Sept: "The Debian project runs into problems with firmware (again) along with an unclear general resolution ballot which causes discord, eventually leading to the resignation of the project secretary"
2008 was a typical year for Debian. By the time Lenny is released, it'll be retro-cool.
Not to take away from Nightingale's achievements, but the most groundbreaking and impactful innovation in graphical representation of disease vectors came from Dr. John Snow, who created a map of SoHo's (London) devastating 1854 cholera outbreak that convincingly made the case that cholera was water born and not the result of miasma. The medical establishment at the time largely dismissed Snow's findings, but the power of the graphical representation convinced the people it needed to in the end and Snow's theories were ultimately vindictated. Unfortunately, Snow didn't live long enough to see his ultimate triumph. Some speculate that his habit of experiementing on himself with ether and chlorophorm may have contributed to his early demise. (Snow was also a pioneering anathesiologist, and even assisted in the birth of Queen Victoria's eight and rather difficult childbirth.)
All this is recounted in Steven Johnson's excellent book The Ghost Map (2006). He talks about Nightingale as well, though not about her charts and graphs. Nightingale was, at least through the 1850s a proponent of the eventually discreted miasma theory.
All of that is beside the point. The point, simply, is that in common vernacular a distribution is called an "operating system." Ubuntu calls itself one, Fedora calls itself one, so do a raft of others.
Furthermore, on the rare occasions when it comes up, I call it one also. When someone asks me what operating system I run, I don't reply with the kernel version or the package name of low-level userland tools I use, nor the window manager. I say "Debian." What do you say?
Out in the real world, people refer to "Windows XP," "OS X," "Ubuntu," etc., as operating systems, and nothing in the rarified pontificating of Slashdot hairsplitters is going to change that.
So you're implying that "Ubuntu" or "Fedora" are not "operating systems," in that they shouldn't be "touched directly by the average user"? Aren't you confusing "operating system" with "kernel"?
If I use Ubuntu, am I not using an "operating system"? Shouldn't I, as an average user, be able to customize the look, feel, and functionality of said operating system?
If not, it's no wonder that Linux has made very little progress on the desktop.
For many Debian desktop users, testing, under normal circumstances, represents the sweet spot of desktop distros: just timely enough, just stable enough; not as fast-moving or susceptible to breakage as Sid, not as hopelessly dated as stable. As a rule, not a bug-ridden as distros based off Sid (Ubuntu, etc.). Those circumstances change, however, when Debian goes into release-mode. And in Debian, releases take months to complete. Testing stagnates, at least from the point of view of those of us who normally prefer it to the other options out there. IMO, Etch is more outdated than I'd like and has been for a good four months or so.
It may not be the purpose of testing from the Debian Project's POV, but that's the use many Debianistas make of it. Personally, I would be thrilled if the next time someone decides to derive a new Debian-based distro, he versions off testing instead of unstable.
...keep moving forward by working to repeal laws that instill any form of anti-market monopoly, such as copyright. I promote and produce for a few bands in the Chicago area, and I've worked hard to get them to repudiate monopoly. The bands that do make more money!
While I'm certainly sympathetic to copyright reform, quite possibly even up to and including its eventual elimination, aren't you being a little short-sighted here? Copyright serves creators in a wide-range of fields with markedly different market dynamics than those that exist for bands in the Chicago area, or for that matter for bands in any area. What about symphony orchestras? What about graphic designers? What about novelists & short story writers? Photographers? Architects? The list goes on...
Arguing that we should repeal copyright because a few bands in Chicago can make more money without it is, to put it mildly, unconvincing.
Pardon me, but according to the DMCA we are explicitly NOT allowed to format shift.
Where did you get that idea? Under the DMCA, we are not allowed to circumvent DRM, but format shifting is fine if you aren't circumventing DRM. Ripping a CD to another digital audio format (.mp3,.ogg, etc.) is fine because most CDs don't have DRM. And many of those that do implemented it so poorly that you can still rip them without violating the DMCA. Holding down the shift key is not a prosecutable circumvention technique. OTOH, using DeCSS is.
Absolutely. Granted, it's TV, not movies. But still, the Professor *was* the archetypal scientist for me as a kid. And he could do anything -- build radios from coconuts, no problem. The guy would've won about 18 Nobel Prizes had he been real.
