I haven't used it myself, but I looked at the install page, and got the impression that they have an app repository similary to Gentoo / Ubuntu. If that's the case, then whil they have to give away the source code along with any distributed binaries, they're in no way required to give access to their app repository for free. They can charge as much as they like for access to their servers, and be well within the limits of the GPL.
That post just made my day:-) Hilarious.
90% of users don't understand that the Desktop is actually a file in a heirarchical structure. If you stopped hiding that fact from them, sat them down and said "look, here's how things are structured"... you could fix all of this in about 10 minutes. Perpetuating the "hide things from the stupid user" UI philosophy only makes people less willing to learn, and thus increases the need for stupid workarounds to fix it. Vicious cycle.
You have stuff that could harm the state and they come knocking, but it's no big deal??? Even if the actions of the state are unconstitutional? Are you really that stupid? That's the kind of logic Stalin and Mao used.
I agree with your position, but your argument has some flaws.
Technically, written words are just as undefined as songs. Suppose I were in a restaurant, and at the next table was the late Mr. Thompson. He writes something on a piece of paper, and leaves it behind. Can I take it and distribute it around? Yes, as freely as I can the speech of the band you talk about above. But if he copies down part of one of his novels out of his head, then I cannot reprint that.
But what about versions of his works written in cursive? Or translated to Swahili? Or ones altered for punctuation or grammer or to bring them up to date with modern street slang? Likely those would be copyright as well, although they differ as much from the original work as do the sound waves passing through walls and such in your example.
There's another problem with your example, and that is if Metalica walks down the street and says something, you CANNOT write it down and print it. Original ideas or phrases or expressions or whatever are automatically copyright the second they are created. So if Ulrich says something original, it IS copyrighted to him. It's just that most people don't usually persue this. Even my post is copyright, and although I implicitly grant permission for it to appear on slashdot through the action of posting, anybody who copies it to another location could be liable for copyright infringement.
In my opinion, that strict level of control over everything that's created is near the root of the problems in the copyright system. I'd be much more happy if the worldwide default copyright were something more along the lines of the creative commons' Attribution/Non-commercial/Share-alike license, with possible exception for original works requiring extraordinary amounts of effort in their creation (a novel, a song, etc that takes many many hours of work). And even then, I think it needs to be relaxed.
Oh my god. You really don't get it, do you? Saying that a news outlet is biased doesn't mean that EVERY story they publish is biased. They may even have stories that lean the other way from their usual bias. The point is that ON AVERAGE they are not a balanced source of news.
If you really expect to defeat the idea of Fox News as a biased media source with one article that talks only about a single FDA report... you're even more stupid than you look.
First, whenever someone claims that he takes it easier on democratic candidates, they give examples of A) the worst things he's said to republican types and B) random introductory things like "how are you doing?" that he's asked democrats. They're purposely choosing examples to make it seem more skewed than it really is.
Second, neither Jon nor any of us have to explain any perceived or real slant. Because guess what: it's a COMEDY SHOW!!! They have NO responsibility to be balanced whatsoever! IF they're being unbalanced, it's because they're playing to their audience -- more of the people that watch their show lean to the left than to the right, I would guess. The fact that people try to compare the Daily Show with actual news in the first place is ludicrous... the fact that during those comparisons people keep bringing up the fact that the Daily Show seems biased is beyond critical stupidity.
Nobody has ever suggested that the Daily Show should be treated like "real news" as you claim in your analogy to Bloggers. They have no desire to run "real news", they just want to do comedy and satire. None of us want the Daily Show to take the place of a real news source, and most of us are saddened and disgusted that they can compare in any way. It just shows how badly defective our "real news" sources actually are.
Sure, the business analysis is sketchy, but it's not meant as a strict business analysis. His main point is, Microsoft doesn't have the attention that they should; and I agree.
