I thought gp was asserting that the GPL3 restricts the freedom of developers to develop DRM code and the freedom of users to use such code. If speech/ideas want to be "Free", then surely DRM speech needs to be "Free" too.
Seems reasonable to me.
DRM isn't about user freedom, anyway. It's about the creator being able to control and grant rights to work she has created.
..gets its name from the Poem of the same name by "Dub Poet", Linton Kwesi Johnson.
He generally speaks poetry in Jamacan Patois over dubbed reggae beats. He was an activist in the 1980s in England, when there was a lot of racial unrest, but he's mellowed out recently. His stuff is on iTunes.
The chorus is;
"Facists on de attack, noh bodder worry about dat, facists on de attack, we will counter attack, facists on de attack den we will fight dem back, facists on de attack, den we will drive dem back"
This is so typical of slashdot. I tried to skim read the comments to get a sense of the discussion, and I come across this. I'm not even going to bother trying to imagine how we got from Richard Stallman and GPL3 to the Torah and killing. I think I'll move along now.
Jobs and Apple, have it right - for now.
on
Jobs Unfazed by Zune
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It takes forever,' he says in the article. 'By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.'"
This kind of common sense thinking demonstrates why Apple are still so far ahead of their competitors - even when equivalent music players offer more, on paper, than the iPod equivalent at a similar price point.
The technology is always hidden behind the usability and is only included if it's absolutely necessary. That's a good enough reason for me to continue buying iPods.
Explain how warehousing a worthless lump of living flesh is good for anything?
That's the point. Prison ought to be about punishment and rehabilitation. However, if the State sees the offender as "a worthless lump of living flesh" then there's not likely to be any effort to rehabilitate, is there now?
As for Capital punishment always being wrong - it has to be. You can split hairs over legal definitions of murder, homicide, manslaughter etc but the bottom line is, if the action of killing a human being is morally wrong, how is it morally right for you (or the State in your name) to kill the killer?
And don't try telling me that there is no moral basis to homicide law.
What, so Mr.Reiser (alledgedly) killed his wife "for fun" now, is it?
You're beginnning to sound like a total wally now.
There are plenty of killers out there - in the armed forces, in the police services, executioners etc - it's not as uncommon as you seem to think. Legal killers wouldn't necessary class themselves as psychopaths lacking empathy, but that doesn't make what they do morally right in my opinion.
Whe it comes to DRM, I'm not entirely of the opinion that DRM is entirely a Bad Thing(tm). I think that in Apples case, there's enough in the product to ensure that a person using it has fair use. i.e. in iTunes, you can burn your songs to a traditional CD format which can then be ripped to anything you like.
I think it's not so much the DRM which is bad, it's the way it's being used and the people who are using it. For instance in Napsters case, I believe DRM is being used to enforce a subscription model where the user never owns the music they download and loses it as soon as they stop subscribing. Then there's the RIAA and the MPAA who see DRM as a tool which they can use to control the one channel of distribution that they currently don't fully control (the internet) so that they can continue to take advantage of artists and consumers.
I think that Apple have always used software to sell their hardware and if iTunes were to start selling vanilla MP3s iPod sales would, inevitably, take a hit. So they've arrived at the happy medium - just enough DRM to package the iPod product with the iTunes service into a Solution (I'm pwning the marketing-speak!) without completely removing the right to own the music and to make copies of it.
I think this is a trend that we'll have to get used to. When someone realises that they're in a position of power as an intermidary, they can, and often do, play both ends against each other for their own profit. It's a model employed by super-markets and record companies, price fixing by controlling supply and demand.
ISPs already employ charging models based on usage per month for their customers(consumers), charging (content)suppliers based on usage is trivial for them.
I don't agree at all. The Labour party is in power still due to the charisma of their current leader and the incompetence of the Tories and the Liberals. As for the economy going well, the jury is still out. Massive public spending pledges, record levels of personal debt, stratospheric house prices and interest rates creeping up are not a good mix.
Offshoring: Carried out mainly for cost savings. Usually the qualified UK staff are made redundant first. Won't name names.
BTW the dole thing was a joke, but it may not be in a few years time...
