"Let's triple or quadruple the cost of petrol, for instance, perhaps due to a stagnant American economy or an American attack on Iran."
Actually, a tripling of the price of fuel would kill the US economy, but not the other way around. A stagnant American economy means less demand for fuel, which should result in a lowering of the price. Unless you're talking about a weak dollar, I'm not sure why you come to the conclusion you stated. I think you have cause and effect reversed. An American attack on Iran would have a serious effect on gas prices though.
"Flaw detected and removed. New version of Winamp out. Get the new version. Protected. Not much more difficult than that. Shouldn't there a be a "Software Vulnerabilties" section to Slashdot, where these things could be posted?"
Yeah, because Winamp has an autoupdate feature, right?
"I personally think Richard would be more appropiate than Linus. The freeness of Linux in particular and GNU/Linux in general comes from RMS's ideals, or more precisely his expression of some ideals common to many people. Linus has done a great job, but the antithesis of Windows is GNU."
Actually, BSD is the antithesis of Windows, because it is the only completely free OS. RMS's GNU puts strings on it's "free" software that limit how you can distribute modified copies.
"free music will hopefully become viable as the cost of production falls closer and closer to hobbyist levels."
Even the people who write Love Money have a better understanding of the music business than/.ers. There's a hell of a lot more to getting airplay and selling records than producing a recording of a song.
"Are you supposed to laugh at Gates's shortsightedness because "hobbyists" developed enterprise grade software like Linux, Apache, etc. for free? (a myth)"
Hobbyists didn't develop enterprise grade software. They just got the ball rolling. Linux is written by professionals, for the most part. They get paid either by the companies they work for or through donations to groups like OSDL.
"As I recall, 4k basic for the Altair was written on an Altair emulator running on a PDP-10 running TOPS-10 at Harvard, which the students were not authorized to use for commercial purposes."
Yeah, at least when Stallman wasted MIT's resources on his crusade, he was consistent, since he believes things should be shared, whether or not the owner agrees.
"Used to be that artists were paid on comission - their customer put up the money, maybe with an advance, and when the work was completed the customer owned the result and the artist was fully compensated. There is no strong reason why we can't move on to a similar system of comissioned creation today, where the customers put up the money and own the result to do with as they wish, including copy and share with a million and one friends. Creators still get compensated and thus still have incentive to create and improve their creations."
ahhh, that's exactly how things work today. Ever hear of a freelance photographer? He takes a picture, sells the copyright to a newspaper, and gets paid a commision. The newspaper now owns the copyright and distributes to millions. Copyright enforces what you want. You want to distribute to millions for free, buy out the copyright. Oh what a surprise, the copyright is worth more than one copy.
So you're saying a constitutional rights are outdated and shouldn't be enforced, nor should new laws be enacted to help enforce them with respect to new technology. You have a lot in common with G. W. Bush.
"Of course not, because there are huge fundamental differences between physical property and intangible "property", and reasonable people know that the analogy between downloading music and stealing CDs (or any other physical property) is as far-fetched as the analogy between gay marriage and interspecies marriage. "
The only difference between stealing a CD and downloading the CD illegally is about 50 cents worth of packaging. No one gives a shit about the actual physical CD. So the difference is negligible./.ers just don't get it.
"Imagine if Windows 95 required a 'Trusted Computing' platform. The manufacturers would have, for various reasons, produced hardware that could essentially only run Windows, and the fact that it couldn't run other, yet-to-be-developed operating systems would have been a total non issue to them. End result - no Linux."
Trusted computing does not mean "only runs windows". Trusted computing means altering a signed OS causes the hardware to flag an error, i.e. your software has been tampered with. As Linus points out, it's a great security feature, and I believe earlier he said he was willing to make Linux compatible with trusted computing.
There are comments calling RMS the philosopher and Linus the engineer, but in my opinion Linus has a better philosophy that places a higher value on freedom, whereas RMS's philosphy involves increasing his own personal freedom at the expense of others. Linus's comments on GPLv3 seem to inllustrate this very well.