Of course, he couldn't quite manage to get them rescued. But nobody's perfect.
I thought the looming format war was of no consequence to me for a variety of reasons, namely that I wasn't interested in purchasing any of the products that would use either of these new formats. I have a stand-alone DVD player, but I don't use it. I have a small TV, but it's not plugged in. I don't have (nor want) and XBox; ditto for PSP. And I'm not a movie collector, so I wouldn't buy new discs in either format.
But now I find myself in the market for a new laptop, and whaddaya know, there are models out there that do HD-DVD. I haven't noticed any Blu-Ray enabled laptops yet, but it's probably only a matter of time. So now what? I don't want to get stuck paying >$2000 for a machine with capabilities that will be useless in a year, nor do I want to get wedded to a losing format. Ignore the new formats altogether and get something that does neither? It seems silly not to take advantage of the newest tech available when making a major purchase -- I want this machine to last me a good long while. But is the risk getting stuck with the equivalent of a BetaMax?
If you go and purchase a new computer, anything cheaper than a mini is, generally, crap anyway,
Oh c'mon...a mini is, what, $800 by the time you add in a monitor, speakers, keyboard & mouse? You aren't seriously suggesting it's not possible to get a nice PC setup for that price, are you? Hell, even the Ars Technica budget box is a nicer, more versatile set-up than a Mini and quite a bit cheaper. And the point is that many people can swing $400 - $500 for a low-end PC, but not $800 for a Mini, to say nothing of the astronomical prices for Apple's other machines. Except, of course, in AppleFanBoyDreamLand, where everyone has drunk the kool-aid and everyone drives a BMW.
A PC that's equivalent to a Mac Mini is MORE money than the Apple - and that's not even taking into account the inferior OS
What OS would that be? IMO, OpenBSD and various Linux distros are superior to OS X. But at least some of them can run on some Macs, albeit usually with more difficulty than on a PC (presuming you were semi-judicious in your hardware purchases). Still, that leaves you overpaying for pretty hardware, or stuck on soul-sucking freedom-robbing DRM-ridden OS X paying for the thrill of clicking through six dozen license agreements and budgeting to shell out more money for shareware to do things you can do with *nix for free.
But give 'm a machine that runs both Windows and OSX, and soon they'll realise that one part of their machine is breaking down, while the other part runs fine.
Are you volunteering the gift?
What kind of bizzare NeverNeverLand are Slashdot Macheads living in where everyone can afford a Mac? Really, you people are astonishingly out-of-touch with the economic realities of most people's lives.
I have a Samsung SyncMaster 940B, which seems to have a higher response time than the 930BF -- I don't see any other differences. I guess I'm not the most demanding of monitor consumers, but I like it just fine. The image quality and sharpness is great and Samsung's menu system for all the tuning options is actually intuitively laid out, though for the most part the auto-adjust works just fine. Still, it's nice to be able to understand what buttons to press in what sequence on the couple of occasions when I did actually need to make a manual adjustment. I hate owning hardware that makes me feel like an idiot. And there are no cheap built-in speakers I have to figure out how to disable.
For vendor, the true cost far exceeds ~$10 because of support.
Yeah, and Linux, as we all know, needs no support. That's why there aren't mailing lists and help websites and USENET groups galore dedicated to helping people who have problems running Linux, because no one ever needs help. Goodness know, if Dell, HP, etc., started selling PCs with Linux pre-installed, when a misguided customer calls up with a problem, they can just tell that fool -- "Ha, we have no support, because we sell Linux. Linux needs no support. Now send us more money." That's a mighty winning business strategy.
For user, the true cost far exceeds ~$10 because one typically must factor in the cost of antivirus, perhaps antispyware too. Not to mention the time spent dealing with these programs, or time spent dealing with spyware and virus infections. Oh, and that doesn't include the cost of whatever proprietary software you'll need to get Windows to do anything truly useful.
Yeah, Firefox and OpenOffice.org and CDex and AVG and foobar2000 cost a fortune on Windows. Thank goodness those same apps or their near equivalents are free on Linux!
All sarcasm aside, it the sort of anti-Windows FUD you're spouting that makes it much easier for people not to take Linux seriously. You might think that its fair, given all of Microsoft's anti-Linux FUD, but a lot more people know from personal experience that your claims are bullshit than know whether MS's claims are invalid. No one is going to take Linux seriously when you make foolish claims about Windows by way of comparison.