Like he says, Microsoft just released their answer to Google, and nobody gave a shit. And other reasons... hell, half of Microsoft's own employees use Gmail rather than MSN. For a company that has enough money to create any product they want, that's a very bad thing.
And their core business is in trouble too. For so many years, the desktop market consisted mainly of grannies who thought that Windows==computer, and internet==IE. Now Apple and Linux and OSS are getting the word out that Microsoft is just one of many alternatives, and they're giving end users cheaper and more solidly built products at the same time.
I doubt Microsoft will ever die completely -- but I do think that within five or ten years, they will be barely recognizable compared to the company they are today.
I think this guy just heard the phrase "Internet OS" and didn't bother to look up what it means. The concept is valid, but it isn't an operating system in the traditional sense... his jump from Internet OS to running the entire desktop is puzzling at best.
That retarded "love it or leave it" attitude is so damn third grade. The reason this country got to the place it is now is because of different viewpoints, not removing those who go against the majority.
As for soldiers giving their lives to protect me (us, whatever)... well, Iraq at no time posed any direct threat to the United States, so you'll have to try again on that one.
uh... no? If I buy a CD once, I have a legal right to as many copies as I want (for personal use only), and in whatever formats I want. It doesn't entitle me to go take another copy of the physical medium, but it certainly does entitle me to download a copy off the internet. This is one of the most basic aspects of the fair use laws.
I agree with your reasoning on damages... I feel the same way, in that I still buy anything I would have bought were piracy not around. And I don't lose a lot of sleep over other stuff, because well, if I couldn't get it for free, they wouldn't get my money anyway. Nobody actually loses sales as a result of anything I pirate, although some people actually do gain because I find things that look retarded on the surface are actually worth paying for.
At the same time though... if you're saying "photoshop is too expensive... but I can't use any of the free alternatives because they don't work well enough" -- that seems a little disingenuous. I think at the least it's worth using free software whenever you can instead of piracy, even if it makes your job a bit more difficult.
The problem is, paying to renew a copyright takes some action (sending in the fee), thus ensuring the attention you speak of. It's also after a much longer time, meaning attention has a good chance of having lapsed.
With a domain name, paying every year doesn't leave enough time for attention to lapse, and you usually just set up a credit card to be automatically debited, or as others here have suggested, pay in advance.
Then the only way this frees up unused domains is to become so costly that those who do nothing with their domains (financially) cannot afford to keep them... but domains were never intended to be used only by money-making organizations, and in fact most of the best domains are not run for profit.
In short, I don't like the idea.
Actually the USSR was not socialist, and neither is China. Both were essentially military dictatorships / facist states, but neither were anywhere near true socialism. They barely qualify as communist, although true communism ends up with no government as opposed to facism/totalitarianism. Anyway, communism and socialism are not one and the same... socialism is a political system while communism is an economic system (although they do complement each other).
In point of fact, germany wasn't even really facist... Hitler was elected democratically, in one of the most decisive landslide victories in the history of democracy.
Try to learn a little about these terms before you go throwing them around, would you?
Also the episode where Strong Bad does a song about what he would change, if he could... "And this little fella / would be a modestly hot girl / to help me through the hard times / you know the kind who are only sorta hot / so they don't mess around with other guuuuys"... that was written by TMBG, if I remember right.
First, I have to say that the US govt. and laws thereof have usually been about giving fair rights, even to minorities. If engineers want to be able to build their own television, they should be able to. To have it be outright ILLEGAL to build a homebrew telecommunications device, or to create a program to view movies on Linux, is downright stupid. It's essentially protecting the corporation from the consumer, and guess who ends up worse for the deal?
Secondly, about your windows 98 vs iMac example:
I would argue that you're making a false analogy. Windows was never designed to run on an iMac... there's just no feasible way that it would be possible. However, Linux is certainly capable of playing DVDs. In fact, it already can, and by all normal logic, it should be legal to use your computer, with WHATEVER OS you choose, to view a DVD that you have the right to watch. But because the MPAA lobbied to get the DMCA through, suddenly it's illegal to break the encryption on material that you ARE entitled to see, just because nobody has payed to license a DVD player on Linux. And that, my friend, is bullshit.
