Do you believe it's legal to sneak into a movie theater or concert without paying?
I'd say the biggest problem with this is that you're walking onto a company's private property. A better analogy would be someone filming the movie, to then show their friend when they get back home. Also, I'm not sure what sort of punishment trying to get into a cinema without paying would result in, but I'd say that fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars or imprisonment would be equally ridiculous.
Just because you can't afford something doesn't give you the right to take what you want. Maybe the solution is to do what I did in college and GET A JOB.
Just because you once wrote something doesn't give you the right to take what you want, or mean that you have a god-given right to make money forever from anyone who sees it. I could say the same, and suggest that perhaps they should either write some more, or GET A JOB.
Whether you think music downloading is morally ok or not doesn't matter. Bottom line is that it is illegal.
I'd say that the morality of these issues is highly important. The law is not absolute or automatically right. Admittedly breaking the law may not necessarily be the best way of getting it changed, but people should certainly voice their opinions and protest, rather than saying "oh it's illegal, so that's that".
Certain corporations didn't accept that copyright lasted 14 years - they pushed to get the length extended again and again. They didn't accept that they were unable to sue consumers for watching DVDs that they had legally bought, just because it wasn't done in the way they liked. Instead, the law got changed.
Re:I have said it before and I will say it again..
on
In Pursuit Of A Spammer
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Are you using metered bandwidth? How much per kilobyte do you pay?
Even on unmetered bandwidth, due you think that the ISP will soak up additional costs by cutting their salaries/profits? Chances are they will pass the increased costs onto the customer. And certainly, it won't be the spammer who pays.
Probably the Linux vendor software will be free software. You can copy/mimic/bundle whatever they come up with. And it's very hard that it won't be free, they probably linked to GPL libraries.
You can copy it, but that's beside the point. Setting myself up as a Linux distributer to rival Red Hat isn't exactly easily done. There may be a theoretical advantage in that I can create and give away Linux+my program where as I can't do that with Windows. But in practice, if Red Hat choose an alternative program to supply as standard, then I'm still stuffed.
Another reason is: Why would they develop their own software if they can use yours, which is probably free too? And if they don't like the way your software performs, they can modify, release the modifications back to you and the community, thus making it stronger.
You're confusing the issue of the software being open source, and the operating system being open source. You can write open source for a proprietry OS - and if the Watson author was GPL, then Apple would have had the same choice that you say the open source distributer has. But (presumably) he chose not to, and a consequence of that is that Apple has to look elsewhere when they want to include the feature as standard.
Many of his arguments apply to open source OSs also. You're still writing software that supports the "land" owned by someone else (since open source is still owned, unless we're talking public domain operating systems). Open source OSs are often distributed by companies who have a lot of influence - so you're still helping those companies make money, and if those companies choose to supply an alternative program as standard with the distribution which does what yours does, then you're in the same situation as the Watson author. APIs can be broken too.
If you're building for the "Web platform", then you're in trouble if something isn't supported properly by the browser that's used by the vast majority of people; certain companies still unfortunately wield power over web development.
There are some valid points in there (eg, secret APIs), but imo the "sharecropper" analogy applies to everyone except those who wrote the OS they develop for themselves.
Well in theory, that's not really "bandwidth," it's just a number of bytes. The bandwidth would be the maximum sustained throughput. Essentially, how much data could be delivered per second, if there were a constant stream of trucks pulling in, each carrying 11.6TB. Assume the trucks drive bumper-to-bumper, at 60 MPH. Assume each truck is what, 25' long. At 60 MPH it takes about 0.28 second to travel one truck-length. Therefore, the actual bandwidth is 11.8/0.28 = 42.1 TB per second.
The important word being "if". Per truck, the bandwidth is a lot less - if it took a week to reach its destination, then you have more like 19MB/s. I don't know how many trucks they have. Perhaps more than one, but probably not enough to have a constant stream of trucks driving bumper to bumper.
Okay, fair enough if we're talking maximum theoretical bandwidth. But then we can play that same trick with the Internet too - I could say I could get uploads of ~320GB/s if I had 10,000,000 NTL cable connections (which is not really more ridiculous than the 133 trucks per kilometre you would need), but that doesn't mean I can say that the upload bandwidth of cable is 320GB/s.
