It's far better to express our dislike for such restrictions by getting the law changed so that such restrictions become impossible.
Fine! I agree! I want the law changed too! But that doesn't mean I should go around sacrificing my integrity and honesty by willfully violating the terms to which I voluntarily accepted. If you're serious about opposing the DMCA and other DRM laws, then vote with your dollar AND speak to your representatives. Visit them. Or better yet, run for office yourself! Contribute to the EFF. But don't go around clicking "I Accept" and then ripping off companies. That won't help the situation.
The TOS here may be moot because of the fair use laws.
There are no fair use laws. There are court precedents which may give your case some merit, but there is no law which gives you this right. Your best shot is the 1984 Sony Betamax decision which allows for time-shifting and location-shifting. However, seeing that you agreed to the TOS and EULA for Apple iTunes and seeing that other alternatives do indeed exist for legally purchasing the music you would rather listen to elsewhere (ie- buy a CD), I don't think you'll find the courts will easily agree to your complaint.
The TOS here may be moot because of the fair use laws.
Unless I choose to bind myself - explicitly - to societies laws I also have the freedom to act in my own interests even when it flies in the face of those laws.
You explicity agree to those laws by taking advantage of the priviledges offered to you by said society. If you don't agree with them, leave the society. Then you'll be free. Right now you're a freeloader.
Try and take away my freedom - you can arrest me, imprison me, and perhaps even kill me. But I will always die a free man with a free mind.
Yes, you always have freedom of choice. This is true in an dictatorship or an anarchary. The consequences of the choice will vary however and you are not free of consequences. That is, when you make a choice you make a decision to accept those consequences. So back on topic, in the case of this Apple DRM, by clicking "I Agree" on the EULA, I am agreeing to the consequences of the license. If I don't agree then I should have the integrity to make my stand there.
I'll continue to purchase music from iTMS. I'll continue to use PlayFair. I'll continue to pay for my music and get the use out of it that I am entitled to.
For the last time, you are NOT entitled to play music purchased from iTMS anywhere or anyhow you want. If you don't like it, don't purchase your music there. But this is a clear violation of iTMS's terms of service and use. So if you use *Apple's* system then *they* get to set the rules. Don't like it? Fine. Buy music elsewhere where you like the rules, but don't go into their store and complain and break their rules!
If it is fair use for my ripped music, it should be fair use for my protected music as well. I don't understand the distinction.
So just because you don't understand it you're going to violate the terms of an agreement that you made when using their service? Good to know you're an honest and trustworthy individual. If you really cared about making a statement you wouldn't have agreed to the terms in the beginning. You're trying to have you cake and eat it too. Make up your mind.
The only law I'm breaking is the DMCA, and my karma (the karma that Jobs refers to) will be just fine, because the DMCA is a bad law that I'm convinced will eventually be struck down. To say that I have fair use of my music, but that I can't use the tools to get that fair use is to say that I don't have fair use at all.
You have no clue about civil disobedience. Moreover, it's individuals like yourself and most of the rest of slashdot apparently who are giving a bad name to those who are trying to change the laws.
It seems that European privacy law is much more strict than US law, and by retaining a subscriber's email even after they have deleted it or cancelled their account Google is breaking those laws.
Cool. Looks like the rest of us won't have to compete with all the Europeans for cool gmail addresses.:)
Another option is that gmail just won't be available in Europe.
Though, you have to check out the results for "Yes, No, Maybe". If you've read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll know what so funny about the results.:)
Sure you can. The GPL does not require that you *RELEASE* your software to the rest of the world.
Hmmm... Thinking about that one...
Yes, you don't have to release to the rest of the world, but you have to release to your internal users, right? And by the GPL you cannot restrict your users from redistributing the software. Sure, they may be your employees, but technically you'd be violating the GPL by telling them they could not release the software to others.
Now, most internal software has limited if any use outside the company in question, expect for some cases where such software might contain trade secrets or other information that a competitor might profit from. Thus releasing internal software under the GPL may very well negate ones claim to those trade secrets because now your license says anyone can have them and distribute them.
