That's exactly how I feel. I used to use E16 back when I used GNOME 1.x, but I always felt like the E development process was a black box. Eventually I moved to GNOME 2.x (where E16 didn't work so well), and later to Xfce, and it's like it's all been very quiet.
The E community seems very closed. That's not to say they aren't welcoming of new members, just that they don't reach out. At all. They don't appear to participate in any of Freedesktop's activities, and tend to keep to themselves, plodding along. And now Rasterman is complaining that Seth and Havoc are only now talking about things that E has done for years. Maybe if Rasterman had been a bit more proactive, and joined the greater Linux desktop community, he could have shared his ideas. Maybe if E17 actually had some developer/preview releases (no, telling everyone who's interested to grab it from CVS doesn't count as having releases), the technology would be better understood by outsiders. But no, they have to sit in their little black box all day...
I'm sorry, but most people don't install CVS snapshots for their primary desktop environment[1], and generally only people interested in that sort of thing will do so in a "for play" setting.
Even if it's true as you say that making a release of E17 would be nothing more than slapping a number on a CVS snapshot of a particular date, that really means quite a bit. It's an official release for packagers to target, and, presumably, somewhat stable. You can say that your CVS environment runs fine, but there's no guarantee that someone won't commit something new or experimental right before I check out *my* snapshot, which breaks the system. The point is that the random person who wants to try out E just won't know about these things without getting involved in the development process, which most people won't want to do.
I find it rather telling that you use the Linux 2.5 kernel series as an example. Note that 2.5 wasn't intended to be run by anyone but people interested in the new technology, and yet they still did releases with version numbers. I don't think I need to point out that the Linux kernel is a very active project with many active contributors and corporate backing, largely because the project is organised so well, and - you guessed it - has a reasonable release schedule. E17 is... well, I really don't know. E has been pretty much off the radar for the past few years. And that's part of the problem too.
Is release engineering easy? No. It takes effort to make a release. But I think E17 would attract a lot more testers if it were to put out a dev release every now and then. Of course, this also means that you have to deal with both ends of the spectrum - people that will provide good bug reports and be helpful in tracking down and fixing problems, as well as people who really shouldn't be trying out the software, and can't get it to compile because they don't have autoconf installed (or something inane like that). Bottom line: if the E community is happy with how things are going now (steady but slow development, not a lot of outside interest), then there's nothing that needs to change.
[1] I'm being somewhat hypocritical here, as I do run a CVS DE, but then again, I hack on it constantly.
Boo hoo. So the old ad-supported business model is failing. They need to find another model. That's the same thing everyone on here tells the music industry. Technology changes how people do business. Things like the broadcast flag and DRM are merely feeble efforts made by the content industry to prop up their dying business models.
Or better yet, the digital TV mandate shouldn't specify a resolution at all.
IIRC, it doesn't, and some DTV broadcasters are indeed sending standard def signals over their allotted frequencies. The mandate from the FCC has nothing to do with broadcast quality, and everything to do with the signal type. The only requirement is that broadcasters use the newly-allocated frequencies, and that they use the digital ATSC standard, and one of the approved modulations. It's digital vs. analog here, not quality.
Uh, where did you come up with that idea? If you rip the DVD and put it online for the content to be "stolen" as you say, then you're committing copyright infringement by making and distributing an unauthorised copy. COPY, get it?
If you leave the DVD itself out on a table in a coffee shop for someone else to steal, that's fine. Though, because of braindead laws like the DMCA, you're not legally allowed to make a backup of it.
So, in that vein, what else would you have the government reduce? Military spending? Education spending?
With the current expenditures on the so-called "war on terror" above $200 billion, a war that has debatable benefit to the US people, I think $1 billion for something that can have a direct scientific benefit to American lives is but a pebble in the pond. Unfortunately, some people in government now seem to have an active distaste for science...
Seeing as the "dark side" of the moon faces the sun half the time, I wonder how much heat it receives - enough to be a problem for a moon-based station?
