more to the point would be a nice napster-like service run on sealand... my wife hates morpheus/kazaa/grokster/bearshare/etc. with napster, i was approved to purchase cd-burners, faster computers, wireless internet, DSL... now with napster gone, so has the "computer purchasing department" funding...
well... corel makes wordperfect, IBM makes lotus smart suite... i'm sure you can think of others. and by a competitor, perhaps i meant a competitor of SUN in general, not just of StarOffice.
nice troll. anyway did you even read the part where he says that the fan fiction is okay by him, as long as they aren't trying to sell it in his name? basically he just wants control over who is selling you a "Piers Anthony" book. why does that make him the Anti-Christ? let him offer some of his works as downloads, if he wants. why shouldn't HE decide what happens to the works he spends hundreds of hours writing. it's one thing to download music for yourself. it's another thing to download music, burn CD's, and sell them. chances are if you download some music and you like it, you'll go see the band in concert. chances are if you download a short story and you like it, you'll go buy a novel.
but if pirates are out selling the same novel for $1 or making it free on-line... wtf? everyone has to be homeless, unwashed hippies? when Piers wants to make -his- copyrighted works available for free, I'm sure he'll do so. if not, well, download someone else.
OpenOffice is coming for Mac OS X. In fact, they recently announced a Quartz port. since Piers is already using OpenOffice... this would probably kick the crap out of his "unable to print" problems.
after reading the article, it sounded like OpenOffice was worth a try. so I headed over to OpenOffice.org to take a look. there was the download link, yay, but 50 meg downloads are a bit much for my net connection. I looked for a "buy this on a CD", but not a link to be found. I even clicked the "Contributing" link, but that was only contributing code, not buying CDs.
maybe this is one reason open source companies fail?
... of a law we just don't need. why does it take the FCC to mandate such a thing, let the market decide. Google is already the defacto search engine, not just because of its tech. but also because of the way it does ads and not being "sold out" as far as search placement goes. why does the government feel this kind of thing requires legislation? if people want a search engine which doesn't sell search result positions, they'll use one. if they don't care, they won't. what's the big freaking deal. save the legislative branch for getting rid of all the stupid laws, not passing new mandates.
- Fight Palladium with the Great OS Freeze: tell your friends who won't switch to Linux to stick with Win2k or Win98
the OS Freeze only works until Microsoft doesn't release DirectX 9.0 or IE 7.0 on Windows 2000 or Windows 98, for purely "technical" reasons, yeah. if my friends (heck, if my DAD) can't play the games they want to play, or visit the website they want to visit (hotmail only working for IE 7.0 rings a bell as a future step once IE 7.0 support is not happening for Win2k or Win98) they will "upgrade" to XP.
as for myself, I won't be upgrading from Win2k, as I don't really play fancy games or visit fancy websites.
there are more people homeless and starving in America than there are people living in mansions. there are many, many, many more people homeless and starving in India than there are in America. the difference is that in America, the majority of the homeless are homeless because they are either crazy or lazy, while in India, they are born to it, a generation at a time.
projects like this make you wonder, what if every child in America were given a computer. would it really change that much? doubtful, but it might make a little ripple. most of the people who could benefit the most from having a computer are too busy working 80 hours a week at minimum wage jobs to have a chance to use them, regardless of being able to afford them.
John Nash's work on Game Theory did not, IMO, have much to do with "public involvement for the public good". It basically attacked John Smith's notion that in general, the best outcome is achieved when all participants do what is in their best interest. Nash basically demonstrated that the best outcome actually MAY occur when all participants work together. This is hardly, I think, blanket support for "public involvement", rather, it supports the notion that if all the Tier-1 ISP's worked together instead of bloodthirstily competing with each other, the best outcome could result.
