My god you are a fucktard. First, you obviously don't have to sign copyright over to the FSF. Many people choose to do it, and it guarantees that the code will never be made proprietary again. Most people who write free software want it to remain free, and want to prevent anyone from turning it into a proprietary product and making money selling their work. If you choose to enforce your own copyrights, that's your own decision -- it just takes money and lawyers to do that, and you may have problems keeping the software free.
Second, I don't get your retarded argument that anyone should be able to use your code. You can use any GPLed code for any purpose -- you just have to ABIDE BY THE LICENSE. The license says you can't make GPLed code proprietary -- it has to stay free. What exactly is your problem with that? Is it the fact that you are one of those retards that writes shareware crap and hopes someone sends him $20 for a shitty program that took 5 minutes to write? Yeah, I suppose the GPL presents certain obstacles to profiting off that crapware -- that's exactly the point.
I'm saying only a fucking noob would use the fucking button. Well, I guess for someone coming from a PC laptop, it's hard to believe that there is such a thing as a good touchpad.
I use OS X when I'm not doing anything important. If I'm actually doing work, I run XP under Parallels, since there are no EE CAD programs for OS X. In fact, OS X is not even much of an attraction for me -- it's painful to use as a UNIX system, it's a huge resource hog compared to Linux, and I don't care much for the eye candy. If Linux had better support for the Macbook hardware, OS X would probably be gone by now.
Goddammit. I'm sick and tired of hearing the "one button mouse" thing. You can configure it (on the Macbooks) to right click with a 2-finger tap, and it works extremely well. You can also do a 2D scrollwheel action with 2 fingers. The keyboard shortcuts map just fine. And the "high resolution" thing is only important for people who don't realize that it also means REALLY TINY EVERYTHING. Apps are designed for a certain DPI, and 1440x900 is about the most you want to do on a 15" screen. Not to mention, if you are doing CAD on a laptop without an external mouse, keyboard, and monitor, you are fucking insane. For any hardcore CAD work, dual 20" displays is pretty much a requirement.
Guess what, douchebag, that's exactly the same system as in the US. Unless you are a SoundExchange member, you won't receive any part of the money they collect on your behalf. And guess what: most small and/or foreign artists do not belong to major labels. Even the ones that do typically receive hardly any money: most of it is retained by the label.
First, you are not liable for patent infringement if you only distribute source code. The GPL at least prevents someone else from stealing your stuff and then claiming patent rights on it. If JMRI's code was GPLed, the Katzer guy would not have been able to use it without relinquishing his patents.
Yeah, so now you expose yourself to patent liability, warranty liability, and a few other things, without even being able to countersue or keep people from plagiarizing your stuff. Sounds good.
Yes, but in this case the work was licensed under the Artistic "license". There is a reason nobody in their right mind uses that license: it is extremely poorly written. It also allows just about anything to be done with the code. The court basically said that it isn't copyright infringement, since the requirement to preserve the copyright notice does not really limit the scope of the license, but rather imposes an additional requirement onto the licensee. Since no monetary damages can be proven here, about the only thing they could have done is made the guy put the copyright notice back in. Next time, they should use a better license.
At this point, I think JMRI has gone on into silly territory. Alleging copyright infringement because Katzer removed the attribution is rather silly, considering that the license is extremely permissive otherwise. Trying to allege that Katzer acted maliciously when he contacted the DOE with the FOIA request is equally silly -- anyone has the right to make a FOIA request, for any reason. In any case, trying to sue someone on rather shaky allegations is setting yourself up to fail.
You are quite wrong. There are several cases where courts have upheld such EULAs. Being that it is always necessary to make a copy of a program (at least in RAM) in order to use it, a EULA of some sort is always required.
The laptop in question might be a piece of shit, too. I had a Dell (B130) that would not play audio without skipping every few seconds. Some kind of chipset bug. It did the same thing on Windows and multiple versions of Linux, and other people have the same issue. Just your regular shitty Dell hardware. I even tried fucking around with BIOS settings, with no useful results.
The sample rate of 160 is higher than CD, and even though an MP3 has some loss, only certain types of tracks with complex harmonies suffer from quality issues.
