If it forces people to upgrade to a better alternative, then maybe it is. Think IE6 - would it be better to maintain that ongoing (considering that many of the things the Slashdot groupthink wants to fix with IE6 are the explicit reasons why some companies are keeping it around) or kill it dead and have people upgrade?
They do not have to continually opt-out. The opt-out is one time, it is online and it takes less than 5 minutes to fill out. Google couldn't make this process easier.
The problem is, will this sort of 'agreement without authority' extend to other parties? That is what I mean by continual opt-out. Continually having to reaffirm to someone else that you do not want them to distribute your work on your behalf - just remaining silent should be enough.
I know what you are thinking "They shouldn't have to opt-out at all".
If the book is older and the copyright owner is unknown then there is a chance that person is dead. What now? Perhaps the heirs will claim the work, or there may not be any heirs. If not, the book is lost. The only way to find a copy of it will be to travel to a library that has a physical copy. Once that physical copy deteriorates, gets destroyed, or stolen, then it is gone forever. To me, it seems like a terrible trade-off to protect the copyrights of people who are too lazy to spend 5 minutes to protect their own works.
Well, firstly Google is digitising these works, so they have to have a physical copy to begin with - so the book is not 'lost', you just have to wait out the copyright expiration before you can distribute new copies of it.
There is nothing stopping Google from storing the physical copy until then, or even digitising the work *now* and storing both for a future date. But no, what they want to do is circumvent copyright and release the works *now*, for profit.
This statement is completely inaccurate. The agreement pertains only to orphaned books, ones without a known copyright owner.
My statement is perfectly accurate - there is no such thing as an orphaned book or work, just one that *you* do not know the copyright owner for. The copyright is still owned by someone, you just do not know who - therefore, Google is making an agreement to use the book without informing said copyright owner.
It is part of copyright that allows an owner to control distribution, even to the extent of not distributing at all - and in my mind, a copyright owner should not have to continually opt out of distributing due to these schemes.
Thats the problem, Google did not make an agreement with the copyright owner, they made a generalised agreement with 'everyone', regardless of whether the actual copyright owner knew about the agreement or not. Whats not wrong about that?!
If you consider the actual number of MySQL users out there, I would say that el cheapo hosting providers will push the figures out there by a few orders of magnitude over people using it for serious applications - since MySQL is used for zero cost databases in this manner, I certainly stand by my 99.9% figure, and indeed consider it to be conservative:)
Because 4GB database size, 1 processor and 1GB ram is more than enough for 99.9% of private websites, blogs, myspace wannabees and stuff hosted on Dreamhost et al. Basically the majority of what MySQL is being used for at the moment.
I looked into using Nginx earlier last year for reverse proxy and load balancing, and I have to say that I abandoned it due to the poor documentation - it was insanely hard to get any actual information on settings and configuration beyond sample rules.
That's fits in well with the original impulses behind Mozilla and Firefox. The former was about transforming the Netscape Communincator code into an open source browser, and the latter was about defending open standards from Microsoft's attempt to lock people into Internet Explorer 6 and its proprietary approaches
I thought Firefox was about Mozilla being bloated and slow, and nothing to do with IE or Microsoft at all?
Surely whether or not the fines are cruel and unusual or excessive (etc) is subjective opinion? Any punishment past a slap on the wrist and a telling off may be cruel and unusual or excessive to the defendant and their family...
I actually disagree with this - the issue of file sharing is completely different to shop lifting a cd. One is theft, the other is unauthorised distribution - with theft, the right being infringed is property ownership, while with unauthorised distribution the right being infringed is the right to control distribution. A cd as a stolen item will cost maybe $20 maximum, while distribution rights are a significant amount of money.
The fines shouldn't be what they currently are, but they should be more than shoplifting or the $30 or $40 some people are suggesting here.
This is exemplified by the London Sock Exchange trading system built by a consortium of M$ and Accenture which (a) was non performant and (b) wouldnt stay up: Just for once the Right Thing (TM) happend and both the CIO and the system got shit canned.
Its amusing, but sadly not exactly surprising that the LSE's systems failure and resulting switch to Linux in October 2009 was heavily covered here on Slashdot, with much mirth directed at Microsoft, but the serious systems failure and several hour outage in November (26/11/2009 - after the switch to the Linux based system) was never mentioned here...
The replacement for the MS system is not without its own issues.
Take.NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die.
Uhm, I'd seriously love to see your metric by which.Net is a miserable failure - comments like that just make you look like a fanboi lunatic.
hey claimed they would use it exclusively going forward and have they? Nope. The only applications written in it are by 3rd parties and I can't say that they are all great programs to use.
MS are using it - large portions of Exchange 2007 onward, SharePoint 2007 onward, Windows 2008 onward, and other of their business apps are built in.Net, and have rich.Net interfaces - they never said they would solely use.Net on an ongoing basis, but they are using it to a great extent, you are just choosing not to see it.
I've managed networks of anything from 100 users up to 10,000 users, from standard call center people to technical teams, and I have yet to experience the issue you are saying exists - but maybe that's because I am a good admin, if I do say so myself. And you can't really be saying that in all the years I have been an admin, I have some how only ever had it good...?
