No, the GPL is viral. They would have to supply the source code to people that bought the game. They don't have to supply it everybody, but they do have to supply it to people who bought the game and ask for the source.
No, they don't. If they've violated copyright law, a court may order them to pay damages - just like we would have to do if we violated Sony's copyright. The same goes for LGPL and BSD. The option to supply source code and avoid paying damages is just a nice added option. Do you think Sony would give us that option if we were using their IP?
So, yes..if they linked to libarc then they would have to GPL ICO as well.
This only applies if you choose to accept the licence. No one is forced to.
I wish they would go back to the ads showing how sexy the technology they offer is (like the PC with a mess of wires in the back compared to the iMac with nothing but the keyboard and mouse
I'm not sure these points are in disagreement - the fact that Facebook has become dominant and a main form of online communication for many is all the more reason to be against it, whether or not you still end up using it.
Think of Microsoft for a more Slashdot-typical example - people oppose them, but it's not as simple as "Don't use them". Many people still end up using Windows even if they oppose Microsoft.
There was a time students would get out and protest against illegal or amoral wars, now they care more about their latte or facefuckmeintheassbook.
It's unclear whether you think they should be complaining, or not complaining - which is it? This article suggests they are complaining. If they were apathetic and didn't care, it wouldn't be on Slashdot for starters.
And to be blunt, I'm not sure that Slashdotters are in a position to criticise about not protesting against illegal wars. Let's face it, what gets talked about on here - "random company does random bad thing that some people disagree with". On what basis do you conclude that Facebook users are less likely to protest against unjust wars than those of us here on Slashdot?
Well, duh. And how do you expect people to hear about this, and decide whether or not to use Facebook? By articles like this.
If Facebook have the "right" to do this, I think users have the right to complain, say it sucks, and tell other people about it. (I don't know why this particular issue always comes up with social networking websites - whenever random_other_company does something annoying, and it gets posted on Slashdot, I don't see people saying "Well don't use them then".)
If you want your own soap box under your own rules then get your own site.
Well, the problem is the lack of open protocols to manage the various "social networking" aspects. It's like suggesting running your own email server in response to email companies being bad - only to find that you can't email anyone else unless they also use your server.
Home address might be one thing, but assuming TFS is accurate, we're talking age, gender, email address, chat logon name, photo, or name of their school.
Presumably "hedwards (940851)" would be your contact information - let's hope everyone on Slashdot is over 18.
There is also the issue of excessive punishment. I'm all for increased data protection laws, especially for companies - but sending individuals to prison?
This looks like they just disabled some high settings under DirectX 9, and this hack reenables them. I don't think that's the same thing as being able to run DirectX 10 applications without Vista?
That's beside the point - if you're not bothered by this, then obviously you're not bothered by it, whether it's Japan, US or Outer Mongolia.
For people who are bothered by it, saying "Other countries have a right to do it" or "The US did it, so it's okay if other countries do it" just doesn't make sense.
And I'm sure I saw comments addressing your point - the problem is not someone finding my fingerprints, it's linking it to my identity and storing them together in a database.
How exactly is this different to what the US does to foreign visitors?
Um, where is anyone saying it is different?
Everytime that something about civil rights with a non-US country comes up, we always get someone trying to start a strawman argument and turn it into a competition. It's not a competition.
If country A does something bad, it's bad. Slashdot story.
If country B also does something bad, it's also bad. Another Slashdot story. Two bad things is worse than one bad thing - they don't cancel each other out. A Government doing things we don't like is not excused because our (or your) Government does it too!
If it makes American's uphappy, I only hope it makes them less willing to support the US policies. But the US citizens don't make the rules. Most citizens could oppose it, but the Governments would still be happy taking people's fingerprints.
The only way this is a competition is one where the citizens of both countries are losing. And your sort of logic just helps this along.
Hasn't it also occured to you that maybe it's not just US posters opposed to this? Japanese users have left comments, and I'm from the UK. I also suspect that any US people opposed to this were also opposed to US fingerprinting. If you can find a person who opposes this but supported that, then fine, but otherwise you're arguing against a strawman.
Countries aren't single beings. Maybe some people don't want their countries to do this - I certainly don't want mine to introduce it.
