There are strict disclosure rules that psychologists have to follow before they can do a test with human subjects. It doesn't matter if your results will be skewed by warning them that they will be dumped in a vat of maggots, you still have to tell them. The rights of people to choose is more important than your right to gather information about them.
Whether you're just trying to cram the Janitor's Commentary track into the extras, or providing Star Trek with a Klingon subtitle track, every little bit helps
It's all about the video quality, and a little about the audio. A full audio track for an hour and a half, in 224 kbit/s AAC (which seems pretty standard) takes up 148 MB. I doubt anyone is begging for more, at least not on the Janitor's Commentary track. The subtitle track is a couple megabytes; the cost of translating and the limited interest in making world-wide DVDs is the main limit on the number of subtitles on the disk. That's a couple minutes of DVD-quality video for each audio track, and a couple seconds for each subtitle track. The extra space is all for the video.
Why is it ok to try and screw BK over, who spent a great deal of money to develop this?
Is it okay for Compac to screw over IBM, who spent a lot of money developing the IBM PC? Or Berkeley to screw over AT&T, who spent a lot of money developing Unix? Or Sun to screw over Microsoft, who spent a lot of mony developing Word? Competition is good, and I don't see any reason for free software people to tip toe around it than proprietary software people.
they legalize the highjacking of materials by editing content against the copyright holders will.
The "hijacking of materials"? If I buy a DVD, I can play it however I want, and that includes in a special DVD that only shows me the scenes I want to see. That's my right. It's no different from cutting the commercials out with your TiVo, except you actually paid for the DVD.
Would it simplify the kernel, though? There already are interfaces; what's the advantage to the kernel of moving the interfaces to be more external and require expensive marshalling? Perhaps it moves the modules out of the kernel, but that's moving complexity around and could be done right now without any kernel changes.
of separate interfaces for every kind of object a single regular interface could be used at least as a starting point
There is; the C function interface. Abstract as much as useful, but no more. Again, whether or not this is a microkernel or not, the interfaces can be made, and have been made to the extent that they were felt useful.
Xen is a virtualization technology; it allows multiple copies of Linux or other OSes to be run at the same time, without a full emulation of the CPU and everything. Unlike other such programs, like VMWare, Xen requires changes to the source code of the OS to be run on it.
The spoken word is not a tangible medium of expression.
Sure, but the notes and outlines his lectures are based off of are a tangible medium of expression.
that copyright belongs to the person making the recording, not the person being recorded.
Copyright requires creative expression. Simply recording something does not a creative expression make. I've never seen anything that would indicate that this is true, and I have several books that were dictated to someone else, and the copyright was listed as the speaker, not the recorder.
Lack of ActiveX support actually prevented my previous company from switching to OpenOffice or Mozilla. The attitude that it's better that these two apps don't support it seriously pisses me off. If Microsoft can't get away with being arrogant, than the OSS Community can't either.
Why does it piss you off? Agree with it or not, but there's very valid reasons behind the thought that it is better that OpenOffice and Mozilla can't run arbitrary code. Not everyone who doesn't see things your way is being arrogant.
One document, written by one guy somewhere, with no sanction and the general historical consensus it wasn't worth keeping, and suddenly we have a better understanding of "the 2nd century views of Christ".
We do. It is simple statistical fact that the more something was copied, the more likely it was to be preserved. And especially considering how much work it was to copy something, if something was copied frequently, it was probably important to a lot of people.
And the recent find of "Dianetics" provides a fascinating view into the religious beliefs of the average American of the 20th century.
It is an interesting viewpoint on the religious view of quite a few Americans of the 20th century. It's interesting you pulled that up, because you're looking at the Scientology of the 1st century and completely dismissing the Aberree as completely unimportant.
the dominant paranoid schizophrenic fantasies of the day
And how do you know that what got historical sanction wasn't the dominant paranoid schizophrenic fantasises of the day? There are a lot more believers in Nostradamus than James Randi; perhaps the document we find will say that the Cottingley fairies weren't real.
in what jurisdiction would you suggest I file suit? I am in the UK, as is my ex.
A British person suing another British person for actions taken from British soil? I'd try the UK.
Same question: an attorney in what jurisdiction, and experienced with what area(s) of law?
I don't know; why don't you ask an attorney? If you have a question of law, ask someone trained in the subject.
for practical purposes a lot of laws don't apply in the on-line world.
I'm sure that's been proved by someone doing something online that they could have done offline just as well. In any case, you've repeatedly said that you don't know the first thing about what the laws are, you haven't consulted an attorney, or attempted any sort of legal action. How do you know whether they apply or not?
I'm providing an example of what happens when free speech and an unregulated Internet are allowed to over-rule established legal and/or regulatory principles that apply in similar areas outside the Internet.