It doesn't even seem unfair to me to allow others to profit a little from modifications/translations that the author or publisher never intend to produce themselves. (or even if they are too slow to produce it themselves...)
Were they even profiting from it though? The article doesn't seem to mention that they were even doing that.
I think the problem is (or should be) that they have posted a copy of the book, albeit in a different language, which is copyright infringement in much the same sense as if I were to post the original English version. The situation is worse for the publishers/author in that there will be a period of time when people can only obtain it by copying it, and more generally, they lose control over which languages the book will be in. However, the former is due to their incompetence, and the latter is control I don't think they should have - as a result, I don't think that doing a translation without permission should be an additional or greater crime.
As a loose analogy, consider region-encoded DVDs. It ought to be legal, imo (and thankfully still is here in the UK), to provide a tool to allow DVDs to be viewed in different regions. But if someone converted a DVD, and then let others download it for free, that would be copyright infringement under pre-DMCA laws, independant of the encoding issues (hmm for a moment I imagined a scary future where translation tools like babelfish were illegal, since they allowed people to read books in a language that they weren't meant to be read in..)
Perhaps a change to copyright laws should be that distribution should be legal (at least, for non-profit) if it's in a form that allows people to use it when the copyright-owner doesn't make it available in that form (if there are issues with the translation being poor or misleading, then I would say these are more trademark issues, and that the derivative work should be clearly marked as being an alternative not-related-to-the-original version).
The medical community seems to think that everything now days is a disease. Everything must have a cure, or so they say. These doctors cannot even prove that ADD is a real disease caused by some abnormallity in the the body, ovbiously if you give someone Riddlen they are going to concentrate more just look whats in the stuff.
Who said anything about disease?
The article talks about disorders. No one is saying that this means it can be 'caught', or that there is necessarily a physical abnormality in the body. Of course, as the parent article says, some people may be able to cope with this without it being a problem - but then they shouldn't be labelled with having the disorder.
The purpose of giving names to disorders, as I understand it, is to classify behaviours and perhaps help to identify treatment (for those people that can't cope with it, and for those that it is a problem). Arguing whether these disorders really "exist", or arguing what is and isn't normal seems to be beside the point.
And to most folks copying IP without renumeration = stealing.
I'm not sure that's true. Consider the millions who download mp3s, give copied tapes/CDs to friends, and record off the TV or radio to keep - I can't believe that these people group it into the same class of activity as stealing or theft. If they use the term "copyright theft", it's probably more that they're parroting terms they've been fed by music companies and articles such as this, rather than thinking about it and deciding it was comparable to stealing. Yes, it may only be a small group of people who are of the opinion that information should be "free", but everyone else I've come across are either of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with it (either they don't know the law, or they don't care), or they see it as technically illegal, but not something that anyone worries about, and certainly not the same sort of thing as stealing.
Are you saying that the only reason that these millions of people aren't also out ransacking the shops of their goods is because there's a higher risk of being caught? Certainly amongst the people I know, there's also a moral element too; that it could be considered wrong, in more ways, and to a greater degree than can copyright infringement.
So you're a little bit right, in that it is illegal, it should be illegal, and it is arguably immoral.
Is it though, or should it be? I mean, yes, it would certainly be illegal if you were to distribute the photos to other people, but the article seems to talk specifically about people taking photos so they can read it later, without having to buy the magazine.
I thought copyright is to do with distribution, and that it's legal to make copies of information that you obtained legally, as long as you don't distribute that information. Is it "mental shoplifting" if I read an article without paying, and remember the article after I walk out the shop?
Whilst these issues might be problematic for bookstores, I don't see them as morally wrong, and don't see that there should be extra legal protections. If they don't want people reading without buying, they are free to introduce measures such as: shrinkwrapped magazines; searching people and confiscating phones/cameras on entrance; making you sign a contract saying you won't take notes or make copies whilst in the store; having staff on the lookout for people taking photos (or perhaps browsing for too long), and kicking them out. Of course, they'll have to accept the risk that such measures may turn potential customers away also.
It reminds me in a way of places like nightclubs that have no-camera policies for different reasons. I fully respect a business' right to have such a policy, but I'd expect temporary confiscation of camera or at worse being banned if I did that, rather than it being considered illegal and being fined or put in prison.
