You mis-spoke when you said: "Some could argue that you are implicitly paying to use those machines if they're necessary to do the work.". You meant: "Some could argue that you are implicitly paying to use those machines if they're necessary to do the learnin'."
No offence, but you're nitpicking; it should have been obvious that I meant coursework. I certainly wasn't implying that it was a job in any sense- if anything, that was you! (Also... I personally don't pronounce "learning" with an apostrophe(!)).
That's the point. You aren't supposed to be doing work.
Coursework.
And you know, it's not just a fun game here. I mean it is, but there's a lot more to it. It's not that what we say here pulls any weight. But it's a great survey of opinions and ideas. When someone, be it a university or a business, decides to consider a policy, these surveys of public opinion -- or in this case sub-culture opinion -- are extremely relevant.
The problem with Slashdot is that while it is frequently useful and insightful for the reasons you mention, it is also on occasion full of IANALs discussing moralistic points in a legalistic sense- and vice versa- and having no knowledge of the latter, but acting as if their guess of how the law *should* work is how the law actually works. When in reality the only way to know how the law actually works is... to go and find out how the law actually works.
(I've been criticised for pointing out this out- as if by explaining the law is what the law is, and that you can't deduce that solely by rational analysis of the issues, no matter how much you'd like that to be so- implies that I agree with the irrational law(s). No, but that's how it is, and I don't intend being shot for being the messenger.)
That's not to mention the wanky, up-their-own-arse, stupid analogy arguments on- for example- social issues that compares every damned thing to a car or breaks it down to stupid levels- "OMG, your photons are in my yard, I can do what I like with them"- that are useless and meaningless to the argument at hand, solely for winning some ******* geeky pseudo-intellectual, argument winning pissing contest.
I promise you that the $80 in coupons (which I didn't even get and they won't replace even though they didn't send it in any trackable manner) won't cover what we should have been given.
I thought that the theory was that the government worked on the citizens' behalf; any billions they make above the cost of those $80 boxes- or whatever- should still- in theory- belong to you, the citizens. In theory.
I'm no rabid fan of letting the market set every standard. However, your argument is flawed:-
If you transition to a non-government regulated technology though:
Reel Film -> VHS vs Betamax -> Laserdisc -> VideoCD -> DVD -> HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray
With UMD and Divx discs mixed in there in a manner that don't really match the progression.
Reel film wasn't really used in the same way as VHS; I'm sure that plenty of rich-ish people used it for their holidays, but not on a day-to-day basis and not for TV.
Betamax flopped, and quite a few people got their fingers burned- that's probably the closest you get to proving your point. VHS's commercially successful lifetime probably lasted at least 25 years (latterly it was still used for timeshifting before PVRs and recordable DVDs got cheap).
Except in Japan, Laserdisc was a high-end niche product at best (and even there it wasn't that big compared to VHS). It wasn't really a successor to VHS, although it may have been seen as a potential rival in the early days; and its era ran almost concurrently to VHS's (starting slightly later, ending slightly earlier).
Video CD never took off in North America and Europe (except a brief period of success circa the late-90s/early-2000s as a medium for convenient pirate videos before recordable DVD was affordable). Probably because it offered nothing above VHS except random access. I heard that it did better in South East Asia where VHS hadn't done as well due to problems caused by the humid climates.
DVD. Yeah- massive success, no question of that.
HD-DVD was killed off fairly early on in the battle before it became a mass-market Joe Sixpack product; I'm guessing relatively few people got burned. Blu Ray might succeed, it might not, who knows?
UMD movies were a stupid idea that were pretty much proprietary and restricted to the PSP, so I doubt many people took it seriously- let alone committed to it- as a movie format. No fingers burned.
DivX was effectively a crap, hobbled DVD variant (and rival) that flopped, so I doubt many people got burned by that either.
Therefore, for your average Joe Public, the progression was really:-
Reel-to-reel -> VHS (possibly got burned by Beta flop) -> DVD -> *Possibly* Blu-Ray (that will probably play his old DVDs anyway).
It doesn't look half as bad when you look at it like that. Everything else was a niche product or- except for Beta- rejected by the public convincingly enough to make it irrelevant.
I know that the tuition doesn't cover using the machine because when a business asks to use the very same machine, they get charged more than the student's entire four-year tuition.
And yes, when someone donates a machine like that to a university, it is donated with strings. And one of those strings is "for academic use".
That covers your donation to one university. Fair enough, but what about all other university equipment? The stuff that the university itself paid for? etc. etc.
My point was that the bottom line is that the situation probably isn't as clear-cut as you- or others- imply when you say something like
The university is paying you -- that's why you get credits. The money you pay to them is tuition for those credits, for the learning. You haven't paid anything to use those machines or facilities.
Some could argue that you are implicitly paying to use those machines if they're necessary to do the work. Others would argue that you're not actually getting "paid" in any traditional sense- even the pseudo-pay in the form of credits that you imply, since undergraduate university study isn't really a job, not even a pretend one. Or... yadda yadda yadda, you get the picture.
As I said, one can indulge in the traditional Slashdot pastime of pseudo-legalistic analogies and rationalisation. So long as you realise that it doesn't and can't say anything about the real world, it's a fun game to play if you're into that sort of thing.
The university is paying you -- that's why you get credits. The money you pay to them is tuition for those credits, for the learning. You haven't paid anything to use those machines or facilities.