Windows licenses CSS. Some Linux distros do as well -- IIRC, Linspire is an example. So it depends upon the distro you're using. If a distro doesn't license CSS (and Ubuntu does not), then you have to use a hack to get around it, said hack being illegal in the U.S.
Isn't it funny that the phrases "GLBT Friendly" and "GLBT Pride" are actually bigoted and full of hate towards heterosexuals who are not included and called inferior as a result? That they actually try to promote the superiority of GLBT people. Then we have people like you who deny that GLBT discriminate even once against heterosexuals. All I am asking for is equal rights for everyone, not superiority of one group over another just because they are a minority or majority.
No, that's not what you're asking. What you're asking is that GLBT players be prevented from advertising that they are GLBT. How does "GLBT friendly" discriminate against anyone? It doesn't say "GLBT ONLY," it says just that GLBT players are welcome. Why is that necessary? Because there are many guilds where GLBT people are not welcome. There are many guilds where people will casually throw around terms like "fag" as insults. There are many guilds in which, if a person who is gay or lesbian mentions that fact, or mentions a same-sex partner, they will be ostracized by some players. Can you name one guild where heterosexual people are treated that way? Have you ever heard anyone insult another player by calling them a breeder? Has any guy been attacked or criticized because he happened to mention his wife or girlfriend? Has any woman been criticized or attacked because she mentions her husband or boyfriend? A guild that advertizes itself as "GLBT friendly" is not claiming any superiority for GLBT people; it is saying, "here, you are welcome, you don't have to be careful to hide your sexual orientation." Heterosexuals are never careful to hide their sexual orientation because there are never any adverse consequences for revealing that they are heterosexual. In the normal course of events, it is natural to presume that everyone is heterosexual, because the majority of people are. But some people aren't.
Did you know that there are discriminations against heterosexuals for jobs, promotions, and even they are fired for being so.
Name one.
That heterosexuals can be sexually harassed by GLBT people as well.
Anyone can be sexually harassed by anyone. Sexual harassment is never appropriate or permitted no matter what. "GLBT friendly" does not change that.
if there was a hetrosexual friendly guild in the game that discussed hetrosexuality on public chat channels in the same way that GLBT friendly guild and discussing GLBT sexuality on public chat channels?
Are you insinuating that there is no heterosexual-oriented chat in WoW? No guy ever mentions his girlfriend, no girl her boyfriend, no mention, ever, of husbands or wives? I don't know what WoW you play, but in the one I've played people mention this kind of stuff all the time.
Sort of like having a company of all GLBT people, and not hiring any Hetrosexuals is still discrimination even if you claim to be GLBT Friendly.
And yet, isn't it funny how no one has ever been fired for being heterosexual, whereas plenty of people have been fired for being homosexual? Isn't it funny how "don't ask, don't tell" in the U.S. military applies to homosexuals only? Heterosexuals ask and tell all the time, and face no reprisals for doing so.
Newsflash, dude: the default is heterosexual-friendly. That's what it means to be a majority.
Yes, you bought it, tacked on terms are irrelevant. (IANAL)
Copyright is not a "tacked on" term. It's law. Copyright is not a license, shrink-wrap or otherwise. Copyright gives the copyright holder the right to determine who can make a copy. Anyone the copyright holder does not designate as authorized to copy is, by default, not authorized to make a copy. The only exception to this is copying that falls under fair use.
* Yet that clause was put in those books prior to Google Book search existing, so it couldn't have been written with Google in mind.
Like I said, anyone not expressly authorized to copy is not authorized to copy. Do you think that copyright only applies to people or corporations who were alive/existed at the time the copyright went into effect? If that were the case, I could freely copy anything published before I was born. But I can't, not legally.
* It fails the 'is this contract fair' test too, since the courts have repeatedly rules that you can reproduce portions of the books and it's fair use.
What contract? There's no contract.
* The book publishers tolerate extracts in book reviews without complaint, and without attempting to enforce this clause, indicating acceptance of the worthlessness of this clause.
No, excerpts used in book reviews are fair use. The courts determined that a long time ago. There are many authors and many publishers who would love to be able to prohibit use of excerpts in some reviews -- specifically, in negative reviews. But they can't, because it's fair use.