As far as I understand, german "Urheberrecht" (not quite the same as copyright, more like "author's right") is basically inalienable. You can't just give away or sell your rights.
One consequence of this is that germans cannot put their software or whatever in the public domain
How is this a problem with the GPL?
One consequence of this is that germans cannot put their software or whatever in the public domain (well, they can, but it would involve dying, and even then it takes some years). Another thing I wonder about is the FSF policy of only accepting patches when the author transfers copyright to the FSF (fun question: why is the GPL not good enough for them?). A german developer cannot meaningfully do that. How can they accept contributions from german developers?
No idea, but one question that springs to mind is how do software companies in Germany operate - do software developers employed by companies still retain the copyright to what they write?
What's the worst that can happen if the GPL is held legally unenforceable?? Companies like MS can steal GNU / Linux code and put it in their kernels?
No. Standard copyright law says that companies like MS aren't allowed to distribute software based on people's code, whether or not they distribute the source code of their changes with it.
The question of whether this part of the GPL is enforceable or not seems irrelevant given that the law offers stronger protection by default. However, this article seems to be more concerned with issues of liability.
Quite easily: "John Mills goes to Hogwarts", or "John Mills goes to Wizard School" and a critic in a newspaper (e-zine, the front cover, whatever) mentions its similarity to Harry Potter.
But a reviewer could do this even in cases where there were enough differences that it shouldn't be considered copyright infringement. It's fairly common for reviewers to mention similarities or references to other books.
For someone reading the review, there's a difference between "This is rather similar to Harry Potter", and "This is the new Harry Potter book".
So you should be able to write a Harry Potter novel, using in your favour the huge success of JK Rowling's work to boost the acceptability and profit potential of your derivative? Do you really think JKR should have to suffer a loss of sales when someone reads your miserable derivative and decides that they don't really like Harry Potter?
But if we're talking about a book that doesn't use any of the same names, and is just with similar settings, characters and storylines, then I don't see how such a book would be able to ride off the success of Harry Potter. People would have to read the book to find that out. People who read the book and decided it was poor wouldn't think that another, different book would be poor, unless it said it was a Harry Potter book.
It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.
Really? Can you provide any evidence for this - because I'm sure this is not the case. Admittedly I haven't played the games so I don't know how close they are, but the games market is full of clones (from space invader clones to FPS clones). The only possible issue here is trademark infringement (consider Civilization versus Call To Power - similar games, and the only possible dispute was over the trademark "Civilization", which was settled, I believe on the basis that neither Microprose nor Activision owned the trademark, since Avalon Hill had earlier produced a board game with the same name).
As long as trademarks aren't infringed, and artwork isn't taken, there shouldn't be a problem. The only other possible issues are patents. I'm not aware that "game dynamics" can be patented or copyrighted.
As for the Word analogy, what about someone else who writes a word processor, but implements features that Word had? Are you saying that would be illegal, even if the features weren't patented, and they didn't infringe on trademarks?
That's like saying that you arn't infringing on ford's patent by selling fords without paint.
Since when did Blizzard own a patent on Warcraft-style games?
I don't see how Ford could stop other people from making cars, just because it was possible to paint them with Ford paint. If they were selling them as "Thord Cars", then perhaps they would have a case..
AWeb-II is Opera fast and then some, wayyyy too old (seems like no JavaScript support), and about as ugly as IBrowse. I never tried the Amiga ports of Lynx, but the gui browsers were all shareware.
No, AWeb is now free and open source (the licence is similar to the GPL I believe). I couldn't find it on Aminet, but you can download it from the website.
Also it appears to have some Javascript support (don't know how good it is though).
That would only work if there was a monopoly on image editing applications. Otherwise, if one company tried to pocket the savings, another would undercut that company and take all its customers.
And then the first company would have to lower its prices, and both companies would have lost out. In an oligopolistic market, one company is unlikely to reduce its long term profits just for a short term gain in customers.
Don't you think that those donating money are doing so because they feel it will be useful to them? Who are you to decide how other people should spend their money - you are free to donate your money to causes that you feel are more worthy.
Platforms such as Windows and MacOS get billions spent on them, whilst platforms such as BeOS and AmigaOS go stagnant.
