Indeed - I think it would be much better to offer the extra benefit to any unmarried partners. It solves several problems:
* It's not then unfair to people who are unmarried with opposite sex partners. * It avoids the sticky question of whether this might be illegal discrimination. It's an interesting problem - whilst it's trying to address the original discrimination that exists, which I think is good for them to do, it's now reasonable for someone to argue that how they pay their employees is discrimination (I don't know if sexuality is a protected class for employment discrimination in the US?) Whilst technically they would still be discriminating against people who are married, this is far less repugnant (since marriage is a choice), and has far less risk of being illegal. * Gay people don't have to out themselves - they simply say they've got an unmarried partner.
TFA says:
The extra compensation to cover the domestic partner tax will apply only to same-sex domestic partners, Mr. Bock said, because heterosexual couples can avoid the added tax by marrying.
That may be true, but there are plenty of reasons why opposite sex couples may not wish to get married (e.g., they don't want to enter in a contract for life, with all the implications and connotations that brings). An equal system must treat people the same, not create a separate class system for gay people (another example is here in the UK where we have civil partnerships for gay people - I believe that gay people should be able to get married, but it's also a problem that straight people can't have civil partnerships - not because I'm thinking "oh no, think of the poor straight people", but it's emphasising that gay people should be treated differently).
Of course, it would be a lot simpler if gay people could get married, so I hope any straight people thinking this is unfair is in favour of gay marriage.
The Zune has managed market share as high as 10% and presumably makes some money, but because it's not market leader and far less successful than the Ipod, it's a "flop", and ridiculed by poeple here.
The Iphone has, last time I checked, less than 5% market share, with market leaders being Nokia who sell far more phones. But because it still brings in some money for Apple, it's a runaway success.
We'll see the same with the Ipad - as long as it sells some and makes money, it's a "success", where as for any other company, it's a "flop" unless it becomes number one.
but it's silly to claim that this isn't news, *assuming* it turns out to be true.
Well that's the problem isn't it - shall we have every rumour about every company, that would bbe news "assuming" it turns out to be true?
Apple has the most popular smartphone on the market
Not this lie again. Apple are somewhere about third, behind RIM, and way behind Nokia. (Not sure what the latest figures are - maybe they're better than RIM now; but maybe Android has overtaken then, and Nokia are still first.) Not to mention that "smartphone" is ill-defined (can you give me a definition that includes the original Iphone, but not most "feature" phones?) In the phone market, Apple are less than 5%, behind Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM. Yes, Apple have a higher share if you restrict it to only a few companies - but third, out of three companies, still isn't exactly satisfying the claim of "most popular".
But wait, I know - you're going to redefine "popular" to mean something other than how many people buy it. Like, "what me and my friends use" or "gets most media hype", or redefining "smartphone" to mean "the Iphones".
Other more popular phone companies don't get news stories for an actual product release. This is a mere announcement of a future release, and only a possible rumour at that too.
Maybe they like the idea of phones that sell 1.7 million in three days, along with the two year contracts and high ETFs to go with them. Droid sold what, 400,000 its first week?
Three days, plus months of pre-orders.
The Droid is just one of Motorola's many phones, and they sell far more than Apple. That's before we mention companies like Nokia. Sure, I'm sure Verizon like Apple too, but don't try to mislead with the figures to pretend they're number one.
It's the design, function, and concept that's copyrighted in Europe and I'm pretty sure the same is true in most other countries that recognize IP and copyright. Do you think that if I wrote Call of Duty from scratch, or re-recorded a popular chart hit without paying royalties to the original publisher that it would somehow be legal?
In the latter case, it's not merely a "concept". You're copying the music, which even in the form of the notes being played, is covered by copyrights. Certain aspects of games can also be copyrighted - e.g., level designs, storylines.
But you can't conclude from that that every "concept" is covered by a copyright. And a good thing too - otherwise loads of similar games (e.g., all the Doom/Quake clones, or consider how Worms used the idea of the earlier game Tanks) could never have happened.
