Are Precious Moments figurines [ibsrv.net] just saccharine, or do they cross the line into freakish to you?
Taken at face value (or rather, appearance), I'd say they were somewhat saccharin, but they don't have particularly large eyes compared to even moderately-cute manga styling, let alone the OTT second example I linked to.
Yeah, but from what I've seen (I'm not a manga/anime fanatic), I've noticed that when they do go too far with the "big eyes == cute" anime thing, (especially with overly "cutesy" and/or soft-porn oriented pictures), it's with the pictures of girls and woman.
It's true that larger eyes -> protectiveness-inducing attractiveness up to a point. But aside from the fact that overdoing this can have a "too much" saccharin effect, some of those pictures go beyond that, and (to me) the eyes are so large they start to lose their stylised "human" connection and edge into freakish, alien and almost insectoid/fly-like territory.
You must not be familiar with PBS or other publicly funded or donation funded channels.
I am, I just didn't think they were anything like as significant as the BBC (at least, not for the size of audience they were addressing). And I've also heard that PBS relentlessly asks for donations, which many people find annoying.
We have publicly funded radio, too (NPR, although it tends to be *very* left-leaning politically - all hail Stalin / Mao!).
No offence, but given the kneejerk reaction of some Americans to label anything to the left of Genghis Khan as socialism or communism, I'd be pretty sceptical of what you describe as "*very* left-leaning politically - all hail Stalin / Mao".:-/
It's Destructoid, not Demonoid. (Ironically enough, Demonoid is that torrent site you use to steal software, music, and movies. Good thing you unblocked them on ABP so *they* don't disappear...)
My mistake, but while I've heard of Demonoid- probably on Slashdot hence my familiarity with the name- *I* don't recall ever having used it (if I had, I probably wouldn't have confused it with a gaming review site that I first heard of today- I'm not a gamer either).
Also, I don't use AdBlock Plus, only Flashblock. (Yes, I'm aware that this is still- in effect- a more limited form of ad blocking, albeit against the more egregious and risky forms.)
You seem to be under the impression that we can get anything but "utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage". Please open your eyes. You can pay for Pay TV, you'll still get ads. You can watch ads, you'll still get product placement and biased reporting.
Er, yeah, I can. I live in the UK, I get the BBC.
It's not perfect, but it's far from the aforementioned "utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage".
Obviously this doesn't apply to the US, where any attempt to apply a similar model would be doubtless be considered "socialist" anathema by the majority- but that's their (your?) choice.
It's not for us to come up with an alternate. YOU are the one with the failed business model. You fix it yourself.
There's no indication that "HE/SHE" is personally following this "failed business model"; assuming this says more about how polarised and partisan about the issue *you* feel than it does about them.
But this is beside the point- which is that it can (or should) be easily understood that the issue being raised in the summary *wasn't* the face value one about a business funding itself, but the clearly implied one of how trustworthy, independent journalism can be funded if advertising wasn't cutting it and there were no reliable alternatives.
I already commented in more depth here, but the short version is that while *we* aren't obliged to fix their business model, "THEY" aren't obliged to provide us with content either, and if we care about it, that makes it "OUR" problem.
So what? Most Dutch investments in 1636 were in tulips. They didn't have a god-given right to make money, either.
Well, that's true- and taken at its absolutely literal face value, the story as summarised (and discussion) is simply about funding a particular website business.
However, the vast majority of readers will clearly understand that the *actual* issue being implied was how one can fund reputable and quality journalism online. *That* is the issue that concerns us- Demonoid's business model is a means to an end, and it's the "end" result *we* enjoy. But clearly the end requires a means, and that's why Demonoid's funding is *our* problem if we enjoy and/or respect what they are producing.
This doesn't mean that advertising is the only solution, and indeed it could be argued that it's an inefficient and overly intrusive method of funding (both in terms of trying to grab attention and in terms of potential corporate interference). Problem is that no obvious alternatives have come up yet- micropayments... what happened to them? Voluntary subscriptions and donations... well, sorry, but generally *very* few people do that. Paid subscriptions? Might work for some sites (e.g. Financial Times), but not all, and it restricts access, relying on a few higher-paying users than many low-paying users, so it's a lose-lose. (I'd rather access lots of sites that made small amounts of money from lots of users than a few sites that made more money from fewer users- the question is, how do we do that without advertising.... "microsubscriptions" perhaps? The latter still doesn't cover occasional one-off visits to sites that have specific useful info or a story I might want to read, but don't plan on visiting regularly... so we're back to the start).