A: Well that will depend a lot on the programming team that tackles the port and their skillset but the spec I would like to see is Amiga OS 3.9 and above and/or WinUAE/Amiga Forever/Amithlon/AROS/MorphOS. 68030+ CPU, faster the better, 24 bit Graphics card, 32MB of RAM. I would also like the coders to try hard to make it work with AGA.
First of all, it says this is only what he would like, and doesn't seem to be a requirement to collect the money.
A 68030 may be unreasonably slow, but it would still work. Even if an '060 is too slow for a 68k version to be worthwhile, it would be fast enough on Amithlon. Once you've made the effort to make a 68k version, compiling an '030 isn't really any extra effort. Minimum CPU requirements above a 68020 aren't so common on the Amiga (I don't know whether that's because there's little speed advantage on doing so with 68k versus x86, or not) - so just because there's a theoretical minimum CPU of an '030, that's not the same as a recommended minimum.
32MB RAM may be a problem, but it may still be possible. Windows 2000 reports here that Mozilla takes up about ~23MB (eg, viewing this very article), and AmigaOS only takes up a few MBs for itself. OS-friendly applications should really care whether they're running on a graphics card or AGA or whatever, and I don't see that running in 256 colours is much of a problem.
Duh. The original post about the 8MHz amiga is correct...'cause you can't run jack shit on the 'new amiga'. Hah.
He may be wrong to mention the AmigaOne, but the original post was still wrong. First of all, no one cares about 8MHz A500s since the OS and software runs quite happily on Amigas with CPUs up to a 66MHz 68060. Secondly, it could utilise PPC accelerators that Amigas can have (up to a 233MHz 604). Thirdly, MorphOS (an Amiga compatible OS, which is also a valid target for this prize) runs on the Pegasos which comes with a 600MHz G3. Lastly, one could point out Amithlon which runs AmigaOS on a PC at speeds far greater than any 68060 Amiga.
The first of these would probably still be slow for Mozilla, but the rest should run it fine I would have thought.
No offense, but this would pay for about 10 days of a junior developer's time.
And much money do the guys porting Mozilla to other platforms receive?
This is open source. Of course, the amount of money isn't going to attract someone who is looking to do programming for commercial gain, but I don't see that anyone is claiming it is. $4000 is a lot more than the $0 that is up for offer by default on open source projects.
The idea is that if someone is perhaps tempted to port it (be it for fun, or whatever else drives people to write software for free), then the cash is a little extra incentive.
Who still cares about, say, MacOS? I was never able to use MacOS on my 'puters, since none of my hardware was supported, and, once I started using Windows, I never looked back. So what makes MacOS so special?
Well, you get the idea. This question seems to come up at every BeOS (and Amiga, come to that) article, but I never bother to ask the question on every Apple article, even though it applies just as much to me.
As to graphics hardware not being supported, I guess this is sadly a problem with all non Windows OSs (eg, several Linux distributions I've tried have all had trouble with my graphics card - sort of working, but displaying flickering pixels).
I like the way that BeOS is extremely good at recognising the hardware it does support - it seems to install the drivers it needs transparently and quickly. It doesn't throw a wobbly and spend ages reinstalling stuff when I upgrade the motherboard.
Could it be used as an offensive weapon? Yes, sure. Baseball bats can be used as offensive weapons. So can tire irons. Neither are illegal to carry
But baseball bats and irons have primary uses other than causing harm to people. This jacket on the other hand is designed to cause harm. True, it's not as bad as guns in that it would be harder to use offensively, but I don't think it's analogous to a baseball bat or iron. You could argue that most guys and girls carrying a stun gun aren't going to be a problem.
Also I don't agree that preventing men from using it means it won't be used offensively!
That assumes that this is possible, which is just as much an assumption (i.e. an unproven statement, scientifically speaking, and probably unprovable) as my belief that one exists.
But are we talking about belief, or what is actually true? I read your definition of religion to be about how one viewed one's relationship, or what one believed one's relationship with a higher power to be - in which case, an atheist has no such relationship.
If you're saying that it's what the relationship really is, then I find this to be a strange definition of religion. In particular, what you say about it being an assumption that there is no relationship applies to anyone - how can anyone, be they Christians, Sikhs, Pagans, or some completely different religion, show that what they believe about their relationship with "the higher power" is correct?
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Do you believe it's legal to sneak into a movie theater or concert without paying?