"But no one pays extra to make hour-long local calls, if they like, and this procedure has worked very well for quite some time too."
I do. I do not have an unlimited local phone service plan. And I pay LESS because I don't make a lot of local calls than if I had unlimited local service. There should be tiered rates on the internet, because it give consumers and providers more freedom and flexibility./.ers don't like it because they use the internet a lot, and they want others who use the internet less to pay more than their fair share, rather than giving them a choice.
Yes it's very rude of MS to be hostile to small developers. They should be more like Apple, who are hostile to all developers, big and small, especially when it comes to their DRM licensing.
WMA is chump change compared to Fairplay. Why isn't someone complaining that you can't license Fairplay for any price? Apple has a monopoly on audio DRM, at least a monopoly in the same sense that MS has a monopoly in the OS realm.
"No, wrong wrong wrong, every McDonalds customer does NOT know that their coffee is far hotter than coffee you would obtain anywhere else, you can NOT feel it through the cup, which is styrofoam not paper, because styrofoam has very good properties of thermal insulation."
So you're saying she intentionally spilled the coffee or herself thinking it wasn't a big deal? And then was dismayed that the coffe was hotter than most? No, the accident was hers. The fault was hers. Do you really think a warning saying this coffee is really hot would have changed anything?
None of these facts makes McDonalds liable if she spills coffe on herself. Just because their coffee is hotter than other people's coffe doesn't make them responsible for her spilling coffee on herself. The fact that other people have burned themselves spilling coffe on themselves doesn't change the fact that McDonalds is not responsible for their mistakes either. To show McDonalds was at fault, you need to show that a defect in the container caused the spill. Otherwise, McDonalds shouldn't be penalized for her mistake. And, there's no law as to how hot coffee can be served, so they can't be blamed for that. There are a lot of consumer products a lot more dangerous than a hot cup of coffee. You shoudn't be allowed to sue them because of your mistakes or careless behavior. It's common knowledge that coffee is hot. Putting a warning label that this coffee is hotter than other coffee really isn't going to change people's behavior.
"Don't worry, the goov't will be fair and release the source for it guys!
And this new happens on the same day Honda made a self-driven car! Today is just full of coincidences.:)"
Unless they're selling the vehicles, they don't need to release the source code to the public. Only people using the vehicles need to have access to the source code.
"It is rightfully modded down because it's not bringing any new ideas to the table and is just making a rather inciting comment. In other words, trying to start a flamewar.
Bring a good, detailed argument about why non-profit copyright violators should be punished to the fullest extent of the law and then we can have a more reasonable debate."
But if he said, these guys got railroaded, it also brings nothing to the table but wouldn't have been modded down. As for a flamewar, you presuppose that/.ers have a groupthink attitude that piracy is ok, and prosecution of it is a problem, since as I just mentioned the opposing opinion would not have been modded down. Therefore, moderating in/. is a form of censorship.
"Bush cited Article XV of the ABM Treaty, which states that the Treaty could be abrogated by one of the parties "if extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.""
So, a fall of the Soviet Government and the formation of a Russian govt. that doesn't consider the US an enemy (maybe not best freind either but...) isn't an extradinary event in your mind? I don't think Russia care whether or not we build a missile defense system at this time since they don't see us in the same light as before.
"Quiet down and pay for the rights to see the same AP or Reuters article on 200 different web sites. It's the Capitalist way."
Since when have you ever paid for an AP or Reuters news story online. The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize. Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.
"Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit against AT&T for helping the National Security Agency execute illegal warrant-less wiretaps against American citizens."
No one's actually proved in a court of law that the wiretaps are illegal yet.
Slashdot Mirror
"Let's triple or quadruple the cost of petrol, for instance, perhaps due to a stagnant American economy or an American attack on Iran."