I didn't see any mention of credit for Mike Dailly, who invented the idea,
Ideas aren't invented (unless you have a patent for it), and presumably he was credited in the original game. Did the original lemmings credit any ideas borrowed from previous puzzle games? Perhaps it did, but this isn't something that's often done in the games industry. There's also the problem that the legal system doesn't really encourage people to be open about crediting others - even in cases where trademarks and graphics aren't be copied, but they got the idea for someone else, by writing "Thanks to X for this idea", you're painting a great big target that might as well say "Sue me please".
You're entirely right about the issue of graphics. Though speaking more generally - yes you're right, we should think about the original developers, but remember it's the company, now not even the original company, that owns the copyrights. Even if the original developers gave their permission - hell, even if they wrote their own unofficial port - it wouldn't be legal.
So getting in touch with the original developers surely wouldn't have made a difference? The only ones who could have given permission are Sony.
I think it would be great if we did live in a world where the original developers had more rights and control; and where people could credit others for ideas without giving up their rights to use those ideas or risk being sued. But we don't, and this guy isn't to blame for that.
Agreed. Another issue unique to this case is the control that Apple have over applications released for Iphones - what if Sony were okay with this unofficial port, but also did their own official port, and then their port got rejected due to being a duplicate? Given that Apple have control over who can release the port, in this case I don't blame Sony taking action.
(Unfortunately this risk also applies to open source software - whilst unofficial ports are of course allowed, for the Iphone, Apple could make it so that someone else is the only one allowed to release their version, whilst a port from the original developer is blocked. I'm not sure if there are any open source licences that get round this, by disallowing ports to such locked down platforms...)
Being polite may be a good idea tactically, but that doesn't justify the original problem of harrassing people taking photos and telling them they shouldn't be doing so. It's not just about whether we have sympathy for this individual person, it's what happens to everyone who might be in that situation of taking photos in public.
Meanwhile, it's okay for London to be covered in CCTV - if that adult cadet officer was so worried about parental permission, perhaps he could show me the parental permission that was given to the CCTV cameras, that were likely to have been filming the entire parade anyway?
I imagine that millions of people use Cisco products or services, including everyday. They provide modems and other services to Virgin Media, a UK cable/broadband/TV company with millions of customers, for example.
These people may not have heard of Cisco's IOS, but how many Iphone users have heard of "IOS"? Can we call them "dweebs" too?
Apple users can fit their iphone in a pocket and be on about their business.
My 5800 fits fine in my pocket. Shame about the size of your Ipad, though. And as for your "geek" stereotype; it's in geek communities like here that Apple has its popularity, just as with Linux. Among normal users, Apple are behind Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM.
If order doesn't matter, then consider the basic question, where no information is offered: IfI have two children, what's the probability that I have two boys? Let's list the possibilities without taking order into account:
Boy, Boy Boy, Girl Girl, Girl
So it's 1/3? Well no, there's overwhelming acceptance that the probability is 1/4, because order does matter. Note that ordering doesn't have to be by the age of child - that's just a convient way of ordering. We could equally order then by their name alphabetically, or whatever. But in probability, some notion of ordering is important. Consider the same question with randomly selected blue and green balls - the probability of selecting two blue balls is still 1/4, not 1/3, because the ordering matters, even though neither ball has an "age".
That's not to say I've wrapped my head round the paradoxes presented by these problems. But it's not as simple as saying ordering doesn't matter - if we ignore ordering, we get into far more obvious problems.
Well indeed, but the problem here is conflating definitions of cheating. It's mad that you can still be accused of cheating, and that it might well stick; but I wouldn't call it cheating.
I take your point about people being upfront - but be careful of holding people to their vows legally.
Consider, for all those who didn't strike the vow for the wife to obey the husband; is simple disobedience from the wife grounds for divorce? Whilst obviously I'd hope that all sensible people should be striking that for the vows these days, I'd think that we'd still consider such a divorce case to be rather ridiculous.
Of course I have no sympathy for people being unfaithful. But there is the question to people who have open relationships (which doesn't have to be "playing the field", it also includes long term multiple relationships with perhaps just one other person, rather than with large numbers of different people) - even though it's open and consensual, if the relationship then turns sour for other reasons, could the existence of a relationship with someone else be used against that person?
Saying "they shouldn't get married" isn't an answer, as that means they can't get the rights that other married people are entitled to.
