GP's father's computer doubtless came with an OEM Windows license. IIRC, that isn't good for running in a VM, and non-OEM licenses are fairly pricy when compared to the cost of the computer. Moreover, you now expect a small business to run Linux (given the right distro, it's about as easy as running Windows), run and administer a VM, run and administer Windows on the VM, accept any performance hit, and try to figure out how to set up a VM to be safe running Windows software on a Windows VM.
Most computer owners don't have a cue about Free vs. proprietary software. They have something they want to do, and they pick what looks like the best choice to do that with. Any choice that requires computer sophistication and significant extra expense is not going to fly.
Talk to them. Find out that they don't see any reason to move off Windows.
Talk to them some more. Convince them somehow that they'd be better off on Linux if the common software and the other three things they absolutely need that run only on Windows ran on them.
Help them organize a similar campaign to enlist the support of the companies using the other three things.
Tell your CIO, and find you need a cost-benefit analysis. Your friends at the other companies also find that out.
Try to defend your estimates for the cost of staying on Windows.
Research the cost of tighter Windows security.
Give up. Take next year's server budget and your own savings and hire the mob.
Tell the mob to kidnap all the CIO's close families and hold them for ransom, ransom being agreement to switch to Linux if humanly possible.
Form an industry group to tell VLC that you want Linux versions.
Realize that you've got to keep paying for their stuff if you want to stay in business, so you have little leverage.
Conduct mob hits on all Windows zealots at your vendor's place of business.
Get estimate of how long it will take X to be rewritten to run on Linux.
Get estimate of how much it will cost you to keep the mob guys holding the hostages all that time.
Find pictures of your CEO, CFO, and a goat in bed together. Blackmail them to cough up the money the mob will need.
There have been numerous attempts to cut programmers out of the software business, because we've always been expensive. IIRC, the first "automatic coder" was an assembly language.
Now, suppose we have robotic code generation from high-level requirements declarations. There's two scenarios.
First: The high-level requirements declarations have to be a formal system to allow them to be robotically translated, which means you need the equivalent of programmers to write them, and the robot is a compiler.
Second: The robot can understand vague and contradictory requirements and make sense of them. At that point, we have strong AI, and it's Singularity time, so society is going to change beyond all recognition, and losing one's job will be par for the course and not the biggest thing to worry about.
The exploit worked not because of some security lapse at Microsoft, but because the people maintaining the machines didn't lock them down or apply appropriate updates in a timely manner.
Microsoft has taught people that Windows updates are not to be trusted, and most people's computers will never become more locked down than they were when shipped. Businesses can have competent people administering their machines, but individual computer owners typically don't. Everything here was pushed by Microsoft: unreliable updates, computers shipped not locked down, distribution of computers to people who don't have clue one how to administer one.
Desktops and laptops aren't just for games. There's a lot of important software that is Windows-only. Lots of software developers really like Visual Studio, for example, and Microsoft Office is vital for many organizations. Microsoft dominates on desktops and laptops, which is a pretty good niche, but not the majority of personal computing devices.
I keep seeing this "properly", and it frequently means "when done by inerrant and superintelligent entities", which isn't real helpful. I prefer it to have some real-life meaning. My definition of properly written C++ is C++ that conforms to a good style that can be enforced by a combination of code scanners and reasonable code review. For example, properly written C++ doesn't double-free memory, but can have a race condition or off-by-one error or use an element from an empty vector.
You are correct; I am a utilitarian, and I do recognize the practical problems with the philosophy. I do consider slippery slopes, which you don't seem to believe. I just arrive at different conclusions than you do. That's to a certain extent speculative, and your apparent attitude that your ideas are clearly correct when examined is frustrating. If you would accept that an intelligent person can think about moral hazards, concentrated benefits/diffuse costs, and slippery slopes, and reasonably come up with a different conclusion from yours, that would help a lot.