Its very simple - a good admin will make it happen in the easiest way for them, a bad admin will just bitch about how bad they have it and continue doing it poorly.
No a properly configured corporate Windows environment does not require only applications designed for such an environment - only a poor admin would come to such a conclusion.
You should never have to touch a GUI installer to install applications in a corporate environment - there are tools and facilities built into Active Directory, Windows and third party systems to allow you to centrally manage application installation from a central point and click interface. Again, if you know what you are doing then you can vastly reduce your workload - and its easy to do. If you have people running around installing crap, then either you are doing it wrong or your company is very very small.
Your last point about installation times is utterly stupid - whats the point in comparing a server install to an application install? I can get a fully working OpenBSD server with dns, firewall, routing and www server in under 10 minutes - but how is that going to help me if what I actually need is an Office application, or the company bespoke data entry system?
Yeah, this seems like a management issue on several fronts. First, why do you need one IT person for every 17 people in the company?
Only 6 out of 30 IT employees are on helpdesk duties - you have no idea what the other 24 are doing... One of my recent employers had 11 IT staff for 120 employees, but only two of those were on IT Support, the rest developed the applications for the business to use. When you take that into consideration, I wouldn't say 10% of the company was excessive.
A properly configured corporate Windows environment does not increase the workload at all - I know, I ran a large one for several years. The problem is, most Slashdotters do not realise that a properly configured corporate Windows environment is nothing like the typical home environment and don't know anything about the tools available.
Except that SharePoint library items are accessible via SMB (\\site-collection-name\site-name\library-name\) and web services, making migration (including full meta data) as easy as anything else.
I'm afraid that almost everything you have said in your post regarding SharePoint is wrong - yes, SharePoint does enjoy integration with the Microsoft Office suites, but if you do not have Word or Excel 2003 onward installed, you will simply get offered the file for download when you click on it. And thats ignoring the fact that you are not limited to the Office file formats - you can even store OpenOffice documents in SharePoint Document Libraries without any hassle at all. Also, SharePoint 2007 works pretty damn well in Firefox (no, some of the advanced page editing features do not work that well, but you can work Lists and Document Libraries fine with Firefox).
Slashdot Mirror
If it forces people to upgrade to a better alternative, then maybe it is. Think IE6 - would it be better to maintain that ongoing (considering that many of the things the Slashdot groupthink wants to fix with IE6 are the explicit reasons why some companies are keeping it around) or kill it dead and have people upgrade?
Try chatting up your friends partner in their own home and see how long he lets you continue to stay.
They do not have to continually opt-out. The opt-out is one time, it is online and it takes less than 5 minutes to fill out. Google couldn't make this process easier.
The problem is, will this sort of 'agreement without authority' extend to other parties? That is what I mean by continual opt-out. Continually having to reaffirm to someone else that you do not want them to distribute your work on your behalf - just remaining silent should be enough.
I know what you are thinking "They shouldn't have to opt-out at all".
If the book is older and the copyright owner is unknown then there is a chance that person is dead. What now? Perhaps the heirs will claim the work, or there may not be any heirs. If not, the book is lost. The only way to find a copy of it will be to travel to a library that has a physical copy. Once that physical copy deteriorates, gets destroyed, or stolen, then it is gone forever. To me, it seems like a terrible trade-off to protect the copyrights of people who are too lazy to spend 5 minutes to protect their own works.
Well, firstly Google is digitising these works, so they have to have a physical copy to begin with - so the book is not 'lost', you just have to wait out the copyright expiration before you can distribute new copies of it.
There is nothing stopping Google from storing the physical copy until then, or even digitising the work *now* and storing both for a future date. But no, what they want to do is circumvent copyright and release the works *now*, for profit.
This statement is completely inaccurate. The agreement pertains only to orphaned books, ones without a known copyright owner.
My statement is perfectly accurate - there is no such thing as an orphaned book or work, just one that *you* do not know the copyright owner for. The copyright is still owned by someone, you just do not know who - therefore, Google is making an agreement to use the book without informing said copyright owner.
It is part of copyright that allows an owner to control distribution, even to the extent of not distributing at all - and in my mind, a copyright owner should not have to continually opt out of distributing due to these schemes.
Thats the problem, Google did not make an agreement with the copyright owner, they made a generalised agreement with 'everyone', regardless of whether the actual copyright owner knew about the agreement or not. Whats not wrong about that?!
If you consider the actual number of MySQL users out there, I would say that el cheapo hosting providers will push the figures out there by a few orders of magnitude over people using it for serious applications - since MySQL is used for zero cost databases in this manner, I certainly stand by my 99.9% figure, and indeed consider it to be conservative :)
Because 4GB database size, 1 processor and 1GB ram is more than enough for 99.9% of private websites, blogs, myspace wannabees and stuff hosted on Dreamhost et al. Basically the majority of what MySQL is being used for at the moment.
So? He shouldn't have taken the money then...
IE was also the better product, but that tends to get overlooked in favour of the antitrust argument...
