Don't like that? Put your action behind your words. Don't just accuse private citizens on slashdot of playing semantic games. Get up a recall petition for all those congressmen who ratified Berne, or supported the DMCA.
Consider someone who isn't rich, the standard "struggling artist" who is much more the rule than the exception. They DO care if you buy their CD, because it affects them in a very real rent-and-groceries sort of way. If you weren't going to buy their album, why should you get to have the song for free?
Stealing a song is morally equivalent to stealing a chocolate bar. That's why I say stealing a song is theft.
Try telling the musician whose song you've just stolen "I'm not stealing, I'm just infringing your copyright" as he struggles to pay his bills.
Again, my intent is not to change the definition of theft but to change what people believe about their theft of music. Using the word "theft" is the most effective way of doing that.
The semantics of the word are not important: the effect of the action are. When you download music you haven't paid for, you're stealing from an artist, plain and simple.
There may be a semantic difference between what I call theft and what you call theft, but there is no intrinsic difference between the two: people are deprived of their livelihood by your wrongful acquisition of something.
My argument is that there is no intrinsic difference between the theft of (say) a chocolate bar and a song downloaded illegally from one of the P2P applications.
Even if you wish to play the semantics game and not call it "theft," stealing music should not be seen as different from theft of an item by those doing it, no matter what you call it. If you're going to steal, fine; just be honest to yourself about it.
Stealing music is theft, regardless of whether it's from a major label or not. (See my sig.) Even so, it seems heavy-handed for the RIAA to sue people; they should educate people about the effects of their theft instead.
If you don't support the RIAA, don't steal more music - that's just playing into their hands. ("See, $GOVERNMENT, people are stealing more and more!") Instead, support musicians who are against the major labels - like Alexi Murdoch - and buy from places where you know the musician gets the money, like CD Baby. Support good music by voting with your dollars and the RIAA (or CRIA, or insert-local-RIA) will get the message.
I think you will find that Linux comes very far behind commercial Unix and Windows. Which goes to show, you can prove anything you like by careful selection of statistics.
What's more, you can prove absolutely anything by unsupported assertion!
People have created tons of software you can use for free; you have bought into this and built your program, which you sell, around this free product.
Now those same people have said "New development of our product is still going to be free, but you'll have to comply with our less liberal license."
You're complaining that your free ride is over. Get over it. You don't have to use Free Software; feel free to pay a company for a license. There are tons of companies which produce all sorts of products.
If you've bothered to read any of that particular thread ("default MTA for sarge"), you'd have found that Postfix isn't actually very likely to be the default MTA for any Debian release any time soon. exim4 is simple and powerful, and what's more, it builds on the legacy of exim as the default mailer in Debian.
There isn't really any compelling reason to switch away from exim, and that more than anything else is likely to leave exim as the default for years to come.
As anybody who has actually used an XScale processor can tell you, it's not all fun and games. Don't let that 300 MHz clock speed fool you, unless you're very carefully optimizing for the XScale (and not any other ARM, including Intel's Strongarm SA-1100) you're going to get shit for performance. This means that not only is your ARM PalmOS 5 not going to be faster on the XScale than the OMAP, it might even be slower.
Also, you have to consider both price and battery life. The OMAP comes with a DSP built-in, and you simply cannot beat the power usage of TI's chips. So, instead of having a bigger package (because you need two chips, both the CPU and the DSP - XScale's "DSP functionality" isn't enough), lower battery life and higher cost, you get OMAP.
No^WFew tables!
on
HotBot Returns
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Check out the source to the new hotbot site. It seems the majority of the layout is done using standard CSS instead of tables.
This is encouraging - looks like TerraLycos is continuing the work that was done with Wired's conversion to a table-free design. Too bad it doesn't validate, though.
I've seen Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows.com, speak (at Debconf 2) - and I can tell you that I am certain that Lindows.com will not be yet another dropout of the Desktop Linux business.
How am I sure?
Michael's a salesman, pure and simple. He speaks with passion and he makes you love him and his company - and I've heard that he succeeded in convincing a lot of people who attended Debconf. You should be aware this is coming from a group of people who are probably a lot less friendly to corporate (particularly proprietary corporate) involvement in the free software world.
Michael's ability to make the connections, to sell his company and his vision - that's what's going to make the difference. I've interviewed for a job at Xandros, and I'm sure they've got good people technically (I'm saying this sight unseen), but there's one thing Lycoris, Xandros and all the rest don't have - Michael Robertson. He will make Lindows.com succeed, I guarantee you.