* Finally, some publishers are not complaining about Google Book Search, and their books have that clause, which suggests the first point is true (that that clause was not intended to block benefitial use).
The fact that some publishers (and authors) are happy to participate in Google Book Search doesn't compel those who aren't happy to participate. Some software authors open-source their product, others don't. Some authors actively use a Creative Commons license, others don't. In all these cases, just because some do doesn't mean others have to.
I think the real sticking point for authors and publishers is that if Google can do this, then anyone can. That seems to be what they're afraid of, and as much as I would like to see Google go forward with Book Search, I think their fear is reasonable. So Google will only display a small piece of the text. What happens when the next Google decides it will display a paragraph, and the next decides it will display a page, then a chapter? And how does any given author make sure that a work he doesn't want included in any of these programs -- Google's and its imitators -- keep track of them all? Should it really be the author's responsibility to police the Internet making sure that no such index is including his work? Would it be fairer if the indexer had to get permission first? That's what Yahoo is doing -- opt-in, not opt-out.
Hvae you actually seen the contracts that authors typically have to sign with publishers?
Yes. Seen them, negotiated them, even. Reversion of rights is pretty much industry standard in trade publishing. It wouldn't pertain in work-for-hire situations, but that's not the norm.
Publishing industry=!music industry. Authors ordinarily retain their copyrights.
Google isn't putting entire books online in the same way.
Google is copying the entire book. It has to, in order to make a complete index. Book Search wouldn't work if Google only copied a chapter.
I see a lot of people, especially here on/., hung up on the issue that Google's not displaying the whole book. I don't think that's such a big deal. Google still has to make use of the entire work, or its book search won't work.
A reasonable analogy might be a book review. A reviewer can quote excerpts from a book in the course of a review. But those excerpts can't be excessive. You can't write a 10 chapter review of a 10 chapter book that ends up quoting or paraphrasing most of the book. Google has to "quote" the entire book, even if it only serves up fragments. That, I think, counts against Google in a fair use determination.
Whereas the book publishers can simply tell Google which books they don't want scanned and so they've given implicit permission by refusing to list those books.
Do you actually own any books? Here's a typical line from the copyright page of one of mine:
"All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form."
Seems to me the publishers already have told Google which books they don't want scanned, in no uncertain terms.
It affects the book search case because it sets a precedent for showing that if Google is benefitting financially from its efforts, and those efforts have the potential to cause economic harm to the copyright holder, then Google can be liable.
There's no question that Google will benefit financially from Google Book Search. Google's program is commercial; it will make money selling ads on its search pages. There's no question that Google Book Search will infringe copyright. The question is whether Google's infringement is fair use. Part of the determination of whether copyright infringement is fair use goes to the potential of that infringement to cause economic harm to the copyright holder. If Google can index the complete text of a book without paying the author, the author can't sell that right to another party.
In the Perfect 10 case, Perfect 10 claimed Google's thumbnails interfere with its ability to sell its own thumbnails to cellphone companies. It's not clear to me that the Authors' Guild will be able to point to so specific an instance of economic harm. OTOH, the courts are generally reluctant to try to anticipate the market. Who's to say book search indexes that will pay authors for the right to include their texts won't spring up? I think the AG can probably make a compelling argument that Google's infringement chokes off the potential for authors to make money directly from selling this right, even if no one is putting money on the table right now. But that argument might not be compelling enough for things to go the authors' way.
I somehow doubt that the original conceivers of copyright law intended for most of the world's works to be locked up in 'corporate vaults' never to see the light of day again
The publication rights of OOP books revert to the author. The OOP books aren't sitting in publishers' vaults; they are sitting in the hands of the authors, unexploited. If the authors want to resell the publication rights, they can do that. If they want to self-publish, they can do that. If they want to make the arrangement with Google you posit, they can do that too. The position of the Authors' Guild in the lawsuit is that Google shouldn't have the right to copy authors' books without first getting permission.
As always in these cases, the issue is control. The authors and publishers want to maintain control over who can do what with their books. Ultimately, I think the question for the courts to consider is whether the social benefit of having books searchable trumps the deference usually given to authors' copyrights.