However, as most Tier-1 ISP's are publicly held, the shareholders do not really care about "the best outcome" for all involved, they want THEIR Tier-1 ISP to WIN COMPLETELY, and, obviously, have not read any of Nash's theories:)
Michael thinks it is wrong to let a library block people from viewing kiddie porn there but it is ok to censor posts.
you have no idea what censorship is. this is somebody's website, they can do whatever they want to it, up to and including shutting it down entirely. you have no right to post anything here. you are not paying taxes here. there is no "bill of rights" here.
unlike at the library, where you are paying taxes to fund it and as a public service, it cannot be censored, as it is protected by the Bill of Rights.
remember, *tard, this is a private webpage, not run by the US government or your tax dollars. if Michael, or CmdrTaco, or whoever with power chooses to do whatever they want to do, they can do it. naturally they could piss off some of their visitors, but hey, like I said, they could shut the whole thing down if they wanted to. you are free to go elsewhere, where your notions of "free speech" (i.e., "turd reports") are more respected.
adam smith's economics and capitalism, or the promise of cheap, reliable broadband for everyone. how often has the promise of "public involvement for the public good" sounded so, well, good, but in the delivery it all goes bad. the USA has always had this attempt of having their cake and eating it too. when you try to have BOTH free markets AND public regulation, what exactly are you trying to do? either have one or the other, with both, you are playing tug of war with yourself.
you get what you pay for. i pay 15-20 bucks more for my DSL line than i would normally have to, simply because i -love- the service they have constantly provided. and, they make it clear that hosting my own webserver is okay. yeah, maybe i only download at 100K/s, but that's the same speed i get 24/7, and when something goes down, i make a phone call and it is fixed pronto (and usually Verizon's fault, not my ISP's).
as for all the people complaining... uh, DUH. you are buying broadband from a cable company, which also owns a large motion picture company and a record label (among other things). did you REALLY think they wouldn't shut down file sharing?
well, the article states that probably the IP referred to was actually created by SGI, and put into the OpenGL standards with the promise of releasing the IP with the standard, i.e., royalty free. Microsoft comes along, buys a bunch of SGI IP (including this vertex stuff), and looks through it and goes, "hrm, now we can crush the OpenGL specification... should we do it?"
of course they will. graphics cards will end up being Direct3D -ONLY-. no OpenGL acceleration. that kills a ton of XFree86 work, that kills a lot of the Linux gaming work.
gateway handbook 486. 20 mb of RAM (upgraded from original 8). came with windows 95. now it's running FreeBSD, my domain's DNS, my email, my SSH into my home LAN...
safer than skydiving from airplanes, is what he means, obviously. if you're going to skydive anyway, you could either have a long process of the airplane takeoff (requiring a well-maintained runway, well-maintained airplane, flight plan, etc) you can just trust one component (the rocket). and, after all, if things go bad, you DO have a parachute on...
not at all what i said. i didn't say white-collar crimes shouldn't be punished, i said that victimless piracy shouldn't be punished with prison time. as you pointed out, there are lives ruined, pain and suffering caused with the enron, AA, and worldcom cases. those people whose lives were ruined should be suing those CEOs in civil court, and, if sufficiently determined damages were caused, THEN prison time is warranted. but i'll agree it is a slippery slope. you can't really put the enron CEO in prison because an ex-investor killed themselves. unless you are the doctor giving them the morphine, or a friend knowingly giving them the loaded handgun, you're not going to convict the guy of being an accomplice. life sucks, all those guys deserve to burn for what they've done. but putting them in prison? what purpose does that serve, but to cheapen the punishment for the crimes for which prisons were created. you get 5 years for sexual assault, a direct, physical act. how much time should you get for being a slimy bastard? strip them of everything they own and sentence them to a lifetime of community service. they're not violent criminals, and, as long as they aren't running a multi-million dollar company, they are NOT a "danger to society". prisons are places to put people who are "dangerous to society", to protect us from them. the way to protect us from the Enron CEO is to make sure he NEVER works above manual labor again:)
:) i should have thought of that. obviously, they should have gone in, guns blazing, damn the passers-by. shoot first, ask questions later, eh? "damn the torpedos!"
