Some of my friends and most of my family use Linux, but I still use FAT on portable media because everyone can read it.
What we need is a proper standard, like ISO9960 for CDs. I wonder how practical it would be to use that on USB flash - I guess you would have trouble writing to it once done.
The tools I user are GUI and never ask whether to "open or run" either. This has been true on Kubuntu, Mandriva, Mint and Mepis with both ext2 and FAT formatted USB drives (not every possible combination of OS and filesustem though).
...or they could have simply published and established prior art without the need for a patent.
Having a patent also lets them use it to counter sue. Its called a defensive patent.
.I'll also admit that I believe patents are important to protect real innovations.
Have you any evidence that you base that belief on. All the evidence that I have ever come across point the other way - especially with regard to software, where the state of the art does not seem to be advancing any faster since it became patentable.
I was hoping for the coating - as in "Oooh shiny!", but no. I'll just have to stick with brushed aluminum or various shades of plastic...
The average user would regard that as a far more important feature of their PC than the software. You can use whatever crap the manufacturer bundled, but what it looks like - now that is important.
They block their radio and television programs from being seen by anyone who has not paid a TV/radio license (UK citizens)
Wrong on four counts:
1) They block non-UK IPs, there is no check on whether you have paid your TV license or not.
2) There is no such thing as a radio license, so if you do not have a TV (I never have) there is no license to pay.
3) Whether you are a British citizen or not is irrelevant to any of this. Residence would be relevant if the the license had anything to do with it, as it is, it is just there you are located.
4) They do not block radio. I am listening to a Radio 4 stream in Sri Lanka as I write this.
[quote]It's also hard for me to bitch out Microsoft while I am forced to tell people who actually want to use websites with flash (such as full screen youtube) that they can't use Linux.[/quote]
Works for me.
I just tried a random Youtube video in full screen to check.
It is not necessarily lack of willingness to learn. In my case it is lack of time.
I did two Linux Mint KDE (Kubuntu derivative) installs in the last week. They were fast. How much time would I have lost installing Slackware instead? What would I have taken time off from? Playing with my children, dinner with my friends, getting actual work donw?
Even worse, once installed, software installation becomes more time consuming as well. Rather than startup Synaptic, tick a box and click "apply" (or apt-get install in a terminal) and get on with something else, I would have to manually install every dependency.
There are third party solutions to this (e.g. slapt-get) but they all seem to have limitations (e.g. do not update packages that are part of the distribution),.
Which developers? Those who use, rather than produce OSes will probably be better off - and there are far more of them
Microsoft shareholders would take most of the loss.
OS developers would have a wider choice of employers, which might strengthen their bargaining position, but the business itself will be less profitable so there will be less money to go around. I would bet on a reduction in the number of jobs (with a lot of people moving to other types of software) rather than a huge reduction in salaries.
That implicitly assumes that sharing components between OSS OSes will bring efficiency gains so there would be less work to be done.
whether you can start your own for-profit software business if you license your software under the GPL.
Depends on what the alternatives are and what your business model is. Assuming we narrow down the choices to the two best known open source licences (others are broadly similar to one of the other) and proprietary licensing:
Want to do all the development yourself, distribution yourself, not using GPL licensed libraries, want to make your money from license sales? Proprietary.
Want to accept community contributions and sell a proprietary version, happy for competitors to use your code, do not need GPL libraries, want others to redistribute? BSD or GPL and persuade contributors to sign over the copyrights, or cleanly separate open and proprietary components and LGPL.
Do not want to sell a proprietary version, want to use GPL licensed libraries, want to accept outside contributions, want to prevent people from reselling your code without contributing back, want other to distribute? GPL
Doing all the development yourself, but want to use GPL libraries, want others to redistribute, want to prevent competitors reselling your code without contributing? GPL
Want to re-assure users that the software will still be around if you go bust? GPL or BSD. Additionally want to stop competitors reselling a proprietary version? GPL.
Obviously this does not cover anything like all the possibilities, but I just want to make the point that there are business reasons for every choice.
Who do you think will do the analysis. Some people can get the data anyway.
A 3d model of their whole body with especially detailed facial features
The government can already get that from your passport photo, driver license photo, security camera photos etc.
Their location a percentage of the time without variable certainty
If you carry a mobile phone your phone company and the government can both track you far better. The government knows when you enter and leave the country, and, in many countries, knows where you are going (at least initially). Uising credit cards or ATMs or any other interaction with a bank creates a trail that can be followed.
A fairly accurate weighted graph of most of their associates and friendsty
The government and telecoms companies again. More accurate as everyone has a phone, not everyone uses Facebook
(plus all the listed information about those people)
There are a lot of sources to pull data on people from.
A rough idea of their habits, personality and political leaning
Bank records, especially what credit and debit card purchases and ATM withdrawals. Loyalty card schemes.Surveillance of protests. Activities which require registration or government checks (anything that involves visiting a school more than once a month in Britain, for example),
Recycling reduces the number new computers being made, which reduces the considerable environmental impact of making them in the first place. Even disposal under better regulation is bad for the environment so the gain is the difference in environmental damage.