And anyone against fingerprinting people should be against this process - even if you don't care about foreigners, the point being made is that other countries are doing the same, and the net result is that all Governments get your fingerprints. Unless you never travel anywhere.
The point is that "entitled to make their own rules" here leads to the Governments of the world getting everyone's fingerprints.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the government here. They make the rules.
Government != Government employees. You do realise that the law is passed by MPs, not the random civil servants?
The Government makes the rules. The employees get scapegoated when data goes missing in the Government's latest plan to put everyone's personal info onto one big database. The Government gets to say "It wasn't our fault, and look the wrongdoer's been punished".
The citizen's details are still on that lost laptop. People's details are still being put onto Government databases. Employees whose only mistake was to work for the Government get criminally charged.
Sounds like a win for the Government, and a lose for everyone else (Government employees included).
Stop your FUD I suppose is the tone of my response.
Everyone is slagging off Vista, and I'm the one spreading FUD? It's not like I'm even a Windows fan - far from it, I was using non-Windows platforms long before it became trendy to do so. But compared with what's available now, it gets the job done well enough.
True, I realise that, but the same could be said of discussions - why not use e-mailing lists and have all the messages land in your inbox.
And once people are already using a website (Facebook, Slashdot, or whatever else), it's no longer an extra website to visit. Don't get me wrong, I still prefer email too, but I can see it being easy to just click someone's username and send a message, and not have to worry if the email account they signed up with is an account they check anymore...
...says the person discussing with people on Slashdot (do I see OpenID support yet? Indeed some social networks such as LiveJournal are better at being open than Slashdot, due to things like OpenID).
I think the same can be said of other generations too though - teenagers have always used phrases like that (and sadly a few of them don't grow out of it), that are thankfully now seen as very innappropriate for work.
I have yet to understand why anyone ever wants to use the internal messaging on websites rather than email. Having to waste my time logging into a large number of websites in order to read and reply to messages instead of them all landing in my inbox is crazyness...
Not only that, but when using email I get to use one well designed user interface of my choice, whereas messaging on websites, forums, etc require me to use a different (usually badly designed and slow) UI on every site.
Are you reading this message from your email program, or by logging into Slashdot?
Indeed there certainly were hard drives in 1990. But to be fair, it was still commonplace for home computers at least (which often weren't PCs in the IBM compatible sense) to not have hard drives. It was only DOS and MacOS which couldn't cope well unless you had an expensive hard drive...
I mean, hard drives have been around commercially since 1956 (from Wikipedia), but I don't think I would criticise someone who group up in the 70s/80s saying they used computers when they didn't have hard drives.
The G3 iMac was derided for not having a floppy drive. Sounds pretty ridiculous now, doesn't it?
I agree with the rest of your post, but this doesn't fit in. Indeed, you yourself are ignoring how things have changed in the last 10 years - namely that floppy drives were still often needed back then, but finally we appear to have gone without them now. Also a reason why it is ridiculous now is because all computers have alternatives to the floppy, which the first floppy-less Macs didn't. So the fact that it would be ridiculous to deride a modern computer for that now, doesn't mean it was ridiculous to deride the G3 back then.
An example - several years ago my parents picked up a second hand 486 laptop. The floppy drive was broken. Was it ridiculous to be bothered by that? Well yes actually, as it meant there was no way to get information on or off the machine.
A lot of the problem I feel is that there's an expectation with IM that if you're online, you're ready and up for making conversation. I see it should be just like a phone - if people want to call me for some reason, they can, but otherwise I've got things to do. I don't get people calling me up just to make random smalltalk everytime I turn on my phone, I don't see why IM should be different.
I guess the main problem is that it advertises that you're online. (And whilst you can be invisible, people then, unlike a phone, will assume you're offline, so that's no good either.)
Although note that seems to be a rather extreme example. What does the Korean Government consider addiction? From TFA:
They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
Well, it's probably better to define addiction in terms of being able to give it up, as opposed to a simple length of time. But then, would we say the same things about books, talking to people in real life, landline phones, radios... or people who spend all day exercising, like it looks like they will do in this camp?
