I'm curious. What Apple applications are you talking about? The OS?
All the Apple applications that ship with the OS: text editor, disk utilities, Quicktime, etc. Actually not many of them had easter eggs (that I'm aware of), but the major change is that the about windows for all of them no longer list the individual programmers. I fail to see how this can be effective; just hang around Apple's mailing lists for awhile and you'll collect lots of engineers' names.
The problem with the view that just making lots of money is okay, is that it isn't okay.
Why not? Under capitalism, the way to make lots of money is to produce something that lots of people want. Why isn't that good? It is true that some companies have found they can make more money by getting government to use its coercive power on their behalf (see RIAA), but that is an indictment of excessive government power, not capitalism.
Of course we would. Isn't that the simplest definition of a conservative - one who thinks status quo is Latin for "good enough"?
That may have been the meaning long ago, but it doesn't really apply today, at least in the US. If you look at major political issues today, for example taxes, Social Security, and education, for the most part it is conservatives who want reform and liberals who defend the status quo. The simplest definition of a conservative would be "someone who wants less government", and even that doesn't apply all the time.
You make some valid points, but there's a large contradiction. You are upset with the GOP for failing to uphold the concepts of limited government (with which I agree 100%), but enforcing the drug war requires a large, powerful, and invasive government. To have any chance of enforcing drug laws the government must monitor our finances, spy on our communications, seize assets without trial, and in many other ways ignore large portions of the Constitution.
I'm willing to accept that some people will make foolish decisions that negatively affect their lives. I'm not willing to sacrifice my freedom so that you can try (and fail, for the most part) to protect a small number of people from themselves.
Biggest single mistake: All e-mail should have been encrypted by default.
That wasn't a mistake, that was exactly what the US government wanted. Even though the blatantly unconstitutional export restrictions are now mostly gone, they achieved their primary goal of preventing encryption from becoming standard in Internet communications. Because of the desire of our government to easily spy on its citizens, the Internet is substantially less secure than it should be.
Now, President Junior does the same thing, saying that his "Lets Give Lots Of Money To The Rich Guys" tax policy as "favoring the poor."
This is the big lie that liberals keep repeating, desperately hoping to convince taxpayers that the government can spend their money better than they can. First, the government cannot "give" tax cuts to anyone, since it's not their money to begin with. All they can do is take less. Second, the tax reductions are greater on a percentage basis for the poor. For example, the 15% tax bracket drops to 10%, a 33% cut; while the top 39.6% bracket drops to 35%, only a 12% cut. Yes, the rich will still save more in absolute dollars, but that's because they pay so much more.
The crux of your argument is correct, that Microsoft is blatantly lying about the GPL and clueless reporters are not calling them on it. But introducing partisan political commentary only confuses the issue and annoys half of the readers. (Yes, I know I've annoyed the other half now...)
Your attitude seems to indicate that you value appearance over substance. Some of us prefer to show respect for our employers by doing quality work, and some of us find that we are more productive when dressed comfortably.
That is somewhat ironic seeing as we just got kicked off the UN human rights commission and we're fuming like a petulant little boy.
And you believe that has anything to do with the actual US record on human rights? Good grief, Sudan is on the human rights commission. A lot of UN members just don't like the US, sometimes for understandable reasons.
No, because everyone is not as morally perfect as you imagine yourself to be. For example, I know that I will work harder to benefit myself than I will to benefit anonymous strangers. If that makes me greedy and selfish, so be it.
Either your desire is to make the world a better place or it is not.
Capitalism and profit are not inconsistent with your goals. Advances in technology and medicine have made the world a better place, and they are largely done by entities motivated by self-interest. Socialism denies human nature; capitalism accepts it and channels it toward the public good.
as a for instance, he ducks the question why is it a good thing to trade privacy for convenience?
Because some people might decide that their privacy is less valuable than what someone offers them for their information? Just because you (and I, in most cases) don't agree with that decision doesn't mean it's not theirs to make.
Accepting this argument would logically lead to arguming for the imagined right of people to sell themselves into slavery.
Most of us regularly sacrifice some of our freedom in exchange for money; it's called "work".