There are a myriad of ways to decouple various Windows components and yet allow for a full end-user experience. Removing Windows Media Player, for instance, need not cripple the end-user multimedia experience, provided Microsoft helps create a framework in Windows to allow other media players to be drop-in replacements (and make full use of their functionality, which means that there needs to be an open standard, not just "do whatever WMP does").
You're right. The problem is that this is how MS wants Windows to work. To my mind, that's a stupid design; to my mind, open standards are the way to go because they allow maximum flexibility and choice. But that's my way of thinking. It's among the reasons I don't use Windows anymore. If I can make that choice as a consumer, so can others. I don't believe in the government dictating that choice for me, nor for MS. The proper remedy is to make sure the marketplace can function, not to dictate software design. Let MS stew in its DRMed juices; let people find the available alternatives. Or, if they are perfectly happy with Microsoft's design decisions, then so be it. There's no accounting for taste, but there ought not to be a goverment mandate for it either.
Slashdot Mirror
Sept: "The Debian project runs into problems with firmware (again) along with an unclear general resolution ballot which causes discord, eventually leading to the resignation of the project secretary"
2008 was a typical year for Debian. By the time Lenny is released, it'll be retro-cool.
Not to take away from Nightingale's achievements, but the most groundbreaking and impactful innovation in graphical representation of disease vectors came from Dr. John Snow, who created a map of SoHo's (London) devastating 1854 cholera outbreak that convincingly made the case that cholera was water born and not the result of miasma. The medical establishment at the time largely dismissed Snow's findings, but the power of the graphical representation convinced the people it needed to in the end and Snow's theories were ultimately vindictated. Unfortunately, Snow didn't live long enough to see his ultimate triumph. Some speculate that his habit of experiementing on himself with ether and chlorophorm may have contributed to his early demise. (Snow was also a pioneering anathesiologist, and even assisted in the birth of Queen Victoria's eight and rather difficult childbirth.) All this is recounted in Steven Johnson's excellent book The Ghost Map (2006). He talks about Nightingale as well, though not about her charts and graphs. Nightingale was, at least through the 1850s a proponent of the eventually discreted miasma theory.
All of that is beside the point. The point, simply, is that in common vernacular a distribution is called an "operating system." Ubuntu calls itself one, Fedora calls itself one, so do a raft of others.
Furthermore, on the rare occasions when it comes up, I call it one also. When someone asks me what operating system I run, I don't reply with the kernel version or the package name of low-level userland tools I use, nor the window manager. I say "Debian." What do you say?
Out in the real world, people refer to "Windows XP," "OS X," "Ubuntu," etc., as operating systems, and nothing in the rarified pontificating of Slashdot hairsplitters is going to change that.
Ubuntu and Fedora aren't operating systems,
Well someone better tell Ubuntu and Fedora!:
from Fedora's website:
"What is Fedora? Fedora is a Linux-based operating system that showcases the latest in free and open source software."
from Ubuntu's website:
"Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers."
Apparently, both are, um, operating under the assumption that they are "operating systems."
If I use Ubuntu, am I not using an "operating system"? Shouldn't I, as an average user, be able to customize the look, feel, and functionality of said operating system?
If not, it's no wonder that Linux has made very little progress on the desktop.
For many Debian desktop users, testing, under normal circumstances, represents the sweet spot of desktop distros: just timely enough, just stable enough; not as fast-moving or susceptible to breakage as Sid, not as hopelessly dated as stable. As a rule, not a bug-ridden as distros based off Sid (Ubuntu, etc.). Those circumstances change, however, when Debian goes into release-mode. And in Debian, releases take months to complete. Testing stagnates, at least from the point of view of those of us who normally prefer it to the other options out there. IMO, Etch is more outdated than I'd like and has been for a good four months or so. It may not be the purpose of testing from the Debian Project's POV, but that's the use many Debianistas make of it. Personally, I would be thrilled if the next time someone decides to derive a new Debian-based distro, he versions off testing instead of unstable.
...keep moving forward by working to repeal laws that instill any form of anti-market monopoly, such as copyright. I promote and produce for a few bands in the Chicago area, and I've worked hard to get them to repudiate monopoly. The bands that do make more money!
While I'm certainly sympathetic to copyright reform, quite possibly even up to and including its eventual elimination, aren't you being a little short-sighted here? Copyright serves creators in a wide-range of fields with markedly different market dynamics than those that exist for bands in the Chicago area, or for that matter for bands in any area. What about symphony orchestras? What about graphic designers? What about novelists & short story writers? Photographers? Architects? The list goes on...