One can rationalise things in any way they like to suit their argument, and that's what everyone (you included) seems to be doing in this thread; aside from the ten-a-penny legal advice from the massed ranks of IANALs, that is.
Bottom line; plucking things out of thin air based on what *you* (or anyone else) thinks they ought to be paying for rather than what they are legally paying for is meaningless argumentative BS wankery. How do you know that his tuition doesn't cover the cost of the machines?
You get to use my expensive machine to learn -- that's why I donated it in the first place.
You donated something with those strings attached? I hope that you made this clear to the university and that they in turn made this clear to the students.
Central park is where it is because they needed somewhere to graze cows so the city could have fresh milk. The same reason as almost every urban park in the world.
Got any evidence for that? This seems to contradict that, and my understanding is that a lot of parks in the UK were created during the 19th century for the use of the growing urban population.
Also, especially given the smaller size of cities in the pre-mass transportation area, I doubt that having the cows smack in a designated area in the middle of the city as opposed to any other pocket of green land or keeping them on the outskirts was very likely.
As a matter of general principle, I think MS has a lot of roosters that I'd like to see coming home to roost. So I'm happy.
OTOH, over the past few years I've had a few decidedly non-evil friends go to work there, and I hate to see anything happen to them.
Assuming we accept your implication that MS is evil, or at least ethically challenged (and I'll happily agree with the latter), it's not like your supposedly "non-evil" friends would have gone in with their eyes shut or at gunpoint. Whatever their reasons, they chose to work there knowing the score.
Besides which, having worked for MS is still a big plus-point for the CV when hunting for a new job.
I can think of things more worth shedding tears over.
My morning routine includes buying a copy of the San Jose Mercury News. [..] Now the Mercury News is about the third of the size it was 3 years ago. Most of its text is wire copy and advertorial crap. What's left of its original content is mostly puff pieces and human interest. Haven't heard whether it's actually more profitable. I'd guess not.
Well, *you're* still buying it, aren't you? From their perspective, they'd likely be happy if every page was a copyvio photo of goatse man or tubgirl, so long as people bought the paper.
That having been said, I agree with your basic point. The "making a reasonable profit is not acceptable" uber-greedy, and uber-stupid BS has nothing to do with increasing profits by increasing efficiency or genuinely improving the company and everything to do with unreasonable, short-termist and unsustainable expectations of making money from an ever-increasing stock price.
I agree that it's sometimes unpleasant that some creatively bankrupt advertising f*****t can cheapen a piece of out-of-copyright classical music by using it for some lousy product, but that's an unfortunate side effect of something that is desirable on the whole.
True. On the other hand, we'd also be missing things like Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale, among others.
Which proves the point I was making(!):)
FWIW, I actually prefer the melody of A Whiter Shade of Pale to the Bach "original" that they incorrectly (or intentionally) didn't quite copy.
Why does the public have rights over and above the creator?
The creator enjoys the protection of the law that *stops* other people making copies of that character. You're already operating from the assumption that an artist has the inherent moral right to stop anyone making copies of his or her work.
Let me make clear that I'm not one of Slashdot's kneejerk anti-IPers. I strongly believe that the time and effort put into creating intellectual (as opposed to physical) works should have the same *opportunity* to be rewarded as physical work or service. Nor do I agree that no-one ever loses out from "piracy". So copyright is (ideally) the protection of *potential* income from intellectual works.
Still, the assumption that the creator should enjoy the protection of the state forever and ever on their works is one some people could reasonably disagree with.
I understand if there is no remaining family but why shouldn't the rights pass to the surviving family much as physical property does?
Regardless of whether some people call it intellectual property, the fact remains that it isn't the same as physical property.
Our culture is built upon the works of previous cultures and their intellectual works. To impose copyright and similar intellectual protection for generations would ultimately have the effect of tying up our current and future popular culture and make it impossible to build upon it in the same way that previous generations have.
Can you imagine how hard it would have been for the creators of Popeye if they hadn't been able to use *any* previous elements, even getting down to the basic structure of the story and the setup? (e.g. Two guys fighting over one girl; sorry, the Greeks have a copyright on that from 2000 years ago, etc.) And yes, IIRC, some people *were* wanting to copyright things down to that sort of level on modern creations.
You probably know (or ought to know) that many of Disney's classic works are based on public domain material and characters that they never paid a cent for. The company is one of the arch-hypocrites when it comes to intellectual property.
My family home can still be in the family in 500 years but my work will belong to anyone that wants to reproduce it for a quick buck.
Your original artwork will still be in the family in 500 years, if they haven't sold it off. You just won't have the right to stop other people making copies of it.
And while you can hold on to the house, you can't hold on to it *and* have the benefit of selling it. Sure, you can rent it out and stuff, so the edges are blurred; but as I said, physical and intellectual property aren't the same thing and can't always be compared. With IP, you can sell copies of it *and* retain the original rights.
I often wonder about releasing some work to the public because in the end the only true way in our society to control your work is to not publish it ever.
That's your choice.
I no longer have the financial need so why not just keep my work for family and friends?
Ditto. Though I'd burn it before you die, as if it's really as important as you seem to think, some descendant will probably release it anyway- likely before the copyright expires in order to make money as well.
It may seem straight forward to non artists but it's an upsetting subject for many artists.
No-one ever said life was perfect. I agree that it's sometimes unpleasant that some creatively bankrupt advertising f*****t can cheapen a piece of out-of-copyright classical music by using it for some lousy product, but that's an unfortunate side effect of something that is desirable on the whole.