Do we need to have paid journalism and content? Some would argue that we can go back to the early days of the web, when most content was user-created and non-commercial... but believe me, the fact that it was all new and exciting then (and a long time ago) obscures the fact that if you went back in time you'd realise there was far, *far* less content available online than there is today. Of course, there are more people online, and Wikipedia is a good model for donation-funded, user-written content. But could that exist without the support of the rest of the web, and would the model work if *every* website expected to be funded and driven in that way? I'm not convinced.
Anyway, one isn't obliged to care. One could say that if Demonoid are offering free ad-funded content, and we can see it without viewing the ads that's their problem, and we'll take advantage of it... well, while it lasts. It's a legitimate response... provided you accept that it cuts both ways- you (or anyone else) have no god-given right to expect quality content, and if one doesn't care about the means (or providing an alternative to it), then you're waived your moral right to complain when the good sites go under and there is either little content, or the content that remains is is utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage.
And believe me, that *is* the true issue that is- or should be- being discussed here.
Note also that the physical copy is also $59.99, you get not even one single cent of discount for buying the digital copy
The physical copy is just as digital as the downloadable one. Please (along with everyone else that does this) stop using "digital" as a synonym for "online" or "download".
While it's probably a lot of work people have made 3rd party servers for WoW.
How much of WoW beyond simple integration of players runs on the server? Actually, I guess it must be a reasonable amount, otherwise it would be far too easy to cheat by hacking client-based logic.
Which raises the question; is WoW running on a third-party server still- essentially- WoW? That is, if the underlying logic isn't there, or is significantly different, is it "authentically" the same game, or something only superficially similar, a different game in WoW's clothes?
Disclaimer; actually, it seems that EA may have been lying about the importance of the servers ain running Sim City. However, the principle stands (unfortunately); it should be possible to design software such that the client did the hard work, whereas the servers ran less intensive *but entirely critical and hard to replicate* code.
The "Oh, our server handles all the number crunching" was a bold faced lie by EA and Maxis, because that kind of number crunching would not be possible without a monthly fee to pay for server maintenance.
Even if it *was* a blatant lie, I still expect to see more of this model in the future. I'm sure that for many game types, it should be possible to shift sufficient less processor-intensive but critical and hard-to-replicate logic onto the server while still having the client PC do all the heavy lifting (i.e. graphics calculations and the like).
Alegedly it's not "just" DRM. EA has stated that their servers are handling some portion of the gameplay itself.
I call BS on that one. The servers may be handling the inter-city calculations but that's it. There's just no way that these mini-cities have so many calculations that a decent desktop stumbles with them.
Actually, it'd probably run a *lot* better if it was running entirely on the local machine. But that's not the point.
As was mentioned several times in yesterday's story, the setup itself was almost certainly designed this way as a form of DRM. It makes perfect sense- if enough critical parts of the game code run on the servers (and the end-user doesn't have direct access to the code), they can restrict access to paying customers only.
Sure, people can still pirate the "game" (or rather, the game client), but without access to the servers, it's pretty worthless in itself. You'd need to replicate the server functionality too- but EA obviously aren't going to let you have the code needed to run them! Sure, you could rewrite it, or hack the game to be entirely client-based, but if enough of the game is server-based, you'd have to rewrite a significant portion of the entire game from scratch.
Expect to see a lot more software (games *and* applications) use this model in future. I predicted it a few years ago- as a lot of people probably did, since it was a pretty logical step.
Of course, if a publisher is going to run things this way, they have to make sure that the servers run smoothly and are able to handle the load. Oops...
There is no need for evidence, it's pretty obvious that if you tell your employees who live 1,000 miles away to either come into the office or quit, a good number of those will quit.
If it was transparent that this was the intention, wouldn't that make it constructive dismissal? Or could they weasel out of that by pointing out that it wasn't aimed at any *specific* employee, or that it was in the contract, or whatever?
Back in the mid-nineties, a company called Gateway bought the assets of a bankrupt Commodore, making fans of the Amiga temporarily very excited thinking that a major PC maker was about to rescue the most innovative personal computer platform. Gateway was doing well, the Amiga's problem was mismanagement, and finally, thought many people, the Amiga might stand a chance of returning to its former glories and lead position.