Arguing that we should repeal copyright because a few bands in Chicago can make more money without it is, to put it mildly, unconvincing.
Michael
Pardon me, but according to the DMCA we are explicitly NOT allowed to format shift.
Where did you get that idea? Under the DMCA, we are not allowed to circumvent DRM, but format shifting is fine if you aren't circumventing DRM. Ripping a CD to another digital audio format (.mp3, .ogg, etc.) is fine because most CDs don't have DRM. And many of those that do implemented it so poorly that you can still rip them without violating the DMCA. Holding down the shift key is not a prosecutable circumvention technique. OTOH, using DeCSS is.
Michael
Absolutely. Granted, it's TV, not movies. But still, the Professor *was* the archetypal scientist for me as a kid. And he could do anything -- build radios from coconuts, no problem. The guy would've won about 18 Nobel Prizes had he been real. Of course, he couldn't quite manage to get them rescued. But nobody's perfect.
But now I find myself in the market for a new laptop, and whaddaya know, there are models out there that do HD-DVD. I haven't noticed any Blu-Ray enabled laptops yet, but it's probably only a matter of time. So now what? I don't want to get stuck paying >$2000 for a machine with capabilities that will be useless in a year, nor do I want to get wedded to a losing format. Ignore the new formats altogether and get something that does neither? It seems silly not to take advantage of the newest tech available when making a major purchase -- I want this machine to last me a good long while. But is the risk getting stuck with the equivalent of a BetaMax?
Michael
If you go and purchase a new computer, anything cheaper than a mini is, generally, crap anyway,
Oh c'mon...a mini is, what, $800 by the time you add in a monitor, speakers, keyboard & mouse? You aren't seriously suggesting it's not possible to get a nice PC setup for that price, are you? Hell, even the Ars Technica budget box is a nicer, more versatile set-up than a Mini and quite a bit cheaper. And the point is that many people can swing $400 - $500 for a low-end PC, but not $800 for a Mini, to say nothing of the astronomical prices for Apple's other machines. Except, of course, in AppleFanBoyDreamLand, where everyone has drunk the kool-aid and everyone drives a BMW.
A PC that's equivalent to a Mac Mini is MORE money than the Apple - and that's not even taking into account the inferior OS
What OS would that be? IMO, OpenBSD and various Linux distros are superior to OS X. But at least some of them can run on some Macs, albeit usually with more difficulty than on a PC (presuming you were semi-judicious in your hardware purchases). Still, that leaves you overpaying for pretty hardware, or stuck on soul-sucking freedom-robbing DRM-ridden OS X paying for the thrill of clicking through six dozen license agreements and budgeting to shell out more money for shareware to do things you can do with *nix for free.
Michael
But give 'm a machine that runs both Windows and OSX, and soon they'll realise that one part of their machine is breaking down, while the other part runs fine.
Are you volunteering the gift?
What kind of bizzare NeverNeverLand are Slashdot Macheads living in where everyone can afford a Mac? Really, you people are astonishingly out-of-touch with the economic realities of most people's lives.
--Michael
I have a Samsung SyncMaster 940B, which seems to have a higher response time than the 930BF -- I don't see any other differences. I guess I'm not the most demanding of monitor consumers, but I like it just fine. The image quality and sharpness is great and Samsung's menu system for all the tuning options is actually intuitively laid out, though for the most part the auto-adjust works just fine. Still, it's nice to be able to understand what buttons to press in what sequence on the couple of occasions when I did actually need to make a manual adjustment. I hate owning hardware that makes me feel like an idiot. And there are no cheap built-in speakers I have to figure out how to disable.
Why is there no image gallery of this stuff? I need new desktop wallpaper!
Yeah, and Linux, as we all know, needs no support. That's why there aren't mailing lists and help websites and USENET groups galore dedicated to helping people who have problems running Linux, because no one ever needs help. Goodness know, if Dell, HP, etc., started selling PCs with Linux pre-installed, when a misguided customer calls up with a problem, they can just tell that fool -- "Ha, we have no support, because we sell Linux. Linux needs no support. Now send us more money." That's a mighty winning business strategy.