Upsetting? Perhaps, but they have to decide whether the trade-off of releasing their work is worth it; they already enjoy the better part of a lifetime's protection in many cases, and that's a lo
A friend at school had a 32MB MP3 player around a decade ago. It was enough for one album encoded at 64kb/s [..] It was more a gimmick than a useful product
Ha ha... I remember reading about those at the time and thinking they sounded pretty lame. Was it one of those ones that took the better part of an hour to upload music via the serial port?
Funny thing is, although I never used one, I came to the same conclusion as you did through experience anyway(!)- namely that they were boys toys and too limited to be much more convenient than a tape Walkman.
Thing is, if you think about it, the capacity makes a *qualitative* difference in the way you consume music. Current models are large enough to upload a large part if not all of your music collection, take it around with you, pick and choose and listen in all sorts of ways.
Being restricted to 32MB OTOH means you only have one album's worth of space, so you have to keep "reloading" it if you want more than an album's worth of music. Just like a cassette player, except that it takes much longer to change the music and you can't reasonably carry new music with you.
And the fact that you can only carry a limited number of tracks means that you're unlikely to skip, or pick and choose the few that you do have, which mostly negates one of the few benefits that it has over a cheap cassette deck.
it was more convenient than any of the alternatives if you just wanted music for a short period while mobile due to its very small size compared to anything with moving parts.
Was it really *that* much smaller than a slimline Walkman/generic-portable-cassette?
I explain it by the fact that not everyone likes 'clicky' keyboards.
Oh, thank God. I came across one of those Model M things about 12 years ago before I knew anything of their supposed reputation, and I wasn't impressed. That was the first time I'd typed on a keyboard with that type of action (i.e. pressure point halfway down) and it just felt weird. And hard work. And noisy.
The Model M is probably a well-constructed and engineered keyboard, but I'm convinced that it's overrepresented and overhyped by a small number of very fanatical users who praise it as the epitome of mechanical keyboards. Every time there's a discussion on keyboards here, the Model M fetishation starts up!
They're probably something you grow to love if you had the opportunity to get used to the feel, but for the rest of us... not convinced.
And I'm not some wuss that grew up with membrane-based PC keyboards. I actually went out of my way to buy a mechanical keyboard a while back, but I wanted one with the more normal action that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom of the stroke. Those with the bloody Model M style action were more widely available, but I had to resort to getting a keyboard with a German layout (not too bad because I touch type anyway and labelled the more obscure keys:)).
Your defense is consistency?? Would you have made the same argument for Xfree86?
And here I get the opportunity to quote my posted-in-advance comment from above, which you should already have seen:-
I'm well aware that some people are going to kneejerk-interpret (and respond to) this post as if it's a blanket defence and/or endorsement of Sun's overall behaviour surrounding OO.o. No, it's not. [etc, read the rest]
I made quite clear that it addressed that one issue only, specifically Kohei's surprise and annoyance that they refused the patch without the JCA despite seemingly having been aware that they always required that.
But in his blog post, Kohei says he signed the JCA when he started writing the solver.
I don't know if he retracted it later when he moved to Novell, but you seem to be working under the wrong assumption that he refused it outright.:-)
I was working under the assumption that he was happy to go along with it initially, then changed his mind when Novell (for whatever reason) requested this.
Even if what you said was true, it ultimately makes no significant difference to what I said. Kohei started off knowing the score with the JCA, then for some reason agreed to change/withdraw/whatever at some later stage.
(I could speculate about the possibly different legal and copyright statuses of the pre- and post- Novell sponsorship code, but since we don't know clearly what was agreed with Novell and what the conditions were- and that's on top of IANAL- this would be fumbling in the dark. And again, it wouldn't change the fact that Kohei and/or Novell were the parties responsible for muddying the waters, not Sun).
Another thing, The Summer of Code stunt Sun pulled looks really weird, whatever happened elsewhere. They are rightfully accused of arrogance and disrespect, with that kind of total lack of communication toward a voluntary developer.
Yeah, that one requires giving Sun the benefit of the doubt and even then it's a bit questionable. But, as I said, I wasn't blanket discussing Sun's behaviour, just the core implication that Sun had suddenly turned round and refused Kohei's work when in fact he knew from the start that the JCA was required.
I guess that's the theory (though I'm not clear if is this accepted practice or your own reasoning; if you're an economics genius, please accept my apologies- it doesn't matter which;)).
I'm guessing one possible flaw with that from the point of view of my example is that it should work for goods where (a) the product is a commodity, (b) there's something approaching a free global market *and* (c) consumer prices generally reflect changes in global wholesale prices.
AFAIK, music isn't really like that; there's not a free market, music isn't a commodity product (or isn't perceived that way by the consumer) and prices here don't generally mirror the "cost" of music and the relative value of currencies.
If I'd done the conversion a few months ago, when the Pound Sterling was hovering around the US $2 mark, you'd have got a higher figure than if I'd done the same thing today. But wouldn't that be misleading?- if I'm still getting paid £X,000 and the price of a CD is £X, and you're still getting paid $Y,000 and the cost of a CD to you is $Y, then... it gets complicated.:)
I've read both those main links through- first time I've heard about that incident. Here are my thoughts:-
The central issue seems to be that in addition to being LGPL-licensed, Sun require all contributions to have a Joint Copyright Assignment agreement.