Is the customs service so deranged that they think this guy is going to escape if they only send 3 or 4 guys? Or 2? Or even 1?
problem is, the customs guys have only the information at hand to go on. the information THEY have been given is that this guy is responsible for billions in stolen software.
now, if you're going after a billionaire, you're going in with a helluvalotta manpower. if the software companies had been HONEST and the charge was the REALISTIC charge of "nuisance" or something like that, the customs guys never get involved.
that said, i totally agree. you'd figure they'd spend a day scoping the guy out, realise he's living with his parents and working in a computer store, and send in 1 guy, with a billy club, not 40 armed agents.
Stealing something because you wouldn't pay for it anyway in no way makes it less of a theft.
Correct, but copying software is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. You're not stealing anything. The person you "stole" it from still has it.
Disclaimer: I work at a software company which sells some $100,000 licenses. We are pirated quite a bit, but I can say with assuredness that not a SINGLE one of those pirates would have bought our software.
Do pirates deserve punishment? Hell yes. It's not technically "stealing" and the overstated financial "losses" are a joke, but they are breaking the law.
Do pirates deserve PRISON time? No, I'll reserve prison time for rapists and murders. Pirates deserve fines, community service, that kind of sentence.
Don't believe the hype. Pirates of $100K software are more than likely not causing any financial harm to anyone. They should get community service and a nice black mark on their record.
However, pirates of $50 games and $100 operating systems are probably causing financial harm. They deserve fines in proportion to the damages caused. If they have made any money reselling the pirated software, they get REALLY fined. But prison time? Give me a break. Rapists go out on parole because the prisons are full, and you are putting SOFTWARE pirates in prison. Wake up.
Slashdot Mirror
yes, but who gave the FTC the power to do this mandating? certainly not the constitution.
Full text of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" on Bibliomania.
Short distillation of his life on Licidcafe, along with some linkage.
biz/ed has topics on both Economic Systems and Game Theory which include lots of relevant material.
but i agree with your synopsis. Mr C is screwed.
more to the point would be a nice napster-like service run on sealand... my wife hates morpheus/kazaa/grokster/bearshare/etc. with napster, i was approved to purchase cd-burners, faster computers, wireless internet, DSL... now with napster gone, so has the "computer purchasing department" funding...
well... corel makes wordperfect, IBM makes lotus smart suite... i'm sure you can think of others. and by a competitor, perhaps i meant a competitor of SUN in general, not just of StarOffice.
unfortuately, financially supporting SUN in any way is kind of trying to put myself out of a job, as i work for a competitor... :)
nice troll. anyway did you even read the part where he says that the fan fiction is okay by him, as long as they aren't trying to sell it in his name? basically he just wants control over who is selling you a "Piers Anthony" book. why does that make him the Anti-Christ? let him offer some of his works as downloads, if he wants. why shouldn't HE decide what happens to the works he spends hundreds of hours writing. it's one thing to download music for yourself. it's another thing to download music, burn CD's, and sell them. chances are if you download some music and you like it, you'll go see the band in concert. chances are if you download a short story and you like it, you'll go buy a novel.
but if pirates are out selling the same novel for $1 or making it free on-line... wtf? everyone has to be homeless, unwashed hippies? when Piers wants to make -his- copyrighted works available for free, I'm sure he'll do so. if not, well, download someone else.
OpenOffice is coming for Mac OS X. In fact, they recently announced a Quartz port. since Piers is already using OpenOffice... this would probably kick the crap out of his "unable to print" problems.
after reading the article, it sounded like OpenOffice was worth a try. so I headed over to OpenOffice.org to take a look. there was the download link, yay, but 50 meg downloads are a bit much for my net connection. I looked for a "buy this on a CD", but not a link to be found. I even clicked the "Contributing" link, but that was only contributing code, not buying CDs.
maybe this is one reason open source companies fail?
... of a law we just don't need. why does it take the FCC to mandate such a thing, let the market decide. Google is already the defacto search engine, not just because of its tech. but also because of the way it does ads and not being "sold out" as far as search placement goes. why does the government feel this kind of thing requires legislation? if people want a search engine which doesn't sell search result positions, they'll use one. if they don't care, they won't. what's the big freaking deal. save the legislative branch for getting rid of all the stupid laws, not passing new mandates.