Actually, a tripling of the price of fuel would kill the US economy, but not the other way around. A stagnant American economy means less demand for fuel, which should result in a lowering of the price. Unless you're talking about a weak dollar, I'm not sure why you come to the conclusion you stated. I think you have cause and effect reversed. An American attack on Iran would have a serious effect on gas prices though.
"Flaw detected and removed. New version of Winamp out. Get the new version. Protected. Not much more difficult than that. Shouldn't there a be a "Software Vulnerabilties" section to Slashdot, where these things could be posted?"
Yeah, because Winamp has an autoupdate feature, right?
"I personally think Richard would be more appropiate than Linus. The freeness of Linux in particular and GNU/Linux in general comes from RMS's ideals, or more precisely his expression of some ideals common to many people. Linus has done a great job, but the antithesis of Windows is GNU."
Actually, BSD is the antithesis of Windows, because it is the only completely free OS. RMS's GNU puts strings on it's "free" software that limit how you can distribute modified copies.
No one would know about this letter, except that is was read at the beginning of the documentary RevolutionOS (about OSS development).
"free music will hopefully become viable as the cost of production falls closer and closer to hobbyist levels."
/.ers. There's a hell of a lot more to getting airplay and selling records than producing a recording of a song.
Even the people who write Love Money have a better understanding of the music business than
"Are you supposed to laugh at Gates's shortsightedness because "hobbyists" developed enterprise grade software like Linux, Apache, etc. for free? (a myth)"
Hobbyists didn't develop enterprise grade software. They just got the ball rolling. Linux is written by professionals, for the most part. They get paid either by the companies they work for or through donations to groups like OSDL.
"As I recall, 4k basic for the Altair was written on an Altair emulator running on a PDP-10 running TOPS-10 at Harvard, which the students were not authorized to use for commercial purposes."
Yeah, at least when Stallman wasted MIT's resources on his crusade, he was consistent, since he believes things should be shared, whether or not the owner agrees.
"Used to be that artists were paid on comission - their customer put up the money, maybe with an advance, and when the work was completed the customer owned the result and the artist was fully compensated. There is no strong reason why we can't move on to a similar system of comissioned creation today, where the customers put up the money and own the result to do with as they wish, including copy and share with a million and one friends. Creators still get compensated and thus still have incentive to create and improve their creations."
ahhh, that's exactly how things work today. Ever hear of a freelance photographer? He takes a picture, sells the copyright to a newspaper, and gets paid a commision. The newspaper now owns the copyright and distributes to millions. Copyright enforces what you want. You want to distribute to millions for free, buy out the copyright. Oh what a surprise, the copyright is worth more than one copy.
So you're saying a constitutional rights are outdated and shouldn't be enforced, nor should new laws be enacted to help enforce them with respect to new technology. You have a lot in common with G. W. Bush.
"Of course not, because there are huge fundamental differences between physical property and intangible "property", and reasonable people know that the analogy between downloading music and stealing CDs (or any other physical property) is as far-fetched as the analogy between gay marriage and interspecies marriage.
/.ers just don't get it.
"
The only difference between stealing a CD and downloading the CD illegally is about 50 cents worth of packaging. No one gives a shit about the actual physical CD. So the difference is negligible.
"Imagine if Windows 95 required a 'Trusted Computing' platform. The manufacturers would have, for various reasons, produced hardware that could essentially only run Windows, and the fact that it couldn't run other, yet-to-be-developed operating systems would have been a total non issue to them. End result - no Linux."
Trusted computing does not mean "only runs windows". Trusted computing means altering a signed OS causes the hardware to flag an error, i.e. your software has been tampered with. As Linus points out, it's a great security feature, and I believe earlier he said he was willing to make Linux compatible with trusted computing.
There are comments calling RMS the philosopher and Linus the engineer, but in my opinion Linus has a better philosophy that places a higher value on freedom, whereas RMS's philosphy involves increasing his own personal freedom at the expense of others. Linus's comments on GPLv3 seem to inllustrate this very well.
No one's forcing you to buy DRM'ed products. A computer is a tool, not a constitutionally protected right.