Here's the rub. Kohei *quite clearly* knew about this requirement when he started off. There seems to have been no sign in the interim that Sun would change their stance. Yet he says:-
Long story short, I joined Novell [who] decided to pick me up. When Novell asked me whether I would be willing to change the license of the Solver code to LGPL only, I simply agreed.
Well... why? He already knows that Sun require the JCA before accepting contributions, and that accepting Novell's change would make this impossible unless *they* were willing to change their minds. But then why ask in the first place? Novell's behaviour here is either very cynical or incompetent.
The change in licensing made perfect sense since the entire code was owned by myself (~99%), with a small fraction contributed from Novell and Debian, under LGPL.
Normally I'd agree, but since the code was written for submission to OO.o which only accepts contributions with the JCA, it makes no sense at all.
I'm well aware that some people are going to kneejerk-interpret (and respond to) this post as if it's a blanket defence and/or endorsement of Sun's overall behaviour surrounding OO.o. No, it's not.
What I *am* saying is that whether or not *we* think the JCA is reasonable (and I'm personally dubious about it), Kohei knew that it was required when he started his module and went ahead anyway. Yet he later agreed to Novell's license change knowing (or he should have known) that this would make it impossible to meet those requirements.
Sun might or might not be dicks, and that Summer of Source incident might have been an intentional blow off, but they at least appear to have been consistent and clear on what the terms of acceptance were. Seems Kohei knew this when he started but later agreed to an incompatible license change anyway. His choice, but I've no idea why and I don't see how he can complain about this.
Easy. All they have to do is refuse to take contributions from the rest of the community. Kohei's solver module is a case in point. He had a fully functional solver, and what did Sun do?
What was the deal? Did he refuse to dual-license it, or did they just not accept it full stop? If the latter, what was the reason (if any) they gave for doing their own?
Yeah, well that was the era of grossly overpriced CD singles. They were sometimes UK £2 - £2.50 in the first week only for promotional reasons, but after that they were usually £4. 4 BLOODY QUID! And you can slap on an extra quid for today's money. £5 at modern conversion rates is over US $7 for a bloody single! I don't care how many bloody extra bonus tracks they slapped on to vainly justify the bloated cost. (*)
Cassette singles were cheaper, but not that cheap, and there was no good reason for the difference in price. Singles sucked in the 1990s.
(Cue cheap anti-nostalgia wavy video effect).
When I think back to the mid-90s, when the record business here had coalesced around the major chains like Virgin and HMV, but MP3 was still an obscure geek curio and major online retailers nonexistent... I remember how overpriced those f*****rs were. At their high-water mark, the cost of a typical full-price back-catalogue CD album was actually above the 15 quid ($22) mark. And they'd still be doing it if there was no competition.
Given the people who may well lose their jobs and- even more seriously- for what it says about our economy, I can't take any pleasure in the fall of Virgin (or Zavvi as the UK stores are now called). But they're the epitome of everything that was wrong with music retailing in the 1990s and early-2000s.
(*) Side note: What's the accepted method for showing a historical price in another currency in today's terms? Do I convert pounds to dollars at (e.g.) 1995 rates first *then* factor in dollar inflation. Or do I factor in pound inflation first then convert from pounds to dollars at modern-day rates?
Modded "flamebait" for the first line or for what I said about fanboyism? (Or -1: I don't like what you said?)
You'll note that I didn't entirely damn Apple here; I merely pointed out that regardless of how you took the fault, they were the ones responsible.
Trying to imply that users are to blame for the faulty results of installing officially-sanctioned non-beta updates- regardless of how soon- smacks of a borderline cult mentality. Specifically, the willingness to transfer the blame for any actions by the cult leadership to the victims, and worse, to blame and even attack them *merely for being passive victims*... because to do otherwise would be to allow the tiniest shadow of doubt to fall upon the infallibility of the cult.
But that's a side issue, my personal analysis of your attack on the users. Of more interest would be any half-passable justification of why the users were at fault for installing an Apple-approved update?
Linux not liked because no corporation stands behind the OS potentially misbehaving.
I think it's not so much that they have someone they can rely on to fix their problems because- let's face it- if you have a problem with Windows it's not like MS are going to do anything about it.
What *is* the case (and may be what you meant) is that with something like Windows, they can always clearly blame MS if something went wrong. Particularly as (paraphrasing) no-one ever got fired for buying Windows; being able to blame MS is an accepted defence. Whereas with Linux there is no-one to point the finger at clearly, making it more likely that it ends up pointing at *you* for going with that weird-ass commie hippie etc. operating system.
the problem was it was a faulty firmware that slipped through software update and was pulled a half hour later. It was replaced with the right firmware but a few people needing to be on the BLEEDING EDGE of updates never reapplied the right firmware, and thus are the ones complaining now.
Cut out the apologist bullshit.
Was it an official Apple update? Was it reasonable that those users would install an official update with no indication that there was a risk to their system?
Perhaps occasional f***-ups are inevitable, but it was still Apple's fault. Trying to imply that those users are to blame is fanboyish cult-defence of the worst order.
Slashdot Mirror
You mis-spoke when you said: "Some could argue that you are implicitly paying to use those machines if they're necessary to do the work.". You meant: "Some could argue that you are implicitly paying to use those machines if they're necessary to do the learnin'."
No offence, but you're nitpicking; it should have been obvious that I meant coursework. I certainly wasn't implying that it was a job in any sense- if anything, that was you! (Also... I personally don't pronounce "learning" with an apostrophe(!)).