As a licence payer, I'm happy for Iplayer to be open to all.
And the licence fee doesn't really work consistently. A UK person who only watches non-BBC TV has to payer the fee. But a UK person who watches BBC content on Iplayer, but doesn't watch TV as its broadcase, doesn't have to pay the fee!
Okay, but are there provisions for someone dying in service?
Perhaps there should be, I think that's fine - but if not, then you don't get to criticise Verizon on the law. You might criticise them because they're not being nice, but your arguments about the law and contracts in other areas is irrelevant.
Also note that if such a provision existed, then companies like that would know that in advance, and could take steps to cover their costs. (I can't help feeling it'd be better for the Government to pay them better, and give adequete life insurance, but it's obviously easier to pass the buck onto private companies.)
It is indeed sad - but is that Verizon's fault? Shouldn't we be calling for the Government to increase their salary, rather than blaming companies for not making exceptions upfront (even though they reversed the decision after)?
I think it's reasonable to criticise Verizon, but there are several issues here. Is the termination fee unreasonable - in which case isn't in always unreasonable (albeit more so in this case)? If though they really have incurred those charges, then whilst it's unfortunate, it's unclear why they should have to pay, or why this is different to any other contracts (phones, mortgages); or indeed the many other costs when someone dies (is it distasteful to bill the widow for the funeral? Of course not - even though no one wants to pay it, we don't assume it to be given by companies for free).
And then there's the issue of whether people should be treated different by companies because they're in the army (or, by your argument, because they're in low paid jobs). And if so, is it only Verizon who are at fault here? (When was the last time you or I were charitable to someone in the army, or in a low paid job.)
What about Symbian then? 50% of the smartphone market, and their dev environment is Qt, allowing the same code to run on near 100% of the desktop/laptop/netbook market too (as well as their other OS, Maemo and presumably Meego in future).
(Of course, what one individual guy chooses to develop for is up to him. The sad thing is though, I can't help feeling that this story made the front page not because of the feat, but because of the obligitary "On The Iphone" mention...)
As for your Android comments:
licenses it out to any crappy hardware manufacturer
Whether or not that's true, these other companies still include those that sell a lot of phones. Nokia are number one, but there are a lot of other major companies that sell far more than Apple (and RIM come to that), but didn't have a decent OS. So it's a good thing that companies like Motorola can now ship devices with a decent OS.
Personally, I think hacking a Linux kernel all to hell and running a bunch of non-portable java smeg on top of a goofy jvm isn't all that impressive nor is it very forward thinking.
So how portable are other platforms? One could argue this for Symbian (now that it uses Qt), but not for the likes of Apple phones. What's "forward thinking" and "impressive" about other platforms, in a way that Android doesn't manage?
I entirely agree with this point, and it's frustrating to hear claims that there are more apps on the Iphone, when this is just based on app store counts (when on Apple, you can't distribute anywhere else).
Windows manages just fine after all without a Microsoft App Store, and it would be absurd to claim there are more Iphone apps than Windows apps. The irony is that if Microsoft started at app store for Windows, it would probably be ridiculed by people on Slashdot, whilst Apple's app store is loved...
No one is claiming they don't have a legal right, or that it's not in their TOS (and it's a matter of debate whether a notice on their website trumps the law - otherwise I might as well put a TOS up saying I've got the right to delete stuff from other people's phones).
The point is that it's bad if they're deleting applications from people's own phones, and it is something that we should rightly criticise.
Yet the most common defence is "But you can jailbreak your phone to get this basic feature working" - just the sort of thing your grandmother knows how to do, or would want to?
Anyhow, most grandmothers will be buying from more popular manufacturers (Nokia, etc).
Note sure why we need a "News Roundup" anyway - as if the coverage for the Iphone 4 hasn't been enough already! Where are the "News Roundups" for all the other phone companies, that sell far more?
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed - I think it would be much better to offer the extra benefit to any unmarried partners. It solves several problems:
* It's not then unfair to people who are unmarried with opposite sex partners.
* It avoids the sticky question of whether this might be illegal discrimination. It's an interesting problem - whilst it's trying to address the original discrimination that exists, which I think is good for them to do, it's now reasonable for someone to argue that how they pay their employees is discrimination (I don't know if sexuality is a protected class for employment discrimination in the US?) Whilst technically they would still be discriminating against people who are married, this is far less repugnant (since marriage is a choice), and has far less risk of being illegal.