"But no one pays extra to make hour-long local calls, if they like, and this procedure has worked very well for quite some time too."
/.ers don't like it because they use the internet a lot, and they want others who use the internet less to pay more than their fair share, rather than giving them a choice.
I do. I do not have an unlimited local phone service plan. And I pay LESS because I don't make a lot of local calls than if I had unlimited local service. There should be tiered rates on the internet, because it give consumers and providers more freedom and flexibility.
Yes it's very rude of MS to be hostile to small developers. They should be more like Apple, who are hostile to all developers, big and small, especially when it comes to their DRM licensing.
WMA is chump change compared to Fairplay. Why isn't someone complaining that you can't license Fairplay for any price? Apple has a monopoly on audio DRM, at least a monopoly in the same sense that MS has a monopoly in the OS realm.
"No, wrong wrong wrong, every McDonalds customer does NOT know that their coffee is far hotter than coffee you would obtain anywhere else, you can NOT feel it through the cup, which is styrofoam not paper, because styrofoam has very good properties of thermal insulation."
So you're saying she intentionally spilled the coffee or herself thinking it wasn't a big deal? And then was dismayed that the coffe was hotter than most? No, the accident was hers. The fault was hers. Do you really think a warning saying this coffee is really hot would have changed anything?
None of these facts makes McDonalds liable if she spills coffe on herself. Just because their coffee is hotter than other people's coffe doesn't make them responsible for her spilling coffee on herself. The fact that other people have burned themselves spilling coffe on themselves doesn't change the fact that McDonalds is not responsible for their mistakes either. To show McDonalds was at fault, you need to show that a defect in the container caused the spill. Otherwise, McDonalds shouldn't be penalized for her mistake. And, there's no law as to how hot coffee can be served, so they can't be blamed for that. There are a lot of consumer products a lot more dangerous than a hot cup of coffee. You shoudn't be allowed to sue them because of your mistakes or careless behavior. It's common knowledge that coffee is hot. Putting a warning label that this coffee is hotter than other coffee really isn't going to change people's behavior.
"Don't worry, the goov't will be fair and release the source for it guys!
:)"
And this new happens on the same day Honda made a self-driven car! Today is just full of coincidences.
Unless they're selling the vehicles, they don't need to release the source code to the public. Only people using the vehicles need to have access to the source code.
"Stop charging so much for software and you would see that $6.5 million drop down."
Yes, if you charge $0 for software, than your piracy losses are $0, and you have nothing to worry about from piracy.
The lost tax revenue alone makes up for the cost of prosecuting.
"It is rightfully modded down because it's not bringing any new ideas to the table and is just making a rather inciting comment. In other words, trying to start a flamewar.
/.ers have a groupthink attitude that piracy is ok, and prosecution of it is a problem, since as I just mentioned the opposing opinion would not have been modded down. Therefore, moderating in /. is a form of censorship.
Bring a good, detailed argument about why non-profit copyright violators should be punished to the fullest extent of the law and then we can have a more reasonable debate."
But if he said, these guys got railroaded, it also brings nothing to the table but wouldn't have been modded down. As for a flamewar, you presuppose that
"Bush cited Article XV of the ABM Treaty, which states that the Treaty could be abrogated by one of the parties "if extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests.""
So, a fall of the Soviet Government and the formation of a Russian govt. that doesn't consider the US an enemy (maybe not best freind either but...) isn't an extradinary event in your mind? I don't think Russia care whether or not we build a missile defense system at this time since they don't see us in the same light as before.
"Quiet down and pay for the rights to see the same AP or Reuters article on 200 different web sites. It's the Capitalist way."
Since when have you ever paid for an AP or Reuters news story online. The news sites posting them pay for them, and use advertising to subsidize. Google doesn't pay for linking to them and uses advertising to subsidize their non-payments.
"Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit against AT&T for helping the National Security Agency execute illegal warrant-less wiretaps against American citizens."
No one's actually proved in a court of law that the wiretaps are illegal yet.