Did that happen? Did it bollocks. Gateway just wanted the patents.
Interesting (and perceptive) comparison. However, in a way that might mirror today's position with WebOS, the fans' hopes were probably blinding them to the fact that- realistically- it was probably too late to save the Amiga market by 1997, even if Gateway had wanted to.
By early 1993, the Amiga (which had been European hobbyists' and gamers' machine of choice in the late 80s and early 90s) was noticably losing ground to cheap clone PCs at the high end, and 16-bit consoles at the other. The "evolution not revolution" A1200 was a catch-up at best. When C= went bankrupt in mid-94, it was no longer dominant and losing mainstream support, then it languished for a year until Escom bought it. They proposed relaunching the near 3-year-old A1200 at £100 *more* than its pre-bankruptcy price (**), and even I knew it was over.
By the time of Gateway's purchase, the Amiga had already been left behind and only serious fans (and the few remaining video professionals who hadn't yet migrated to the PC) were still using it. Windows 95 had long replaced the sub-Amiga Windows 3.1, and the PlayStation had moved gaming on. Gateway would have had to seriously modernise the Amiga hardware to even "keep up" with the 1997 market, and since by that time the format had lost support and dominance it would have had to be *better* than the ruthlessly cheap commodity PC clones to justify choosing.
I suppose they *might* have considered using it as the basis of cheap hardware driving Internet set-top boxes (yeah, I know, but they didn't know those would be a flop back then), but such boxes wouldn't necessarily have been "Amigas". In any case they'd really just have been milking the existing hardware (and probably ditching the OS).
The Amiga *was* mismanaged by Commodore, but the "event horizon" for coming back from that was probably well over five years before Gateway took over.
Perhaps- over a shorter timescale- this reflects the situation with WebOS; the battle is already lost, the fans just can't see it?
(*) I remember this shift because I bought an Amiga in early 1992, when everyone was still exchanging Amiga games, and around a year later it had noticably shifted towards the PC
(**) They claimed they had to do this to make a profit. Well, that might have been true, but it still wasn't going to sell at that price.
I remember when everyone suddenly got excited about virtual reality in the early 1990s. Of course, back then it was more the concept and the possibilities that triggered peoples' imaginations- actual VR systems and games did exist at that time, but were never really widespread, probably due to the limitations and cost of the then-current technology and the fact it was essentially a novelty.
One commentator, however, said something that has stuck with me ever since. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was along the lines of...
"Eventually the current fad for Virtual Reality will pass, and everyone will forget about it. Then one day you'll look around you and realise that it's everywhere."
The other option - develop it on the Lemote computers that use the Loongson CPU, which RMS finds satisfactorily 'free'. Then further development of HURD can be done by the Chinese, maybe even the People's Liberation Army of Programmers (PLAP) and endorsed by the Beijing regime, and will be the official OS of all Chinese. HURD will then become the #1 OS in the world
Assuming this was meant seriously, the issue is... why would you expect the Chinese themselves to want to do that? What benefit would spending a lot of time working on the underdeveloped Hurd bring them that they couldn't get more easily from leveraging the already-mature Linux kernel?
Linus refused GPL 3.0 because it would be suicide for the kernel in embedded devices.
As far as I'm aware, another major problem- actually *the* major problem, since it would be a showstopper regardless of anything else, including Linus' position on v3- is that it would require either getting every one of the countless contributors to the kernel to agree to relicensing their work under the new terms or rewriting all parts of the kernel whose contributors did not permit that.
The former isn't going to happen, and the latter would be a huge undertaking.
What's the legal position if the other party has already notified you that *they* are recording the call? (e.g. an automated "Calls may be recorded for training purposes" notification)
I do remember hearing somewhere that this made it acceptable for you to do the same, but (a) I don't vouch for the accuracy of that vague memory, (b) I can't remember if it was supposed to apply to US or UK law and (c) IANAL.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he was comparing the behaviour and hierarchy of High School students to that of chimps, not criticising your English.
Are Precious Moments figurines [ibsrv.net] just saccharine, or do they cross the line into freakish to you?
Taken at face value (or rather, appearance), I'd say they were somewhat saccharin, but they don't have particularly large eyes compared to even moderately-cute manga styling, let alone the OTT second example I linked to.
Manga guys usually have big eyes too.