That's the point. You aren't supposed to be doing work.
Coursework.
And you know, it's not just a fun game here. I mean it is, but there's a lot more to it. It's not that what we say here pulls any weight. But it's a great survey of opinions and ideas. When someone, be it a university or a business, decides to consider a policy, these surveys of public opinion -- or in this case sub-culture opinion -- are extremely relevant.
The problem with Slashdot is that while it is frequently useful and insightful for the reasons you mention, it is also on occasion full of IANALs discussing moralistic points in a legalistic sense- and vice versa- and having no knowledge of the latter, but acting as if their guess of how the law *should* work is how the law actually works. When in reality the only way to know how the law actually works is... to go and find out how the law actually works.
(I've been criticised for pointing out this out- as if by explaining the law is what the law is, and that you can't deduce that solely by rational analysis of the issues, no matter how much you'd like that to be so- implies that I agree with the irrational law(s). No, but that's how it is, and I don't intend being shot for being the messenger.)
That's not to mention the wanky, up-their-own-arse, stupid analogy arguments on- for example- social issues that compares every damned thing to a car or breaks it down to stupid levels- "OMG, your photons are in my yard, I can do what I like with them"- that are useless and meaningless to the argument at hand, solely for winning some ******* geeky pseudo-intellectual, argument winning pissing contest.
I promise you that the $80 in coupons (which I didn't even get and they won't replace even though they didn't send it in any trackable manner) won't cover what we should have been given.
I thought that the theory was that the government worked on the citizens' behalf; any billions they make above the cost of those $80 boxes- or whatever- should still- in theory- belong to you, the citizens. In theory.
Yeah, I *know*.
If you transition to a non-government regulated technology though:
Reel Film -> VHS vs Betamax -> Laserdisc -> VideoCD -> DVD -> HD-DVD vs. Blu Ray
With UMD and Divx discs mixed in there in a manner that don't really match the progression.
Reel film wasn't really used in the same way as VHS; I'm sure that plenty of rich-ish people used it for their holidays, but not on a day-to-day basis and not for TV.
Betamax flopped, and quite a few people got their fingers burned- that's probably the closest you get to proving your point. VHS's commercially successful lifetime probably lasted at least 25 years (latterly it was still used for timeshifting before PVRs and recordable DVDs got cheap).
Except in Japan, Laserdisc was a high-end niche product at best (and even there it wasn't that big compared to VHS). It wasn't really a successor to VHS, although it may have been seen as a potential rival in the early days; and its era ran almost concurrently to VHS's (starting slightly later, ending slightly earlier).
Video CD never took off in North America and Europe (except a brief period of success circa the late-90s/early-2000s as a medium for convenient pirate videos before recordable DVD was affordable). Probably because it offered nothing above VHS except random access. I heard that it did better in South East Asia where VHS hadn't done as well due to problems caused by the humid climates.
DVD. Yeah- massive success, no question of that.
HD-DVD was killed off fairly early on in the battle before it became a mass-market Joe Sixpack product; I'm guessing relatively few people got burned. Blu Ray might succeed, it might not, who knows?
UMD movies were a stupid idea that were pretty much proprietary and restricted to the PSP, so I doubt many people took it seriously- let alone committed to it- as a movie format. No fingers burned.
DivX was effectively a crap, hobbled DVD variant (and rival) that flopped, so I doubt many people got burned by that either.
Therefore, for your average Joe Public, the progression was really:-
Reel-to-reel -> VHS (possibly got burned by Beta flop) -> DVD -> *Possibly* Blu-Ray (that will probably play his old DVDs anyway).
It doesn't look half as bad when you look at it like that. Everything else was a niche product or- except for Beta- rejected by the public convincingly enough to make it irrelevant.
I know that the tuition doesn't cover using the machine because when a business asks to use the very same machine, they get charged more than the student's entire four-year tuition. And yes, when someone donates a machine like that to a university, it is donated with strings. And one of those strings is "for academic use".
That covers your donation to one university. Fair enough, but what about all other university equipment? The stuff that the university itself paid for? etc. etc.
My point was that the bottom line is that the situation probably isn't as clear-cut as you- or others- imply when you say something like
The university is paying you -- that's why you get credits. The money you pay to them is tuition for those credits, for the learning. You haven't paid anything to use those machines or facilities.
Some could argue that you are implicitly paying to use those machines if they're necessary to do the work. Others would argue that you're not actually getting "paid" in any traditional sense- even the pseudo-pay in the form of credits that you imply, since undergraduate university study isn't really a job, not even a pretend one. Or... yadda yadda yadda, you get the picture.
As I said, one can indulge in the traditional Slashdot pastime of pseudo-legalistic analogies and rationalisation. So long as you realise that it doesn't and can't say anything about the real world, it's a fun game to play if you're into that sort of thing.
The university is paying you -- that's why you get credits. The money you pay to them is tuition for those credits, for the learning. You haven't paid anything to use those machines or facilities.
One can rationalise things in any way they like to suit their argument, and that's what everyone (you included) seems to be doing in this thread; aside from the ten-a-penny legal advice from the massed ranks of IANALs, that is.
Bottom line; plucking things out of thin air based on what *you* (or anyone else) thinks they ought to be paying for rather than what they are legally paying for is meaningless argumentative BS wankery. How do you know that his tuition doesn't cover the cost of the machines?