His argument is still invalid, because Amazon changing their policy retroactively is a blatant breach of contract. But what this shows is that the FTC can't be counted on to protect consumers, because surprisingly government organizations do not always act in the best interests of the public. This should make people stop and think before proposing government intervention as the solution to every problem.
...and the local gas station raises prices _the next day_ citing OPEC as the cause of new shortages.
Which is entirely reasonable. Supply and demand work off of more information than the immediate quantity at one instant in time. The knowledge that there *will be* a shortage immediately affects the perceived value, just like a company can announce a breakthrough product and have its stock rise immediately, even if they aren't shipping the product for months.
A 2450 rackmount was nearly $1000 more expensive Monday morning when I logged in with our corporate account than it was Sunday night as a random web user. I immediately saw that I was getting raped for being a "corporate" customer.
Or alternatively, you were given a discount for *not* being a corporate customer. You can think of it as individual customers being partially subsidized by corporations who are willing to pay more. With all the anti-corporate rhetoric I see here, I would think this would be applauded.
Good point and all... but how exactly do you save money by buy a SECOND CPU that the OS (Mac OS 9) doesn't even see... won't single proc mac's or an OS that could use them be cheaper?
Classic Mac OS can use multiple processors, it's just that the applications have to be specifically written to use them, which the "clustering" software here apparently is.
I guarnette any admin that is worth his weight can keep 16 X86/Sparc/Alpha boxen running as stable as 16 Mac boxen...
Sure, but if it only takes the admin half the time to manages the Macs, that means he has more time to do other work, or that you can double the number of Macs without hiring another admin.
has been revoked by the united corporations of America.
No, it has been revoked by a government that has abandoned any pretense of respecting the Constitution and the rights of the people. The MPAA can spout lies about DeCSS all they want, but it takes government action to make it illegal.
that's gotta knock a hole in current key lengths and security...I wonder how fast this thing has to get before brute forcing a 256 bit key becomes feasible.
Not possible. If all the energy of a supernova could be channeled into a ideal computer that did nothing but count, it would only get up to 2^219. (from Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier). Brute force attacks will never work against keys of sufficient length; you will need to find a weakness in the cryptographic algorithm (or find the sticky note the user wrote his password on, which is a much better bet).
As long as I don't want their music, pictures, software, etc. What they do to control that content means nothing to me. (And if I do want it, I should either pay the price they are asking. If I think it is overpriced, I should produce something just as good on my own.)
I'm not opposed to their protection mechanisms because they prevent piracy (which they won't). I'm opposed to them because they prevent me from using the content in completely legal ways that they happen to not approve of. See DeCSS.
Every SA I've ever seen from a cable company comes down to the fact that they want you downloading HTTP content and anything that remotely resembles anything other than the computer equivilent of watching TV is expressly forbidden.
That's not always the case, it depends on the provider. Time Warner's service agreement is rather vague on the topic, but the sales guy I talked to said they don't care about servers as long as you don't hog bandwidth and understand that they aren't responsible if somebody hacks your box.
Please. Last time I checked exactly one country had ratified Kyoto, Romania I believe. It had no hope of passing under Clinton, and nothing has changed under Bush.
America is a rogue state. It is not a Democracy but a Plutocracy. It should be expelled from all international bodies
Oh no, please don't do that. Whatever will we do if we don't get to pay for 25% of the UN budget while they pass anti-US resolutions, or pay for our military to defend the rest of the world?
until they democratically elect a government
We did. Perhaps you missed it, but Bush won around 5 separate recounts. Deal with it.
How can the GPL be made to be enforceable while clickwraps shouldn't be?
IANAL, and I have no idea if any of this is legally accurate, but this is my understanding of the situation. When you buy a book, there is no EULA, and regular copyright law applies which gives you certain rights. Obviously you can read the book, you can also make copies of limited sections, (I believe) record yourself reading the book, and study the author's sentence structure and word choices and incorporate the techniques you find into your own writing. A typical software EULA removes most of these rights, and gives you nothing in exchange. They will typically claim to grant you a "license" to run the software, but you can already do that under copyright law. So the EULA is a completely one-sided "contract", stripping your fair use rights in exchange for nothing.
The GPL on the other hand grants you additional rights that you would not have under a standard copyright, specifically the right to distribute copies to anyone as long as you fulfill certain conditions.