A person who is sick or injured and can't get health care is harmed. A person who can't get a good job is harmed. I take harm to be a negative deviation in well-being from what should be expected; you appear to have a much lower baseline to calculate it from. That some people will be harmed by anything people do is obvious. The reasons for the harm should be cogent and apply to the individual in question.
By the way, you appear to believe in government-enforced property rights, and the only way the government can enforce anything is by inflicting harm on certain individuals. By your own arguments, this means the government will harm more people for fewer benefits. It's your slippery slope, and we just start at different places.
I get that you disagree with the people who actually study this sort of thing, but why the vehemence? Every time this comes up, lots of people insist on emphasizing their anti-scientific opinions like they perceived it as a threat.
In other words, you don't find the evidence available before the investigation to be convincing. No problem. We'll see what the investigation turns up.
Trump has been living and vacationing at his properties, and they've been getting money from the Federal government. That's unconstitutional, and a violation of the Constitution counts as impeachment material.
Last poll I saw had 84% of Republicans supporting him. (I really miss the sort of Republicans they made when I was a kid. They were at least intelligent and willing to compromise.) A two-thirds conviction vote in the Senate could splinter the Republican party.
We had plenty of polluted water to drink before the government acted to change that. I'm old enough to remember before the EPA, and it was bad. Remove government regulation over water and you can have all the polluted water to drink you could ever want.
There's evidence that something might be going on, which is enough to justify an investigation. There isn't solid evidence available yet, but the investigation might find something.
The requirement for an investigation is very very low. The requirement for a search warrant is reason to believe the authorities will find something incriminating. The requirement for a conviction is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Typically, there's an investigation. If it turns up probable cause, it can get warrants. Given warrants, it might come up with enough evidence to convict. There is no need for probable cause to start an investigation, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt to get a search warrant.
However, with Trump talking about a Muslim ban, an action arbitrarily banning entry to people from certain Muslim countries (as opposed to, say, increasing vetting for entry permissions) sure looks like a Muslim ban, particularly with comments on preference for religious minorities in those countries (i.e., non-Muslims).
Trump has no Constitutional authority here. He can only use the authority Congress gave him, which is subject to Constitutional restrictions.
There's plenty of evidence of business connections to Russia, and some of Trump's advisors/lackeys/whatever do have connections. There are things that appear to be cover-ups. There's plenty of reason to investigate.
It is a natural monopoly/duopoly, due to the necessity of running a connection to every user. It costs serious money to hook me up to a central site. It is possible for a new company to string new connections, and I'm aware of one in my area, but it's risky because an existing ISP can make it very difficult to get profitable. There was a third-party (i.e., neither cable nor phone) ISP in my city, but before it got to my part the phone company extended fiber coverage to my neighborhood. ISPs per se are not awarded monopoly licenses.
tl;dr: governments have little or nothing to do with the lack of competition.
The only feasible way to get multiple ISPs is to have the physical connections run like a utility
If you tell a joke and it isn't recorded, then it isn't in a fixed form and is ineligible for copyright. If written down, it's copyrighted, assuming it's eligible. It may be considered too short, or unoriginal, or too tied with an idea, but that's a matter for courts to settle.
Registering a copyright has some advantages. For example, it's possible to sue for statutory damages rather than actual damages. It would be hard to prove that someone telling your joke damages you, so you'd probably want to go for statutory damages.
Of course, copyrighting individual jokes is expensive, and copyrighting a collection opens the door to a claim of fair use, assuming you can show that the joke was taken from you in the first place.
Personally, it doesn't sound worth the bother to me.
We also need to consider the relationships of copyrights to ideas. Jokes are generally short sequences of words built around an idea, and some of them require pretty much the same words to express the idea. Copyright can't legally be used to limit the expression of ideas.
The word was "knock". Those words weren't original to Brown, either; they had previously been touted as a very short science fiction story. Brown decided to write a story that started with those words. (He had a weird sense of humor.)