People today seem to forget just how terrible Netscape Navigator really was back then.
I looked into using Nginx earlier last year for reverse proxy and load balancing, and I have to say that I abandoned it due to the poor documentation - it was insanely hard to get any actual information on settings and configuration beyond sample rules.
I thought Firefox was about Mozilla being bloated and slow, and nothing to do with IE or Microsoft at all?
Surely whether or not the fines are cruel and unusual or excessive (etc) is subjective opinion? Any punishment past a slap on the wrist and a telling off may be cruel and unusual or excessive to the defendant and their family...
I actually disagree with this - the issue of file sharing is completely different to shop lifting a cd. One is theft, the other is unauthorised distribution - with theft, the right being infringed is property ownership, while with unauthorised distribution the right being infringed is the right to control distribution. A cd as a stolen item will cost maybe $20 maximum, while distribution rights are a significant amount of money.
The fines shouldn't be what they currently are, but they should be more than shoplifting or the $30 or $40 some people are suggesting here.
If you had never sold MySQL to Sun in the first place, it wouldn't be in the position it is now in. I hope the money was worth it.
Why are you so concerned now? Your chance to do something came and went, and so did you.
Also, I rather think you overrate MySQL in that petition post, but thats just mho.
You need to take your meds. Or seek professional help.
This is exemplified by the London Sock Exchange trading system built by a consortium of M$ and Accenture which (a) was non performant and (b) wouldnt stay up: Just for once the Right Thing (TM) happend and both the CIO and the system got shit canned.
Its amusing, but sadly not exactly surprising that the LSE's systems failure and resulting switch to Linux in October 2009 was heavily covered here on Slashdot, with much mirth directed at Microsoft, but the serious systems failure and several hour outage in November (26/11/2009 - after the switch to the Linux based system) was never mentioned here...
The replacement for the MS system is not without its own issues.
Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die.
Uhm, I'd seriously love to see your metric by which .Net is a miserable failure - comments like that just make you look like a fanboi lunatic.
hey claimed they would use it exclusively going forward and have they? Nope. The only applications written in it are by 3rd parties and I can't say that they are all great programs to use.
MS are using it - large portions of Exchange 2007 onward, SharePoint 2007 onward, Windows 2008 onward, and other of their business apps are built in .Net, and have rich .Net interfaces - they never said they would solely use .Net on an ongoing basis, but they are using it to a great extent, you are just choosing not to see it.
I've managed networks of anything from 100 users up to 10,000 users, from standard call center people to technical teams, and I have yet to experience the issue you are saying exists - but maybe that's because I am a good admin, if I do say so myself. And you can't really be saying that in all the years I have been an admin, I have some how only ever had it good...?
Its very simple - a good admin will make it happen in the easiest way for them, a bad admin will just bitch about how bad they have it and continue doing it poorly.
No a properly configured corporate Windows environment does not require only applications designed for such an environment - only a poor admin would come to such a conclusion.
You should never have to touch a GUI installer to install applications in a corporate environment - there are tools and facilities built into Active Directory, Windows and third party systems to allow you to centrally manage application installation from a central point and click interface. Again, if you know what you are doing then you can vastly reduce your workload - and its easy to do. If you have people running around installing crap, then either you are doing it wrong or your company is very very small.
Your last point about installation times is utterly stupid - whats the point in comparing a server install to an application install? I can get a fully working OpenBSD server with dns, firewall, routing and www server in under 10 minutes - but how is that going to help me if what I actually need is an Office application, or the company bespoke data entry system?
Yeah, this seems like a management issue on several fronts. First, why do you need one IT person for every 17 people in the company?
Only 6 out of 30 IT employees are on helpdesk duties - you have no idea what the other 24 are doing... One of my recent employers had 11 IT staff for 120 employees, but only two of those were on IT Support, the rest developed the applications for the business to use. When you take that into consideration, I wouldn't say 10% of the company was excessive.
A properly configured corporate Windows environment does not increase the workload at all - I know, I ran a large one for several years. The problem is, most Slashdotters do not realise that a properly configured corporate Windows environment is nothing like the typical home environment and don't know anything about the tools available.
Except that SharePoint library items are accessible via SMB (\\site-collection-name\site-name\library-name\) and web services, making migration (including full meta data) as easy as anything else.
Sorry, but copyright law really isn't something I am prepared to go to an armed conflict and kill people over...
So do a fair proportion of the 'consumers' of the movie and music industries - but we aren't allowed to talk about that side of it here on Slashdot...
I'm afraid that almost everything you have said in your post regarding SharePoint is wrong - yes, SharePoint does enjoy integration with the Microsoft Office suites, but if you do not have Word or Excel 2003 onward installed, you will simply get offered the file for download when you click on it. And thats ignoring the fact that you are not limited to the Office file formats - you can even store OpenOffice documents in SharePoint Document Libraries without any hassle at all. Also, SharePoint 2007 works pretty damn well in Firefox (no, some of the advanced page editing features do not work that well, but you can work Lists and Document Libraries fine with Firefox).