For user, the true cost far exceeds ~$10 because one typically must factor in the cost of antivirus, perhaps antispyware too. Not to mention the time spent dealing with these programs, or time spent dealing with spyware and virus infections. Oh, and that doesn't include the cost of whatever proprietary software you'll need to get Windows to do anything truly useful.Yeah, Firefox and OpenOffice.org and CDex and AVG and foobar2000 cost a fortune on Windows. Thank goodness those same apps or their near equivalents are free on Linux!
All sarcasm aside, it the sort of anti-Windows FUD you're spouting that makes it much easier for people not to take Linux seriously. You might think that its fair, given all of Microsoft's anti-Linux FUD, but a lot more people know from personal experience that your claims are bullshit than know whether MS's claims are invalid. No one is going to take Linux seriously when you make foolish claims about Windows by way of comparison.
Michael
See the FAQ: http://www.dvdcca.org/faq.html
Michael
No, that's not what you're asking. What you're asking is that GLBT players be prevented from advertising that they are GLBT. How does "GLBT friendly" discriminate against anyone? It doesn't say "GLBT ONLY," it says just that GLBT players are welcome. Why is that necessary? Because there are many guilds where GLBT people are not welcome. There are many guilds where people will casually throw around terms like "fag" as insults. There are many guilds in which, if a person who is gay or lesbian mentions that fact, or mentions a same-sex partner, they will be ostracized by some players. Can you name one guild where heterosexual people are treated that way? Have you ever heard anyone insult another player by calling them a breeder? Has any guy been attacked or criticized because he happened to mention his wife or girlfriend? Has any woman been criticized or attacked because she mentions her husband or boyfriend? A guild that advertizes itself as "GLBT friendly" is not claiming any superiority for GLBT people; it is saying, "here, you are welcome, you don't have to be careful to hide your sexual orientation." Heterosexuals are never careful to hide their sexual orientation because there are never any adverse consequences for revealing that they are heterosexual. In the normal course of events, it is natural to presume that everyone is heterosexual, because the majority of people are. But some people aren't.
Did you know that there are discriminations against heterosexuals for jobs, promotions, and even they are fired for being so.
Name one.
That heterosexuals can be sexually harassed by GLBT people as well.
Anyone can be sexually harassed by anyone. Sexual harassment is never appropriate or permitted no matter what. "GLBT friendly" does not change that.
Michael
Are you insinuating that there is no heterosexual-oriented chat in WoW? No guy ever mentions his girlfriend, no girl her boyfriend, no mention, ever, of husbands or wives? I don't know what WoW you play, but in the one I've played people mention this kind of stuff all the time.
Sort of like having a company of all GLBT people, and not hiring any Hetrosexuals is still discrimination even if you claim to be GLBT Friendly.And yet, isn't it funny how no one has ever been fired for being heterosexual, whereas plenty of people have been fired for being homosexual? Isn't it funny how "don't ask, don't tell" in the U.S. military applies to homosexuals only? Heterosexuals ask and tell all the time, and face no reprisals for doing so.
Newsflash, dude: the default is heterosexual-friendly. That's what it means to be a majority.
Michael
Copyright is not a "tacked on" term. It's law. Copyright is not a license, shrink-wrap or otherwise. Copyright gives the copyright holder the right to determine who can make a copy. Anyone the copyright holder does not designate as authorized to copy is, by default, not authorized to make a copy. The only exception to this is copying that falls under fair use.
* Yet that clause was put in those books prior to Google Book search existing, so it couldn't have been written with Google in mind.
Like I said, anyone not expressly authorized to copy is not authorized to copy. Do you think that copyright only applies to people or corporations who were alive/existed at the time the copyright went into effect? If that were the case, I could freely copy anything published before I was born. But I can't, not legally.
* It fails the 'is this contract fair' test too, since the courts have repeatedly rules that you can reproduce portions of the books and it's fair use.
What contract? There's no contract.
* The book publishers tolerate extracts in book reviews without complaint, and without attempting to enforce this clause, indicating acceptance of the worthlessness of this clause.
No, excerpts used in book reviews are fair use. The courts determined that a long time ago. There are many authors and many publishers who would love to be able to prohibit use of excerpts in some reviews -- specifically, in negative reviews. But they can't, because it's fair use.
* Finally, some publishers are not complaining about Google Book Search, and their books have that clause, which suggests the first point is true (that that clause was not intended to block benefitial use).