The overall impact is probably good for the environment but bad for people whose health suffers. Perhaps the best solution would be to subsidise better conditions for the workers involved in the final disposal and better final disposal of salvageable material? It will almost certainly still be cheaper than an export ban, and would give the third world the gains from importing the stuff.
The transparent thing works both ways... it's easier for black hats to find holes too, by your own logic. And they can keep it secret and exploit it as long as they can.
Except that there have been leaks of Windows source code. That means the bad guys get to see the source, but the law abiding do not.
Learning for the sake of learning doesn't seem to be popular anymore
Schools and universities are increasingly being measures by how well they prepare people for work - i.e. education is becoming more like vocational training.
In Britain, the government has made schools a lot more centralised. Both schools are teachers have a lot less discretion.
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The lack of IP protection (nee, the deliberate elimination of IP protection) is not something companies who innovate are likely to embrace.
There is no actual evidence for that - in fact the evidence (academic studies) point the other way. Most of the studies are on patents, not copyright, but it is all the evidence there is.
The GPL protects any actual innovator better than BSD style licenses because it stops free riders. See Zed Shaw's explanation of why he uses the GPL: http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html .
The article gives one actual real life example, and they prefer the Apache license because they prefer the patent clause, not because they want to allow proprietary forks.
BSD style licenses can be better for those who want to accept outside patches and sell a proprietary version (e.g. Django). It is more appealing to the outside contributors than a copyright assignment (like MySQL and ZImbra). In many cases they could also use the LGPL (provided they can cleanly separate the proprietary and open components), and I have no idea why they do not.
it was apparently very important to know how cruelly the evil Romans persecuted the early Christians
Entirely different. The point of that is that is to admire courage under persecution. The lesson is "you sometimes have to give things up to do the right thing, and these people were prepared to give up even their lives".
Also, persecution is still happens, and people are still killed for their faith. Even if you are lucky enough not to be affected, it is worth remembering those who are.
What is being discussed here is encouraging people to think they are persecuted when they are not.
[quote]Way to give Mozilla a free pass because it's OSS.[/quote]
No, it is because it is an aspect of software you get from them, MS was changing the behaviour of software you got form someone else.
Ubuntu are doing the same as Mozilla here. As far as I can tell it is not personally identifiable data, so all they know is "some Ubuntu user searched for keyword using the search bar". Google know more than this about the search, so where is the privacy problem?
Slashdot Mirror
Some of my friends and most of my family use Linux, but I still use FAT on portable media because everyone can read it.
What we need is a proper standard, like ISO9960 for CDs. I wonder how practical it would be to use that on USB flash - I guess you would have trouble writing to it once done.
This is from Friend Feed
The tools I user are GUI and never ask whether to "open or run" either. This has been true on Kubuntu, Mandriva, Mint and Mepis with both ext2 and FAT formatted USB drives (not every possible combination of OS and filesustem though).
There is a Firefox plugin that downloads from Youtube perfectly well.
...or they could have simply published and established prior art without the need for a patent.
Having a patent also lets them use it to counter sue. Its called a defensive patent.
.I'll also admit that I believe patents are important to protect real innovations.
Have you any evidence that you base that belief on. All the evidence that I have ever come across point the other way - especially with regard to software, where the state of the art does not seem to be advancing any faster since it became patentable.
Even if they win they will get poultry damages, and it may prove to be the attorney's swan song. The judge is unlikely to take drake-onian measures.
I would argue that the duck quack is a generic sound, used by hunters for hundreds of years.
Much longer. Definitely as long as home sapiens has been around, possibly longer.
Ducks have been making the sound longer still.....
I was hoping for the coating - as in "Oooh shiny!", but no. I'll just have to stick with brushed aluminum or various shades of plastic...
The average user would regard that as a far more important feature of their PC than the software. You can use whatever crap the manufacturer bundled, but what it looks like - now that is important.
They block their radio and television programs from being seen by anyone who has not paid a TV/radio license (UK citizens)
Wrong on four counts:
1) They block non-UK IPs, there is no check on whether you have paid your TV license or not.
2) There is no such thing as a radio license, so if you do not have a TV (I never have) there is no license to pay.
3) Whether you are a British citizen or not is irrelevant to any of this. Residence would be relevant if the the license had anything to do with it, as it is, it is just there you are located.
4) They do not block radio. I am listening to a Radio 4 stream in Sri Lanka as I write this.
reasonable control over something you bought and paid for
Like modding a console you own?
[quote]It's also hard for me to bitch out Microsoft while I am forced to tell people who actually want to use websites with flash (such as full screen youtube) that they can't use Linux.[/quote]
Works for me.
I just tried a random Youtube video in full screen to check.
It is not necessarily lack of willingness to learn. In my case it is lack of time.
I did two Linux Mint KDE (Kubuntu derivative) installs in the last week. They were fast. How much time would I have lost installing Slackware instead? What would I have taken time off from? Playing with my children, dinner with my friends, getting actual work donw?