I live in Southeastern Connecticut, home of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos. I visit both regularly, simply because of the restaurants and other offerings. I don't gamble at all. However, I constantly see the people with tattered clothes sitting at the machines, the mother with her 6 year old sleeping on the carpet next to her at 2 AM. I see the signs mounted on all the pay phones with the free # for the gambling addiction hotline... which are there only after lobbying pressured them
Yes, but if I understand correctly, you're speaking of off-line (traditional) gambling, which has not been banned. I would have thought that the poorer people, the less well educated etc wouldn't be the types who are going to benefit from this ban, because they're far more likely to be frequenting establishments like the one you describe.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think there's a deeper political motive at work. I don't know what it is, but I'm reasonably certain that the US government doesn't have its citizens best interests at heart here.
The problem is of course, is there ANYTHING productive left for US and other western societies to do
er..watching 5 billion channels of $#!+ on television, eating burgers and drinking "pop"? That's the US. In the UK, everyone can productively go on the dole...
Exactly. This so called study is a lot of tosh. There's an implied $0.76 per year decrease, so by now the computer owners are spending $7.83 less than at the start of 2002. (2004 $6.31 2005 $7.07)
Of course, being computer owners, they're probably spending more than $7.07 more per year with iTunes, so it's all moot.
Filesharing isn't damaging CD sales, anyway. The RIAA is.
Funny that. In the same period, I've increased my spend on music (and yet I buy less CDs). Of course, what this is really about is the centre trying to control both ends - the centre being the RIAA and its equivalents attempting to control demand and supply - as they do with physical media now. iTunes is great, but it's time that the music buying public and the music producers realised that they can use the web to deal directly with each other, cutting out the greedy middleman for the benefit of all. Or something.
At the last Apple special event, Steve Jobs was almost bragging about the fact that 70% of new cars sold in the U.S. this year had (optional!) iPod 'integration' available... Obviously, he didn't talk about the rest of the world. But most of all, what Steve didn't tell us is how crappy the existing "integration" solutions actually are!
How is this Apples fault? Not to sound like a fan boy (which I'm not) the point here is that 70% of motor manufacturers selling cars in the US are offering some level of iPod integration. That in itself speaks volumes about the market saturation and mindshare of Apples product, so of course Jobs is going to make a song and dance(pardon the pun) about it. OTOH the fact that the type and quality (for want of a better word) of the integration offering varies from very good to very crap is besides the point.
In principle, yes, it is no bad thing, however in the UK, in practice, measures such as these are often used as a means of raising extra revenue. The local council taxes will not decrease when rubbish collection is paid for directly, rather money will be "freed up" to spend elsewhere.
Why would you care about getting back the same garbage can?
Because in the UK, some of the local councils are now collecting bins every second week instead of every week, so during hot weather, when flies lay their eggs in the rubbish, two weeks is long enough for maggots to breed in the bin. Some people clean their bins or pay a third party to clean and dis-infect the bin following rubbish collection. To then get a dirty bin which is never cleaned can cause a dispute.
All this may be completely unnecessary, after all the US and perhaps other countries have jury trials without worrying that press coverage might influence the jury.
Tell that to that Entwistle guy, the one extradited back to Boston a few months ago. The probability of a jury being selected who know nothing about the case and have not already decided that he's guilty is very slim.
It's good and right that the UK system is the way it is. The OJ trial farce is proof of that if any is needed. Agree with everything you wrote prior to that BTW.
Too right! They're (unwittingly maybe) fighting for oil and the control of massive oil reserves. Democracy and all the rest are just desirable side effects. Or maybe, economic stability and developed infrastructure wiil facilitate the ability to control the oil. Not that I have a problem with that. I just wish the politicos would be upfront and honest about what they're trying to achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
Welcome to the Googlepshere... resistance is futile... but at least we dont have chairs.
And neither do we have Steve Ballmer to throw them...
I thought gp was asserting that the GPL3 restricts the freedom of developers to develop DRM code and the freedom of users to use such code. If speech/ideas want to be "Free", then surely DRM speech needs to be "Free" too.
Seems reasonable to me.
DRM isn't about user freedom, anyway. It's about the creator being able to control and grant rights to work she has created.