So, you end up with some disgruntled employee. He takes your software and sends a CD with source code to your competitor. Well now you're in a bind. First this probably violates some contract the employee signed. However, such a restriction probably violates the GPL, meaning you either need to rewrite your software or comply and in either case may loose some "effectively" propietary information in the process.
Long story short -- I wouldn't use the GPL for internal development unless you would have no problems releasing it into the wild anyway.
The point of free software is to provide a common base from which all people can profit.
Uh, the point is they (Mozilla) wanted to use a license which allowed users to have access to the source code. Anything above and beyond that is reading into the motives of the developers (in this case, originally the Netscape company) and supposing all open source developers have some sort of unified altruistic mission. There is no single open source movement. Open Source describes a licensing scheme and, perhaps, to a degree a programming methodology (though that's a stretch). Thus each organization or company which releases software under an open source license can do so for many reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean they do it to "provide a common base" or that "all people can profit."
Some organizations and individuals have made Open Source into a sort of social-political movement. The foremost of these is the FSF. But not everyone agrees with them, nor needs to.
Read the GNU Manifesto... the goal is to have software available for free.
Mozilla does not use the GPL. It uses the MPL which is very different. Additionally, Mozilla is not part of the FSF, is not "free software" in this sense, and can have completely different goals from the rest of the so-called open source movement.
The first mistake most people make when evalutating open source software or the individuals and organizations which produce such software is to assume there exists a united effort with a single goal. Such a case is just about as likely as all humanity having a common purpose and single goal.
By the way, this reminds me of the recent article on Domain Specific Languages over on Martin Foweler's website. Another aspect of programming worth investigating.
Some can quite well actually. But I'll get to that in a second.
First off, we need to make the distinction between "theology" and "belief." A particular theology may not survive this sort of revealation, but in most cases that just means it will adapt. Most major religions of today have gone through huge adjustments and adaptions. This will just simply be another one.
Secondly, beliefs die hard. The fact that one's religious belief is based on faith and not evidence means that in most case no amount of evidence is going to shake a strong belief, especially if one is determined to hold it no matter what. So if this is the "end" of someone's faith, well, such an individual was bound to drop that faith at some point anyway.
Finally, there are many religions in the world in which this sort of discovery will not contridict their core theology and beliefs at all. In fact, to some, it may validate it. So don't be so quick to announce the end of religion. It has survived much and will continue to do so.
Did you read the most recent ASF position on this? The matter is due to a misunderstanding how patents work under the ASL versus how they work under the GPL. The matter will probably not be completely resolved until there is a better understanding of software patents and/or a court case involving patents and these open source license.
One important point: GPL-compatibility was not the only "justification for the new license" by a long shot. That was one of many goals, but not the main point of the license.
So, there has been progress on this issue, but it's not as clear cut as you make it out.
However, if you're some relatively unknown open source developer, you'll have an easier time getting others to adopt your software if it's under a standard OSI compliant license and not a modified license which is what projects using ASL 1.1 like licenses had to do. Of course, you could have just used a different license from the beginning, but the point is, the ASF recognized this problem and solved it (among many other things) in the 2.0 license.
One of the major advantages of the ASL 2.0 is that it is now easier for non-ASF projects to use the ASL. Previously you had to use an ASL-like license because unless you wanted to assign your copyright to the ASF you needed to adjust the wording of the license to include your name and your organization. The new license removes that information from the license itself and instead places it in a NOTICE file. This allows other open source projects to take advantage of the ASL and use it for their own organization.
While the ASL 2.0 is longer than the ASL 1.1, it's worth a read. A lot of effort was made to make this an easy license to adopt and use. If you're currently using a MIT or BSD style license, you may want to consider the new ASL 2.0.
They should. If nothing else it eliminates all of those Unix accounts they have to maintain. And it would probably decrease bandwidth. SF's CVS server can get bogged down at times.
The ASF has some projects using SVN and will probably move all of them over at some point.
Okay, I haven't yet RTFA but I do have a couple of comments. I went from Palm (a Palm III, then a Handspring Visor) over to a Zaurus and now back to Palm with my new Treo 600.