Those words are also mostly needed to express an idea that would be difficult to express as tersely in other words. That renders them as a bad prospect for copyright,
So, your "certainly was originally copyrighted" claim looks really dubious to me. Brown's story was copyrighted, but it was considerably longer than those words.
A joke is an idea, and the words are the expression of the idea. It would probably be possible to copyright the text, at least if the joke was long, but I really don't think that could stop people from telling the joke in their own words.
Slashdot Mirror
GP's father's computer doubtless came with an OEM Windows license. IIRC, that isn't good for running in a VM, and non-OEM licenses are fairly pricy when compared to the cost of the computer. Moreover, you now expect a small business to run Linux (given the right distro, it's about as easy as running Windows), run and administer a VM, run and administer Windows on the VM, accept any performance hit, and try to figure out how to set up a VM to be safe running Windows software on a Windows VM.
Most computer owners don't have a cue about Free vs. proprietary software. They have something they want to do, and they pick what looks like the best choice to do that with. Any choice that requires computer sophistication and significant extra expense is not going to fly.
Okay, so:
There have been numerous attempts to cut programmers out of the software business, because we've always been expensive. IIRC, the first "automatic coder" was an assembly language.
Now, suppose we have robotic code generation from high-level requirements declarations. There's two scenarios.
First: The high-level requirements declarations have to be a formal system to allow them to be robotically translated, which means you need the equivalent of programmers to write them, and the robot is a compiler.
Second: The robot can understand vague and contradictory requirements and make sense of them. At that point, we have strong AI, and it's Singularity time, so society is going to change beyond all recognition, and losing one's job will be par for the course and not the biggest thing to worry about.
Microsoft has taught people that Windows updates are not to be trusted, and most people's computers will never become more locked down than they were when shipped. Businesses can have competent people administering their machines, but individual computer owners typically don't. Everything here was pushed by Microsoft: unreliable updates, computers shipped not locked down, distribution of computers to people who don't have clue one how to administer one.
Desktops and laptops aren't just for games. There's a lot of important software that is Windows-only. Lots of software developers really like Visual Studio, for example, and Microsoft Office is vital for many organizations. Microsoft dominates on desktops and laptops, which is a pretty good niche, but not the majority of personal computing devices.
I keep seeing this "properly", and it frequently means "when done by inerrant and superintelligent entities", which isn't real helpful. I prefer it to have some real-life meaning. My definition of properly written C++ is C++ that conforms to a good style that can be enforced by a combination of code scanners and reasonable code review. For example, properly written C++ doesn't double-free memory, but can have a race condition or off-by-one error or use an element from an empty vector.
You are correct; I am a utilitarian, and I do recognize the practical problems with the philosophy. I do consider slippery slopes, which you don't seem to believe. I just arrive at different conclusions than you do. That's to a certain extent speculative, and your apparent attitude that your ideas are clearly correct when examined is frustrating. If you would accept that an intelligent person can think about moral hazards, concentrated benefits/diffuse costs, and slippery slopes, and reasonably come up with a different conclusion from yours, that would help a lot.
A person who is sick or injured and can't get health care is harmed. A person who can't get a good job is harmed. I take harm to be a negative deviation in well-being from what should be expected; you appear to have a much lower baseline to calculate it from. That some people will be harmed by anything people do is obvious. The reasons for the harm should be cogent and apply to the individual in question.
By the way, you appear to believe in government-enforced property rights, and the only way the government can enforce anything is by inflicting harm on certain individuals. By your own arguments, this means the government will harm more people for fewer benefits. It's your slippery slope, and we just start at different places.
I get that you disagree with the people who actually study this sort of thing, but why the vehemence? Every time this comes up, lots of people insist on emphasizing their anti-scientific opinions like they perceived it as a threat.
However, "any class" has to be Constitutional. The courts found that this was apparent discrimination by religion.
In other words, you don't find the evidence available before the investigation to be convincing. No problem. We'll see what the investigation turns up.