The good thing about being an adult is we can spend however much time we like on what we like, without fear of thinking it is wrong, or, it seems, being shipped off to some camp for addiction.
In that case, I look forward to the day when they are up the ladder, and it means society no longer cares about petty irrelevant things you do or once did, and we no longer have to hide ourselves online (like we do on Slashdot).
Oh? Trying to psychologically manipulate and hurt a 13 year old girl is not harmful? I'm pretty sure that if it was a 40 year old man pretty to be a young teen boy instead of a woman then their would be charges laid.
I agree, and in particular, I'm curious about sources referring to flirtation. If this is true, then I wonder why this isn't illegal under child abuse laws? As you say, if it was a 40 year old man, he'd be locked up as a pedophile. (I wonder if impersonating a teenager to talk to another child is also illegal, at least in some places?)
The key problem here is that it was an adult and a child. What worries me is people calling for knee-jerk reactions to bring in new laws that would also cover behaviour between two adults (there, such behaviour might be wrong, but I'm not sure it should be illegal, unless it's covered by existing harrassment laws).
You're confusing two entirely separate things - what you're talking about is when no one is allowed to tell anyone. Just because you have the right to anonymity, doesn't mean you're prevented from telling people if you want to.
So you only have anecdotal evidence that there is any kind of significant shift to other platforms from XP rather than Vista?
Yes, I know people use Linux. Some people still use Amigas, that doesn't mean that people are leaving Windows in droves for it!
I had too many driver problems and moved on. I got tired of hunting down a driver for a thumb drive every time someone handed me one. I still have it on the laptop hard drive I swapped out just in case I need it, but have found I seldom slide it back in the laptop to use it.
Funnily enough, that sounds like my experience of Linux...
True, but it does often equate buying a Mac instead of a PC when picking up a new machine.
Citation needed? And by that, I mean evidence, not anecdotes of some guy buying a Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the GPL is viral. They would have to supply the source code to people that bought the game. They don't have to supply it everybody, but they do have to supply it to people who bought the game and ask for the source.
No, they don't. If they've violated copyright law, a court may order them to pay damages - just like we would have to do if we violated Sony's copyright. The same goes for LGPL and BSD. The option to supply source code and avoid paying damages is just a nice added option. Do you think Sony would give us that option if we were using their IP?
So, yes..if they linked to libarc then they would have to GPL ICO as well.
This only applies if you choose to accept the licence. No one is forced to.
I wish they would go back to the ads showing how sexy the technology they offer is (like the PC with a mess of wires in the back compared to the iMac with nothing but the keyboard and mouse
It runs on batteries??
I'm not sure these points are in disagreement - the fact that Facebook has become dominant and a main form of online communication for many is all the more reason to be against it, whether or not you still end up using it.
Think of Microsoft for a more Slashdot-typical example - people oppose them, but it's not as simple as "Don't use them". Many people still end up using Windows even if they oppose Microsoft.
There was a time students would get out and protest against illegal or amoral wars, now they care more about their latte or facefuckmeintheassbook.
It's unclear whether you think they should be complaining, or not complaining - which is it? This article suggests they are complaining. If they were apathetic and didn't care, it wouldn't be on Slashdot for starters.
And to be blunt, I'm not sure that Slashdotters are in a position to criticise about not protesting against illegal wars. Let's face it, what gets talked about on here - "random company does random bad thing that some people disagree with". On what basis do you conclude that Facebook users are less likely to protest against unjust wars than those of us here on Slashdot?
If you don't like that then don't use Facebook!
Well, duh. And how do you expect people to hear about this, and decide whether or not to use Facebook? By articles like this.
If Facebook have the "right" to do this, I think users have the right to complain, say it sucks, and tell other people about it. (I don't know why this particular issue always comes up with social networking websites - whenever random_other_company does something annoying, and it gets posted on Slashdot, I don't see people saying "Well don't use them then".)
If you want your own soap box under your own rules then get your own site.
Well, the problem is the lack of open protocols to manage the various "social networking" aspects. It's like suggesting running your own email server in response to email companies being bad - only to find that you can't email anyone else unless they also use your server.
Home address might be one thing, but assuming TFS is accurate, we're talking age, gender, email address, chat logon name, photo, or name of their school.