Yeah, but from what I've seen (I'm not a manga/anime fanatic), I've noticed that when they do go too far with the "big eyes == cute" anime thing, (especially with overly "cutesy" and/or soft-porn oriented pictures), it's with the pictures of girls and woman.
It's true that larger eyes -> protectiveness-inducing attractiveness up to a point. But aside from the fact that overdoing this can have a "too much" saccharin effect, some of those pictures go beyond that, and (to me) the eyes are so large they start to lose their stylised "human" connection and edge into freakish, alien and almost insectoid/fly-like territory.
Examples; here and especially here (possibly NSFW)
You must not be familiar with PBS or other publicly funded or donation funded channels.
I am, I just didn't think they were anything like as significant as the BBC (at least, not for the size of audience they were addressing). And I've also heard that PBS relentlessly asks for donations, which many people find annoying.
We have publicly funded radio, too (NPR, although it tends to be *very* left-leaning politically - all hail Stalin / Mao!).
No offence, but given the kneejerk reaction of some Americans to label anything to the left of Genghis Khan as socialism or communism, I'd be pretty sceptical of what you describe as "*very* left-leaning politically - all hail Stalin / Mao". :-/
It's Destructoid, not Demonoid. (Ironically enough, Demonoid is that torrent site you use to steal software, music, and movies. Good thing you unblocked them on ABP so *they* don't disappear...)
My mistake, but while I've heard of Demonoid- probably on Slashdot hence my familiarity with the name- *I* don't recall ever having used it (if I had, I probably wouldn't have confused it with a gaming review site that I first heard of today- I'm not a gamer either).
Also, I don't use AdBlock Plus, only Flashblock. (Yes, I'm aware that this is still- in effect- a more limited form of ad blocking, albeit against the more egregious and risky forms.)
You seem to be under the impression that we can get anything but "utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage". Please open your eyes. You can pay for Pay TV, you'll still get ads. You can watch ads, you'll still get product placement and biased reporting.
Er, yeah, I can. I live in the UK, I get the BBC.
It's not perfect, but it's far from the aforementioned "utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage".
Obviously this doesn't apply to the US, where any attempt to apply a similar model would be doubtless be considered "socialist" anathema by the majority- but that's their (your?) choice.
No that is what we are blocking "utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage".
No, I'm talking about the site content itself becoming that, not just the ads.
It's not for us to come up with an alternate. YOU are the one with the failed business model. You fix it yourself.
There's no indication that "HE/SHE" is personally following this "failed business model"; assuming this says more about how polarised and partisan about the issue *you* feel than it does about them.
But this is beside the point- which is that it can (or should) be easily understood that the issue being raised in the summary *wasn't* the face value one about a business funding itself, but the clearly implied one of how trustworthy, independent journalism can be funded if advertising wasn't cutting it and there were no reliable alternatives.
I already commented in more depth here, but the short version is that while *we* aren't obliged to fix their business model, "THEY" aren't obliged to provide us with content either, and if we care about it, that makes it "OUR" problem.
So what? Most Dutch investments in 1636 were in tulips. They didn't have a god-given right to make money, either.
Well, that's true- and taken at its absolutely literal face value, the story as summarised (and discussion) is simply about funding a particular website business.
However, the vast majority of readers will clearly understand that the *actual* issue being implied was how one can fund reputable and quality journalism online. *That* is the issue that concerns us- Demonoid's business model is a means to an end, and it's the "end" result *we* enjoy. But clearly the end requires a means, and that's why Demonoid's funding is *our* problem if we enjoy and/or respect what they are producing.
This doesn't mean that advertising is the only solution, and indeed it could be argued that it's an inefficient and overly intrusive method of funding (both in terms of trying to grab attention and in terms of potential corporate interference). Problem is that no obvious alternatives have come up yet- micropayments... what happened to them? Voluntary subscriptions and donations... well, sorry, but generally *very* few people do that. Paid subscriptions? Might work for some sites (e.g. Financial Times), but not all, and it restricts access, relying on a few higher-paying users than many low-paying users, so it's a lose-lose. (I'd rather access lots of sites that made small amounts of money from lots of users than a few sites that made more money from fewer users- the question is, how do we do that without advertising.... "microsubscriptions" perhaps? The latter still doesn't cover occasional one-off visits to sites that have specific useful info or a story I might want to read, but don't plan on visiting regularly... so we're back to the start).
