When you read "...the Supreme Court began requiring..." you know there is something not right about the article summary. What power does the SC have to "begin requiring" anything? Did they suddenly get the power to create laws?
Obviously, 2006 numbers are not in yet, but the only reported quarter (Q1) for 2006 has revenue 38% higher (84 versus 61) than 2005 and profit 11% higher (13.8 versus 12.4).
You are absolutely right, SCO could withhold the source code until someone requests it, and they could even charge for the media to send it to you my snail mail if they wanted.
But, only one person would have to go through the trouble of requesting and paying for the source code. Then, the GPL allows this person to then redistribute the source code in any manner fitting the GPL, including posting to a public FTP/HTTP server.
Let's show those evil (evil I say!) bastards at RH. Everyone post an ISO image of their software on the internet! Make copies or said ISOs and sell them for profit! Ha!
Then, use their software on *all* your machines at work, and don't pay them a red cent! Ha!
Spider man is *not* "on track to massacre star wars" as Katz says in his article. If he would have read the link he published on this comment.
Katz says:
Spider-man is now on track to massacre Star Wars, perhaps out-earning it in the early days of the summer by as much as $100 million, if projected patterns continue.
Blake predicted "Spider-Man" would end up north of $400 million, possibly getting as far as $450 million, which would make it the third-highest grossing picture of all time behind "Titanic" ($601 million) and "Star Wars" ($461 million).
I didn't state the point clearly enough. The point is to make a political statement about the DMCA.
I understood you. I just wanted to make sure people understood this would only be a political statement, nothing more.
If people see that the US flag can be used as a copyright circumvention device (code + flag = cracked DVD), then perhaps they will realize the unfairness and unworkability of the DMCA.
Why? This is the idea I was questioning. Who cares if the flag is used to make this point? It is a grandstanding tactic designed to draw attention, but has little to do with legal issues.
Theoretically, it might allow one to distribute a modified DeCSS and say, "This is not a copyright circumvention device. It does nothing useful by itself. If it's used with an image of the United States flag, then one might use it to view DVDs on an unapproved device, but without the flag, it's harmless." Now, how would this be prosecuted in court? I imagine it would be tough for a prosecutor to stand up in court and argue against distributing the code, which does nothing useful. And no sane (or politcially ambitious) prosecutor will stand up and argue against distributing a copy of the flag. So how would the prosecutor prosecute this case?
Simple, he argues that in fact this item (in this case a flag) *is* a circumvention device. He could demonstrate how using it (with some other item maybe) decrypts a DVD. The real question is how could the defense use the fact that the device resembles a US flag in its arguement.
Now, rethink the situation where you can involve a free speech arguement, such as in the example of singing the DeCSS source code. Now, the defense does have an arguement. Free speech.
But, this is why the "sing the decryption algorithm" recordings are interesting, because a song falls under the auspices of free speech in the US. And, thus, is a protected legal right of US citizens. So, you have the opposing legal rights of free speech and DMCA laws.
But, the flag does not enjoy such priviledges. So, while using the flag would be symbolicly interesting to entangle in this mess, it would be much less interesting legally.
...but, there is no special protection/rules for the US flag in the USA. There was an *attempt* to make it illegal to burn (or otherwise malign) the flag, but it was not successful. You are legally entitled to step on, spit on, or do other indignities to the US flag!
So, I'm kinda confused as to the point of this whole line of thought.
Sure, if you created something that you (or your heirs) want to protect, great. By all means, you should be allowed to keep it protected, but only through an opt-in type of program. Maybe every 20 years or so someone would have to re-file a form to keep it protected.
This way, the 99.999% of published material that has little or no resale value, and whose authors are no longer interested, would be freed to the public domain.
The problem with the current laws is (IMHO) that it automatically includes all published material, rather than being opt-in.
It states that the database WILL be made available to the general public. There will be the restriction that commercial access needs to sign a MTA, but the general public (not for profit) can search, download, etc, the database.
Wow, talk about a completely misleading article header slashdot!
Clearly. And the $2500 price-tag for the PIII was for a complete system as well. My point was: why is the PIII rated the worse price/performance when the Mac system is more expensive than the PIII system?
It would seem, using the criteria they are using, that the Mac would be the worse price/performance, not the PIII.
If in fact they are using the "price per chip" (as opposed to price per system) in the analysis, why not list the chip prices?
I agree, M$ has asked Merkey's company to honor its agreement (as far as I can tell anyway). I'm sure kind of stuff happens all the time in the business world, and quite frankly, there is nothing wrnog with it. Merkey did not have to make any agreements with M$.
The odd thing about Merkey is that he drags all of LKML along with him on his personal matters. He often writes messages to LKML which really have nothing to do with the LK. He writes about how wonderful MANOS is, and how much Linux sucks (gee, thanks for the input!). And, in this case, writing about some internal matter between his company and M$. Oh, yeah, and I remember some REALLY bizarre postings a few weeks ago about someone he knew who committed suicide at Novell. All this on LKML!