I'd say the biggest problem with this is that you're walking onto a company's private property. A better analogy would be someone filming the movie, to then show their friend when they get back home. Also, I'm not sure what sort of punishment trying to get into a cinema without paying would result in, but I'd say that fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars or imprisonment would be equally ridiculous.
Just because you can't afford something doesn't give you the right to take what you want. Maybe the solution is to do what I did in college and GET A JOB.
Just because you once wrote something doesn't give you the right to take what you want, or mean that you have a god-given right to make money forever from anyone who sees it. I could say the same, and suggest that perhaps they should either write some more, or GET A JOB.
Whether you think music downloading is morally ok or not doesn't matter. Bottom line is that it is illegal.
I'd say that the morality of these issues is highly important. The law is not absolute or automatically right. Admittedly breaking the law may not necessarily be the best way of getting it changed, but people should certainly voice their opinions and protest, rather than saying "oh it's illegal, so that's that".
Certain corporations didn't accept that copyright lasted 14 years - they pushed to get the length extended again and again. They didn't accept that they were unable to sue consumers for watching DVDs that they had legally bought, just because it wasn't done in the way they liked. Instead, the law got changed.
Are you using metered bandwidth? How much per kilobyte do you pay?
Even on unmetered bandwidth, due you think that the ISP will soak up additional costs by cutting their salaries/profits? Chances are they will pass the increased costs onto the customer. And certainly, it won't be the spammer who pays.
Probably the Linux vendor software will be free software. You can copy/mimic/bundle whatever they come up with. And it's very hard that it won't be free, they probably linked to GPL libraries.
You can copy it, but that's beside the point. Setting myself up as a Linux distributer to rival Red Hat isn't exactly easily done. There may be a theoretical advantage in that I can create and give away Linux+my program where as I can't do that with Windows. But in practice, if Red Hat choose an alternative program to supply as standard, then I'm still stuffed.
Another reason is: Why would they develop their own software if they can use yours, which is probably free too? And if they don't like the way your software performs, they can modify, release the modifications back to you and the community, thus making it stronger.
You're confusing the issue of the software being open source, and the operating system being open source. You can write open source for a proprietry OS - and if the Watson author was GPL, then Apple would have had the same choice that you say the open source distributer has. But (presumably) he chose not to, and a consequence of that is that Apple has to look elsewhere when they want to include the feature as standard.
Many of his arguments apply to open source OSs also. You're still writing software that supports the "land" owned by someone else (since open source is still owned, unless we're talking public domain operating systems). Open source OSs are often distributed by companies who have a lot of influence - so you're still helping those companies make money, and if those companies choose to supply an alternative program as standard with the distribution which does what yours does, then you're in the same situation as the Watson author. APIs can be broken too.
If you're building for the "Web platform", then you're in trouble if something isn't supported properly by the browser that's used by the vast majority of people; certain companies still unfortunately wield power over web development.
There are some valid points in there (eg, secret APIs), but imo the "sharecropper" analogy applies to everyone except those who wrote the OS they develop for themselves.
Well in theory, that's not really "bandwidth," it's just a number of bytes. The bandwidth would be the maximum sustained throughput. Essentially, how much data could be delivered per second, if there were a constant stream of trucks pulling in, each carrying 11.6TB. Assume the trucks drive bumper-to-bumper, at 60 MPH. Assume each truck is what, 25' long. At 60 MPH it takes about 0.28 second to travel one truck-length. Therefore, the actual bandwidth is 11.8/0.28 = 42.1 TB per second.
The important word being "if". Per truck, the bandwidth is a lot less - if it took a week to reach its destination, then you have more like 19MB/s. I don't know how many trucks they have. Perhaps more than one, but probably not enough to have a constant stream of trucks driving bumper to bumper.
Okay, fair enough if we're talking maximum theoretical bandwidth. But then we can play that same trick with the Internet too - I could say I could get uploads of ~320GB/s if I had 10,000,000 NTL cable connections (which is not really more ridiculous than the 133 trucks per kilometre you would need), but that doesn't mean I can say that the upload bandwidth of cable is 320GB/s.
It doesn't even seem unfair to me to allow others to profit a little from modifications/translations that the author or publisher never intend to produce themselves. (or even if they are too slow to produce it themselves...)
Were they even profiting from it though? The article doesn't seem to mention that they were even doing that.