First off, I loved my Zaurus. Still do. I was a college student and it was like having a small laptop with me at all times. I could jump on WiFi networks, play games, listen to music, whatever. What I couldn't do very well was use the Zaurus as an organizer. Sync support varied and was often horrible for Linux. The standard PIM apps were poor and everyone knows it. It was great having tons of free software and even new operating systems to play around with (Opie and OpenZaurus were great), but the Zaurus ended up just being another hobby and toy, not a tool that I could consistently use and rely on.
I went back to a Palm and the Treo600 because I wanted something that would just work. I work on plenty of other open source software. I wanted something that did it's job well and the Treo is amazing. It doesn't have quite the power of the Zaurus or even the screen resolution, but I'm using it as an organizer more than I ever used the Zaurus.
So in the end, I personally think that open source PDA software is still only appropriate for a small niche of technically savvy users. There's nothing wrong with that, but I know when my sister asks me about a PDA for medical school, I'll be suggesting a Palm, not a Zaurus or other open source system.
I have PS2, never had a PS1, but I have several PS1 games: Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Metal Gear.... Sure, a PS1 is so cheap now that it's not a big deal, but why clutter up my space with an extra console? Moreover, backwards compatibility helps a new system during those early months when there just aren't very many games out for it yet. And I don't understand why everyone is forgetting about the GameBoy -- a bastion of backwards compatibility and a feature which is certainly a selling point.
It completely depends on the functionality you're trying to achieve. One of my favorite applications is konqueror. I don't care much for the rest of KDE (no offense), but I love konqueror. I wish I could run it natively on windows (which I have to use at work) but I sometimes run it through cygwin simply because it's a better browser. And it browsers EVERYTHING. It's probably a bit too much of a "power tool" for the average user, but for me, it's great. Of course, this is coming from someone who prefers emacs over just about everything else too.:)
Why are there not more savvy people in higher places?
Because savvy people avoid the temptation of higher places. They're happy coding, studying, exploring, inventing, and recognize that getting involved would mean sacrificing much, if not all, of that. There are some "savvy" individuals who feel driven enough to put aside personal pleasures and take up a cause, but often they feel that in the end, it's not worth it. Let the idiots who crave power, fame, wealth or whatever waste their lives in petty politics and schemes. The savvy are often savvy enough to just not play those games.
That's not to say it's morally right or wrong to get involved. It's a choice about how one wishes to live life and contribute. But you'll often know a good leader by the one who turns down the offer. I'm in an organization right now in which the current leader is stepping down and finding a new one is hard. Everyone who is truly qualified doesn't really want the responsibility or trouble. A savvy individual who is willing to play the game of "higher places" is rare indeed.
There's plenty of portable DVD players. But you're right, they need to drop the price point or otherwise you might was well buy a laptop. If these players had firewire and optical out, I'd be a little more inclined to consider one.
That is the point of Open Source. If you start requiring companies to give a donation, then whats the point? They will use M$, most don't care if they have the source code or not, they just ask does it work, and what is it gonna cost? I cannot believe this was even brought up.
Exactly! This is completely a non-issue. If open source projects want companies or individuals using their software to contribute back, then they should release it under a different license agreement. I release all my software under ASF or BSD licenses and I don't expect anything back. If I did, I would charge for the software, or include some sort of license that required contribution for source code access, or something. But if these companies are abiding by the licenses then who cares if they contribute anything more. They certainly don't need to.
Slashdot Mirror
It's far better to express our dislike for such restrictions by getting the law changed so that such restrictions become impossible.
Fine! I agree! I want the law changed too! But that doesn't mean I should go around sacrificing my integrity and honesty by willfully violating the terms to which I voluntarily accepted. If you're serious about opposing the DMCA and other DRM laws, then vote with your dollar AND speak to your representatives. Visit them. Or better yet, run for office yourself! Contribute to the EFF. But don't go around clicking "I Accept" and then ripping off companies. That won't help the situation.
The TOS here may be moot because of the fair use laws.
