of the latest version of HTML completely and correctly. Using the various color tags and techniques from previous versions would in fact be violating the correct use of HTML. When you break standards you end up having to do dozens of special cases for the quirks of each browser. If you stick to baseline modern HTML with CSS, all modern browsers will display the same thing looking good, older browsers will degrade gracefully.
You argue that by not supporting out of date HTML you're somehow discriminating against people with older computers. That's a bizarre claim. By using out of date HTML, you're making it harder for anyone to use it. Modern HTML makes it easier to render a web page in lynx, or on your WebTV, or on a braille display, or be read aloud by a text to speech program. CSS makes it easier to keep your HTML small, speeding up the browsing experience for people with lower quality phone lines or working over an expensive wireless link. Modern HTML degrades gracefully. The old hackery HTML turns into a mess when forced to degrade. The webstandards.org page you complain about may not look pretty, but it's sure as hell usable. It'll work fine under lynx and a text to speech reader will easily and accurate speak the page for a blind person. As someone who occasionally must fall back on extremely low end systems and extremely slow connections, I appreciate how well webstandards.org degrade and curse how poorly most "old HTML" sites do.
Actually, anyone playing this sort of game is most certainly not a believer in Web Standards. Setting the background color at all in HTML (instead of CSS) is not invalid by the standard. No, those people are just assholes.
I strongly support the "I bought it, I'll hack it as I wish" attitude. It's my right to play DVDs under Linux, add mod chips to my consoles, and disable macrovision and region coding from my DVD player.
But.
This isn't about your hardware. This is about a service you pay for (and agree to a license for up front). You're welcome to hack your X-Box, but Microsoft is free to decline to let you onto their service. Seems reasonable to me.
Oh, they torture me so. For a brief moment I thought I could expect a New Monkey Island game. But then I realized that the fourth game is already out...
(Shameless plug: want to play the old 2d Lucasarts adventures but your system isn't compatible (lacks ancient sound card or video card or DOS), or you want to play under Linux or on your WinCE box? Try ScummVM! (Requires legal copy of original games.)
Stop skimming and start reading. It clearly documents their attempt to transition from Unix to Windows. This was a test case, they hoped to collect their findings and use it to support real startups converting from Unix to Windows. From that standpoint, it makes perfect sense to treat Hotmail as an independant startup. This is why the document says things like "Although there were no costs to the Hotmail project, as a Microsoft department, the team did consider the software costs in order to make the conversion a useful model for future customers." The goal was to build up documentation showing external customers why switching to Windows from Unix is a good idea and easy. It's a well researched and presented paper that honestly shows that Windows 2000 has a number of problems in this situation and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of the move.
My apologies, I meant no offense. I was simply looking for examples and that happened to be something I found. I took sex ed at a Catholic high school, so I'm intimately familiar with the Catholic church's official teachings on the matter. (Not to denegrate the high school, the local diocese wasn't entirely pleased with the high school because it, in part, explained the church's position, then gave clear explanations on the effectiveness of various birth control methods and basically said, "You're too young, but if you're going to, use a condom.")
Interestingly, based on personal experiences, there is an increasingly large number of people who identify themselves as Catholic, but maintain beliefs that go contrary to official church policy. A lot of "the core religion is good, but some of the beuracracy has become detached from the Truth." I place alot of hope in the rejuvination of the church by these people.
(Wow, are we off topic.)
Woah, relax. Yes, stores and businesses already do try to track you with discount cards, credit card numbers, checking account numbers, rebate requests, and the ilk. I object to those as well. I strongly support laws that restrict tracking people by social security number, credit card number, checking account number, and other tricks. Myself, I try to live on cash. I find it useful for crude budgeting (hmmm, that last withdrawal of $100 didn't last as long as it should, time to cut back a bit), and makes me harder to track. I refuse discount cards and rebates.
And someone skilled at handling proprietary software will be cheaper? Sure, you can get someone cheaper, but you get what you pay for.
If you think a local high school computer class teacher (who is usually the entire schools "computer guy") is going to get any sort of support from a large proprietary software company, you've got some strange conceptions. Instead you're going to get the clueless "Try rebooting, try reinstalling" we all face when we call the outsourced support centers of various companies. And while you're getting the barely useful support, you are stuck on the phone dealing with it. Not much of a win.