What established legal or regulatory principles? If you have been slandered, your recourse is to sue the person. It doesn't matter whether she did it in a newsletter or by phone or by painting it on a board and holding it up at the SuperBowl or put it online.
But that means there has to be some effective means of taking legal action in a timely and affordable manner in cases like this.
How would you know--you haven't even tried. If you wanted to take legal action, you should talk to an attorney.
Paying hundreds of dollars or whatever for a lawyer to successfully pursue a law suit that says "Yes, you were right" six months after the post was made is too little, too late to deal with this kind of crime.
In a lot of situations, all you need to silence someone for is a few weeks, and their statements become pointless. And you want to do that on your say-so.
the benefit of the doubt goes with the accused until the accuser provides evidence to support their allegations.
As the AC pointed out, you're accusing someone of lying. You want here silenced without you providing any evidence to support your allegations.
Since when was being an ex-gf/ex-bf/neighbour/whatever an excuse for libel?
It's not; if he wants to sue his ex-girlfriend for libel, then he can. But he said:
I'm hardly going to pay hundreds of $$$ to hire a US attorney and pursue a defamation suit against my ex in the US just to get LJ to take the post down
So noone's asking that the government explicitly goes and silences women, or some other emotionally-charged bullshit,
If he's not willing to spend the money for a lawyer, he's either asking that someone else spend the money to investigate it, or that government or LiveJournal silence her on his say-so. So that's exactly what he's asking.
No, they don't have a right to keep anyone from looking at it, though they do have a right to keep people from connecting to their software.
Which amounts to the same thing. If you want to keep people from connecting to your software, use technological means to do so or don't put it on the open internet. Don't leave the door to your business wide open and get pissed when people wander in.
Tridge knew that his actions would result in McVoy pulling the license.
That's McVoy's choice. I don't feel that Tridge should have to bow to McVoy's every whim.
The real killer is that despite the blog host being a big name, they didn't give a shit.
That really must have sucked for you, but why should they care? Ex-girlfriends badmouthing ex-boyfriends (and vice-versa) has been going on for years, and how are they supposed to know whether it's true or not?
But without any official, international regulation of this area of the Internet, the damage was done all the same,
So you want the government to stop this? You're not willing to pay hundreds of $$$ to stop this, but you want the government to spend hundreds of $$$ to investigate this? Or do you want every ex-girlfriend who was viciously abused to be silenced by the government, just because some of them lie?
BK, however, is not an open protocol, and not only did Tridge know that, he was also generally aware that there were terms associated with it, and was aware of the "no reverse engineering" clause.
So what you're saying is that anyone who makes a protocol has every right in the world to keep anyone from looking at it. That's a completely unprecedently level of control. Why does any car company use patents; why don't they just tell everyone about their "no reverse engineering" clause?
Even if we live in the fantasy land Tridge lives in where requesting data from a server isn't using the software
My webserver runs one of the websites that you visited today, and my terms of agreement are that you admit you're wrong in this argument. (And how could you know that I'm not telling the truth--there's no way for you to absolutely know what's running on the other end of that HTTP connection.)
Tridge worked on a project that was "fed" by "free as in beer" software from Bitkeeper.
Tridge worked on Linux. Over Tridge's objections, Linus started using BitKeeper. I hardly see how that implies some huge obligation on the part of Tridge. No matter what Linus chooses to do, that can't oblige Tridge to anything.
Obviously McVoy doesn't want someone else to produce a tool with the same features as BK, but he has never said there is any reason why they shouldn't. All he's done is tried to stop them using the free version of BK to do so.
That's not true; he has stopped people from using the free version of BK when they were working on Subversion, even though they weren't using BK in their work on Subversion, nor implementing anything in Subversion that wasn't common knowledge in the SCM world outside of BitKeeper.
You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails.
The specifications for Unix operating systems are well known and publically available.
So? Does that mean that Linus wasn't riding on Unix's coattails when he copied Unix?
Do you think that Larry really would have been happy if someone made well-known and publically available specifications and Tridge was just copying them? Larry didn't want another BitKeeper out there, however it was copied.
Strictly speaking, linux was an independent implementation of POSIX, not Unix(TM).
There are a number of cases that Linux supports BSDisms or SysVisms that aren't listed in POSIX. It is probably as compatible or incompatible with real Unix as with POSIX.
After RTFA, what I get is, if you reverse engineer BK, learn how it works, and implement something that's not plugged into BK's network, and compete with McVoy, he's fine with it.
His license has at times prohibited people who work on Subversion, which doesn't interface with BitKeeper at all and is an entirely different style of SCM than BitKeeper, from getting a free license. He doesn't seem to like competition at all.
Slashdot Mirror
in either case your stats will be skewed.
There are strict disclosure rules that psychologists have to follow before they can do a test with human subjects. It doesn't matter if your results will be skewed by warning them that they will be dumped in a vat of maggots, you still have to tell them. The rights of people to choose is more important than your right to gather information about them.