- Fight Palladium with the Great OS Freeze: tell your friends who won't switch to Linux to stick with Win2k or Win98
the OS Freeze only works until Microsoft doesn't release DirectX 9.0 or IE 7.0 on Windows 2000 or Windows 98, for purely "technical" reasons, yeah. if my friends (heck, if my DAD) can't play the games they want to play, or visit the website they want to visit (hotmail only working for IE 7.0 rings a bell as a future step once IE 7.0 support is not happening for Win2k or Win98) they will "upgrade" to XP.
as for myself, I won't be upgrading from Win2k, as I don't really play fancy games or visit fancy websites.
there are more people homeless and starving in America than there are people living in mansions. there are many, many, many more people homeless and starving in India than there are in America. the difference is that in America, the majority of the homeless are homeless because they are either crazy or lazy, while in India, they are born to it, a generation at a time.
projects like this make you wonder, what if every child in America were given a computer. would it really change that much? doubtful, but it might make a little ripple. most of the people who could benefit the most from having a computer are too busy working 80 hours a week at minimum wage jobs to have a chance to use them, regardless of being able to afford them.
IAA Mathematician...
:)
John Nash's work on Game Theory did not, IMO, have much to do with "public involvement for the public good". It basically attacked John Smith's notion that in general, the best outcome is achieved when all participants do what is in their best interest. Nash basically demonstrated that the best outcome actually MAY occur when all participants work together. This is hardly, I think, blanket support for "public involvement", rather, it supports the notion that if all the Tier-1 ISP's worked together instead of bloodthirstily competing with each other, the best outcome could result.
However, as most Tier-1 ISP's are publicly held, the shareholders do not really care about "the best outcome" for all involved, they want THEIR Tier-1 ISP to WIN COMPLETELY, and, obviously, have not read any of Nash's theories
wake up.
Michael thinks it is wrong to let a library block people from viewing kiddie porn there but it is ok to censor posts.
you have no idea what censorship is. this is somebody's website, they can do whatever they want to it, up to and including shutting it down entirely. you have no right to post anything here. you are not paying taxes here. there is no "bill of rights" here.
unlike at the library, where you are paying taxes to fund it and as a public service, it cannot be censored, as it is protected by the Bill of Rights.
remember, *tard, this is a private webpage, not run by the US government or your tax dollars. if Michael, or CmdrTaco, or whoever with power chooses to do whatever they want to do, they can do it. naturally they could piss off some of their visitors, but hey, like I said, they could shut the whole thing down if they wanted to. you are free to go elsewhere, where your notions of "free speech" (i.e., "turd reports") are more respected.
adam smith's economics and capitalism, or the promise of cheap, reliable broadband for everyone. how often has the promise of "public involvement for the public good" sounded so, well, good, but in the delivery it all goes bad. the USA has always had this attempt of having their cake and eating it too. when you try to have BOTH free markets AND public regulation, what exactly are you trying to do? either have one or the other, with both, you are playing tug of war with yourself.
what up, raleigh /.ers? i run BritSys DSL. slower than RR but the service has been amazing...
you get what you pay for. i pay 15-20 bucks more for my DSL line than i would normally have to, simply because i -love- the service they have constantly provided. and, they make it clear that hosting my own webserver is okay. yeah, maybe i only download at 100K/s, but that's the same speed i get 24/7, and when something goes down, i make a phone call and it is fixed pronto (and usually Verizon's fault, not my ISP's).
as for all the people complaining... uh, DUH. you are buying broadband from a cable company, which also owns a large motion picture company and a record label (among other things). did you REALLY think they wouldn't shut down file sharing?
directfb is the bomb. when it becomes mature... that is definitely the future of the linux desktop as i see it.
it would be kinda like patenting "one-click" ordering.