I think the problem is (or should be) that they have posted a copy of the book, albeit in a different language, which is copyright infringement in much the same sense as if I were to post the original English version. The situation is worse for the publishers/author in that there will be a period of time when people can only obtain it by copying it, and more generally, they lose control over which languages the book will be in. However, the former is due to their incompetence, and the latter is control I don't think they should have - as a result, I don't think that doing a translation without permission should be an additional or greater crime.
As a loose analogy, consider region-encoded DVDs. It ought to be legal, imo (and thankfully still is here in the UK), to provide a tool to allow DVDs to be viewed in different regions. But if someone converted a DVD, and then let others download it for free, that would be copyright infringement under pre-DMCA laws, independant of the encoding issues (hmm for a moment I imagined a scary future where translation tools like babelfish were illegal, since they allowed people to read books in a language that they weren't meant to be read in..)
Perhaps a change to copyright laws should be that distribution should be legal (at least, for non-profit) if it's in a form that allows people to use it when the copyright-owner doesn't make it available in that form (if there are issues with the translation being poor or misleading, then I would say these are more trademark issues, and that the derivative work should be clearly marked as being an alternative not-related-to-the-original version).
The medical community seems to think that everything now days is a disease. Everything must have a cure, or so they say. These doctors cannot even prove that ADD is a real disease caused by some abnormallity in the the body, ovbiously if you give someone Riddlen they are going to concentrate more just look whats in the stuff.
Who said anything about disease?
The article talks about disorders. No one is saying that this means it can be 'caught', or that there is necessarily a physical abnormality in the body. Of course, as the parent article says, some people may be able to cope with this without it being a problem - but then they shouldn't be labelled with having the disorder.
The purpose of giving names to disorders, as I understand it, is to classify behaviours and perhaps help to identify treatment (for those people that can't cope with it, and for those that it is a problem). Arguing whether these disorders really "exist", or arguing what is and isn't normal seems to be beside the point.
And to most folks copying IP without renumeration = stealing.
I'm not sure that's true. Consider the millions who download mp3s, give copied tapes/CDs to friends, and record off the TV or radio to keep - I can't believe that these people group it into the same class of activity as stealing or theft. If they use the term "copyright theft", it's probably more that they're parroting terms they've been fed by music companies and articles such as this, rather than thinking about it and deciding it was comparable to stealing. Yes, it may only be a small group of people who are of the opinion that information should be "free", but everyone else I've come across are either of the opinion that there's nothing wrong with it (either they don't know the law, or they don't care), or they see it as technically illegal, but not something that anyone worries about, and certainly not the same sort of thing as stealing.
Are you saying that the only reason that these millions of people aren't also out ransacking the shops of their goods is because there's a higher risk of being caught? Certainly amongst the people I know, there's also a moral element too; that it could be considered wrong, in more ways, and to a greater degree than can copyright infringement.
So you're a little bit right, in that it is illegal, it should be illegal, and it is arguably immoral.
Is it though, or should it be? I mean, yes, it would certainly be illegal if you were to distribute the photos to other people, but the article seems to talk specifically about people taking photos so they can read it later, without having to buy the magazine.
I thought copyright is to do with distribution, and that it's legal to make copies of information that you obtained legally, as long as you don't distribute that information. Is it "mental shoplifting" if I read an article without paying, and remember the article after I walk out the shop?
Whilst these issues might be problematic for bookstores, I don't see them as morally wrong, and don't see that there should be extra legal protections. If they don't want people reading without buying, they are free to introduce measures such as: shrinkwrapped magazines; searching people and confiscating phones/cameras on entrance; making you sign a contract saying you won't take notes or make copies whilst in the store; having staff on the lookout for people taking photos (or perhaps browsing for too long), and kicking them out. Of course, they'll have to accept the risk that such measures may turn potential customers away also.
It reminds me in a way of places like nightclubs that have no-camera policies for different reasons. I fully respect a business' right to have such a policy, but I'd expect temporary confiscation of camera or at worse being banned if I did that, rather than it being considered illegal and being fined or put in prison.
As far as I understand, german "Urheberrecht" (not quite the same as copyright, more like "author's right") is basically inalienable. You can't just give away or sell your rights.