I think you are really confused now. 160 Kbps is the bit rate -- as in, 20 Kbytes per second. Uncompressed CD quality is 1411 Kbps. MP3s use the same 44.1KHz sampling rate as CDs do. It's not "160 bits" or whatever.
This is the same argument for vinyl vs. CD in the first place.
Vinyl vs. CD? The CD wins, every time. The only argument there is vinyl is typically not as badly mastered as most CDs are (overcompression, etc.) in order to sound good in the car. Vinyl does not even have the 96dB of theoretical dynamic range that 16 bits would give you, so its claimed benefits are just your typical audiophile horseshit.
Making 256bit MP3s from CD media is a waste as theres no additional data to encode).
There is certainly more data to encode, but the real quality advantage is lacking. The MP3 algorithm is not that good, so there is still a difference in quality to the original, while the difference in size relative to lossless starts disappearing.
Well, if not for the fact that your browser SENDS a user-agent string with every request, nobody would know what browser you were using. Get the user-agent switcher and set it to whatever the hell you want -- an empty string, profanity, malicious javascript, whatever.
Or maybe, they should stop being dipshits and realize that if people are running Adblock Plus, they probably don't want to see their ads, much less click on them. They should either come up with an alternate revenue scheme, switch to less-obnoxious ads, or start charging money. Believe it or not, there are plenty of websites that manage to stay afloat despite not having ads. Yet somehow, they tend to be the higher-quality ones.
People argue about the difference between 160 and 192 and unless you have really high end gear, only a fraction of people can tell, and usually only when listening to music that highlights the weaknesses of one of the lesser frequency
I don't think you get it. Take a decent pair of headphones (I don't mean anything expensive, just your average $30-ish pair), and listen to a 160 Kbps rip and the original. You will usually hear a difference. Granted, 160 Kbps and 192 Kbps might not sound too different, since there is not enough difference between them to really tell. But the original recording usually sounds different, especially if it's some kind of electronica or has a lot of percussion.
Yes, the conditions at most factories are better than they were, but they are so far below US standards it's scary. OK, I'll bite. Have you worked in a US factory back when those existed? Do you have a basis for comparison? Do you know which US standards are higher? At least the Chinese workers get free health care, which is something US workers largely do not have. The fact is, this country did exactly the same thing back when its economy was going through the growth phase.
What sort of ethical breaches could there possibly be? Sounds like the workers are paid in actual currency, they are free to leave, they are being paid an above-average wage, and they can find alternate employment. What exactly is the problem here?
Yeah, it's all the fault of the Chinese! Because we all know American companies were the pioneers of safety, and would never make unsafe products just to save a few cents.
I think you're misunderstanding something. The issue with TrollTech is that by using their library, you are basically preventing anyone from writing non-GPL software that uses Qt in one way or another. Having to pay money to Trolltech simply for developing non-GPLed KDE applications would be quite the antithesis of a free operating system, wouldn't it?
As far as the pine/pico folks: they were always complete jerks, and the FSF is quite right. They like being jerks, they don't want anyone else to modify their software, and they place giant restrictions on use and distribution, even though there is no reason for them to do so. The FSF wanted something that wouldn't be illegal to modify or distribute on Linux CDs (which Pine's license does not allow).
If you really want to get anal, mb is not megabits, it would be millibits (which doesn't make much sense, but hey). The mega prefix is always a capital M.
The copyright owner can permit filming -- the law prohibits unauthorized filming. However, it does not takes into account fair use considerations, only the permission of the copyright owner.
Here's an excerpt from the text itself:
``(a) Offense.--Any person who, without the authorization of the copyright owner, knowingly uses or attempts to use an audiovisual recording device to transmit or make a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work protected under title 17, or any part thereof, from a performance of such work in a motion picture exhibition facility, shall--
``(1) be imprisoned for not more than 3 years, fined under
this title, or both; or
``(2) if the offense is a second or subsequent offense, be
imprisoned for no more than 6 years, fined under this title, or
both.
The possession by a person of an audiovisual recording device in a motion picture exhibition facility may be considered as evidence in any proceeding to determine whether that person committed an offense under this subsection, but shall not, by itself, be sufficient to support a conviction of that person for such offense.