Do we need to have paid journalism and content? Some would argue that we can go back to the early days of the web, when most content was user-created and non-commercial... but believe me, the fact that it was all new and exciting then (and a long time ago) obscures the fact that if you went back in time you'd realise there was far, *far* less content available online than there is today. Of course, there are more people online, and Wikipedia is a good model for donation-funded, user-written content. But could that exist without the support of the rest of the web, and would the model work if *every* website expected to be funded and driven in that way? I'm not convinced.
Anyway, one isn't obliged to care. One could say that if Demonoid are offering free ad-funded content, and we can see it without viewing the ads that's their problem, and we'll take advantage of it... well, while it lasts. It's a legitimate response... provided you accept that it cuts both ways- you (or anyone else) have no god-given right to expect quality content, and if one doesn't care about the means (or providing an alternative to it), then you're waived your moral right to complain when the good sites go under and there is either little content, or the content that remains is is utterly vapid, worthless, contemptible corporate-sponsored garbage.
And believe me, that *is* the true issue that is- or should be- being discussed here.
Note also that the physical copy is also $59.99, you get not even one single cent of discount for buying the digital copy
The physical copy is just as digital as the downloadable one. Please (along with everyone else that does this) stop using "digital" as a synonym for "online" or "download".
While it's probably a lot of work people have made 3rd party servers for WoW.
How much of WoW beyond simple integration of players runs on the server? Actually, I guess it must be a reasonable amount, otherwise it would be far too easy to cheat by hacking client-based logic.
Which raises the question; is WoW running on a third-party server still- essentially- WoW? That is, if the underlying logic isn't there, or is significantly different, is it "authentically" the same game, or something only superficially similar, a different game in WoW's clothes?
Disclaimer; actually, it seems that EA may have been lying about the importance of the servers ain running Sim City. However, the principle stands (unfortunately); it should be possible to design software such that the client did the hard work, whereas the servers ran less intensive *but entirely critical and hard to replicate* code.
The "Oh, our server handles all the number crunching" was a bold faced lie by EA and Maxis, because that kind of number crunching would not be possible without a monthly fee to pay for server maintenance.
Even if it *was* a blatant lie, I still expect to see more of this model in the future. I'm sure that for many game types, it should be possible to shift sufficient less processor-intensive but critical and hard-to-replicate logic onto the server while still having the client PC do all the heavy lifting (i.e. graphics calculations and the like).
Alegedly it's not "just" DRM. EA has stated that their servers are handling some portion of the gameplay itself.
I call BS on that one. The servers may be handling the inter-city calculations but that's it. There's just no way that these mini-cities have so many calculations that a decent desktop stumbles with them.
Actually, it'd probably run a *lot* better if it was running entirely on the local machine. But that's not the point.
As was mentioned several times in yesterday's story, the setup itself was almost certainly designed this way as a form of DRM. It makes perfect sense- if enough critical parts of the game code run on the servers (and the end-user doesn't have direct access to the code), they can restrict access to paying customers only.
Sure, people can still pirate the "game" (or rather, the game client), but without access to the servers, it's pretty worthless in itself. You'd need to replicate the server functionality too- but EA obviously aren't going to let you have the code needed to run them! Sure, you could rewrite it, or hack the game to be entirely client-based, but if enough of the game is server-based, you'd have to rewrite a significant portion of the entire game from scratch.
Expect to see a lot more software (games *and* applications) use this model in future. I predicted it a few years ago- as a lot of people probably did, since it was a pretty logical step.
Of course, if a publisher is going to run things this way, they have to make sure that the servers run smoothly and are able to handle the load. Oops...
There is no need for evidence, it's pretty obvious that if you tell your employees who live 1,000 miles away to either come into the office or quit, a good number of those will quit.
If it was transparent that this was the intention, wouldn't that make it constructive dismissal? Or could they weasel out of that by pointing out that it wasn't aimed at any *specific* employee, or that it was in the contract, or whatever?
Reminded me of this...
Back in the mid-nineties, a company called Gateway bought the assets of a bankrupt Commodore, making fans of the Amiga temporarily very excited thinking that a major PC maker was about to rescue the most innovative personal computer platform. Gateway was doing well, the Amiga's problem was mismanagement, and finally, thought many people, the Amiga might stand a chance of returning to its former glories and lead position. Did that happen? Did it bollocks. Gateway just wanted the patents.