There are no fair use laws. There are court precedents which may give your case some merit, but there is no law which gives you this right. Your best shot is the 1984 Sony Betamax decision which allows for time-shifting and location-shifting. However, seeing that you agreed to the TOS and EULA for Apple iTunes and seeing that other alternatives do indeed exist for legally purchasing the music you would rather listen to elsewhere (ie- buy a CD), I don't think you'll find the courts will easily agree to your complaint.
The TOS here may be moot because of the fair use laws.
Then sue Apple and take it to the courts.
Unless I choose to bind myself - explicitly - to societies laws I also have the freedom to act in my own interests even when it flies in the face of those laws.
You explicity agree to those laws by taking advantage of the priviledges offered to you by said society. If you don't agree with them, leave the society. Then you'll be free. Right now you're a freeloader .
Try and take away my freedom - you can arrest me, imprison me, and perhaps even kill me. But I will always die a free man with a free mind.
Yes, you always have freedom of choice. This is true in an dictatorship or an anarchary. The consequences of the choice will vary however and you are not free of consequences. That is, when you make a choice you make a decision to accept those consequences. So back on topic, in the case of this Apple DRM, by clicking "I Agree" on the EULA, I am agreeing to the consequences of the license. If I don't agree then I should have the integrity to make my stand there.
Since the agreement makes outrageous restrictions
Give me one example of an outrageous restriction.
Yes you are. How dare Apple try to meddle in what you do in your own house.
Look, it's simple: If you don't like the restrictions, DON'T BUY IT. That means if you don't like the Microsoft EULA's then DON'T BUY THEM.
I'll continue to purchase music from iTMS. I'll continue to use PlayFair. I'll continue to pay for my music and get the use out of it that I am entitled to.
For the last time, you are NOT entitled to play music purchased from iTMS anywhere or anyhow you want . If you don't like it, don't purchase your music there. But this is a clear violation of iTMS's terms of service and use. So if you use *Apple's* system then *they* get to set the rules. Don't like it? Fine. Buy music elsewhere where you like the rules, but don't go into their store and complain and break their rules!
If it is fair use for my ripped music, it should be fair use for my protected music as well. I don't understand the distinction.
So just because you don't understand it you're going to violate the terms of an agreement that you made when using their service? Good to know you're an honest and trustworthy individual. If you really cared about making a statement you wouldn't have agreed to the terms in the beginning. You're trying to have you cake and eat it too. Make up your mind.
The only law I'm breaking is the DMCA, and my karma (the karma that Jobs refers to) will be just fine, because the DMCA is a bad law that I'm convinced will eventually be struck down. To say that I have fair use of my music, but that I can't use the tools to get that fair use is to say that I don't have fair use at all.
You have no clue about civil disobedience. Moreover, it's individuals like yourself and most of the rest of slashdot apparently who are giving a bad name to those who are trying to change the laws.
It seems that European privacy law is much more strict than US law, and by retaining a subscriber's email even after they have deleted it or cancelled their account Google is breaking those laws.
:)
Cool. Looks like the rest of us won't have to compete with all the Europeans for cool gmail addresses.
Another option is that gmail just won't be available in Europe.
Sun is scared to open-source Java because the "zealots" will end up turning it into LISP.
:)
They've already turned it into SmallTalk/Ruby: Groovy.
what they need is a new section 'google mailing lists'
You mean like The Mail Archive or MARC?
Or if you like a newsgroup view of mailing lists there is always Gmane
Google Sets rocks.
:)
Though, you have to check out the results for "Yes, No, Maybe". If you've read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll know what so funny about the results.
Sure you can. The GPL does not require that you *RELEASE* your software to the rest of the world.
Hmmm... Thinking about that one...
Yes, you don't have to release to the rest of the world, but you have to release to your internal users, right? And by the GPL you cannot restrict your users from redistributing the software. Sure, they may be your employees, but technically you'd be violating the GPL by telling them they could not release the software to others.
Now, most internal software has limited if any use outside the company in question, expect for some cases where such software might contain trade secrets or other information that a competitor might profit from. Thus releasing internal software under the GPL may very well negate ones claim to those trade secrets because now your license says anyone can have them and distribute them.