For me, it's just the fact that the story explores much more complex themes than any other show I've seen, and isn't afraid to get intellectual.
For example, the show very often explores the nature of self, of personal identity. So, at one point, you actually have 3 copies of John running around. 1 is in Scorpius' chip extracted on accident when he was looking for the wormhole tech, and two are exact copies of each other, with no information as to which is 'the real one' if there even IS a real one. And this wasn't just resolved in an episode, these multiple facets of the main character stuck around for at least a half season, if I remember correctly (I'm a bit spotty on which eps I've been able to get my hands on).
What other show would do that? I can't see anyone else being brave enough to have three equally 'real' copies of the main character running around the screen for more than one episode, and the same thing happened to scorpius for an extended period of time as well. Then when you get into the discussion of wormholes as portals to alternate realities, and which one does john want to choose to exist in, it gets really fun:-)
All in all, I have to say this is the best written show on tv in recent time (TNG would come close, but that's older). Anyway, that's why I like it.
I don't know what field he thinks programers work in, but a lot of my programming experience has been WAY more creativity and design work than actual straight logic. For anything complex, especially gaming/complex systems, you are required to do a lot of creative design.
We don't even have to give up DVDs, CDs, etc... since the equipment to produce them is essentially at a general-consumer cost level, we can make them ourselves. All we have to give up is the music that is controlled by affiliates of the RIAA. There are many good alternatives available, and the more people notice them, the more independent labels and bands will spring up.
If so few people are signing this, and they're only showing partials, they can probably tell who leaked by what information goes out. And then they come to take your balls...
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't used it myself, but I looked at the install page, and got the impression that they have an app repository similary to Gentoo / Ubuntu. If that's the case, then whil they have to give away the source code along with any distributed binaries, they're in no way required to give access to their app repository for free. They can charge as much as they like for access to their servers, and be well within the limits of the GPL.
That post just made my day :-) Hilarious.
90% of users don't understand that the Desktop is actually a file in a heirarchical structure. If you stopped hiding that fact from them, sat them down and said "look, here's how things are structured"... you could fix all of this in about 10 minutes. Perpetuating the "hide things from the stupid user" UI philosophy only makes people less willing to learn, and thus increases the need for stupid workarounds to fix it. Vicious cycle.
I'm not saying this particular action was unconstitutional, but the parent sounded like they were talking about ANY situation.
You have stuff that could harm the state and they come knocking, but it's no big deal??? Even if the actions of the state are unconstitutional? Are you really that stupid? That's the kind of logic Stalin and Mao used.
I agree with your position, but your argument has some flaws.
Technically, written words are just as undefined as songs. Suppose I were in a restaurant, and at the next table was the late Mr. Thompson. He writes something on a piece of paper, and leaves it behind. Can I take it and distribute it around? Yes, as freely as I can the speech of the band you talk about above. But if he copies down part of one of his novels out of his head, then I cannot reprint that.
But what about versions of his works written in cursive? Or translated to Swahili? Or ones altered for punctuation or grammer or to bring them up to date with modern street slang? Likely those would be copyright as well, although they differ as much from the original work as do the sound waves passing through walls and such in your example.
There's another problem with your example, and that is if Metalica walks down the street and says something, you CANNOT write it down and print it. Original ideas or phrases or expressions or whatever are automatically copyright the second they are created. So if Ulrich says something original, it IS copyrighted to him. It's just that most people don't usually persue this. Even my post is copyright, and although I implicitly grant permission for it to appear on slashdot through the action of posting, anybody who copies it to another location could be liable for copyright infringement.