The optical DRIVE is class I, because it's enclosed by a metal box and has interlocks, thus posing no danger if operated normally. The diode inside can be class II, III, IV, or whatever. Every DVD drive would have similar power output, since that's what it takes to burn DVDs.
Ionized part of the laser? What the hell are you smoking? Lasers are just light, not ionizing radiation. Laser goggles are just opaque at the frequency of interest.
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And then Novell would turn into the next SCO? Great idea you had there. Remember, Caldera/SCO used to be a Linux vendor too.
Well, he is a fucktard. That is a fact that can be shown objectively. I'm just being honest.
My god you are a fucktard. First, you obviously don't have to sign copyright over to the FSF. Many people choose to do it, and it guarantees that the code will never be made proprietary again. Most people who write free software want it to remain free, and want to prevent anyone from turning it into a proprietary product and making money selling their work. If you choose to enforce your own copyrights, that's your own decision -- it just takes money and lawyers to do that, and you may have problems keeping the software free.
Second, I don't get your retarded argument that anyone should be able to use your code. You can use any GPLed code for any purpose -- you just have to ABIDE BY THE LICENSE. The license says you can't make GPLed code proprietary -- it has to stay free. What exactly is your problem with that? Is it the fact that you are one of those retards that writes shareware crap and hopes someone sends him $20 for a shitty program that took 5 minutes to write? Yeah, I suppose the GPL presents certain obstacles to profiting off that crapware -- that's exactly the point.
I'm saying only a fucking noob would use the fucking button. Well, I guess for someone coming from a PC laptop, it's hard to believe that there is such a thing as a good touchpad.
I use OS X when I'm not doing anything important. If I'm actually doing work, I run XP under Parallels, since there are no EE CAD programs for OS X. In fact, OS X is not even much of an attraction for me -- it's painful to use as a UNIX system, it's a huge resource hog compared to Linux, and I don't care much for the eye candy. If Linux had better support for the Macbook hardware, OS X would probably be gone by now.
Goddammit. I'm sick and tired of hearing the "one button mouse" thing. You can configure it (on the Macbooks) to right click with a 2-finger tap, and it works extremely well. You can also do a 2D scrollwheel action with 2 fingers. The keyboard shortcuts map just fine. And the "high resolution" thing is only important for people who don't realize that it also means REALLY TINY EVERYTHING. Apps are designed for a certain DPI, and 1440x900 is about the most you want to do on a 15" screen. Not to mention, if you are doing CAD on a laptop without an external mouse, keyboard, and monitor, you are fucking insane. For any hardcore CAD work, dual 20" displays is pretty much a requirement.
Guess what, douchebag, that's exactly the same system as in the US. Unless you are a SoundExchange member, you won't receive any part of the money they collect on your behalf. And guess what: most small and/or foreign artists do not belong to major labels. Even the ones that do typically receive hardly any money: most of it is retained by the label.
First, you are not liable for patent infringement if you only distribute source code. The GPL at least prevents someone else from stealing your stuff and then claiming patent rights on it. If JMRI's code was GPLed, the Katzer guy would not have been able to use it without relinquishing his patents.
Yeah, so now you expose yourself to patent liability, warranty liability, and a few other things, without even being able to countersue or keep people from plagiarizing your stuff. Sounds good.
It's not much of a precedent, since it's just a district court ruling.
Yes, but in this case the work was licensed under the Artistic "license". There is a reason nobody in their right mind uses that license: it is extremely poorly written. It also allows just about anything to be done with the code. The court basically said that it isn't copyright infringement, since the requirement to preserve the copyright notice does not really limit the scope of the license, but rather imposes an additional requirement onto the licensee. Since no monetary damages can be proven here, about the only thing they could have done is made the guy put the copyright notice back in. Next time, they should use a better license.
At this point, I think JMRI has gone on into silly territory. Alleging copyright infringement because Katzer removed the attribution is rather silly, considering that the license is extremely permissive otherwise. Trying to allege that Katzer acted maliciously when he contacted the DOE with the FOIA request is equally silly -- anyone has the right to make a FOIA request, for any reason. In any case, trying to sue someone on rather shaky allegations is setting yourself up to fail.