(Of course, this is discounting the huge war chest of money he got from the sale of mp3.com. I'll bet he could fund Lindows.com for a lot of years even if he never sold a single product.)
Er, your rant is rather mis-placed: my instructor was actually a professor of computer science, Stephen Mann. From the stories he told in class, he knows a lot about the history of CS, and was just not in the 'know' on this topic, because SETI is simply more popular than Distributed.net these days, and few people know that Distributed.net even exists - a sad thing.
Distributed.net no longer in the public eye
on
RC5-64 Success
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It's sad, really, that so much focus has moved off Distributed.net to SETI@Home and the other distributed computing projects when Distributed.net was one of the real pioneers of this style of computing (that is, harnessing regular people's CPU time).
In one of my CS classes, we were discussing distributed computing, and a question of any well-known distributed computing projects was asked. I answered "Distributed.net" - and the instructor promptly asked "What's that?" The next student to respond, of course, said SETI: the answer he was looking for.
Maybe I'm biased, as the former maintainer of distributed-net for Debian, but has Distributed.net really become this unimportant and forgotten?
BSD wouldn't do it either, because BSD allows the program to be sold, too. What you need is one of those non-free shareware licenses: "You may do whatever you want non-commercially" or "you may not sell this."
This would relegate mpg321, XMMS mp3 input plugin, etc to the non-free section of Debian; as the author (and maintainer within Debian) of mpg321, I'd rather it be removed altogether than relegated to non-free.
I understand that Thompson wants to make money, but their licensing practices wrt free software leave much to be desired. I'm now faced with the possibility of discontinuing development on mpg321 because of their licensing practices; it may be possible to change it to work with Ogg Vorbis, and use mp3 as a seperate input plug-in, but this is dependent upon Rob Leslie's work on an integer-only Ogg Vorbis decoder.
I'm the organizer for the high-level Conference (Alex is the organizer for York University-related bits).
First: Just what is Debconf? Debconf, or Debian Conference, is a gathering of Debian developers to talk about Debian, learn various projects that people might be working on, and to meet our fellow developers. It's very much a tech-oriented conference, but it isn't restricted to just debian developers in any way. Interested users and general well-wishers can attend too, though some of the talks may be a bit uninteresting or over their heads, depending on the user's experience level.
Second: Why Toronto? The previous two debconfs have been held in Bordeaux, France. The organizer of the Bordeaux conferences wasn't interested in doing the third, and it was thrown out to go to North America somewhere. People were a bit wary of going to the United States, and I threw my hat in - Why not Toronto? And then said, "Hell, I'll do it, in Toronto." Alex offered to do some organizing on his side, at York, and here we are.
It's going to be held from the 5th to the 7th of July, 2002 (not the 6th to the 8th - Alex and I both made a mistake as to the dates). None of the presenters are definite yet, and there is no definite schedule either. But it will likely prove to be as enlightening and interesting a technical conference as the previous 2, and I am looking forward not only to organizing it, but also to being a participant.:)
Feel free to reply to this message and ask any Conference-specific questions. I'll do my best to answer them.
Yeah, I work just down the street from Joe's, too. Unfortunately it's gone down-hill recently: the old Joe was bought out by a new Joe, and the service, the ambiance -- it's just not the same.
As well, the mystique of Joe's is kind of ruined once you've discovered that most of the beers can be bought for 1/2 the cost at the LCBO...
And as a final addition, Joe's is quite far away from York University.:)
For streaming media and video right in your web browser, Crossover is your friend. Supports Quicktime, Macromedia (flash works, though not "officially" supported since a native flash plugin exists for Linux), and various other bits. Combine this with the native Real plugin and you've got some great surfing goodness. If they get Windows Media Player up and running, there will be no reason whatsoever to use Windows for any porn-surfing at all.
TI recognises that ARM does a much better job as a GPP (General Purpose Processor) than any DSP, and also that its customers want ARM. Bundling the two means that there is less memory and power required to run the devices. There's a good reason so many companies are now going with TI for their ARM needs (Palm, most cell phone manufacturers, now HP, etc) - they're good at making small chips which use less power than the competition do more.