One consequence of this is that germans cannot put their software or whatever in the public domain
How is this a problem with the GPL?
One consequence of this is that germans cannot put their software or whatever in the public domain (well, they can, but it would involve dying, and even then it takes some years). Another thing I wonder about is the FSF policy of only accepting patches when the author transfers copyright to the FSF (fun question: why is the GPL not good enough for them?). A german developer cannot meaningfully do that. How can they accept contributions from german developers?
No idea, but one question that springs to mind is how do software companies in Germany operate - do software developers employed by companies still retain the copyright to what they write?
What's the worst that can happen if the GPL is held legally unenforceable?? Companies like MS can steal GNU / Linux code and put it in their kernels?
No. Standard copyright law says that companies like MS aren't allowed to distribute software based on people's code, whether or not they distribute the source code of their changes with it.
The question of whether this part of the GPL is enforceable or not seems irrelevant given that the law offers stronger protection by default. However, this article seems to be more concerned with issues of liability.
Quite easily: "John Mills goes to Hogwarts", or "John Mills goes to Wizard School" and a critic in a newspaper (e-zine, the front cover, whatever) mentions its similarity to Harry Potter.
But a reviewer could do this even in cases where there were enough differences that it shouldn't be considered copyright infringement. It's fairly common for reviewers to mention similarities or references to other books.
For someone reading the review, there's a difference between "This is rather similar to Harry Potter", and "This is the new Harry Potter book".
So you should be able to write a Harry Potter novel, using in your favour the huge success of JK Rowling's work to boost the acceptability and profit potential of your derivative? Do you really think JKR should have to suffer a loss of sales when someone reads your miserable derivative and decides that they don't really like Harry Potter?
But if we're talking about a book that doesn't use any of the same names, and is just with similar settings, characters and storylines, then I don't see how such a book would be able to ride off the success of Harry Potter. People would have to read the book to find that out. People who read the book and decided it was poor wouldn't think that another, different book would be poor, unless it said it was a Harry Potter book.
It is illegal to freely provide such a close imitaion of a retail game, no matter how low-quality you can make it.
Really? Can you provide any evidence for this - because I'm sure this is not the case. Admittedly I haven't played the games so I don't know how close they are, but the games market is full of clones (from space invader clones to FPS clones). The only possible issue here is trademark infringement (consider Civilization versus Call To Power - similar games, and the only possible dispute was over the trademark "Civilization", which was settled, I believe on the basis that neither Microprose nor Activision owned the trademark, since Avalon Hill had earlier produced a board game with the same name).
As long as trademarks aren't infringed, and artwork isn't taken, there shouldn't be a problem. The only other possible issues are patents. I'm not aware that "game dynamics" can be patented or copyrighted.
As for the Word analogy, what about someone else who writes a word processor, but implements features that Word had? Are you saying that would be illegal, even if the features weren't patented, and they didn't infringe on trademarks?
That's like saying that you arn't infringing on ford's patent by selling fords without paint.
Since when did Blizzard own a patent on Warcraft-style games?
I don't see how Ford could stop other people from making cars, just because it was possible to paint them with Ford paint. If they were selling them as "Thord Cars", then perhaps they would have a case..
AWeb-II is Opera fast and then some, wayyyy too old (seems like no JavaScript support), and about as ugly as IBrowse. I never tried the Amiga ports of Lynx, but the gui browsers were all shareware.
No, AWeb is now free and open source (the licence is similar to the GPL I believe). I couldn't find it on Aminet, but you can download it from the website.
Also it appears to have some Javascript support (don't know how good it is though).
That would only work if there was a monopoly on image editing applications. Otherwise, if one company tried to pocket the savings, another would undercut that company and take all its customers.
And then the first company would have to lower its prices, and both companies would have lost out. In an oligopolistic market, one company is unlikely to reduce its long term profits just for a short term gain in customers.
The FAQ has just been updated to say "680X0+ CPU" instead of "68030 CPU". Which this change, the described minimum requires seem reasonable.
Don't you think that those donating money are doing so because they feel it will be useful to them? Who are you to decide how other people should spend their money - you are free to donate your money to causes that you feel are more worthy.
Platforms such as Windows and MacOS get billions spent on them, whilst platforms such as BeOS and AmigaOS go stagnant.