You are quite wrong. There are several cases where courts have upheld such EULAs. Being that it is always necessary to make a copy of a program (at least in RAM) in order to use it, a EULA of some sort is always required.
The laptop in question might be a piece of shit, too. I had a Dell (B130) that would not play audio without skipping every few seconds. Some kind of chipset bug. It did the same thing on Windows and multiple versions of Linux, and other people have the same issue. Just your regular shitty Dell hardware. I even tried fucking around with BIOS settings, with no useful results.
The sample rate of 160 is higher than CD, and even though an MP3 has some loss, only certain types of tracks with complex harmonies suffer from quality issues.
I think you are really confused now. 160 Kbps is the bit rate -- as in, 20 Kbytes per second. Uncompressed CD quality is 1411 Kbps. MP3s use the same 44.1KHz sampling rate as CDs do. It's not "160 bits" or whatever.
This is the same argument for vinyl vs. CD in the first place.
Vinyl vs. CD? The CD wins, every time. The only argument there is vinyl is typically not as badly mastered as most CDs are (overcompression, etc.) in order to sound good in the car. Vinyl does not even have the 96dB of theoretical dynamic range that 16 bits would give you, so its claimed benefits are just your typical audiophile horseshit.
Making 256bit MP3s from CD media is a waste as theres no additional data to encode).
There is certainly more data to encode, but the real quality advantage is lacking. The MP3 algorithm is not that good, so there is still a difference in quality to the original, while the difference in size relative to lossless starts disappearing.
Well, if not for the fact that your browser SENDS a user-agent string with every request, nobody would know what browser you were using. Get the user-agent switcher and set it to whatever the hell you want -- an empty string, profanity, malicious javascript, whatever.
Or maybe, they should stop being dipshits and realize that if people are running Adblock Plus, they probably don't want to see their ads, much less click on them. They should either come up with an alternate revenue scheme, switch to less-obnoxious ads, or start charging money. Believe it or not, there are plenty of websites that manage to stay afloat despite not having ads. Yet somehow, they tend to be the higher-quality ones.
People argue about the difference between 160 and 192 and unless you have really high end gear, only a fraction of people can tell, and usually only when listening to music that highlights the weaknesses of one of the lesser frequency
I don't think you get it. Take a decent pair of headphones (I don't mean anything expensive, just your average $30-ish pair), and listen to a 160 Kbps rip and the original. You will usually hear a difference. Granted, 160 Kbps and 192 Kbps might not sound too different, since there is not enough difference between them to really tell. But the original recording usually sounds different, especially if it's some kind of electronica or has a lot of percussion.
What sort of ethical breaches could there possibly be? Sounds like the workers are paid in actual currency, they are free to leave, they are being paid an above-average wage, and they can find alternate employment. What exactly is the problem here?
Yeah, it's all the fault of the Chinese! Because we all know American companies were the pioneers of safety, and would never make unsafe products just to save a few cents.
I think you're misunderstanding something. The issue with TrollTech is that by using their library, you are basically preventing anyone from writing non-GPL software that uses Qt in one way or another. Having to pay money to Trolltech simply for developing non-GPLed KDE applications would be quite the antithesis of a free operating system, wouldn't it?
As far as the pine/pico folks: they were always complete jerks, and the FSF is quite right. They like being jerks, they don't want anyone else to modify their software, and they place giant restrictions on use and distribution, even though there is no reason for them to do so. The FSF wanted something that wouldn't be illegal to modify or distribute on Linux CDs (which Pine's license does not allow).
If you really want to get anal, mb is not megabits, it would be millibits (which doesn't make much sense, but hey). The mega prefix is always a capital M.
Here's an excerpt from the text itself:
The optical DRIVE is class I, because it's enclosed by a metal box and has interlocks, thus posing no danger if operated normally. The diode inside can be class II, III, IV, or whatever. Every DVD drive would have similar power output, since that's what it takes to burn DVDs.
Ionized part of the laser? What the hell are you smoking? Lasers are just light, not ionizing radiation. Laser goggles are just opaque at the frequency of interest.