* Gay people don't have to out themselves - they simply say they've got an unmarried partner.
TFA says:
The extra compensation to cover the domestic partner tax will apply only to same-sex domestic partners, Mr. Bock said, because heterosexual couples can avoid the added tax by marrying.
That may be true, but there are plenty of reasons why opposite sex couples may not wish to get married (e.g., they don't want to enter in a contract for life, with all the implications and connotations that brings). An equal system must treat people the same, not create a separate class system for gay people (another example is here in the UK where we have civil partnerships for gay people - I believe that gay people should be able to get married, but it's also a problem that straight people can't have civil partnerships - not because I'm thinking "oh no, think of the poor straight people", but it's emphasising that gay people should be treated differently).
Of course, it would be a lot simpler if gay people could get married, so I hope any straight people thinking this is unfair is in favour of gay marriage.
The Zune has managed market share as high as 10% and presumably makes some money, but because it's not market leader and far less successful than the Ipod, it's a "flop", and ridiculed by poeple here.
The Iphone has, last time I checked, less than 5% market share, with market leaders being Nokia who sell far more phones. But because it still brings in some money for Apple, it's a runaway success.
We'll see the same with the Ipad - as long as it sells some and makes money, it's a "success", where as for any other company, it's a "flop" unless it becomes number one.
but it's silly to claim that this isn't news, *assuming* it turns out to be true.
Well that's the problem isn't it - shall we have every rumour about every company, that would bbe news "assuming" it turns out to be true?
Apple has the most popular smartphone on the market
Not this lie again. Apple are somewhere about third, behind RIM, and way behind Nokia. (Not sure what the latest figures are - maybe they're better than RIM now; but maybe Android has overtaken then, and Nokia are still first.) Not to mention that "smartphone" is ill-defined (can you give me a definition that includes the original Iphone, but not most "feature" phones?) In the phone market, Apple are less than 5%, behind Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM. Yes, Apple have a higher share if you restrict it to only a few companies - but third, out of three companies, still isn't exactly satisfying the claim of "most popular".
But wait, I know - you're going to redefine "popular" to mean something other than how many people buy it. Like, "what me and my friends use" or "gets most media hype", or redefining "smartphone" to mean "the Iphones".
Other more popular phone companies don't get news stories for an actual product release. This is a mere announcement of a future release, and only a possible rumour at that too.
Maybe they like the idea of phones that sell 1.7 million in three days, along with the two year contracts and high ETFs to go with them. Droid sold what, 400,000 its first week?
Three days, plus months of pre-orders.
The Droid is just one of Motorola's many phones, and they sell far more than Apple. That's before we mention companies like Nokia. Sure, I'm sure Verizon like Apple too, but don't try to mislead with the figures to pretend they're number one.
the only thing that is definitely "used" is ... the original EGA graphics from the game.
IANAL - but since no original files are used
There seems to be a discrepency here.
It's the design, function, and concept that's copyrighted in Europe and I'm pretty sure the same is true in most other countries that recognize IP and copyright. Do you think that if I wrote Call of Duty from scratch, or re-recorded a popular chart hit without paying royalties to the original publisher that it would somehow be legal?
In the latter case, it's not merely a "concept". You're copying the music, which even in the form of the notes being played, is covered by copyrights. Certain aspects of games can also be copyrighted - e.g., level designs, storylines.
But you can't conclude from that that every "concept" is covered by a copyright. And a good thing too - otherwise loads of similar games (e.g., all the Doom/Quake clones, or consider how Worms used the idea of the earlier game Tanks) could never have happened.
I didn't see any mention of credit for Mike Dailly, who invented the idea,
Ideas aren't invented (unless you have a patent for it), and presumably he was credited in the original game. Did the original lemmings credit any ideas borrowed from previous puzzle games? Perhaps it did, but this isn't something that's often done in the games industry. There's also the problem that the legal system doesn't really encourage people to be open about crediting others - even in cases where trademarks and graphics aren't be copied, but they got the idea for someone else, by writing "Thanks to X for this idea", you're painting a great big target that might as well say "Sue me please".