You get to use my expensive machine to learn -- that's why I donated it in the first place.
You donated something with those strings attached? I hope that you made this clear to the university and that they in turn made this clear to the students.
Central park is where it is because they needed somewhere to graze cows so the city could have fresh milk. The same reason as almost every urban park in the world.
Got any evidence for that? This seems to contradict that, and my understanding is that a lot of parks in the UK were created during the 19th century for the use of the growing urban population.
Also, especially given the smaller size of cities in the pre-mass transportation area, I doubt that having the cows smack in a designated area in the middle of the city as opposed to any other pocket of green land or keeping them on the outskirts was very likely.
As a matter of general principle, I think MS has a lot of roosters that I'd like to see coming home to roost. So I'm happy. OTOH, over the past few years I've had a few decidedly non-evil friends go to work there, and I hate to see anything happen to them.
Assuming we accept your implication that MS is evil, or at least ethically challenged (and I'll happily agree with the latter), it's not like your supposedly "non-evil" friends would have gone in with their eyes shut or at gunpoint. Whatever their reasons, they chose to work there knowing the score.
Besides which, having worked for MS is still a big plus-point for the CV when hunting for a new job.
I can think of things more worth shedding tears over.
My morning routine includes buying a copy of the San Jose Mercury News. [..] Now the Mercury News is about the third of the size it was 3 years ago. Most of its text is wire copy and advertorial crap. What's left of its original content is mostly puff pieces and human interest. Haven't heard whether it's actually more profitable. I'd guess not.
Well, *you're* still buying it, aren't you? From their perspective, they'd likely be happy if every page was a copyvio photo of goatse man or tubgirl, so long as people bought the paper.
That having been said, I agree with your basic point. The "making a reasonable profit is not acceptable" uber-greedy, and uber-stupid BS has nothing to do with increasing profits by increasing efficiency or genuinely improving the company and everything to do with unreasonable, short-termist and unsustainable expectations of making money from an ever-increasing stock price.
I agree that it's sometimes unpleasant that some creatively bankrupt advertising f*****t can cheapen a piece of out-of-copyright classical music by using it for some lousy product, but that's an unfortunate side effect of something that is desirable on the whole.
True. On the other hand, we'd also be missing things like Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale, among others.
Which proves the point I was making(!) :)
FWIW, I actually prefer the melody of A Whiter Shade of Pale to the Bach "original" that they incorrectly (or intentionally) didn't quite copy.
Why does the public have rights over and above the creator?
The creator enjoys the protection of the law that *stops* other people making copies of that character. You're already operating from the assumption that an artist has the inherent moral right to stop anyone making copies of his or her work.
Let me make clear that I'm not one of Slashdot's kneejerk anti-IPers. I strongly believe that the time and effort put into creating intellectual (as opposed to physical) works should have the same *opportunity* to be rewarded as physical work or service. Nor do I agree that no-one ever loses out from "piracy". So copyright is (ideally) the protection of *potential* income from intellectual works.
Still, the assumption that the creator should enjoy the protection of the state forever and ever on their works is one some people could reasonably disagree with.
I understand if there is no remaining family but why shouldn't the rights pass to the surviving family much as physical property does?
Regardless of whether some people call it intellectual property, the fact remains that it isn't the same as physical property.
Our culture is built upon the works of previous cultures and their intellectual works. To impose copyright and similar intellectual protection for generations would ultimately have the effect of tying up our current and future popular culture and make it impossible to build upon it in the same way that previous generations have.
Can you imagine how hard it would have been for the creators of Popeye if they hadn't been able to use *any* previous elements, even getting down to the basic structure of the story and the setup? (e.g. Two guys fighting over one girl; sorry, the Greeks have a copyright on that from 2000 years ago, etc.) And yes, IIRC, some people *were* wanting to copyright things down to that sort of level on modern creations.
You probably know (or ought to know) that many of Disney's classic works are based on public domain material and characters that they never paid a cent for. The company is one of the arch-hypocrites when it comes to intellectual property.
My family home can still be in the family in 500 years but my work will belong to anyone that wants to reproduce it for a quick buck.
Your original artwork will still be in the family in 500 years, if they haven't sold it off. You just won't have the right to stop other people making copies of it.
And while you can hold on to the house, you can't hold on to it *and* have the benefit of selling it. Sure, you can rent it out and stuff, so the edges are blurred; but as I said, physical and intellectual property aren't the same thing and can't always be compared. With IP, you can sell copies of it *and* retain the original rights.
I often wonder about releasing some work to the public because in the end the only true way in our society to control your work is to not publish it ever.
That's your choice.
I no longer have the financial need so why not just keep my work for family and friends?
Ditto. Though I'd burn it before you die, as if it's really as important as you seem to think, some descendant will probably release it anyway- likely before the copyright expires in order to make money as well.
It may seem straight forward to non artists but it's an upsetting subject for many artists.
No-one ever said life was perfect. I agree that it's sometimes unpleasant that some creatively bankrupt advertising f*****t can cheapen a piece of out-of-copyright classical music by using it for some lousy product, but that's an unfortunate side effect of something that is desirable on the whole.
Upsetting? Perhaps, but they have to decide whether the trade-off of releasing their work is worth it; they already enjoy the better part of a lifetime's protection in many cases, and that's a lo
They could recover much of the data from the Google cache.
56,200 results, the first few at least seem to be intact and useful.