Presumably "hedwards (940851)" would be your contact information - let's hope everyone on Slashdot is over 18.
There is also the issue of excessive punishment. I'm all for increased data protection laws, especially for companies - but sending individuals to prison?
This looks like they just disabled some high settings under DirectX 9, and this hack reenables them. I don't think that's the same thing as being able to run DirectX 10 applications without Vista?
That's beside the point - if you're not bothered by this, then obviously you're not bothered by it, whether it's Japan, US or Outer Mongolia.
For people who are bothered by it, saying "Other countries have a right to do it" or "The US did it, so it's okay if other countries do it" just doesn't make sense.
And I'm sure I saw comments addressing your point - the problem is not someone finding my fingerprints, it's linking it to my identity and storing them together in a database.
How exactly is this different to what the US does to foreign visitors?
Um, where is anyone saying it is different?
Everytime that something about civil rights with a non-US country comes up, we always get someone trying to start a strawman argument and turn it into a competition. It's not a competition.
If country A does something bad, it's bad. Slashdot story.
If country B also does something bad, it's also bad. Another Slashdot story. Two bad things is worse than one bad thing - they don't cancel each other out. A Government doing things we don't like is not excused because our (or your) Government does it too!
If it makes American's uphappy, I only hope it makes them less willing to support the US policies. But the US citizens don't make the rules. Most citizens could oppose it, but the Governments would still be happy taking people's fingerprints.
The only way this is a competition is one where the citizens of both countries are losing. And your sort of logic just helps this along.
Hasn't it also occured to you that maybe it's not just US posters opposed to this? Japanese users have left comments, and I'm from the UK. I also suspect that any US people opposed to this were also opposed to US fingerprinting. If you can find a person who opposes this but supported that, then fine, but otherwise you're arguing against a strawman.
Countries aren't single beings. Maybe some people don't want their countries to do this - I certainly don't want mine to introduce it.
And anyone against fingerprinting people should be against this process - even if you don't care about foreigners, the point being made is that other countries are doing the same, and the net result is that all Governments get your fingerprints. Unless you never travel anywhere.
The point is that "entitled to make their own rules" here leads to the Governments of the world getting everyone's fingerprints.
I have absolutely no sympathy for the government here. They make the rules.
Government != Government employees. You do realise that the law is passed by MPs, not the random civil servants?
The Government makes the rules. The employees get scapegoated when data goes missing in the Government's latest plan to put everyone's personal info onto one big database. The Government gets to say "It wasn't our fault, and look the wrongdoer's been punished".
The citizen's details are still on that lost laptop. People's details are still being put onto Government databases. Employees whose only mistake was to work for the Government get criminally charged.
Sounds like a win for the Government, and a lose for everyone else (Government employees included).
Stop your FUD I suppose is the tone of my response.
Everyone is slagging off Vista, and I'm the one spreading FUD? It's not like I'm even a Windows fan - far from it, I was using non-Windows platforms long before it became trendy to do so. But compared with what's available now, it gets the job done well enough.
True, I realise that, but the same could be said of discussions - why not use e-mailing lists and have all the messages land in your inbox.
And once people are already using a website (Facebook, Slashdot, or whatever else), it's no longer an extra website to visit. Don't get me wrong, I still prefer email too, but I can see it being easy to just click someone's username and send a message, and not have to worry if the email account they signed up with is an account they check anymore...
...says the person discussing with people on Slashdot (do I see OpenID support yet? Indeed some social networks such as LiveJournal are better at being open than Slashdot, due to things like OpenID).
I think the same can be said of other generations too though - teenagers have always used phrases like that (and sadly a few of them don't grow out of it), that are thankfully now seen as very innappropriate for work.
Couldn't the same thing be said of GMail? Or anyone who doesn't run their own email server?
I have yet to understand why anyone ever wants to use the internal messaging on websites rather than email. Having to waste my time logging into a large number of websites in order to read and reply to messages instead of them all landing in my inbox is crazyness...
Not only that, but when using email I get to use one well designed user interface of my choice, whereas messaging on websites, forums, etc require me to use a different (usually badly designed and slow) UI on every site.
Are you reading this message from your email program, or by logging into Slashdot?