Another poster described the various offerings made by different companies in the ARM business. The thing which is different about OMAP and XScale, among others, is not that they have "DSP Features," but that they have a complete DSP on-chip. (Maybe even on-die; I'm not positive.) A similar technology is behind many cellular phones, such as the recent ones Nokia produces. The ARM runs the OS, and the DSP handles all the cell phone signal handling, as it was designed to do.
Disclaimer: I also work for TI, with Mechanik.
Double-disclaimer: We don't work in hardware.
Actually, Palm is going towards TI, with its OMAP chip - integrated ARM and TI 55x DSP on one chip. While it's not an exclusive deal with TI, I'd expect to see at least the first few iterations use OMAP exclusively.
I'm also a transgaming customer. They have between 500-600 customers, maybe a few more, right now: the exact number isn't known, but they'll be releasing their subscriber numbers in around a month.
They're really doing excellent work: I recommend that if anybody has Windows games, they go on over to Transgaming and subscribe. $5 a month is nothing for the quality of work they put in, and how good Wine is getting with their work. (And that's saying something, since it's $US 5, and I'm in Canada! I pay closer to $10/month!)
Bottom line: WineX, their product, works well for some games now, and will work well for many more games later. Just subscribe, you know you want to.
Slashdot Mirror
Stealing a song is morally equivalent to stealing a chocolate bar. That's why I say stealing a song is theft.
Again, my intent is not to change the definition of theft but to change what people believe about their theft of music. Using the word "theft" is the most effective way of doing that.
The semantics of the word are not important: the effect of the action are. When you download music you haven't paid for, you're stealing from an artist, plain and simple.
There may be a semantic difference between what I call theft and what you call theft, but there is no intrinsic difference between the two: people are deprived of their livelihood by your wrongful acquisition of something.
Even if you wish to play the semantics game and not call it "theft," stealing music should not be seen as different from theft of an item by those doing it, no matter what you call it. If you're going to steal, fine; just be honest to yourself about it.
If you don't support the RIAA, don't steal more music - that's just playing into their hands. ("See, $GOVERNMENT, people are stealing more and more!") Instead, support musicians who are against the major labels - like Alexi Murdoch - and buy from places where you know the musician gets the money, like CD Baby. Support good music by voting with your dollars and the RIAA (or CRIA, or insert-local-RIA) will get the message.
Let me get this straight.
People have created tons of software you can use for free; you have bought into this and built your program, which you sell, around this free product.
Now those same people have said "New development of our product is still going to be free, but you'll have to comply with our less liberal license."
You're complaining that your free ride is over. Get over it. You don't have to use Free Software; feel free to pay a company for a license. There are tons of companies which produce all sorts of products.
TANSTAAFL, as Lazarus Long would say.
If you've bothered to read any of that particular thread ("default MTA for sarge"), you'd have found that Postfix isn't actually very likely to be the default MTA for any Debian release any time soon. exim4 is simple and powerful, and what's more, it builds on the legacy of exim as the default mailer in Debian.
There isn't really any compelling reason to switch away from exim, and that more than anything else is likely to leave exim as the default for years to come.
The Canadian patent expires on the 6th of June, 2004, the European on the 18th of June, 2004, and the Japanese on the 20th of June, 2004.
Don't start partying until it's expired everywhere - you still need a patent license to create your .Z archives and compressed GIFs in these areas.
Also, you have to consider both price and battery life. The OMAP comes with a DSP built-in, and you simply cannot beat the power usage of TI's chips. So, instead of having a bigger package (because you need two chips, both the CPU and the DSP - XScale's "DSP functionality" isn't enough), lower battery life and higher cost, you get OMAP.
This is encouraging - looks like TerraLycos is continuing the work that was done with Wired's conversion to a table-free design. Too bad it doesn't validate, though.
I've seen Michael Robertson, CEO of Lindows.com, speak (at Debconf 2) - and I can tell you that I am certain that Lindows.com will not be yet another dropout of the Desktop Linux business.
How am I sure?
Michael's a salesman, pure and simple. He speaks with passion and he makes you love him and his company - and I've heard that he succeeded in convincing a lot of people who attended Debconf. You should be aware this is coming from a group of people who are probably a lot less friendly to corporate (particularly proprietary corporate) involvement in the free software world.
Michael's ability to make the connections, to sell his company and his vision - that's what's going to make the difference. I've interviewed for a job at Xandros, and I'm sure they've got good people technically (I'm saying this sight unseen), but there's one thing Lycoris, Xandros and all the rest don't have - Michael Robertson. He will make Lindows.com succeed, I guarantee you.