So, you end up with some disgruntled employee. He takes your software and sends a CD with source code to your competitor. Well now you're in a bind. First this probably violates some contract the employee signed. However, such a restriction probably violates the GPL, meaning you either need to rewrite your software or comply and in either case may loose some "effectively" propietary information in the process.
Long story short -- I wouldn't use the GPL for internal development unless you would have no problems releasing it into the wild anyway.
The point of free software is to provide a common base from which all people can profit.
Uh, the point is they (Mozilla) wanted to use a license which allowed users to have access to the source code. Anything above and beyond that is reading into the motives of the developers (in this case, originally the Netscape company) and supposing all open source developers have some sort of unified altruistic mission. There is no single open source movement. Open Source describes a licensing scheme and, perhaps, to a degree a programming methodology (though that's a stretch). Thus each organization or company which releases software under an open source license can do so for many reasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean they do it to "provide a common base" or that "all people can profit."
Some organizations and individuals have made Open Source into a sort of social-political movement. The foremost of these is the FSF. But not everyone agrees with them, nor needs to.
Read the GNU Manifesto... the goal is to have software available for free.
Mozilla does not use the GPL. It uses the MPL which is very different. Additionally, Mozilla is not part of the FSF, is not "free software" in this sense, and can have completely different goals from the rest of the so-called open source movement.
The first mistake most people make when evalutating open source software or the individuals and organizations which produce such software is to assume there exists a united effort with a single goal. Such a case is just about as likely as all humanity having a common purpose and single goal.
More on this subject at my blog
"Constructor-based Programming" is approximately the same as Dependency Injection which is related to Inversion of Control which means if you program in Java, you should look at Apache Avalon, PicoContainer, and/or the Spring Framework. Enjoy!
Nice to see some actual content on Slashdot!
By the way, this reminds me of the recent article on Domain Specific Languages over on Martin Foweler's website. Another aspect of programming worth investigating.
How can any religion survive that revelation?
Some can quite well actually. But I'll get to that in a second.
First off, we need to make the distinction between "theology" and "belief." A particular theology may not survive this sort of revealation, but in most cases that just means it will adapt. Most major religions of today have gone through huge adjustments and adaptions. This will just simply be another one.
Secondly, beliefs die hard. The fact that one's religious belief is based on faith and not evidence means that in most case no amount of evidence is going to shake a strong belief, especially if one is determined to hold it no matter what. So if this is the "end" of someone's faith, well, such an individual was bound to drop that faith at some point anyway.
Finally, there are many religions in the world in which this sort of discovery will not contridict their core theology and beliefs at all. In fact, to some, it may validate it. So don't be so quick to announce the end of religion. It has survived much and will continue to do so.
Did you read the most recent ASF position on this? The matter is due to a misunderstanding how patents work under the ASL versus how they work under the GPL. The matter will probably not be completely resolved until there is a better understanding of software patents and/or a court case involving patents and these open source license.
One important point: GPL-compatibility was not the only "justification for the new license" by a long shot. That was one of many goals, but not the main point of the license.
So, there has been progress on this issue, but it's not as clear cut as you make it out.
However, if you're some relatively unknown open source developer, you'll have an easier time getting others to adopt your software if it's under a standard OSI compliant license and not a modified license which is what projects using ASL 1.1 like licenses had to do. Of course, you could have just used a different license from the beginning, but the point is, the ASF recognized this problem and solved it (among many other things) in the 2.0 license.
One of the major advantages of the ASL 2.0 is that it is now easier for non-ASF projects to use the ASL. Previously you had to use an ASL-like license because unless you wanted to assign your copyright to the ASF you needed to adjust the wording of the license to include your name and your organization. The new license removes that information from the license itself and instead places it in a NOTICE file. This allows other open source projects to take advantage of the ASL and use it for their own organization.
While the ASL 2.0 is longer than the ASL 1.1, it's worth a read. A lot of effort was made to make this an easy license to adopt and use. If you're currently using a MIT or BSD style license, you may want to consider the new ASL 2.0.
They should. If nothing else it eliminates all of those Unix accounts they have to maintain. And it would probably decrease bandwidth. SF's CVS server can get bogged down at times.