Interesting (and perceptive) comparison. However, in a way that might mirror today's position with WebOS, the fans' hopes were probably blinding them to the fact that- realistically- it was probably too late to save the Amiga market by 1997, even if Gateway had wanted to.
By early 1993, the Amiga (which had been European hobbyists' and gamers' machine of choice in the late 80s and early 90s) was noticably losing ground to cheap clone PCs at the high end, and 16-bit consoles at the other. The "evolution not revolution" A1200 was a catch-up at best. When C= went bankrupt in mid-94, it was no longer dominant and losing mainstream support, then it languished for a year until Escom bought it. They proposed relaunching the near 3-year-old A1200 at £100 *more* than its pre-bankruptcy price (**), and even I knew it was over.
By the time of Gateway's purchase, the Amiga had already been left behind and only serious fans (and the few remaining video professionals who hadn't yet migrated to the PC) were still using it. Windows 95 had long replaced the sub-Amiga Windows 3.1, and the PlayStation had moved gaming on. Gateway would have had to seriously modernise the Amiga hardware to even "keep up" with the 1997 market, and since by that time the format had lost support and dominance it would have had to be *better* than the ruthlessly cheap commodity PC clones to justify choosing.
I suppose they *might* have considered using it as the basis of cheap hardware driving Internet set-top boxes (yeah, I know, but they didn't know those would be a flop back then), but such boxes wouldn't necessarily have been "Amigas". In any case they'd really just have been milking the existing hardware (and probably ditching the OS).
The Amiga *was* mismanaged by Commodore, but the "event horizon" for coming back from that was probably well over five years before Gateway took over.
Perhaps- over a shorter timescale- this reflects the situation with WebOS; the battle is already lost, the fans just can't see it?
(*) I remember this shift because I bought an Amiga in early 1992, when everyone was still exchanging Amiga games, and around a year later it had noticably shifted towards the PC
(**) They claimed they had to do this to make a profit. Well, that might have been true, but it still wasn't going to sell at that price.
The internet does as well. In fact it has made the minority seem like a majority for a long time. It is amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
I agree- good point!
But those are really crappy analogies
Er, you must be new here. Stupid analogies are the lifeblood of Slashdot arguments. :-)
I remember when everyone suddenly got excited about virtual reality in the early 1990s. Of course, back then it was more the concept and the possibilities that triggered peoples' imaginations- actual VR systems and games did exist at that time, but were never really widespread, probably due to the limitations and cost of the then-current technology and the fact it was essentially a novelty.
:-O
One commentator, however, said something that has stuck with me ever since. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was along the lines of...
"Eventually the current fad for Virtual Reality will pass, and everyone will forget about it. Then one day you'll look around you and realise that it's everywhere."
(*) If you remember it too, then yes- it really *was* that long ago
From what I know, an IP doesn't have "life"
Well, yeah, but neither do most Slashdotters, so what's your point? ;-)
Unless it's supported in Links I'm not going to use 3D...
Bollocks to that, I'm not using it unless it's supported in *Lynx* running on an 80-column greenscreen terminal.
The other option - develop it on the Lemote computers that use the Loongson CPU, which RMS finds satisfactorily 'free'. Then further development of HURD can be done by the Chinese, maybe even the People's Liberation Army of Programmers (PLAP) and endorsed by the Beijing regime, and will be the official OS of all Chinese. HURD will then become the #1 OS in the world
Assuming this was meant seriously, the issue is... why would you expect the Chinese themselves to want to do that? What benefit would spending a lot of time working on the underdeveloped Hurd bring them that they couldn't get more easily from leveraging the already-mature Linux kernel?
Linus refused GPL 3.0 because it would be suicide for the kernel in embedded devices.
As far as I'm aware, another major problem- actually *the* major problem, since it would be a showstopper regardless of anything else, including Linus' position on v3- is that it would require either getting every one of the countless contributors to the kernel to agree to relicensing their work under the new terms or rewriting all parts of the kernel whose contributors did not permit that.
The former isn't going to happen, and the latter would be a huge undertaking.
What's the legal position if the other party has already notified you that *they* are recording the call? (e.g. an automated "Calls may be recorded for training purposes" notification)
I do remember hearing somewhere that this made it acceptable for you to do the same, but (a) I don't vouch for the accuracy of that vague memory, (b) I can't remember if it was supposed to apply to US or UK law and (c) IANAL.