I'd grab them while I could if I was Journalspace.
A friend at school had a 32MB MP3 player around a decade ago. It was enough for one album encoded at 64kb/s [..] It was more a gimmick than a useful product
Ha ha... I remember reading about those at the time and thinking they sounded pretty lame. Was it one of those ones that took the better part of an hour to upload music via the serial port?
Funny thing is, although I never used one, I came to the same conclusion as you did through experience anyway(!)- namely that they were boys toys and too limited to be much more convenient than a tape Walkman.
Thing is, if you think about it, the capacity makes a *qualitative* difference in the way you consume music. Current models are large enough to upload a large part if not all of your music collection, take it around with you, pick and choose and listen in all sorts of ways.
Being restricted to 32MB OTOH means you only have one album's worth of space, so you have to keep "reloading" it if you want more than an album's worth of music. Just like a cassette player, except that it takes much longer to change the music and you can't reasonably carry new music with you.
And the fact that you can only carry a limited number of tracks means that you're unlikely to skip, or pick and choose the few that you do have, which mostly negates one of the few benefits that it has over a cheap cassette deck.
it was more convenient than any of the alternatives if you just wanted music for a short period while mobile due to its very small size compared to anything with moving parts.
Was it really *that* much smaller than a slimline Walkman/generic-portable-cassette?
The old IBM keyboards are still available.
I explain it by the fact that not everyone likes 'clicky' keyboards.
Oh, thank God. I came across one of those Model M things about 12 years ago before I knew anything of their supposed reputation, and I wasn't impressed. That was the first time I'd typed on a keyboard with that type of action (i.e. pressure point halfway down) and it just felt weird. And hard work. And noisy.
:)).
The Model M is probably a well-constructed and engineered keyboard, but I'm convinced that it's overrepresented and overhyped by a small number of very fanatical users who praise it as the epitome of mechanical keyboards. Every time there's a discussion on keyboards here, the Model M fetishation starts up!
They're probably something you grow to love if you had the opportunity to get used to the feel, but for the rest of us... not convinced.
And I'm not some wuss that grew up with membrane-based PC keyboards. I actually went out of my way to buy a mechanical keyboard a while back, but I wanted one with the more normal action that goes "tap" when it hits the bottom of the stroke. Those with the bloody Model M style action were more widely available, but I had to resort to getting a keyboard with a German layout (not too bad because I touch type anyway and labelled the more obscure keys
Your defense is consistency?? Would you have made the same argument for Xfree86?
And here I get the opportunity to quote my posted-in-advance comment from above, which you should already have seen:-
I'm well aware that some people are going to kneejerk-interpret (and respond to) this post as if it's a blanket defence and/or endorsement of Sun's overall behaviour surrounding OO.o. No, it's not. [etc, read the rest]
I made quite clear that it addressed that one issue only, specifically Kohei's surprise and annoyance that they refused the patch without the JCA despite seemingly having been aware that they always required that.
But in his blog post, Kohei says he signed the JCA when he started writing the solver. I don't know if he retracted it later when he moved to Novell, but you seem to be working under the wrong assumption that he refused it outright. :-)
I was working under the assumption that he was happy to go along with it initially, then changed his mind when Novell (for whatever reason) requested this.
Even if what you said was true, it ultimately makes no significant difference to what I said. Kohei started off knowing the score with the JCA, then for some reason agreed to change/withdraw/whatever at some later stage.
(I could speculate about the possibly different legal and copyright statuses of the pre- and post- Novell sponsorship code, but since we don't know clearly what was agreed with Novell and what the conditions were- and that's on top of IANAL- this would be fumbling in the dark. And again, it wouldn't change the fact that Kohei and/or Novell were the parties responsible for muddying the waters, not Sun).
Another thing, The Summer of Code stunt Sun pulled looks really weird, whatever happened elsewhere. They are rightfully accused of arrogance and disrespect, with that kind of total lack of communication toward a voluntary developer.
Yeah, that one requires giving Sun the benefit of the doubt and even then it's a bit questionable. But, as I said, I wasn't blanket discussing Sun's behaviour, just the core implication that Sun had suddenly turned round and refused Kohei's work when in fact he knew from the start that the JCA was required.
I guess that's the theory (though I'm not clear if is this accepted practice or your own reasoning; if you're an economics genius, please accept my apologies- it doesn't matter which ;)).
:)
I'm guessing one possible flaw with that from the point of view of my example is that it should work for goods where (a) the product is a commodity, (b) there's something approaching a free global market *and* (c) consumer prices generally reflect changes in global wholesale prices.
AFAIK, music isn't really like that; there's not a free market, music isn't a commodity product (or isn't perceived that way by the consumer) and prices here don't generally mirror the "cost" of music and the relative value of currencies.
If I'd done the conversion a few months ago, when the Pound Sterling was hovering around the US $2 mark, you'd have got a higher figure than if I'd done the same thing today. But wouldn't that be misleading?- if I'm still getting paid £X,000 and the price of a CD is £X, and you're still getting paid $Y,000 and the cost of a CD to you is $Y, then... it gets complicated.
The central issue seems to be that in addition to being LGPL-licensed, Sun require all contributions to have a Joint Copyright Assignment agreement.
Here's the rub. Kohei *quite clearly* knew about this requirement when he started off. There seems to have been no sign in the interim that Sun would change their stance. Yet he says:-
Long story short, I joined Novell [who] decided to pick me up. When Novell asked me whether I would be willing to change the license of the Solver code to LGPL only, I simply agreed.