You esentially have a contract that allows you do recieve a copy of the program. Absent that contract, the program is restricted from you by copyright.If you violate the contract, the contract is nullified, and you are back to just copyright, which says you cannot have a copy of the software. (If you cannot have the software, you cannot use the software)
I'm assuming we're still talking about the GPL here. If not, my apologies. Say person A distributes to person B a copy of GPLed code (doesn't matter if person A is the copyright holder or not). Assume that person A has fulfilled his/her obligations under the GPL. All is good. Person B decides to change the name of the software, make binaries, and sell them on a CD, without an offer to give the source code as well. Person B is, obviously, violating the GPL. At this point, the copyright holder can sue person B. However, there can only be two things that come out of this lawsuit: 1) the copyright holder gets some form of monetary damages, 2) person B is barred from further distributing the software. Ok, there can be other outcomes, such as a monetary settlement, or a settlement that involves a different arrangement of licensing terms for person B. Whatever. The salient point here is that the copyright holder cannot, at this point, refuse to allow person B the right to *use* the software. The software is released under the terms of the GPL, which governs distribution, not use. The part where person B obtained the software (that is, the distribution from person A to person B) was all well and good, and compliant with the GPL. The only relief available here is that person B's rights under the GPL have been terminated: that is, person B's right to further distribute the software.
No. EULA terms are protected by contract law. Copyright does not give a creator the power to limit use. Only distribution. Period. Go read up on copyright law if you don't believe me. Wikipedia has a nice bulletted list of the rights copyright grants. Don't believe Wikipedia if you don't want to, but Cornell's law site basically says the same thing.
You are missing something fundamental. The first step in you USING the app, is it getting DISTRIBUTED to you in the first place. Therefore GPL and COPYRIGHT cover your use, even if no terms specifically apply to the way you use it.
Uh, that really makes no sense. Receiving != using. The GPL covers the distribution/receiving part, but the using part has nothing to do with the GPL (GPLv2, anyway). If you add clauses to the GPL that govern use, then the GPL is no longer just a license to distribute: it's also a EULA, which falls into the realm of contract law.
You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
It specifically states that you don't have to accept the GPL to use the software. You only have to if you intend to mod & distribute.
IF you make a change to the GPL (or a new license) covering how the software may be used, it is just as binding as the GPL, because you do not have the right to RECIEVE (part of DISTRIBUTION) the app without the licence granting you that right.
I'm not saying it's not binding, I'm just saying that it ceases to be solely the copyright-bound distribution license that it is, and becomes a EULA, which is governed by contract law. If that's what the FSF wants to do to the GPL, that's fine, but in that case, I'll stick with v2, thanks.
That is why DRM and things, are legal, even though annoying
Wrong again. DRM, in and of itself, has nothing to do with copyright. DRM is a copy-prevention device. The copyright holder has used his/her rights under copyright to distribute it, and has put technological countermeasures in place to prevent unauthorised copying. Essentially, DRM exists because the media companies don't trust copyright; or rather, they don't trust people to obey it. The *ability* to put DRM on a work has nothing to do with copyright. If there were no copyright laws, they could still put DRM on it: it just wouldn't be a crime (or even a tort) to circumvent it (assuming the lack of a DMCA-type law) and distribute the "cracked" copy. Now, of course, you can get into EULAs, which depend on contract law, which, again, aren't directly related to copyright. Such a EULA could say "I'm giving this to you, under contract, with the agreement that you won't give this to anyone else." That's essentially a "physical NDA".
It's a mess, yeah. But please try to separate the terms and actions involved before making wild assertions that frankly make no sense.
Actually no. The GPL is a distribution license as it stands today. That's really all copyright covers: distribution. By downloading and using a piece of GPLed software, you have not done anything that has to do with the GPL. You don't even have to accept the GPL to use the software. You don't even have to accept the GPL to modify the software. You just have to accept (and abide by the terms of) the GPL if you decide to distribute the software (whether you modify it or not).
Now, with clauses that attempt to govern use, such as the idea to require users of GPLed web service apps to make their modifications public just because they use the software on their website, the GPL becomes, essentially, a EULA. A sort of a weak contract where the copyright holder is saying "I'm allowing you to *use* my software if you agree to make any modifications public - regardless if you decide to redistribute my software or not". Note that we're not talking about distribution anymore. *Copyright* is not requiring that non-redistributed changes are made public, but an end-user agreement is.