So my view is that EULAs are not enforceable because the user receives nothing in exchange for surrendering his rights, while the GPL is because it grants the user additional rights, and merely stipulates the conditions under which those rights can be exercised. If somebody with actual knowledge of this topic can correct me, I'd be interested.
I have tried to stay out of license arguments here, but this is too much.
Personally, I find the second much more offensive.
Your choice, but I don't agree. If someone takes my BSD code, modifies it, and tries to sell it to me, I'm under no obligation to buy it. The only reason I would is if it gives me a good value for my money, in which case we both benefit.
I give you the MS TCP/IP stack, and the Darwin layer of OSX.
You mean the Darwin layer whose source is freely available, and that includes tons of original Apple code?
they are not required to give anything back to the community in return. Admittedly, Apple does, but this is just PR - not a legal requirement.
I can't follow this at all. Apple is giving back far more than they have to (nothing), and you're still bashing them because it's "just PR"? Doesn't the fact that Apple voluntarily chose to release their code count for more than it would if they had been forced to by the GPL?
It is simply a way of ensuring that you don't profit from my altruism in a manner that I cannot or will not exploit.
When I release software as open source, I've made a decision to not attempt to profit financially from it. If somebody else can, good for them. I am not bothered by the concept of other people making money without harming me.
I, however, will continue to interpret your choice to use the BSDL as a sign that either:
1. You don't value what you work on.
2. What you work on isn't valuable.
Congratulations on insulting many developers who are trying to get good code used as widely as possible. Meanwhile, I will interpret your use of the GPL as a sign that you are more interested in your ideological crusade than you are in the quality of your code. I'm picturing a missionary visiting a village of starving peasants who says "you can have some of my food, just as soon as you accept Christ as your personal savior".
No, I don't really believe all of that. I have no problem with your choice of the GPL, but I have a huge problem when you attempt to discredit the work of those who don't use it.
Right now they have two formidable weapons: IP laws and powerful police states to enforce them.
Police state tactics, such as the suppression of speech in the DeCSS case, are most definitely not features of capitalism. They are bugs in the U.S. implementation of capitalism where corporations buy Congressmen and get them to pass unconstitutional laws, while uninformed voters keep electing them.
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime.
It won't happen in my lifetime, or our grandchildren's lifetime. We've been promised true AI "real soon now" for decades, with very little progress. Even menial jobs require a degree of intelligence that computers do not have and will not for the forseeable future.
We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves.
This makes no sense. If you're a slave because you have to provide for yourself, how are you not a slave if you are forcibly compelled to provide for others?
But writing "our own" wouldn't suddenly make CNN start using it or whatever...
Sure it would, if it were as good as or better than Sorenson. If CNN has a zero-cost alternative to Sorenson that would be accessible to more customers, of course they'd use it.
Unix for the masses... yeah... just what the world needs.
Have you actually used Mac OS X? If you're not a Unix geek, it works very much like Mac OS 9, except applications multitask much better and the OS doesn't crash. "Unix" does not have to mean "unusable by mortals".
Slashdot Mirror
All the Apple applications that ship with the OS: text editor, disk utilities, Quicktime, etc. Actually not many of them had easter eggs (that I'm aware of), but the major change is that the about windows for all of them no longer list the individual programmers. I fail to see how this can be effective; just hang around Apple's mailing lists for awhile and you'll collect lots of engineers' names.
Why not? Under capitalism, the way to make lots of money is to produce something that lots of people want. Why isn't that good? It is true that some companies have found they can make more money by getting government to use its coercive power on their behalf (see RIAA), but that is an indictment of excessive government power, not capitalism.
That may have been the meaning long ago, but it doesn't really apply today, at least in the US. If you look at major political issues today, for example taxes, Social Security, and education, for the most part it is conservatives who want reform and liberals who defend the status quo. The simplest definition of a conservative would be "someone who wants less government", and even that doesn't apply all the time.
I'm willing to accept that some people will make foolish decisions that negatively affect their lives. I'm not willing to sacrifice my freedom so that you can try (and fail, for the most part) to protect a small number of people from themselves.