Bah, Humbug! If the kid is educated with general computer knowledge and general categories of applications, he'll be fine. If you only train him to a specific piece of software, he'll be out of luck when the software changes. For heavens sake, let's look at the software my generation learned in grade school and high school: DOS, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3. By the time we got into the real world, all three were dead and buried.
Part of the problem is that too much training is focused on "learn this one, highly specific thing". The result is a growing number of people who are completely unable to handle new technologies and software. The solution is "learn how computers and software work in general, learn how general categories of software work, and learn how to explore and understand unfamiliar software." Teaching to specific software is a stupid as only teaching how to drive Ford cars in driver's ed., and only teaching how to repair Honda cars in auto shop class. We don't need more generations of whiners, "but I was trained on the FooBarQux 3, not FooBarQux 5." We need people willing to dive and explore and learn for themselves!
Fortunately as increasing numbers of kids are exposed to computers at all, this becomes less important to worry about. Kids like exploring new things, so new software doesn't scare them. They're taught early on that computers are something that they should be comfortable with.
Teach kids lots of different things and encourage kids to identify common patterns and solutions. A kid shouldn't really need to decide on what's best today, we just need to get him thinking about the world with a good baseline of knowledge so he can make those decisions given the new technologies and problems that await him when he enters the workforce.
True capitalism with lots of healthy competition requires that consumers have access to lots of information so that they can make educated decisions. If consumer access to information is restricted, consumers are unable to make educated decisions and the market becomes distorted. Successful businesses have every bit of incentive to restrict your access to information. If it's harder to find competing products, or harder to compare prices, consumers will tend to stick with existing suppliers and products (because it costs time and sometimes money to find out about other options). If information is easily available, smaller and newer providers have a much easier time gaining customers.
Ultimately, successful capitalists are the greatest danger to capitalism. This is why we have anti-trust laws. This is why we need to fight hard against attempts to limit information on products, be it pricing information or reviews and benchmarks (as many software EULAs prohibit).
No, wait, that's a stupid idea.
Some people seems to have forgotten that you first identify a problem, then you provide a solution. Providing a solution, then looking for a problem is usually doomed to failure. I fail to see a realistic case where getting stock quotes in the supermarket solves anyones problem.
The problem isn't that the manager knows. The problem is that any number of "trusted" employees will know. One or more of employees may be willing to resell (or just give away) your information. Heck, for the right amount of money I'm sure the store will happily sell the information. I for one purchase personal hygiene and pharmacy products at my local supermarket. If I'm a politician trying to appease a rigid Catholic demographic, I might prefer that my political opponents not be able to prove that I purchase of condoms or birth control pills. I'd rather my health insurance didn't have the opportunity to analyze my buying habits of aspirin and antacids to decide if I've become too risky. Or even if my health insurance decides I buy too much junk food, my auto insurance decides that I buy too much alcohol. Or perhaps my opponent for a county board seat will get the information and claim, "Bob sure buys alot of alcohol, are you sure you want someone who buys that much alcohol on the board?" A potential employer might make collecting such information part of their check on me before hiring me.
The probably isn't that the store knows. To the store I'm only interesting as a relatively anonymous consumer. The problem is that once the information is collected that it will become available to other people who may be interested in me personally. There is a serious risk of abuse. If government agents who have been specifically screened for security purposes occasionally decide to abuse the information (like Robert Hanseen, a few Michigan police, amoung other cases), why should I trust the night shift manager at my local supermarket who hates his job at my local supermarket?
Easy to install? The last few versions of Red Hat I've installed (6.2 and 7.2) were significantly easier than my last few installs of Win2K. Do I have the right drivers? How many times will I need to reboot to get working drivers installed? Anyone who has ever installed Windows 2000 has all of the skill necessary to install Red Hat 8.0.
Usable? Well, after installing Windows 2000 out of the box, I have an email client, a web browser, a few games, a nearly useless stripped down word processor (Write), and not much else. Without purchasing additional software, Windows 2000 isn't terribly useful for much other that basic internet access. With Red Hat 8, I get a word processor, spreadsheet, photo editor, and bunch of other useful, usable software. The various productivity packages that ship with Red Hat may not be perfect, but they're good enough for 95% of users and come with the operating system.
Good? That's in the eye of the beholder. I am certainly much happier with Red Hat than Windows. Sounds good to me.