Copyright covers distribution, and all the GPL does is allow non-copyright-holders the privilege of redistributing the code, but puts conditions on it. You can redistribute the app, IF you provide the source code. You can distribute modified versions, IF you provide source for the modified version. This web services stuff has nothing to do with distribution. Now the GPL is trying to say: you can *use* the app, IF you release the source for any changes you make to it. I understand the FSF's desire to add this to the GPL, but I feel like they're moving onto shaky ground here: how can we say that Microsoft's EULAs are ridiculous and unenforceable if the GPL community is slapping a EULA on their software?
Just so it's clear: copyright covers copying and distribution of a work, and nothing else.
Why are people afraid of the BSD license? Is it because they can't stand to see their code used by someone else in a proprietary product?
In a word, yes. Call me selfish, but I want the stuff I write to remain open forever (well, at least until the copyright on it expires).
If I've decided that I'm not going to make money off the software, I see little reason to allow someone else to "improve" and repackage my code, and make money off my work. Plus, it's nice to require that any (released) bugfixes get released in such a way that I can incorporate them into my tree.
Of course, it's somewhat moot, since I don't think I've written anything that's really commercially viable (yet).
What *is* the sustained read/write rate for CF or SD? TFA says that the CPU in this thing can handle 8MB/s of video (64Mbps), so as long as CF or SD can handle that, it should be fine. Probably the real reason is what one of the other replies to the grandparent says: it's because Samsung has a business relationship with Sony.
Yeah, yeah, I suppose I was a bit misleading. Of course others can profit off of the design... but not without paying royalties to the "inventor" first.
The point I was making is that I think it's stupid that patent holders aren't required to actually make use of the patent they file (and no, I don't consider sitting around collecting royalties to be "use").
The best part is, the end of the article mentions that HP doesn't plan on a commercial use for the patent, for exactly that reason.
There's a fine example of exactly what's wrong with our patent system. *sigh* What bullshit... "I know, let's patent something not so we can profit off it, but so no one else can!"
Perhaps not *yet*. I work for a company that does some multimedia device stuff, and I've already come into contact with customers who get frustrated that they can't, for example, play iTMS-bought music on our devices. Why can't they? Because Apple won't let them. If this keeps up, and people continue expecting to play their media on different devices, I have a feeling that there's going to be a bit of a backlash against Apple and their closed DRM format. An industry-wide DRM standard would make these people happy.
For me, I'd rather see DRM just go away completely, but hey, I don't drive sales...
My solution is much simpler: I don't buy anything with DRM on it. If it's a band I really like and I know I'll enjoy the entire album, I'll buy the CD, always after it's dropped below the exorbitant new-release price. If not, there are plenty of ways to get music that don't involve the risk of the P2P networks. Trade music with your friends. Just like everyone's been doing for the past 20+ years with CDs, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc. Is this techincally illegal? Sure, it probably is. But it doesn't strike me as being some "moral wrong" that the music industry would like all of us to believe.
If they want me to buy their digital music, they damn well better give it to me in a lossless format (or at least a lossy format with a bitrate that gives quality at least as high as ~220kbps VBR MP3) with no DRM. Am I aiming too high? Probably, but I'm not willing to budge on this. If they won't sell it to me how I want it, I won't buy it. Hopefully many others feel the same way I do.
With how things are now, if I *do* decide to buy digital music, it'll probably be from AllofMP3.com.
Ah, so they *do* retain ownership of your work. I dunno, that just sounds totally unattractive to me. I wouldn't work on anything terribly interesting if I don't get to retain the rights to it. YMMV, of course.
Well, what do you mean by "always busy"? If you mean that you have work to do from the minute you step into the office in the morning, and it continues until you leave (at a reasonable time), minus a lunch break, I fail to see what the problem is. If you're not getting things done in the time that your boss thinks it should be, that's only a problem if he's unreasonably pressuring you. If he gives you un-meetable deadlines solely to keep you working on 100% of the company's time, good for him. After all, they *are* paying you for a solid 8 hours of work each day (or whatever).