That wasn't a mistake, that was exactly what the US government wanted. Even though the blatantly unconstitutional export restrictions are now mostly gone, they achieved their primary goal of preventing encryption from becoming standard in Internet communications. Because of the desire of our government to easily spy on its citizens, the Internet is substantially less secure than it should be.
This is the big lie that liberals keep repeating, desperately hoping to convince taxpayers that the government can spend their money better than they can. First, the government cannot "give" tax cuts to anyone, since it's not their money to begin with. All they can do is take less. Second, the tax reductions are greater on a percentage basis for the poor. For example, the 15% tax bracket drops to 10%, a 33% cut; while the top 39.6% bracket drops to 35%, only a 12% cut. Yes, the rich will still save more in absolute dollars, but that's because they pay so much more.
The crux of your argument is correct, that Microsoft is blatantly lying about the GPL and clueless reporters are not calling them on it. But introducing partisan political commentary only confuses the issue and annoys half of the readers. (Yes, I know I've annoyed the other half now...)
Your attitude seems to indicate that you value appearance over substance. Some of us prefer to show respect for our employers by doing quality work, and some of us find that we are more productive when dressed comfortably.
Exactly the point. The USSR lost because their inferior economic system couldn't both support their huge military and feed their people.
And you believe that has anything to do with the actual US record on human rights? Good grief, Sudan is on the human rights commission. A lot of UN members just don't like the US, sometimes for understandable reasons.
No, because everyone is not as morally perfect as you imagine yourself to be. For example, I know that I will work harder to benefit myself than I will to benefit anonymous strangers. If that makes me greedy and selfish, so be it.
Either your desire is to make the world a better place or it is not.
Capitalism and profit are not inconsistent with your goals. Advances in technology and medicine have made the world a better place, and they are largely done by entities motivated by self-interest. Socialism denies human nature; capitalism accepts it and channels it toward the public good.
Because some people might decide that their privacy is less valuable than what someone offers them for their information? Just because you (and I, in most cases) don't agree with that decision doesn't mean it's not theirs to make.
Accepting this argument would logically lead to arguming for the imagined right of people to sell themselves into slavery.
Most of us regularly sacrifice some of our freedom in exchange for money; it's called "work".
His argument is still invalid, because Amazon changing their policy retroactively is a blatant breach of contract. But what this shows is that the FTC can't be counted on to protect consumers, because surprisingly government organizations do not always act in the best interests of the public. This should make people stop and think before proposing government intervention as the solution to every problem.
Which is entirely reasonable. Supply and demand work off of more information than the immediate quantity at one instant in time. The knowledge that there *will be* a shortage immediately affects the perceived value, just like a company can announce a breakthrough product and have its stock rise immediately, even if they aren't shipping the product for months.
A 2450 rackmount was nearly $1000 more expensive Monday morning when I logged in with our corporate account than it was Sunday night as a random web user. I immediately saw that I was getting raped for being a "corporate" customer.
Or alternatively, you were given a discount for *not* being a corporate customer. You can think of it as individual customers being partially subsidized by corporations who are willing to pay more. With all the anti-corporate rhetoric I see here, I would think this would be applauded.
Classic Mac OS can use multiple processors, it's just that the applications have to be specifically written to use them, which the "clustering" software here apparently is.
I guarnette any admin that is worth his weight can keep 16 X86/Sparc/Alpha boxen running as stable as 16 Mac boxen...
Sure, but if it only takes the admin half the time to manages the Macs, that means he has more time to do other work, or that you can double the number of Macs without hiring another admin.
How about Mac OS X for $129, which includes Mac OS 9.1 and developer tools?
That, and the fact that normal TVs have really crappy resolution.
No, it has been revoked by a government that has abandoned any pretense of respecting the Constitution and the rights of the people. The MPAA can spout lies about DeCSS all they want, but it takes government action to make it illegal.
Not possible. If all the energy of a supernova could be channeled into a ideal computer that did nothing but count, it would only get up to 2^219. (from Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier). Brute force attacks will never work against keys of sufficient length; you will need to find a weakness in the cryptographic algorithm (or find the sticky note the user wrote his password on, which is a much better bet).
I'm not opposed to their protection mechanisms because they prevent piracy (which they won't). I'm opposed to them because they prevent me from using the content in completely legal ways that they happen to not approve of. See DeCSS.