The part that bothers me the most, I think, is why slashdot covered the story the way they did. This sensationalist journalism gets old after a while, especially when it concerns something as inflamatory as implying that M$ is somehow using threats of legal action against Linux (the kernel).
Let's review the title of this article. These are the words that the/. people chose to summarize this issue:
Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support
Can you IMAGINE the/. response to similar hyperbole coming from Redmond directed against Linux?
Jeff Merkey is the head of a for-profit company, Timpaganos (or some such thing). There was some agreement between his company and M$, the exact nature of which I don't know.
<p>
When Jeff said, "Microsoft has threatened us with litigation due to our support of Linux NTFS development" the <b>us</b> he was referring to was his company, not <i>linux</i> proper.
<p>
Jeff was giving people a binary NTFS tool to help people recover their file systems after they got damaged by some bugs in the linux NTFS drivers. This is probably what Jeff is referring to when he says, "Microsoft demanded that we delete any and all NTFS tools we had been providing to customers..."
<p>
Micro$oft is NOT threatening linux. M$ is NOT trying to have the NTFS driver removed from linux proper. This is not clear in the linuxcare article, but is clear if you followed all of Jeff's (sometimes logic-challenged) posts. One final note, you have to mentally tone down posts from Jeff, he tends to be <understatement> overly dramatic </understatement> and has a strange combative/cooperative cycle of posts.
I've never contributed a line of code to either Gnome or KDE, but I use them daily.
I find the comments of Mr. Granroth to be quite insulting to my intelligence. Does he honestly believe that the end users of Gnome and KDE based their decision to use either on corporate backing?
Is there anything Sun Corporation can say or do that will FORCE me to do anything? Of course not.
I find his comments about Redhat to be quite telling. Is he so shortsighted as to have forgotten that only a few releases ago, Redhat did not even include KDE? It was the end users that kept downloading KDE and installing it on Redhat, until finally they HAD to include it. We (end users) hold the power, not corporate might.
Mr. Granroth, your comments come across like those of a whiny loser, and there is no need for it! Keep releasing a high quality product, and people will keep using it. End of story. Stop embarrasing yourself and the KDE project. This "we are the victims, look at us" attitude has got to go.
One final comment. We do not live in the world of proprietary software any more. We are free (RMS definition) to do what we want. If every company in the world backs Gnome, we can STILL thumb our noses at them, and use KDE. You can take the best technologies from Gnome (remember the GPL!) and place them into KDE. You could develop a KDE version of StarOffice. It is so frustrating to see that one of the head developers of KDE still just doesn't GET THIS.
Slashdot Mirror
Fagets. Haha, insert. Fagets.
I don't get it. Motorcycle bikers like to insert themselves?
Just stupid. Thanks for the link, now I'm less stupid.
What is a "radiation-hardened" robot? Isn't anything that doesn't have mutation sensitive DNA "radiation-hardened"? In other words, any robot?
Or maybe they mean the robot gets an erection from the radiation. Yeah, that's probably it.
hehe
...linux
When you read "...the Supreme Court began requiring..." you know there is something not right about the article summary. What power does the SC have to "begin requiring" anything? Did they suddenly get the power to create laws?
Some facts on RHAT finances.
Year Revenue Profit
2001 79 -140
2002 91 -7
2003 125 14
2004 197 45
2005 278 80
(all numbers in millions)
Obviously, 2006 numbers are not in yet, but the only reported quarter (Q1) for 2006 has revenue 38% higher (84 versus 61) than 2005 and profit 11% higher (13.8 versus 12.4).
You are absolutely right, SCO could withhold the source code until someone requests it, and they could even charge for the media to send it to you my snail mail if they wanted.
But, only one person would have to go through the trouble of requesting and paying for the source code. Then, the GPL allows this person to then redistribute the source code in any manner fitting the GPL, including posting to a public FTP/HTTP server.
Let's show those evil (evil I say!) bastards at RH. Everyone post an ISO image of their software on the internet! Make copies or said ISOs and sell them for profit! Ha!
Then, use their software on *all* your machines at work, and don't pay them a red cent! Ha!
Oh, wait a minute...
Katz says:
The article he links says:
Geesh Katz, this is bad... even for you!
I understood you. I just wanted to make sure people understood this would only be a political statement, nothing more.
Why? This is the idea I was questioning. Who cares if the flag is used to make this point? It is a grandstanding tactic designed to draw attention, but has little to do with legal issues.
Simple, he argues that in fact this item (in this case a flag) *is* a circumvention device. He could demonstrate how using it (with some other item maybe) decrypts a DVD. The real question is how could the defense use the fact that the device resembles a US flag in its arguement.