Whether you're just trying to cram the Janitor's Commentary track into the extras, or providing Star Trek with a Klingon subtitle track, every little bit helps
It's all about the video quality, and a little about the audio. A full audio track for an hour and a half, in 224 kbit/s AAC (which seems pretty standard) takes up 148 MB. I doubt anyone is begging for more, at least not on the Janitor's Commentary track. The subtitle track is a couple megabytes; the cost of translating and the limited interest in making world-wide DVDs is the main limit on the number of subtitles on the disk. That's a couple minutes of DVD-quality video for each audio track, and a couple seconds for each subtitle track. The extra space is all for the video.
Why is it ok to try and screw BK over, who spent a great deal of money to develop this?
Is it okay for Compac to screw over IBM, who spent a lot of money developing the IBM PC? Or Berkeley to screw over AT&T, who spent a lot of money developing Unix? Or Sun to screw over Microsoft, who spent a lot of mony developing Word? Competition is good, and I don't see any reason for free software people to tip toe around it than proprietary software people.
they legalize the highjacking of materials by editing content against the copyright holders will.
The "hijacking of materials"? If I buy a DVD, I can play it however I want, and that includes in a special DVD that only shows me the scenes I want to see. That's my right. It's no different from cutting the commercials out with your TiVo, except you actually paid for the DVD.
Would it simplify the kernel, though? There already are interfaces; what's the advantage to the kernel of moving the interfaces to be more external and require expensive marshalling? Perhaps it moves the modules out of the kernel, but that's moving complexity around and could be done right now without any kernel changes.
of separate interfaces for every kind of object a single regular interface could be used at least as a starting point
There is; the C function interface. Abstract as much as useful, but no more. Again, whether or not this is a microkernel or not, the interfaces can be made, and have been made to the extent that they were felt useful.
Yes. You need the source code of an OS to change it to run under Xen.
Xen is a virtualization technology; it allows multiple copies of Linux or other OSes to be run at the same time, without a full emulation of the CPU and everything. Unlike other such programs, like VMWare, Xen requires changes to the source code of the OS to be run on it.
The spoken word is not a tangible medium of expression.
Sure, but the notes and outlines his lectures are based off of are a tangible medium of expression.
that copyright belongs to the person making the recording, not the person being recorded.
Copyright requires creative expression. Simply recording something does not a creative expression make. I've never seen anything that would indicate that this is true, and I have several books that were dictated to someone else, and the copyright was listed as the speaker, not the recorder.
Right, so using GPL-licensed fonts in a document doesn't require you to license your document under the GPL.
Unless you embed your font in the PDF or PS file thus "link"ing them together. Then it becomes a lot more hazy.
Lack of ActiveX support actually prevented my previous company from switching to OpenOffice or Mozilla. The attitude that it's better that these two apps don't support it seriously pisses me off. If Microsoft can't get away with being arrogant, than the OSS Community can't either.
Why does it piss you off? Agree with it or not, but there's very valid reasons behind the thought that it is better that OpenOffice and Mozilla can't run arbitrary code. Not everyone who doesn't see things your way is being arrogant.
One document, written by one guy somewhere, with no sanction and the general historical consensus it wasn't worth keeping, and suddenly we have a better understanding of "the 2nd century views of Christ".
We do. It is simple statistical fact that the more something was copied, the more likely it was to be preserved. And especially considering how much work it was to copy something, if something was copied frequently, it was probably important to a lot of people.
And the recent find of "Dianetics" provides a fascinating view into the religious beliefs of the average American of the 20th century.
It is an interesting viewpoint on the religious view of quite a few Americans of the 20th century. It's interesting you pulled that up, because you're looking at the Scientology of the 1st century and completely dismissing the Aberree as completely unimportant.
the dominant paranoid schizophrenic fantasies of the day
And how do you know that what got historical sanction wasn't the dominant paranoid schizophrenic fantasises of the day? There are a lot more believers in Nostradamus than James Randi; perhaps the document we find will say that the Cottingley fairies weren't real.
The algorithm used to create the font is copyrightable, but the font itself is not.
The font file is copyrightable. The outlines, abstracted from the code isn't, but TrueType fonts, as the word font is often used, is copyrightable.
in what jurisdiction would you suggest I file suit? I am in the UK, as is my ex.
A British person suing another British person for actions taken from British soil? I'd try the UK.
Same question: an attorney in what jurisdiction, and experienced with what area(s) of law?
I don't know; why don't you ask an attorney? If you have a question of law, ask someone trained in the subject.
for practical purposes a lot of laws don't apply in the on-line world.
I'm sure that's been proved by someone doing something online that they could have done offline just as well. In any case, you've repeatedly said that you don't know the first thing about what the laws are, you haven't consulted an attorney, or attempted any sort of legal action. How do you know whether they apply or not?