Now, if the work you're getting is causing you to stay at work later and later, work through lunch, etc., etc., and if your boss is constantly on your back about not getting the work done that he's given you, then sure, you have a problem. But this may all be alleviated simply by going to your boss, giving him a list of the tasks he has you doing, with time estimates. Ask him to prioritise the work, and shift some of your workload to someone else if he absolutely must have some of it done before you're able to complete it. If he's not willing to be reasonable about this, it's time to brush up the ol' resume and look for a new job.
Er, not sure what you're talking about. Check out the titles and air dates guide over at epguides.com. It shows 16 episodes listed so far, with the air date of 4x16 during the same week that 3x17 aired last year. At most, they're one episode behind last year's 24-episode schedule. I don't know if they plan to announce/air more episodes after 4x16, but they're certainly not behind in content for this season, considering the date.
This is a well known gigantic red flag indicating an amateur programmer. File-scoped variables are antiquated even within the pure C community; the only time they're acceptable in most professional programmer's eyes are within a library which is built alone.
Uh, excuse me? To which community are you referring? You sound to me that you've done very little in the way of real-world programming. Using file-scoped variables (not to mention file-scoped functions, which also have the potential for conflicts in this scenario) can be very useful and make things easier. Of course, care must be taken if you're working in, e.g., a multithreaded environment. But to say that file-scoped variables are "antiquated" just shows a level of real-world ignorance on par with an academic. Either that, or someone who works mostly with C++ and is trying to speak about something with which he knows very little.
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That's exactly how I feel. I used to use E16 back when I used GNOME 1.x, but I always felt like the E development process was a black box. Eventually I moved to GNOME 2.x (where E16 didn't work so well), and later to Xfce, and it's like it's all been very quiet.
The E community seems very closed. That's not to say they aren't welcoming of new members, just that they don't reach out. At all. They don't appear to participate in any of Freedesktop's activities, and tend to keep to themselves, plodding along. And now Rasterman is complaining that Seth and Havoc are only now talking about things that E has done for years. Maybe if Rasterman had been a bit more proactive, and joined the greater Linux desktop community, he could have shared his ideas. Maybe if E17 actually had some developer/preview releases (no, telling everyone who's interested to grab it from CVS doesn't count as having releases), the technology would be better understood by outsiders. But no, they have to sit in their little black box all day...
I'm sorry, but most people don't install CVS snapshots for their primary desktop environment[1], and generally only people interested in that sort of thing will do so in a "for play" setting.
Even if it's true as you say that making a release of E17 would be nothing more than slapping a number on a CVS snapshot of a particular date, that really means quite a bit. It's an official release for packagers to target, and, presumably, somewhat stable. You can say that your CVS environment runs fine, but there's no guarantee that someone won't commit something new or experimental right before I check out *my* snapshot, which breaks the system. The point is that the random person who wants to try out E just won't know about these things without getting involved in the development process, which most people won't want to do.
I find it rather telling that you use the Linux 2.5 kernel series as an example. Note that 2.5 wasn't intended to be run by anyone but people interested in the new technology, and yet they still did releases with version numbers. I don't think I need to point out that the Linux kernel is a very active project with many active contributors and corporate backing, largely because the project is organised so well, and - you guessed it - has a reasonable release schedule. E17 is... well, I really don't know. E has been pretty much off the radar for the past few years. And that's part of the problem too.
Is release engineering easy? No. It takes effort to make a release. But I think E17 would attract a lot more testers if it were to put out a dev release every now and then. Of course, this also means that you have to deal with both ends of the spectrum - people that will provide good bug reports and be helpful in tracking down and fixing problems, as well as people who really shouldn't be trying out the software, and can't get it to compile because they don't have autoconf installed (or something inane like that). Bottom line: if the E community is happy with how things are going now (steady but slow development, not a lot of outside interest), then there's nothing that needs to change.
[1] I'm being somewhat hypocritical here, as I do run a CVS DE, but then again, I hack on it constantly.