In my opinion, that strict level of control over everything that's created is near the root of the problems in the copyright system. I'd be much more happy if the worldwide default copyright were something more along the lines of the creative commons' Attribution/Non-commercial/Share-alike license, with possible exception for original works requiring extraordinary amounts of effort in their creation (a novel, a song, etc that takes many many hours of work). And even then, I think it needs to be relaxed.
Oh my god. You really don't get it, do you? Saying that a news outlet is biased doesn't mean that EVERY story they publish is biased. They may even have stories that lean the other way from their usual bias. The point is that ON AVERAGE they are not a balanced source of news.
If you really expect to defeat the idea of Fox News as a biased media source with one article that talks only about a single FDA report... you're even more stupid than you look.
Damn, dude... you totally missed the point.
First, whenever someone claims that he takes it easier on democratic candidates, they give examples of A) the worst things he's said to republican types and B) random introductory things like "how are you doing?" that he's asked democrats. They're purposely choosing examples to make it seem more skewed than it really is.
Second, neither Jon nor any of us have to explain any perceived or real slant. Because guess what: it's a COMEDY SHOW!!! They have NO responsibility to be balanced whatsoever! IF they're being unbalanced, it's because they're playing to their audience -- more of the people that watch their show lean to the left than to the right, I would guess. The fact that people try to compare the Daily Show with actual news in the first place is ludicrous... the fact that during those comparisons people keep bringing up the fact that the Daily Show seems biased is beyond critical stupidity.
Nobody has ever suggested that the Daily Show should be treated like "real news" as you claim in your analogy to Bloggers. They have no desire to run "real news", they just want to do comedy and satire. None of us want the Daily Show to take the place of a real news source, and most of us are saddened and disgusted that they can compare in any way. It just shows how badly defective our "real news" sources actually are.
Sure, the business analysis is sketchy, but it's not meant as a strict business analysis. His main point is, Microsoft doesn't have the attention that they should; and I agree.
Like he says, Microsoft just released their answer to Google, and nobody gave a shit. And other reasons... hell, half of Microsoft's own employees use Gmail rather than MSN. For a company that has enough money to create any product they want, that's a very bad thing.
And their core business is in trouble too. For so many years, the desktop market consisted mainly of grannies who thought that Windows==computer, and internet==IE. Now Apple and Linux and OSS are getting the word out that Microsoft is just one of many alternatives, and they're giving end users cheaper and more solidly built products at the same time.
I doubt Microsoft will ever die completely -- but I do think that within five or ten years, they will be barely recognizable compared to the company they are today.
I think this guy just heard the phrase "Internet OS" and didn't bother to look up what it means. The concept is valid, but it isn't an operating system in the traditional sense... his jump from Internet OS to running the entire desktop is puzzling at best.
That retarded "love it or leave it" attitude is so damn third grade. The reason this country got to the place it is now is because of different viewpoints, not removing those who go against the majority. As for soldiers giving their lives to protect me (us, whatever)... well, Iraq at no time posed any direct threat to the United States, so you'll have to try again on that one.
uh... no? If I buy a CD once, I have a legal right to as many copies as I want (for personal use only), and in whatever formats I want. It doesn't entitle me to go take another copy of the physical medium, but it certainly does entitle me to download a copy off the internet. This is one of the most basic aspects of the fair use laws.
I agree with your reasoning on damages... I feel the same way, in that I still buy anything I would have bought were piracy not around. And I don't lose a lot of sleep over other stuff, because well, if I couldn't get it for free, they wouldn't get my money anyway. Nobody actually loses sales as a result of anything I pirate, although some people actually do gain because I find things that look retarded on the surface are actually worth paying for.
At the same time though... if you're saying "photoshop is too expensive... but I can't use any of the free alternatives because they don't work well enough" -- that seems a little disingenuous. I think at the least it's worth using free software whenever you can instead of piracy, even if it makes your job a bit more difficult.