I'm providing an example of what happens when free speech and an unregulated Internet are allowed to over-rule established legal and/or regulatory principles that apply in similar areas outside the Internet.
What established legal or regulatory principles? If you have been slandered, your recourse is to sue the person. It doesn't matter whether she did it in a newsletter or by phone or by painting it on a board and holding it up at the SuperBowl or put it online.
But that means there has to be some effective means of taking legal action in a timely and affordable manner in cases like this.
How would you know--you haven't even tried. If you wanted to take legal action, you should talk to an attorney.
Paying hundreds of dollars or whatever for a lawyer to successfully pursue a law suit that says "Yes, you were right" six months after the post was made is too little, too late to deal with this kind of crime.
In a lot of situations, all you need to silence someone for is a few weeks, and their statements become pointless. And you want to do that on your say-so.
the benefit of the doubt goes with the accused until the accuser provides evidence to support their allegations.
As the AC pointed out, you're accusing someone of lying. You want here silenced without you providing any evidence to support your allegations.
It's not; if he wants to sue his ex-girlfriend for libel, then he can. But he said:
So noone's asking that the government explicitly goes and silences women, or some other emotionally-charged bullshit,
If he's not willing to spend the money for a lawyer, he's either asking that someone else spend the money to investigate it, or that government or LiveJournal silence her on his say-so. So that's exactly what he's asking.
No, they don't have a right to keep anyone from looking at it, though they do have a right to keep people from connecting to their software.
Which amounts to the same thing. If you want to keep people from connecting to your software, use technological means to do so or don't put it on the open internet. Don't leave the door to your business wide open and get pissed when people wander in.
Tridge knew that his actions would result in McVoy pulling the license.
That's McVoy's choice. I don't feel that Tridge should have to bow to McVoy's every whim.
The real killer is that despite the blog host being a big name, they didn't give a shit.
That really must have sucked for you, but why should they care? Ex-girlfriends badmouthing ex-boyfriends (and vice-versa) has been going on for years, and how are they supposed to know whether it's true or not?
But without any official, international regulation of this area of the Internet, the damage was done all the same,
So you want the government to stop this? You're not willing to pay hundreds of $$$ to stop this, but you want the government to spend hundreds of $$$ to investigate this? Or do you want every ex-girlfriend who was viciously abused to be silenced by the government, just because some of them lie?
BK, however, is not an open protocol, and not only did Tridge know that, he was also generally aware that there were terms associated with it, and was aware of the "no reverse engineering" clause.
So what you're saying is that anyone who makes a protocol has every right in the world to keep anyone from looking at it. That's a completely unprecedently level of control. Why does any car company use patents; why don't they just tell everyone about their "no reverse engineering" clause?
Even if we live in the fantasy land Tridge lives in where requesting data from a server isn't using the software
My webserver runs one of the websites that you visited today, and my terms of agreement are that you admit you're wrong in this argument. (And how could you know that I'm not telling the truth--there's no way for you to absolutely know what's running on the other end of that HTTP connection.)
Tridge worked on a project that was "fed" by "free as in beer" software from Bitkeeper.
Tridge worked on Linux. Over Tridge's objections, Linus started using BitKeeper. I hardly see how that implies some huge obligation on the part of Tridge. No matter what Linus chooses to do, that can't oblige Tridge to anything.
Note that it doesn't have any reference to licenses. Licensing is not an issue.
It doesn't have any reference to Tridge, either. Tridge didn't accept anything, nor was he fed by BitKeeper.
Obviously McVoy doesn't want someone else to produce a tool with the same features as BK, but he has never said there is any reason why they shouldn't. All he's done is tried to stop them using the free version of BK to do so.
That's not true; he has stopped people from using the free version of BK when they were working on Subversion, even though they weren't using BK in their work on Subversion, nor implementing anything in Subversion that wasn't common knowledge in the SCM world outside of BitKeeper.
You can compete with me, but you can't do so by riding on my coat-tails.
The specifications for Unix operating systems are well known and publically available.
So? Does that mean that Linus wasn't riding on Unix's coattails when he copied Unix?
Do you think that Larry really would have been happy if someone made well-known and publically available specifications and Tridge was just copying them? Larry didn't want another BitKeeper out there, however it was copied.
Strictly speaking, linux was an independent implementation of POSIX, not Unix(TM).
There are a number of cases that Linux supports BSDisms or SysVisms that aren't listed in POSIX. It is probably as compatible or incompatible with real Unix as with POSIX.
After RTFA, what I get is, if you reverse engineer BK, learn how it works, and implement something that's not plugged into BK's network, and compete with McVoy, he's fine with it.
His license has at times prohibited people who work on Subversion, which doesn't interface with BitKeeper at all and is an entirely different style of SCM than BitKeeper, from getting a free license. He doesn't seem to like competition at all.