(Of course, this is discounting the huge war chest of money he got from the sale of mp3.com. I'll bet he could fund Lindows.com for a lot of years even if he never sold a single product.)
Er, your rant is rather mis-placed: my instructor was actually a professor of computer science, Stephen Mann. From the stories he told in class, he knows a lot about the history of CS, and was just not in the 'know' on this topic, because SETI is simply more popular than Distributed.net these days, and few people know that Distributed.net even exists - a sad thing.
In one of my CS classes, we were discussing distributed computing, and a question of any well-known distributed computing projects was asked. I answered "Distributed.net" - and the instructor promptly asked "What's that?" The next student to respond, of course, said SETI: the answer he was looking for.
Maybe I'm biased, as the former maintainer of distributed-net for Debian, but has Distributed.net really become this unimportant and forgotten?
This would relegate mpg321, XMMS mp3 input plugin, etc to the non-free section of Debian; as the author (and maintainer within Debian) of mpg321, I'd rather it be removed altogether than relegated to non-free.
I understand that Thompson wants to make money, but their licensing practices wrt free software leave much to be desired. I'm now faced with the possibility of discontinuing development on mpg321 because of their licensing practices; it may be possible to change it to work with Ogg Vorbis, and use mp3 as a seperate input plug-in, but this is dependent upon Rob Leslie's work on an integer-only Ogg Vorbis decoder.
First: Just what is Debconf?
Debconf, or Debian Conference, is a gathering of Debian developers to talk about Debian, learn various projects that people might be working on, and to meet our fellow developers. It's very much a tech-oriented conference, but it isn't restricted to just debian developers in any way. Interested users and general well-wishers can attend too, though some of the talks may be a bit uninteresting or over their heads, depending on the user's experience level.
Second: Why Toronto?
The previous two debconfs have been held in Bordeaux, France. The organizer of the Bordeaux conferences wasn't interested in doing the third, and it was thrown out to go to North America somewhere. People were a bit wary of going to the United States, and I threw my hat in - Why not Toronto? And then said, "Hell, I'll do it, in Toronto." Alex offered to do some organizing on his side, at York, and here we are.
It's going to be held from the 5th to the 7th of July, 2002 (not the 6th to the 8th - Alex and I both made a mistake as to the dates). None of the presenters are definite yet, and there is no definite schedule either. But it will likely prove to be as enlightening and interesting a technical conference as the previous 2, and I am looking forward not only to organizing it, but also to being a participant. :)
Feel free to reply to this message and ask any Conference-specific questions. I'll do my best to answer them.
As well, the mystique of Joe's is kind of ruined once you've discovered that most of the beers can be bought for 1/2 the cost at the LCBO...
And as a final addition, Joe's is quite far away from York University. :)
Playdium near the Paramount (downtown Toronto) is closed now, unfortunately. The Mississauga one is the closest afaik.
Plus, it's cheap. Try the demo and then buy it.
TI recognises that ARM does a much better job as a GPP (General Purpose Processor) than any DSP, and also that its customers want ARM. Bundling the two means that there is less memory and power required to run the devices. There's a good reason so many companies are now going with TI for their ARM needs (Palm, most cell phone manufacturers, now HP, etc) - they're good at making small chips which use less power than the competition do more.
Another poster described the various offerings made by different companies in the ARM business. The thing which is different about OMAP and XScale, among others, is not that they have "DSP Features," but that they have a complete DSP on-chip. (Maybe even on-die; I'm not positive.) A similar technology is behind many cellular phones, such as the recent ones Nokia produces. The ARM runs the OS, and the DSP handles all the cell phone signal handling, as it was designed to do.
Disclaimer: I also work for TI, with Mechanik.
Double-disclaimer: We don't work in hardware.
Actually, Palm is going towards TI, with its OMAP chip - integrated ARM and TI 55x DSP on one chip. While it's not an exclusive deal with TI, I'd expect to see at least the first few iterations use OMAP exclusively.
They're really doing excellent work: I recommend that if anybody has Windows games, they go on over to Transgaming and subscribe. $5 a month is nothing for the quality of work they put in, and how good Wine is getting with their work. (And that's saying something, since it's $US 5, and I'm in Canada! I pay closer to $10/month!)
Bottom line: WineX, their product, works well for some games now, and will work well for many more games later. Just subscribe, you know you want to.