The problem is, paying to renew a copyright takes some action (sending in the fee), thus ensuring the attention you speak of. It's also after a much longer time, meaning attention has a good chance of having lapsed. With a domain name, paying every year doesn't leave enough time for attention to lapse, and you usually just set up a credit card to be automatically debited, or as others here have suggested, pay in advance. Then the only way this frees up unused domains is to become so costly that those who do nothing with their domains (financially) cannot afford to keep them... but domains were never intended to be used only by money-making organizations, and in fact most of the best domains are not run for profit. In short, I don't like the idea.
Actually the USSR was not socialist, and neither is China. Both were essentially military dictatorships / facist states, but neither were anywhere near true socialism. They barely qualify as communist, although true communism ends up with no government as opposed to facism/totalitarianism. Anyway, communism and socialism are not one and the same... socialism is a political system while communism is an economic system (although they do complement each other). In point of fact, germany wasn't even really facist... Hitler was elected democratically, in one of the most decisive landslide victories in the history of democracy. Try to learn a little about these terms before you go throwing them around, would you?
Also the episode where Strong Bad does a song about what he would change, if he could... "And this little fella / would be a modestly hot girl / to help me through the hard times / you know the kind who are only sorta hot / so they don't mess around with other guuuuys"... that was written by TMBG, if I remember right.
First, I have to say that the US govt. and laws thereof have usually been about giving fair rights, even to minorities. If engineers want to be able to build their own television, they should be able to. To have it be outright ILLEGAL to build a homebrew telecommunications device, or to create a program to view movies on Linux, is downright stupid. It's essentially protecting the corporation from the consumer, and guess who ends up worse for the deal? Secondly, about your windows 98 vs iMac example: I would argue that you're making a false analogy. Windows was never designed to run on an iMac... there's just no feasible way that it would be possible. However, Linux is certainly capable of playing DVDs. In fact, it already can, and by all normal logic, it should be legal to use your computer, with WHATEVER OS you choose, to view a DVD that you have the right to watch. But because the MPAA lobbied to get the DMCA through, suddenly it's illegal to break the encryption on material that you ARE entitled to see, just because nobody has payed to license a DVD player on Linux. And that, my friend, is bullshit.
For me, it's just the fact that the story explores much more complex themes than any other show I've seen, and isn't afraid to get intellectual.
:-)
For example, the show very often explores the nature of self, of personal identity. So, at one point, you actually have 3 copies of John running around. 1 is in Scorpius' chip extracted on accident when he was looking for the wormhole tech, and two are exact copies of each other, with no information as to which is 'the real one' if there even IS a real one. And this wasn't just resolved in an episode, these multiple facets of the main character stuck around for at least a half season, if I remember correctly (I'm a bit spotty on which eps I've been able to get my hands on).
What other show would do that? I can't see anyone else being brave enough to have three equally 'real' copies of the main character running around the screen for more than one episode, and the same thing happened to scorpius for an extended period of time as well. Then when you get into the discussion of wormholes as portals to alternate realities, and which one does john want to choose to exist in, it gets really fun
All in all, I have to say this is the best written show on tv in recent time (TNG would come close, but that's older). Anyway, that's why I like it.
I don't know what field he thinks programers work in, but a lot of my programming experience has been WAY more creativity and design work than actual straight logic. For anything complex, especially gaming/complex systems, you are required to do a lot of creative design.
I'd rather buy a new dvd every month that other people can borrow and watch, and then I own something in the end.
:-P)
wget divx_codec_5.05.exe
wget decss.exe
wget flask_mpeg.exe
(yeah, I know I'm mixing *nix and windows, but I don't know the apps for *nix
We don't even have to give up DVDs, CDs, etc... since the equipment to produce them is essentially at a general-consumer cost level, we can make them ourselves. All we have to give up is the music that is controlled by affiliates of the RIAA. There are many good alternatives available, and the more people notice them, the more independent labels and bands will spring up.
If so few people are signing this, and they're only showing partials, they can probably tell who leaked by what information goes out. And then they come to take your balls...