..gets its name from the Poem of the same name by "Dub Poet", Linton Kwesi Johnson.
He generally speaks poetry in Jamacan Patois over dubbed reggae beats. He was an activist in the 1980s in England, when there was a lot of racial unrest, but he's mellowed out recently. His stuff is on iTunes.
The chorus is;
"Facists on de attack, noh bodder worry about dat,
facists on de attack, we will counter attack,
facists on de attack den we will fight dem back,
facists on de attack, den we will drive dem back"
Got it, posting from it, loving it.
This is the second new browser in 24 hours - I got IE7 yesterday and that's been a vast improvement over IE6.
Gotta say, the current state of browsing is due entirely to pressure from Firefox and Opera.
I remember when firefox was Phoenix, and then Firebird - when Netscape/Mozilla was going so badly wrong.
Wait - didn't Netscape make a customised version of firefox the official Netscape a while back?
OK, I'm babbling after a beering. Opera - love it. Firefox - love it. IE7 like it.
Arse Biscuits?
This is so typical of slashdot. I tried to skim read the comments to get a sense of the discussion, and I come across this. I'm not even going to bother trying to imagine how we got from Richard Stallman and GPL3 to the Torah and killing. I think I'll move along now.
It takes forever,' he says in the article. 'By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.'"
This kind of common sense thinking demonstrates why Apple are still so far ahead of their competitors - even when equivalent music players offer more, on paper, than the iPod equivalent at a similar price point.
The technology is always hidden behind the usability and is only included if it's absolutely necessary. That's a good enough reason for me to continue buying iPods.
Love your sig. Really made me laugh.
The tone of the web is going to be lowered...
Explain how warehousing a worthless lump of living flesh is good for anything?
That's the point. Prison ought to be about punishment and rehabilitation. However, if the State sees the offender as "a worthless lump of living flesh" then there's not likely to be any effort to rehabilitate, is there now?
As for Capital punishment always being wrong - it has to be. You can split hairs over legal definitions of murder, homicide, manslaughter etc but the bottom line is, if the action of killing a human being is morally wrong, how is it morally right for you (or the State in your name) to kill the killer?
And don't try telling me that there is no moral basis to homicide law.
What, so Mr.Reiser (alledgedly) killed his wife "for fun" now, is it?
You're beginnning to sound like a total wally now.
There are plenty of killers out there - in the armed forces, in the police services, executioners etc - it's not as uncommon as you seem to think. Legal killers wouldn't necessary class themselves as psychopaths lacking empathy, but that doesn't make what they do morally right in my opinion.
...try running Doom3 on a 386sx with 1MB of RAM
...let DUKE NUKEM sort 'em out!!
Whe it comes to DRM, I'm not entirely of the opinion that DRM is entirely a Bad Thing(tm). I think that in Apples case, there's enough in the product to ensure that a person using it has fair use. i.e. in iTunes, you can burn your songs to a traditional CD format which can then be ripped to anything you like.
I think it's not so much the DRM which is bad, it's the way it's being used and the people who are using it. For instance in Napsters case, I believe DRM is being used to enforce a subscription model where the user never owns the music they download and loses it as soon as they stop subscribing. Then there's the RIAA and the MPAA who see DRM as a tool which they can use to control the one channel of distribution that they currently don't fully control (the internet) so that they can continue to take advantage of artists and consumers.
I think that Apple have always used software to sell their hardware and if iTunes were to start selling vanilla MP3s iPod sales would, inevitably, take a hit. So they've arrived at the happy medium - just enough DRM to package the iPod product with the iTunes service into a Solution (I'm pwning the marketing-speak!) without completely removing the right to own the music and to make copies of it.
I think this is a trend that we'll have to get used to. When someone realises that they're in a position of power as an intermidary, they can, and often do, play both ends against each other for their own profit. It's a model employed by super-markets and record companies, price fixing by controlling supply and demand.
ISPs already employ charging models based on usage per month for their customers(consumers), charging (content)suppliers based on usage is trivial for them.