Indeed there certainly were hard drives in 1990. But to be fair, it was still commonplace for home computers at least (which often weren't PCs in the IBM compatible sense) to not have hard drives. It was only DOS and MacOS which couldn't cope well unless you had an expensive hard drive...
I mean, hard drives have been around commercially since 1956 (from Wikipedia), but I don't think I would criticise someone who group up in the 70s/80s saying they used computers when they didn't have hard drives.
The G3 iMac was derided for not having a floppy drive. Sounds pretty ridiculous now, doesn't it?
I agree with the rest of your post, but this doesn't fit in. Indeed, you yourself are ignoring how things have changed in the last 10 years - namely that floppy drives were still often needed back then, but finally we appear to have gone without them now. Also a reason why it is ridiculous now is because all computers have alternatives to the floppy, which the first floppy-less Macs didn't. So the fact that it would be ridiculous to deride a modern computer for that now, doesn't mean it was ridiculous to deride the G3 back then.
An example - several years ago my parents picked up a second hand 486 laptop. The floppy drive was broken. Was it ridiculous to be bothered by that? Well yes actually, as it meant there was no way to get information on or off the machine.
A lot of the problem I feel is that there's an expectation with IM that if you're online, you're ready and up for making conversation. I see it should be just like a phone - if people want to call me for some reason, they can, but otherwise I've got things to do. I don't get people calling me up just to make random smalltalk everytime I turn on my phone, I don't see why IM should be different.
I guess the main problem is that it advertises that you're online. (And whilst you can be invisible, people then, unlike a phone, will assume you're offline, so that's no good either.)
Although note that seems to be a rather extreme example. What does the Korean Government consider addiction? From TFA:
... or people who spend all day exercising, like it looks like they will do in this camp?
They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.
Well, it's probably better to define addiction in terms of being able to give it up, as opposed to a simple length of time. But then, would we say the same things about books, talking to people in real life, landline phones, radios
The good thing about being an adult is we can spend however much time we like on what we like, without fear of thinking it is wrong, or, it seems, being shipped off to some camp for addiction.
In that case, I look forward to the day when they are up the ladder, and it means society no longer cares about petty irrelevant things you do or once did, and we no longer have to hide ourselves online (like we do on Slashdot).
Oh? Trying to psychologically manipulate and hurt a 13 year old girl is not harmful? I'm pretty sure that if it was a 40 year old man pretty to be a young teen boy instead of a woman then their would be charges laid.
I agree, and in particular, I'm curious about sources referring to flirtation. If this is true, then I wonder why this isn't illegal under child abuse laws? As you say, if it was a 40 year old man, he'd be locked up as a pedophile. (I wonder if impersonating a teenager to talk to another child is also illegal, at least in some places?)
The key problem here is that it was an adult and a child. What worries me is people calling for knee-jerk reactions to bring in new laws that would also cover behaviour between two adults (there, such behaviour might be wrong, but I'm not sure it should be illegal, unless it's covered by existing harrassment laws).
You're providing to me an example that you saw on the internet? Reread what I wrote: Has this happened to you or anyone you know?
What, you'd rather have an anecdote from a random anonymous Internet person, than verifiable published factual evidence?
Okay, my mate's ex-girlfriend's tennis partner's hairdresser once knew someone this happened to.
But I'd prefer the evidence.
You're confusing two entirely separate things - what you're talking about is when no one is allowed to tell anyone. Just because you have the right to anonymity, doesn't mean you're prevented from telling people if you want to.
Open your eyes and look.
So you only have anecdotal evidence that there is any kind of significant shift to other platforms from XP rather than Vista?
Yes, I know people use Linux. Some people still use Amigas, that doesn't mean that people are leaving Windows in droves for it!
I had too many driver problems and moved on. I got tired of hunting down a driver for a thumb drive every time someone handed me one. I still have it on the laptop hard drive I swapped out just in case I need it, but have found I seldom slide it back in the laptop to use it.
Funnily enough, that sounds like my experience of Linux...
True, but it does often equate buying a Mac instead of a PC when picking up a new machine.
Citation needed? And by that, I mean evidence, not anecdotes of some guy buying a Mac.