Now, rethink the situation where you can involve a free speech arguement, such as in the example of singing the DeCSS source code. Now, the defense does have an arguement. Free speech.
Sure.
But, this is why the "sing the decryption algorithm" recordings are interesting, because a song falls under the auspices of free speech in the US. And, thus, is a protected legal right of US citizens. So, you have the opposing legal rights of free speech and DMCA laws.
But, the flag does not enjoy such priviledges. So, while using the flag would be symbolicly interesting to entangle in this mess, it would be much less interesting legally.
...but, there is no special protection/rules for the US flag in the USA. There was an *attempt* to make it illegal to burn (or otherwise malign) the flag, but it was not successful. You are legally entitled to step on, spit on, or do other indignities to the US flag!
So, I'm kinda confused as to the point of this whole line of thought.
Sure, if you created something that you (or your heirs) want to protect, great. By all means, you should be allowed to keep it protected, but only through an opt-in type of program. Maybe every 20 years or so someone would have to re-file a form to keep it protected.
This way, the 99.999% of published material that has little or no resale value, and whose authors are no longer interested, would be freed to the public domain.
The problem with the current laws is (IMHO) that it automatically includes all published material, rather than being opt-in.
It states that the database WILL be made available to the general public. There will be the restriction that commercial access needs to sign a MTA, but the general public (not for profit) can search, download, etc, the database.
Wow, talk about a completely misleading article header slashdot!
Clearly. And the $2500 price-tag for the PIII was for a complete system as well. My point was: why is the PIII rated the worse price/performance when the Mac system is more expensive than the PIII system?
It would seem, using the criteria they are using, that the Mac would be the worse price/performance, not the PIII.
If in fact they are using the "price per chip" (as opposed to price per system) in the analysis, why not list the chip prices?
The odd thing about Merkey is that he drags all of LKML along with him on his personal matters. He often writes messages to LKML which really have nothing to do with the LK. He writes about how wonderful MANOS is, and how much Linux sucks (gee, thanks for the input!). And, in this case, writing about some internal matter between his company and M$. Oh, yeah, and I remember some REALLY bizarre postings a few weeks ago about someone he knew who committed suicide at Novell. All this on LKML!
Let's review the title of this article. These are the words that the /. people chose to summarize this issue:
Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support
Can you IMAGINE the /. response to similar hyperbole coming from Redmond directed against Linux?
Oops, I selected 'HTML tags to text' instead of 'HTML formatted' in my post.
Jeff Merkey is the head of a for-profit company, Timpaganos (or some such thing). There was some agreement between his company and M$, the exact nature of which I don't know.
<p>
When Jeff said, "Microsoft has threatened us with litigation due to our support of Linux NTFS development" the <b>us</b> he was referring to was his company, not <i>linux</i> proper.
<p>
Jeff was giving people a binary NTFS tool to help people recover their file systems after they got damaged by some bugs in the linux NTFS drivers. This is probably what Jeff is referring to when he says, "Microsoft demanded that we delete any and all NTFS tools we had been providing to customers..."
<p>
Micro$oft is NOT threatening linux. M$ is NOT trying to have the NTFS driver removed from linux proper. This is not clear in the linuxcare article, but is clear if you followed all of Jeff's (sometimes logic-challenged) posts. One final note, you have to mentally tone down posts from Jeff, he tends to be <understatement> overly dramatic </understatement> and has a strange combative/cooperative cycle of posts.
Sure, of course.
I meant to say: "We no longer [are forced] to live in a world of proprietary software." I should have included the 'are forced'.
It has been so long since I have used proprietary software, it honestly didn't occur to me to add that!
I've never contributed a line of code to either Gnome or KDE, but I use them daily.
I find the comments of Mr. Granroth to be quite insulting to my intelligence. Does he honestly believe that the end users of Gnome and KDE based their decision to use either on corporate backing?
Is there anything Sun Corporation can say or do that will FORCE me to do anything? Of course not.
I find his comments about Redhat to be quite telling. Is he so shortsighted as to have forgotten that only a few releases ago, Redhat did not even include KDE? It was the end users that kept downloading KDE and installing it on Redhat, until finally they HAD to include it. We (end users) hold the power, not corporate might.
Mr. Granroth, your comments come across like those of a whiny loser, and there is no need for it! Keep releasing a high quality product, and people will keep using it. End of story. Stop embarrasing yourself and the KDE project. This "we are the victims, look at us" attitude has got to go.
One final comment. We do not live in the world of proprietary software any more. We are free (RMS definition) to do what we want. If every company in the world backs Gnome, we can STILL thumb our noses at them, and use KDE. You can take the best technologies from Gnome (remember the GPL!) and place them into KDE. You could develop a KDE version of StarOffice. It is so frustrating to see that one of the head developers of KDE still just doesn't GET THIS.