I don't agree at all. The Labour party is in power still due to the charisma of their current leader and the incompetence of the Tories and the Liberals. As for the economy going well, the jury is still out. Massive public spending pledges, record levels of personal debt, stratospheric house prices and interest rates creeping up are not a good mix.
Offshoring: Carried out mainly for cost savings. Usually the qualified UK staff are made redundant first. Won't name names.
BTW the dole thing was a joke, but it may not be in a few years time...
I live in Southeastern Connecticut, home of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos. I visit both regularly, simply because of the restaurants and other offerings. I don't gamble at all. However, I constantly see the people with tattered clothes sitting at the machines, the mother with her 6 year old sleeping on the carpet next to her at 2 AM. I see the signs mounted on all the pay phones with the free # for the gambling addiction hotline... which are there only after lobbying pressured them
Yes, but if I understand correctly, you're speaking of off-line (traditional) gambling, which has not been banned. I would have thought that the poorer people, the less well educated etc wouldn't be the types who are going to benefit from this ban, because they're far more likely to be frequenting establishments like the one you describe.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think there's a deeper political motive at work. I don't know what it is, but I'm reasonably certain that the US government doesn't have its citizens best interests at heart here.
The problem is of course, is there ANYTHING productive left for US and other western societies to do
er..watching 5 billion channels of $#!+ on television, eating burgers and drinking "pop"? That's the US. In the UK, everyone can productively go on the dole...
Exactly. This so called study is a lot of tosh. There's an implied $0.76 per year decrease, so by now the computer owners are spending $7.83 less than at the start of 2002. (2004 $6.31 2005 $7.07) Of course, being computer owners, they're probably spending more than $7.07 more per year with iTunes, so it's all moot. Filesharing isn't damaging CD sales, anyway. The RIAA is.
Funny that. In the same period, I've increased my spend on music (and yet I buy less CDs). Of course, what this is really about is the centre trying to control both ends - the centre being the RIAA and its equivalents attempting to control demand and supply - as they do with physical media now. iTunes is great, but it's time that the music buying public and the music producers realised that they can use the web to deal directly with each other, cutting out the greedy middleman for the benefit of all. Or something.
At the last Apple special event, Steve Jobs was almost bragging about the fact that 70% of new cars sold in the U.S. this year had (optional!) iPod 'integration' available ... Obviously, he didn't talk about the rest of the world. But most of all, what Steve didn't tell us is how crappy the existing "integration" solutions actually are!
How is this Apples fault? Not to sound like a fan boy (which I'm not) the point here is that 70% of motor manufacturers selling cars in the US are offering some level of iPod integration. That in itself speaks volumes about the market saturation and mindshare of Apples product, so of course Jobs is going to make a song and dance(pardon the pun) about it. OTOH the fact that the type and quality (for want of a better word) of the integration offering varies from very good to very crap is besides the point.
It is not a bad thing, in principle.
In principle, yes, it is no bad thing, however in the UK, in practice, measures such as these are often used as a means of raising extra revenue. The local council taxes will not decrease when rubbish collection is paid for directly, rather money will be "freed up" to spend elsewhere.
Why would you care about getting back the same garbage can?
Because in the UK, some of the local councils are now collecting bins every second week instead of every week, so during hot weather, when flies lay their eggs in the rubbish, two weeks is long enough for maggots to breed in the bin. Some people clean their bins or pay a third party to clean and dis-infect the bin following rubbish collection. To then get a dirty bin which is never cleaned can cause a dispute.
All this may be completely unnecessary, after all the US and perhaps other countries have jury trials without worrying that press coverage might influence the jury.
Tell that to that Entwistle guy, the one extradited back to Boston a few months ago. The probability of a jury being selected who know nothing about the case and have not already decided that he's guilty is very slim.
It's good and right that the UK system is the way it is. The OJ trial farce is proof of that if any is needed.
Agree with everything you wrote prior to that BTW.
Our troops aren't just fighting for Democracy
Too right! They're (unwittingly maybe) fighting for oil and the control of massive oil reserves. Democracy and all the rest are just desirable side effects. Or maybe, economic stability and developed infrastructure wiil facilitate the ability to control the oil. Not that I have a problem with that. I just wish the politicos would be upfront and honest about what they're trying to achieve.