Boo hoo. So the old ad-supported business model is failing. They need to find another model. That's the same thing everyone on here tells the music industry. Technology changes how people do business. Things like the broadcast flag and DRM are merely feeble efforts made by the content industry to prop up their dying business models.
Uh, where did you come up with that idea? If you rip the DVD and put it online for the content to be "stolen" as you say, then you're committing copyright infringement by making and distributing an unauthorised copy. COPY, get it?
If you leave the DVD itself out on a table in a coffee shop for someone else to steal, that's fine. Though, because of braindead laws like the DMCA, you're not legally allowed to make a backup of it.
Hence the quotes around "dark". Duh.
So, in that vein, what else would you have the government reduce? Military spending? Education spending?
With the current expenditures on the so-called "war on terror" above $200 billion, a war that has debatable benefit to the US people, I think $1 billion for something that can have a direct scientific benefit to American lives is but a pebble in the pond. Unfortunately, some people in government now seem to have an active distaste for science...
Seeing as the "dark side" of the moon faces the sun half the time, I wonder how much heat it receives - enough to be a problem for a moon-based station?
No. EULA terms are protected by contract law. Copyright does not give a creator the power to limit use. Only distribution. Period. Go read up on copyright law if you don't believe me. Wikipedia has a nice bulletted list of the rights copyright grants. Don't believe Wikipedia if you don't want to, but Cornell's law site basically says the same thing.
Read section 5 of the GPL: It specifically states that you don't have to accept the GPL to use the software. You only have to if you intend to mod & distribute. I'm not saying it's not binding, I'm just saying that it ceases to be solely the copyright-bound distribution license that it is, and becomes a EULA, which is governed by contract law. If that's what the FSF wants to do to the GPL, that's fine, but in that case, I'll stick with v2, thanks. Wrong again. DRM, in and of itself, has nothing to do with copyright. DRM is a copy-prevention device. The copyright holder has used his/her rights under copyright to distribute it, and has put technological countermeasures in place to prevent unauthorised copying. Essentially, DRM exists because the media companies don't trust copyright; or rather, they don't trust people to obey it. The *ability* to put DRM on a work has nothing to do with copyright. If there were no copyright laws, they could still put DRM on it: it just wouldn't be a crime (or even a tort) to circumvent it (assuming the lack of a DMCA-type law) and distribute the "cracked" copy. Now, of course, you can get into EULAs, which depend on contract law, which, again, aren't directly related to copyright. Such a EULA could say "I'm giving this to you, under contract, with the agreement that you won't give this to anyone else." That's essentially a "physical NDA".
It's a mess, yeah. But please try to separate the terms and actions involved before making wild assertions that frankly make no sense.
Well, I dunno... I've never read the GPL v1. Perhaps the changes from v1 to v2 weren't considered "major".
Actually no. The GPL is a distribution license as it stands today. That's really all copyright covers: distribution. By downloading and using a piece of GPLed software, you have not done anything that has to do with the GPL. You don't even have to accept the GPL to use the software. You don't even have to accept the GPL to modify the software. You just have to accept (and abide by the terms of) the GPL if you decide to distribute the software (whether you modify it or not).
Now, with clauses that attempt to govern use, such as the idea to require users of GPLed web service apps to make their modifications public just because they use the software on their website, the GPL becomes, essentially, a EULA. A sort of a weak contract where the copyright holder is saying "I'm allowing you to *use* my software if you agree to make any modifications public - regardless if you decide to redistribute my software or not". Note that we're not talking about distribution anymore. *Copyright* is not requiring that non-redistributed changes are made public, but an end-user agreement is.
Copyright covers distribution, and all the GPL does is allow non-copyright-holders the privilege of redistributing the code, but puts conditions on it. You can redistribute the app, IF you provide the source code. You can distribute modified versions, IF you provide source for the modified version. This web services stuff has nothing to do with distribution. Now the GPL is trying to say: you can *use* the app, IF you release the source for any changes you make to it. I understand the FSF's desire to add this to the GPL, but I feel like they're moving onto shaky ground here: how can we say that Microsoft's EULAs are ridiculous and unenforceable if the GPL community is slapping a EULA on their software?