Trump has been living and vacationing at his properties, and they've been getting money from the Federal government. That's unconstitutional, and a violation of the Constitution counts as impeachment material.
Last poll I saw had 84% of Republicans supporting him. (I really miss the sort of Republicans they made when I was a kid. They were at least intelligent and willing to compromise.) A two-thirds conviction vote in the Senate could splinter the Republican party.
We had plenty of polluted water to drink before the government acted to change that. I'm old enough to remember before the EPA, and it was bad. Remove government regulation over water and you can have all the polluted water to drink you could ever want.
Lots of Senators did. Bush & co. deceived people into thinking there was good reason for it.
There's evidence that something might be going on, which is enough to justify an investigation. There isn't solid evidence available yet, but the investigation might find something.
The requirement for an investigation is very very low. The requirement for a search warrant is reason to believe the authorities will find something incriminating. The requirement for a conviction is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Typically, there's an investigation. If it turns up probable cause, it can get warrants. Given warrants, it might come up with enough evidence to convict. There is no need for probable cause to start an investigation, or proof beyond a reasonable doubt to get a search warrant.
However, with Trump talking about a Muslim ban, an action arbitrarily banning entry to people from certain Muslim countries (as opposed to, say, increasing vetting for entry permissions) sure looks like a Muslim ban, particularly with comments on preference for religious minorities in those countries (i.e., non-Muslims).
Trump has no Constitutional authority here. He can only use the authority Congress gave him, which is subject to Constitutional restrictions.
There's plenty of evidence of business connections to Russia, and some of Trump's advisors/lackeys/whatever do have connections. There are things that appear to be cover-ups. There's plenty of reason to investigate.
It is a natural monopoly/duopoly, due to the necessity of running a connection to every user. It costs serious money to hook me up to a central site. It is possible for a new company to string new connections, and I'm aware of one in my area, but it's risky because an existing ISP can make it very difficult to get profitable. There was a third-party (i.e., neither cable nor phone) ISP in my city, but before it got to my part the phone company extended fiber coverage to my neighborhood. ISPs per se are not awarded monopoly licenses.
tl;dr: governments have little or nothing to do with the lack of competition.
The only feasible way to get multiple ISPs is to have the physical connections run like a utility
It accounts for a small minority of my torrent use, and my actions are the only ones I'm responsible for.
Copyright used to be about protecting the publishers, not the author.
If you tell a joke and it isn't recorded, then it isn't in a fixed form and is ineligible for copyright. If written down, it's copyrighted, assuming it's eligible. It may be considered too short, or unoriginal, or too tied with an idea, but that's a matter for courts to settle.
Registering a copyright has some advantages. For example, it's possible to sue for statutory damages rather than actual damages. It would be hard to prove that someone telling your joke damages you, so you'd probably want to go for statutory damages.
Of course, copyrighting individual jokes is expensive, and copyrighting a collection opens the door to a claim of fair use, assuming you can show that the joke was taken from you in the first place.
Personally, it doesn't sound worth the bother to me.
We also need to consider the relationships of copyrights to ideas. Jokes are generally short sequences of words built around an idea, and some of them require pretty much the same words to express the idea. Copyright can't legally be used to limit the expression of ideas.
Translations of copyrighted works are covered by copyright.
The word was "knock". Those words weren't original to Brown, either; they had previously been touted as a very short science fiction story. Brown decided to write a story that started with those words. (He had a weird sense of humor.)
Those words are also mostly needed to express an idea that would be difficult to express as tersely in other words. That renders them as a bad prospect for copyright,
So, your "certainly was originally copyrighted" claim looks really dubious to me. Brown's story was copyrighted, but it was considerably longer than those words.
A joke is an idea, and the words are the expression of the idea. It would probably be possible to copyright the text, at least if the joke was long, but I really don't think that could stop people from telling the joke in their own words.
Trump: Making America Mediocre Again!