Even worse, once installed, software installation becomes more time consuming as well. Rather than startup Synaptic, tick a box and click "apply" (or apt-get install in a terminal) and get on with something else, I would have to manually install every dependency.
There are third party solutions to this (e.g. slapt-get) but they all seem to have limitations (e.g. do not update packages that are part of the distribution),.
Windows XP has superior battery life, out of the box and with tweaks.
How exactly has that been established? By one person reporting that his laptop has better battery life watching DVDs on Windows than on Linux?
Which developers? Those who use, rather than produce OSes will probably be better off - and there are far more of them
Microsoft shareholders would take most of the loss.
OS developers would have a wider choice of employers, which might strengthen their bargaining position, but the business itself will be less profitable so there will be less money to go around. I would bet on a reduction in the number of jobs (with a lot of people moving to other types of software) rather than a huge reduction in salaries.
That implicitly assumes that sharing components between OSS OSes will bring efficiency gains so there would be less work to be done.
whether you can start your own for-profit software business if you license your software under the GPL.
Depends on what the alternatives are and what your business model is. Assuming we narrow down the choices to the two best known open source licences (others are broadly similar to one of the other) and proprietary licensing:
Obviously this does not cover anything like all the possibilities, but I just want to make the point that there are business reasons for every choice.
Copyright infringments are not in the criminal code, at least not in civilized countries
By that definition, the world is rapidly running out of civilized countries.
Not that I disagree with you.
Who do you think will do the analysis. Some people can get the data anyway.
A 3d model of their whole body with especially detailed facial features
The government can already get that from your passport photo, driver license photo, security camera photos etc.
Their location a percentage of the time without variable certainty
If you carry a mobile phone your phone company and the government can both track you far better. The government knows when you enter and leave the country, and, in many countries, knows where you are going (at least initially). Uising credit cards or ATMs or any other interaction with a bank creates a trail that can be followed.
A fairly accurate weighted graph of most of their associates and friendsty
The government and telecoms companies again. More accurate as everyone has a phone, not everyone uses Facebook
(plus all the listed information about those people)
There are a lot of sources to pull data on people from.
A rough idea of their habits, personality and political leaning
Bank records, especially what credit and debit card purchases and ATM withdrawals. Loyalty card schemes.Surveillance of protests. Activities which require registration or government checks (anything that involves visiting a school more than once a month in Britain, for example),
If you put the burden of websites to be compliant with every law in the world, it is going to be very difficult for small sites and startups.
Recycling reduces the number new computers being made, which reduces the considerable environmental impact of making them in the first place. Even disposal under better regulation is bad for the environment so the gain is the difference in environmental damage.
The overall impact is probably good for the environment but bad for people whose health suffers. Perhaps the best solution would be to subsidise better conditions for the workers involved in the final disposal and better final disposal of salvageable material? It will almost certainly still be cheaper than an export ban, and would give the third world the gains from importing the stuff.
The transparent thing works both ways... it's easier for black hats to find holes too, by your own logic. And they can keep it secret and exploit it as long as they can.
Except that there have been leaks of Windows source code. That means the bad guys get to see the source, but the law abiding do not.
Learning for the sake of learning doesn't seem to be popular anymore
Schools and universities are increasingly being measures by how well they prepare people for work - i.e. education is becoming more like vocational training.
In Britain, the government has made schools a lot more centralised. Both schools are teachers have a lot less discretion.
The lack of IP protection (nee, the deliberate elimination of IP protection) is not something companies who innovate are likely to embrace.
There is no actual evidence for that - in fact the evidence (academic studies) point the other way. Most of the studies are on patents, not copyright, but it is all the evidence there is.
The GPL protects any actual innovator better than BSD style licenses because it stops free riders. See Zed Shaw's explanation of why he uses the GPL: http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html .
The article gives one actual real life example, and they prefer the Apache license because they prefer the patent clause, not because they want to allow proprietary forks.
BSD style licenses can be better for those who want to accept outside patches and sell a proprietary version (e.g. Django). It is more appealing to the outside contributors than a copyright assignment (like MySQL and ZImbra). In many cases they could also use the LGPL (provided they can cleanly separate the proprietary and open components), and I have no idea why they do not.
it was apparently very important to know how cruelly the evil Romans persecuted the early Christians
Entirely different. The point of that is that is to admire courage under persecution. The lesson is "you sometimes have to give things up to do the right thing, and these people were prepared to give up even their lives".
Also, persecution is still happens, and people are still killed for their faith. Even if you are lucky enough not to be affected, it is worth remembering those who are.
What is being discussed here is encouraging people to think they are persecuted when they are not.
Why is only one of them a bad thing? If the others are ok, why is the browser not?
What else does MS bundle with Windows that harms competition?
IE is the only important end user app that is shipped with Windows.
[quote]Way to give Mozilla a free pass because it's OSS.[/quote]
No, it is because it is an aspect of software you get from them, MS was changing the behaviour of software you got form someone else.
Ubuntu are doing the same as Mozilla here. As far as I can tell it is not personally identifiable data, so all they know is "some Ubuntu user searched for keyword using the search bar". Google know more than this about the search, so where is the privacy problem?