Just so it's clear: copyright covers copying and distribution of a work, and nothing else.
If I've decided that I'm not going to make money off the software, I see little reason to allow someone else to "improve" and repackage my code, and make money off my work. Plus, it's nice to require that any (released) bugfixes get released in such a way that I can incorporate them into my tree.
Of course, it's somewhat moot, since I don't think I've written anything that's really commercially viable (yet).
What *is* the sustained read/write rate for CF or SD? TFA says that the CPU in this thing can handle 8MB/s of video (64Mbps), so as long as CF or SD can handle that, it should be fine. Probably the real reason is what one of the other replies to the grandparent says: it's because Samsung has a business relationship with Sony.
Yeah, yeah, I suppose I was a bit misleading. Of course others can profit off of the design... but not without paying royalties to the "inventor" first.
The point I was making is that I think it's stupid that patent holders aren't required to actually make use of the patent they file (and no, I don't consider sitting around collecting royalties to be "use").
Last I checked, there were serious A/V sync issues when using the Flash plugin on any gtk2 build of Mozilla or Firefox. Maybe with other browsers too.
Perhaps not *yet*. I work for a company that does some multimedia device stuff, and I've already come into contact with customers who get frustrated that they can't, for example, play iTMS-bought music on our devices. Why can't they? Because Apple won't let them. If this keeps up, and people continue expecting to play their media on different devices, I have a feeling that there's going to be a bit of a backlash against Apple and their closed DRM format. An industry-wide DRM standard would make these people happy.
For me, I'd rather see DRM just go away completely, but hey, I don't drive sales...
In case you hadn't noticed, "consumer electronics" consists of quite a bit more than "MP3 players".
My solution is much simpler: I don't buy anything with DRM on it. If it's a band I really like and I know I'll enjoy the entire album, I'll buy the CD, always after it's dropped below the exorbitant new-release price. If not, there are plenty of ways to get music that don't involve the risk of the P2P networks. Trade music with your friends. Just like everyone's been doing for the past 20+ years with CDs, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, etc. Is this techincally illegal? Sure, it probably is. But it doesn't strike me as being some "moral wrong" that the music industry would like all of us to believe.
If they want me to buy their digital music, they damn well better give it to me in a lossless format (or at least a lossy format with a bitrate that gives quality at least as high as ~220kbps VBR MP3) with no DRM. Am I aiming too high? Probably, but I'm not willing to budge on this. If they won't sell it to me how I want it, I won't buy it. Hopefully many others feel the same way I do.
With how things are now, if I *do* decide to buy digital music, it'll probably be from AllofMP3.com.
Ah, so they *do* retain ownership of your work. I dunno, that just sounds totally unattractive to me. I wouldn't work on anything terribly interesting if I don't get to retain the rights to it. YMMV, of course.
Well, what do you mean by "always busy"? If you mean that you have work to do from the minute you step into the office in the morning, and it continues until you leave (at a reasonable time), minus a lunch break, I fail to see what the problem is. If you're not getting things done in the time that your boss thinks it should be, that's only a problem if he's unreasonably pressuring you. If he gives you un-meetable deadlines solely to keep you working on 100% of the company's time, good for him. After all, they *are* paying you for a solid 8 hours of work each day (or whatever).
Now, if the work you're getting is causing you to stay at work later and later, work through lunch, etc., etc., and if your boss is constantly on your back about not getting the work done that he's given you, then sure, you have a problem. But this may all be alleviated simply by going to your boss, giving him a list of the tasks he has you doing, with time estimates. Ask him to prioritise the work, and shift some of your workload to someone else if he absolutely must have some of it done before you're able to complete it. If he's not willing to be reasonable about this, it's time to brush up the ol' resume and look for a new job.
Er, not sure what you're talking about. Check out the titles and air dates guide over at epguides.com. It shows 16 episodes listed so far, with the air date of 4x16 during the same week that 3x17 aired last year. At most, they're one episode behind last year's 24-episode schedule. I don't know if they plan to announce/air more episodes after 4x16, but they're certainly not behind in content for this season, considering the date.