well, the article states that probably the IP referred to was actually created by SGI, and put into the OpenGL standards with the promise of releasing the IP with the standard, i.e., royalty free. Microsoft comes along, buys a bunch of SGI IP (including this vertex stuff), and looks through it and goes, "hrm, now we can crush the OpenGL specification... should we do it?"
of course they will. graphics cards will end up being Direct3D -ONLY-. no OpenGL acceleration. that kills a ton of XFree86 work, that kills a lot of the Linux gaming work.
hell, that might kill Linux.
amateurs.
gateway handbook 486. 20 mb of RAM (upgraded from original 8). came with windows 95. now it's running FreeBSD, my domain's DNS, my email, my SSH into my home LAN...
safer than skydiving from airplanes, is what he means, obviously. if you're going to skydive anyway, you could either have a long process of the airplane takeoff (requiring a well-maintained runway, well-maintained airplane, flight plan, etc) you can just trust one component (the rocket). and, after all, if things go bad, you DO have a parachute on...
not at all what i said. i didn't say white-collar crimes shouldn't be punished, i said that victimless piracy shouldn't be punished with prison time. as you pointed out, there are lives ruined, pain and suffering caused with the enron, AA, and worldcom cases. those people whose lives were ruined should be suing those CEOs in civil court, and, if sufficiently determined damages were caused, THEN prison time is warranted. but i'll agree it is a slippery slope. you can't really put the enron CEO in prison because an ex-investor killed themselves. unless you are the doctor giving them the morphine, or a friend knowingly giving them the loaded handgun, you're not going to convict the guy of being an accomplice. life sucks, all those guys deserve to burn for what they've done. but putting them in prison? what purpose does that serve, but to cheapen the punishment for the crimes for which prisons were created. you get 5 years for sexual assault, a direct, physical act. how much time should you get for being a slimy bastard? strip them of everything they own and sentence them to a lifetime of community service. they're not violent criminals, and, as long as they aren't running a multi-million dollar company, they are NOT a "danger to society". prisons are places to put people who are "dangerous to society", to protect us from them. the way to protect us from the Enron CEO is to make sure he NEVER works above manual labor again :)
"would you like fries with that?"
:) i should have thought of that. obviously, they should have gone in, guns blazing, damn the passers-by. shoot first, ask questions later, eh? "damn the torpedos!"
Is the customs service so deranged that they think this guy is going to escape if they only send 3 or 4 guys? Or 2? Or even 1?
problem is, the customs guys have only the information at hand to go on. the information THEY have been given is that this guy is responsible for billions in stolen software.
now, if you're going after a billionaire, you're going in with a helluvalotta manpower. if the software companies had been HONEST and the charge was the REALISTIC charge of "nuisance" or something like that, the customs guys never get involved.
that said, i totally agree. you'd figure they'd spend a day scoping the guy out, realise he's living with his parents and working in a computer store, and send in 1 guy, with a billy club, not 40 armed agents.
Stealing something because you wouldn't pay for it anyway in no way makes it less of a theft.
Correct, but copying software is not stealing. It is copyright infringement. You're not stealing anything. The person you "stole" it from still has it.
Disclaimer: I work at a software company which sells some $100,000 licenses. We are pirated quite a bit, but I can say with assuredness that not a SINGLE one of those pirates would have bought our software.
Do pirates deserve punishment? Hell yes. It's not technically "stealing" and the overstated financial "losses" are a joke, but they are breaking the law.
Do pirates deserve PRISON time? No, I'll reserve prison time for rapists and murders. Pirates deserve fines, community service, that kind of sentence.
Don't believe the hype. Pirates of $100K software are more than likely not causing any financial harm to anyone. They should get community service and a nice black mark on their record.
However, pirates of $50 games and $100 operating systems are probably causing financial harm. They deserve fines in proportion to the damages caused. If they have made any money reselling the pirated software, they get REALLY fined. But prison time? Give me a break. Rapists go out on parole because the prisons are full, and you are putting SOFTWARE pirates in prison. Wake up.