You're entirely right about the issue of graphics. Though speaking more generally - yes you're right, we should think about the original developers, but remember it's the company, now not even the original company, that owns the copyrights. Even if the original developers gave their permission - hell, even if they wrote their own unofficial port - it wouldn't be legal.
So getting in touch with the original developers surely wouldn't have made a difference? The only ones who could have given permission are Sony.
I think it would be great if we did live in a world where the original developers had more rights and control; and where people could credit others for ideas without giving up their rights to use those ideas or risk being sued. But we don't, and this guy isn't to blame for that.
Agreed. Another issue unique to this case is the control that Apple have over applications released for Iphones - what if Sony were okay with this unofficial port, but also did their own official port, and then their port got rejected due to being a duplicate? Given that Apple have control over who can release the port, in this case I don't blame Sony taking action.
(Unfortunately this risk also applies to open source software - whilst unofficial ports are of course allowed, for the Iphone, Apple could make it so that someone else is the only one allowed to release their version, whilst a port from the original developer is blocked. I'm not sure if there are any open source licences that get round this, by disallowing ports to such locked down platforms...)
Being polite may be a good idea tactically, but that doesn't justify the original problem of harrassing people taking photos and telling them they shouldn't be doing so. It's not just about whether we have sympathy for this individual person, it's what happens to everyone who might be in that situation of taking photos in public.
Meanwhile, it's okay for London to be covered in CCTV - if that adult cadet officer was so worried about parental permission, perhaps he could show me the parental permission that was given to the CCTV cameras, that were likely to have been filming the entire parade anyway?
I was talking about other people uploading photos. Yes, that's an issue to be concerned about when uploading your own photos.
I imagine that millions of people use Cisco products or services, including everyday. They provide modems and other services to Virgin Media, a UK cable/broadband/TV company with millions of customers, for example.
These people may not have heard of Cisco's IOS, but how many Iphone users have heard of "IOS"? Can we call them "dweebs" too?
Apple users can fit their iphone in a pocket and be on about their business.
My 5800 fits fine in my pocket. Shame about the size of your Ipad, though. And as for your "geek" stereotype; it's in geek communities like here that Apple has its popularity, just as with Linux. Among normal users, Apple are behind Nokia, Motorola, LG, Samsung, RIM.
If order doesn't matter, then consider the basic question, where no information is offered: IfI have two children, what's the probability that I have two boys? Let's list the possibilities without taking order into account:
Boy, Boy
Boy, Girl
Girl, Girl
So it's 1/3? Well no, there's overwhelming acceptance that the probability is 1/4, because order does matter. Note that ordering doesn't have to be by the age of child - that's just a convient way of ordering. We could equally order then by their name alphabetically, or whatever. But in probability, some notion of ordering is important. Consider the same question with randomly selected blue and green balls - the probability of selecting two blue balls is still 1/4, not 1/3, because the ordering matters, even though neither ball has an "age".
That's not to say I've wrapped my head round the paradoxes presented by these problems. But it's not as simple as saying ordering doesn't matter - if we ignore ordering, we get into far more obvious problems.
Well indeed, but the problem here is conflating definitions of cheating. It's mad that you can still be accused of cheating, and that it might well stick; but I wouldn't call it cheating.
I take your point about people being upfront - but be careful of holding people to their vows legally.
Consider, for all those who didn't strike the vow for the wife to obey the husband; is simple disobedience from the wife grounds for divorce? Whilst obviously I'd hope that all sensible people should be striking that for the vows these days, I'd think that we'd still consider such a divorce case to be rather ridiculous.
Ummm, yeah, that's what marriage IS.
No, it isn't.
Of course I have no sympathy for people being unfaithful. But there is the question to people who have open relationships (which doesn't have to be "playing the field", it also includes long term multiple relationships with perhaps just one other person, rather than with large numbers of different people) - even though it's open and consensual, if the relationship then turns sour for other reasons, could the existence of a relationship with someone else be used against that person?
Saying "they shouldn't get married" isn't an answer, as that means they can't get the rights that other married people are entitled to.
You can untag them - if you don't have a facebook page, people can stick your name in, and you'll never know.