A: Well that will depend a lot on the programming team that tackles the port and their skillset but the spec I would like to see is Amiga OS 3.9 and above and/or WinUAE/Amiga Forever/Amithlon/AROS/MorphOS. 68030+ CPU, faster the better, 24 bit Graphics card, 32MB of RAM. I would also like the coders to try hard to make it work with AGA.
First of all, it says this is only what he would like, and doesn't seem to be a requirement to collect the money.
A 68030 may be unreasonably slow, but it would still work. Even if an '060 is too slow for a 68k version to be worthwhile, it would be fast enough on Amithlon. Once you've made the effort to make a 68k version, compiling an '030 isn't really any extra effort. Minimum CPU requirements above a 68020 aren't so common on the Amiga (I don't know whether that's because there's little speed advantage on doing so with 68k versus x86, or not) - so just because there's a theoretical minimum CPU of an '030, that's not the same as a recommended minimum.
32MB RAM may be a problem, but it may still be possible. Windows 2000 reports here that Mozilla takes up about ~23MB (eg, viewing this very article), and AmigaOS only takes up a few MBs for itself. OS-friendly applications should really care whether they're running on a graphics card or AGA or whatever, and I don't see that running in 256 colours is much of a problem.
Duh. The original post about the 8MHz amiga is correct...'cause you can't run jack shit on the 'new amiga'. Hah.
He may be wrong to mention the AmigaOne, but the original post was still wrong. First of all, no one cares about 8MHz A500s since the OS and software runs quite happily on Amigas with CPUs up to a 66MHz 68060. Secondly, it could utilise PPC accelerators that Amigas can have (up to a 233MHz 604). Thirdly, MorphOS (an Amiga compatible OS, which is also a valid target for this prize) runs on the Pegasos which comes with a 600MHz G3. Lastly, one could point out Amithlon which runs AmigaOS on a PC at speeds far greater than any 68060 Amiga.
The first of these would probably still be slow for Mozilla, but the rest should run it fine I would have thought.
No offense, but this would pay for about 10 days of a junior developer's time.
And much money do the guys porting Mozilla to other platforms receive?
This is open source. Of course, the amount of money isn't going to attract someone who is looking to do programming for commercial gain, but I don't see that anyone is claiming it is. $4000 is a lot more than the $0 that is up for offer by default on open source projects.
The idea is that if someone is perhaps tempted to port it (be it for fun, or whatever else drives people to write software for free), then the cash is a little extra incentive.
Who still cares about BeOS?
Who still cares about, say, MacOS? I was never able to use MacOS on my 'puters, since none of my hardware was supported, and, once I started using Windows, I never looked back. So what makes MacOS so special?
Well, you get the idea. This question seems to come up at every BeOS (and Amiga, come to that) article, but I never bother to ask the question on every Apple article, even though it applies just as much to me.
As to graphics hardware not being supported, I guess this is sadly a problem with all non Windows OSs (eg, several Linux distributions I've tried have all had trouble with my graphics card - sort of working, but displaying flickering pixels).
I like the way that BeOS is extremely good at recognising the hardware it does support - it seems to install the drivers it needs transparently and quickly. It doesn't throw a wobbly and spend ages reinstalling stuff when I upgrade the motherboard.
Could it be used as an offensive weapon? Yes, sure. Baseball bats can be used as offensive weapons. So can tire irons. Neither are illegal to carry
But baseball bats and irons have primary uses other than causing harm to people. This jacket on the other hand is designed to cause harm. True, it's not as bad as guns in that it would be harder to use offensively, but I don't think it's analogous to a baseball bat or iron. You could argue that most guys and girls carrying a stun gun aren't going to be a problem.
Also I don't agree that preventing men from using it means it won't be used offensively!
That assumes that this is possible, which is just as much an assumption (i.e. an unproven statement, scientifically speaking, and probably unprovable) as my belief that one exists.
But are we talking about belief, or what is actually true? I read your definition of religion to be about how one viewed one's relationship, or what one believed one's relationship with a higher power to be - in which case, an atheist has no such relationship.
If you're saying that it's what the relationship really is, then I find this to be a strange definition of religion. In particular, what you say about it being an assumption that there is no relationship applies to anyone - how can anyone, be they Christians, Sikhs, Pagans, or some completely different religion, show that what they believe about their relationship with "the higher power" is correct?