The ASF has some projects using SVN and will probably move all of them over at some point.
They maybe able to build an interesting Sim plugin, but sure can't build a website!
Someone needs to teach these people some basic HTML and site design skills. This hurts my eyes almost as bad as the Slashdot Games color scheme!
Okay, I haven't yet RTFA but I do have a couple of comments. I went from Palm (a Palm III, then a Handspring Visor) over to a Zaurus and now back to Palm with my new Treo 600.
First off, I loved my Zaurus. Still do. I was a college student and it was like having a small laptop with me at all times. I could jump on WiFi networks, play games, listen to music, whatever. What I couldn't do very well was use the Zaurus as an organizer. Sync support varied and was often horrible for Linux. The standard PIM apps were poor and everyone knows it. It was great having tons of free software and even new operating systems to play around with (Opie and OpenZaurus were great), but the Zaurus ended up just being another hobby and toy, not a tool that I could consistently use and rely on.
I went back to a Palm and the Treo600 because I wanted something that would just work. I work on plenty of other open source software. I wanted something that did it's job well and the Treo is amazing. It doesn't have quite the power of the Zaurus or even the screen resolution, but I'm using it as an organizer more than I ever used the Zaurus.
So in the end, I personally think that open source PDA software is still only appropriate for a small niche of technically savvy users. There's nothing wrong with that, but I know when my sister asks me about a PDA for medical school, I'll be suggesting a Palm, not a Zaurus or other open source system.
I have PS2, never had a PS1, but I have several PS1 games: Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, Metal Gear.... Sure, a PS1 is so cheap now that it's not a big deal, but why clutter up my space with an extra console? Moreover, backwards compatibility helps a new system during those early months when there just aren't very many games out for it yet. And I don't understand why everyone is forgetting about the GameBoy -- a bastion of backwards compatibility and a feature which is certainly a selling point.
It completely depends on the functionality you're trying to achieve. One of my favorite applications is konqueror. I don't care much for the rest of KDE (no offense), but I love konqueror. I wish I could run it natively on windows (which I have to use at work) but I sometimes run it through cygwin simply because it's a better browser. And it browsers EVERYTHING. It's probably a bit too much of a "power tool" for the average user, but for me, it's great. Of course, this is coming from someone who prefers emacs over just about everything else too. :)
Why are there not more savvy people in higher places?
Because savvy people avoid the temptation of higher places. They're happy coding, studying, exploring, inventing, and recognize that getting involved would mean sacrificing much, if not all, of that. There are some "savvy" individuals who feel driven enough to put aside personal pleasures and take up a cause, but often they feel that in the end, it's not worth it. Let the idiots who crave power, fame, wealth or whatever waste their lives in petty politics and schemes. The savvy are often savvy enough to just not play those games.
That's not to say it's morally right or wrong to get involved. It's a choice about how one wishes to live life and contribute. But you'll often know a good leader by the one who turns down the offer. I'm in an organization right now in which the current leader is stepping down and finding a new one is hard. Everyone who is truly qualified doesn't really want the responsibility or trouble. A savvy individual who is willing to play the game of "higher places" is rare indeed.
Simple gray LCD display, simple controls. You could listen to music with headphones or plug it into a TV for video (throw in Divx decoding, maybe).
How about a $99 price point?
How about $180 and with a color screen?
There's plenty of portable DVD players. But you're right, they need to drop the price point or otherwise you might was well buy a laptop. If these players had firewire and optical out, I'd be a little more inclined to consider one.
That is the point of Open Source. If you start requiring companies to give a donation, then whats the point? They will use M$, most don't care if they have the source code or not, they just ask does it work, and what is it gonna cost? I cannot believe this was even brought up.
Exactly! This is completely a non-issue. If open source projects want companies or individuals using their software to contribute back, then they should release it under a different license agreement. I release all my software under ASF or BSD licenses and I don't expect anything back. If I did, I would charge for the software, or include some sort of license that required contribution for source code access, or something. But if these companies are abiding by the licenses then who cares if they contribute anything more. They certainly don't need to.