The fact that some publishers (and authors) are happy to participate in Google Book Search doesn't compel those who aren't happy to participate. Some software authors open-source their product, others don't. Some authors actively use a Creative Commons license, others don't. In all these cases, just because some do doesn't mean others have to.
I think the real sticking point for authors and publishers is that if Google can do this, then anyone can. That seems to be what they're afraid of, and as much as I would like to see Google go forward with Book Search, I think their fear is reasonable. So Google will only display a small piece of the text. What happens when the next Google decides it will display a paragraph, and the next decides it will display a page, then a chapter? And how does any given author make sure that a work he doesn't want included in any of these programs -- Google's and its imitators -- keep track of them all? Should it really be the author's responsibility to police the Internet making sure that no such index is including his work? Would it be fairer if the indexer had to get permission first? That's what Yahoo is doing -- opt-in, not opt-out.
Michael
Yes. Seen them, negotiated them, even. Reversion of rights is pretty much industry standard in trade publishing. It wouldn't pertain in work-for-hire situations, but that's not the norm.
Publishing industry=!music industry. Authors ordinarily retain their copyrights.
MichaelGoogle is copying the entire book. It has to, in order to make a complete index. Book Search wouldn't work if Google only copied a chapter.
I see a lot of people, especially here on /., hung up on the issue that Google's not displaying the whole book. I don't think that's such a big deal. Google still has to make use of the entire work, or its book search won't work.
A reasonable analogy might be a book review. A reviewer can quote excerpts from a book in the course of a review. But those excerpts can't be excessive. You can't write a 10 chapter review of a 10 chapter book that ends up quoting or paraphrasing most of the book. Google has to "quote" the entire book, even if it only serves up fragments. That, I think, counts against Google in a fair use determination.
Michael
Do you actually own any books? Here's a typical line from the copyright page of one of mine:
Seems to me the publishers already have told Google which books they don't want scanned, in no uncertain terms.
Michael
There's no question that Google will benefit financially from Google Book Search. Google's program is commercial; it will make money selling ads on its search pages. There's no question that Google Book Search will infringe copyright. The question is whether Google's infringement is fair use. Part of the determination of whether copyright infringement is fair use goes to the potential of that infringement to cause economic harm to the copyright holder. If Google can index the complete text of a book without paying the author, the author can't sell that right to another party.
In the Perfect 10 case, Perfect 10 claimed Google's thumbnails interfere with its ability to sell its own thumbnails to cellphone companies. It's not clear to me that the Authors' Guild will be able to point to so specific an instance of economic harm. OTOH, the courts are generally reluctant to try to anticipate the market. Who's to say book search indexes that will pay authors for the right to include their texts won't spring up? I think the AG can probably make a compelling argument that Google's infringement chokes off the potential for authors to make money directly from selling this right, even if no one is putting money on the table right now. But that argument might not be compelling enough for things to go the authors' way.
Michael
I somehow doubt that the original conceivers of copyright law intended for most of the world's works to be locked up in 'corporate vaults' never to see the light of day again
The publication rights of OOP books revert to the author. The OOP books aren't sitting in publishers' vaults; they are sitting in the hands of the authors, unexploited. If the authors want to resell the publication rights, they can do that. If they want to self-publish, they can do that. If they want to make the arrangement with Google you posit, they can do that too. The position of the Authors' Guild in the lawsuit is that Google shouldn't have the right to copy authors' books without first getting permission.
As always in these cases, the issue is control. The authors and publishers want to maintain control over who can do what with their books. Ultimately, I think the question for the courts to consider is whether the social benefit of having books searchable trumps the deference usually given to authors' copyrights.
Michael
You're right. The problem is that this is how MS wants Windows to work. To my mind, that's a stupid design; to my mind, open standards are the way to go because they allow maximum flexibility and choice. But that's my way of thinking. It's among the reasons I don't use Windows anymore. If I can make that choice as a consumer, so can others. I don't believe in the government dictating that choice for me, nor for MS. The proper remedy is to make sure the marketplace can function, not to dictate software design. Let MS stew in its DRMed juices; let people find the available alternatives. Or, if they are perfectly happy with Microsoft's design decisions, then so be it. There's no accounting for taste, but there ought not to be a goverment mandate for it either.
Michael