You can also remove the photos link from your profile altogether (or make it restricted to friends only, etc).
As a licence payer, I'm happy for Iplayer to be open to all.
And the licence fee doesn't really work consistently. A UK person who only watches non-BBC TV has to payer the fee. But a UK person who watches BBC content on Iplayer, but doesn't watch TV as its broadcase, doesn't have to pay the fee!
Because it's not their money to give away.
It'd be like me showing compassion by giving your money to charity...
Okay, but are there provisions for someone dying in service?
Perhaps there should be, I think that's fine - but if not, then you don't get to criticise Verizon on the law. You might criticise them because they're not being nice, but your arguments about the law and contracts in other areas is irrelevant.
Also note that if such a provision existed, then companies like that would know that in advance, and could take steps to cover their costs. (I can't help feeling it'd be better for the Government to pay them better, and give adequete life insurance, but it's obviously easier to pass the buck onto private companies.)
It is indeed sad - but is that Verizon's fault? Shouldn't we be calling for the Government to increase their salary, rather than blaming companies for not making exceptions upfront (even though they reversed the decision after)?
I think it's reasonable to criticise Verizon, but there are several issues here. Is the termination fee unreasonable - in which case isn't in always unreasonable (albeit more so in this case)? If though they really have incurred those charges, then whilst it's unfortunate, it's unclear why they should have to pay, or why this is different to any other contracts (phones, mortgages); or indeed the many other costs when someone dies (is it distasteful to bill the widow for the funeral? Of course not - even though no one wants to pay it, we don't assume it to be given by companies for free).
And then there's the issue of whether people should be treated different by companies because they're in the army (or, by your argument, because they're in low paid jobs). And if so, is it only Verizon who are at fault here? (When was the last time you or I were charitable to someone in the army, or in a low paid job.)
What about Symbian then? 50% of the smartphone market, and their dev environment is Qt, allowing the same code to run on near 100% of the desktop/laptop/netbook market too (as well as their other OS, Maemo and presumably Meego in future).
(Of course, what one individual guy chooses to develop for is up to him. The sad thing is though, I can't help feeling that this story made the front page not because of the feat, but because of the obligitary "On The Iphone" mention...)
As for your Android comments:
licenses it out to any crappy hardware manufacturer
Whether or not that's true, these other companies still include those that sell a lot of phones. Nokia are number one, but there are a lot of other major companies that sell far more than Apple (and RIM come to that), but didn't have a decent OS. So it's a good thing that companies like Motorola can now ship devices with a decent OS.
Personally, I think hacking a Linux kernel all to hell and running a bunch of non-portable java smeg on top of a goofy jvm isn't all that impressive nor is it very forward thinking.
So how portable are other platforms? One could argue this for Symbian (now that it uses Qt), but not for the likes of Apple phones. What's "forward thinking" and "impressive" about other platforms, in a way that Android doesn't manage?
I entirely agree with this point, and it's frustrating to hear claims that there are more apps on the Iphone, when this is just based on app store counts (when on Apple, you can't distribute anywhere else).
Windows manages just fine after all without a Microsoft App Store, and it would be absurd to claim there are more Iphone apps than Windows apps. The irony is that if Microsoft started at app store for Windows, it would probably be ridiculed by people on Slashdot, whilst Apple's app store is loved...
No one is claiming they don't have a legal right, or that it's not in their TOS (and it's a matter of debate whether a notice on their website trumps the law - otherwise I might as well put a TOS up saying I've got the right to delete stuff from other people's phones).
The point is that it's bad if they're deleting applications from people's own phones, and it is something that we should rightly criticise.
Yet the most common defence is "But you can jailbreak your phone to get this basic feature working" - just the sort of thing your grandmother knows how to do, or would want to?
Anyhow, most grandmothers will be buying from more popular manufacturers (Nokia, etc).
Note sure why we need a "News Roundup" anyway - as if the coverage for the Iphone 4 hasn't been enough already! Where are the "News Roundups" for all the other phone companies, that sell far more?
You and a few more folks on slashdot, but not 99% of mobile phone users.
So maybe most people aren't buying N900s - but note they are still mostly buying Nokia phones (including Symbian).