That's not always the case, it depends on the provider. Time Warner's service agreement is rather vague on the topic, but the sales guy I talked to said they don't care about servers as long as you don't hog bandwidth and understand that they aren't responsible if somebody hacks your box.
America is a rogue state. It is not a Democracy but a Plutocracy. It should be expelled from all international bodies
Oh no, please don't do that. Whatever will we do if we don't get to pay for 25% of the UN budget while they pass anti-US resolutions, or pay for our military to defend the rest of the world?
until they democratically elect a government
We did. Perhaps you missed it, but Bush won around 5 separate recounts. Deal with it.
IANAL, and I have no idea if any of this is legally accurate, but this is my understanding of the situation. When you buy a book, there is no EULA, and regular copyright law applies which gives you certain rights. Obviously you can read the book, you can also make copies of limited sections, (I believe) record yourself reading the book, and study the author's sentence structure and word choices and incorporate the techniques you find into your own writing. A typical software EULA removes most of these rights, and gives you nothing in exchange. They will typically claim to grant you a "license" to run the software, but you can already do that under copyright law. So the EULA is a completely one-sided "contract", stripping your fair use rights in exchange for nothing.
The GPL on the other hand grants you additional rights that you would not have under a standard copyright, specifically the right to distribute copies to anyone as long as you fulfill certain conditions.
So my view is that EULAs are not enforceable because the user receives nothing in exchange for surrendering his rights, while the GPL is because it grants the user additional rights, and merely stipulates the conditions under which those rights can be exercised. If somebody with actual knowledge of this topic can correct me, I'd be interested.
Personally, I find the second much more offensive.
Your choice, but I don't agree. If someone takes my BSD code, modifies it, and tries to sell it to me, I'm under no obligation to buy it. The only reason I would is if it gives me a good value for my money, in which case we both benefit.
I give you the MS TCP/IP stack, and the Darwin layer of OSX.
You mean the Darwin layer whose source is freely available, and that includes tons of original Apple code?
they are not required to give anything back to the community in return. Admittedly, Apple does, but this is just PR - not a legal requirement.
I can't follow this at all. Apple is giving back far more than they have to (nothing), and you're still bashing them because it's "just PR"? Doesn't the fact that Apple voluntarily chose to release their code count for more than it would if they had been forced to by the GPL?
It is simply a way of ensuring that you don't profit from my altruism in a manner that I cannot or will not exploit.
When I release software as open source, I've made a decision to not attempt to profit financially from it. If somebody else can, good for them. I am not bothered by the concept of other people making money without harming me.
I, however, will continue to interpret your choice to use the BSDL as a sign that either:
1. You don't value what you work on.
2. What you work on isn't valuable.
Congratulations on insulting many developers who are trying to get good code used as widely as possible. Meanwhile, I will interpret your use of the GPL as a sign that you are more interested in your ideological crusade than you are in the quality of your code. I'm picturing a missionary visiting a village of starving peasants who says "you can have some of my food, just as soon as you accept Christ as your personal savior".
No, I don't really believe all of that. I have no problem with your choice of the GPL, but I have a huge problem when you attempt to discredit the work of those who don't use it.
Police state tactics, such as the suppression of speech in the DeCSS case, are most definitely not features of capitalism. They are bugs in the U.S. implementation of capitalism where corporations buy Congressmen and get them to pass unconstitutional laws, while uninformed voters keep electing them.
And don't think for a minute this won't happen in your lifetime.
It won't happen in my lifetime, or our grandchildren's lifetime. We've been promised true AI "real soon now" for decades, with very little progress. Even menial jobs require a degree of intelligence that computers do not have and will not for the forseeable future.
We all depend on our labor because we are all slaves.
This makes no sense. If you're a slave because you have to provide for yourself, how are you not a slave if you are forcibly compelled to provide for others?
Sure it would, if it were as good as or better than Sorenson. If CNN has a zero-cost alternative to Sorenson that would be accessible to more customers, of course they'd use it.
Have you actually used Mac OS X? If you're not a Unix geek, it works very much like Mac OS 9, except applications multitask much better and the OS doesn't crash. "Unix" does not have to mean "unusable by mortals".