Well... why? He already knows that Sun require the JCA before accepting contributions, and that accepting Novell's change would make this impossible unless *they* were willing to change their minds. But then why ask in the first place? Novell's behaviour here is either very cynical or incompetent.
The change in licensing made perfect sense since the entire code was owned by myself (~99%), with a small fraction contributed from Novell and Debian, under LGPL.
Normally I'd agree, but since the code was written for submission to OO.o which only accepts contributions with the JCA, it makes no sense at all.
I'm well aware that some people are going to kneejerk-interpret (and respond to) this post as if it's a blanket defence and/or endorsement of Sun's overall behaviour surrounding OO.o. No, it's not.
What I *am* saying is that whether or not *we* think the JCA is reasonable (and I'm personally dubious about it), Kohei knew that it was required when he started his module and went ahead anyway. Yet he later agreed to Novell's license change knowing (or he should have known) that this would make it impossible to meet those requirements.
Sun might or might not be dicks, and that Summer of Source incident might have been an intentional blow off, but they at least appear to have been consistent and clear on what the terms of acceptance were. Seems Kohei knew this when he started but later agreed to an incompatible license change anyway. His choice, but I've no idea why and I don't see how he can complain about this.
Easy. All they have to do is refuse to take contributions from the rest of the community. Kohei's solver module is a case in point. He had a fully functional solver, and what did Sun do?
What was the deal? Did he refuse to dual-license it, or did they just not accept it full stop? If the latter, what was the reason (if any) they gave for doing their own?
Well, Europe is dying.
I need proof of this from a reliable source; has Netcraft confirmed it?
They didn't sell singles 15 years ago???
Yeah, well that was the era of grossly overpriced CD singles. They were sometimes UK £2 - £2.50 in the first week only for promotional reasons, but after that they were usually £4. 4 BLOODY QUID! And you can slap on an extra quid for today's money. £5 at modern conversion rates is over US $7 for a bloody single! I don't care how many bloody extra bonus tracks they slapped on to vainly justify the bloated cost. (*)
Cassette singles were cheaper, but not that cheap, and there was no good reason for the difference in price. Singles sucked in the 1990s.
(Cue cheap anti-nostalgia wavy video effect).
When I think back to the mid-90s, when the record business here had coalesced around the major chains like Virgin and HMV, but MP3 was still an obscure geek curio and major online retailers nonexistent... I remember how overpriced those f*****rs were. At their high-water mark, the cost of a typical full-price back-catalogue CD album was actually above the 15 quid ($22) mark. And they'd still be doing it if there was no competition.
Given the people who may well lose their jobs and- even more seriously- for what it says about our economy, I can't take any pleasure in the fall of Virgin (or Zavvi as the UK stores are now called). But they're the epitome of everything that was wrong with music retailing in the 1990s and early-2000s.
(*) Side note: What's the accepted method for showing a historical price in another currency in today's terms? Do I convert pounds to dollars at (e.g.) 1995 rates first *then* factor in dollar inflation. Or do I factor in pound inflation first then convert from pounds to dollars at modern-day rates?
FWIW, I didn't think you were paraphrasing on the part about no one ever getting fired for buying Windows. That was my intent.
No, it was paraphrasing- and updating- the old (and now out-of-date) expression "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM".
Modded "flamebait" for the first line or for what I said about fanboyism? (Or -1: I don't like what you said?)
You'll note that I didn't entirely damn Apple here; I merely pointed out that regardless of how you took the fault, they were the ones responsible.
Trying to imply that users are to blame for the faulty results of installing officially-sanctioned non-beta updates- regardless of how soon- smacks of a borderline cult mentality. Specifically, the willingness to transfer the blame for any actions by the cult leadership to the victims, and worse, to blame and even attack them *merely for being passive victims*... because to do otherwise would be to allow the tiniest shadow of doubt to fall upon the infallibility of the cult.
But that's a side issue, my personal analysis of your attack on the users. Of more interest would be any half-passable justification of why the users were at fault for installing an Apple-approved update?
Linux not liked because no corporation stands behind the OS potentially misbehaving.
I think it's not so much that they have someone they can rely on to fix their problems because- let's face it- if you have a problem with Windows it's not like MS are going to do anything about it.
What *is* the case (and may be what you meant) is that with something like Windows, they can always clearly blame MS if something went wrong. Particularly as (paraphrasing) no-one ever got fired for buying Windows; being able to blame MS is an accepted defence. Whereas with Linux there is no-one to point the finger at clearly, making it more likely that it ends up pointing at *you* for going with that weird-ass commie hippie etc. operating system.
the problem was it was a faulty firmware that slipped through software update and was pulled a half hour later. It was replaced with the right firmware but a few people needing to be on the BLEEDING EDGE of updates never reapplied the right firmware, and thus are the ones complaining now.
Cut out the apologist bullshit.
Was it an official Apple update? Was it reasonable that those users would install an official update with no indication that there was a risk to their system?
Perhaps occasional f***-ups are inevitable, but it was still Apple's fault. Trying to imply that those users are to blame is fanboyish cult-defence of the worst order.
Sorry Phelan, it's been restarted & rebooted a couple of dozen times. All I get is the Apple logo twice then blankety-blank.
Yeah... it was popular at the time, but I can see how being shown nothing but Blankety Blank could get annoying.