Chimera is much snappier on initial launching of the application
Something is very wrong. On my dual GHz G4 (MDD), Chimera always took several seconds to launch the first time, during which I had to stare at that oh-so-1990's splash screen of theirs. Safari launches more-or-less instantly, in a second or less. (Unless my computer is swapping; it's not that hard to fill up 512 MB of RAM these days.)
Use one of the various available utilities or tricks to enable the Debug menu-- I think you can do it with defaults, but I forget exactly how; google it-- and you can change your browser ID string. Wells Fargo's site works just fine if you pretend to be running IE 5 for Mac, for example.
I don't know what your standard for comparison is, but Project Builder is an excellent IDE in my opinion. Yes, the tabbed-window, paned-window, multi-document editor thing is hard to use and confusing, but you can change the way PB handles its windows in the preferences.
Essentially anything that messes with the kernel or kernel extensions is going to require you to reboot, or at least to strongly suggest that you reboot. It's possible to unload and reload kernel extensions without rebooting, of course, but dicey. For example, what would happen if you were in the middle of burning a CD and the installer decided to try to unload your CD-RW driver? It's just safer to reboot.
I like this old one. I don't remember it verbatim, so I'll paraphrase.
In the United States, the standard railroad gauge is exactly four feet, eight-and-one-half inches wide. Why? Because that's the way they built them in England. Why did they build them that way in England? Because that's how wide English tramways were. And why were they that width? Because the people who built the trams also built wagons, and wagons wheels were that far apart. Why? Because the ancient Roman roads in England had wheel ruts exactly that far apart. Why? Because those ancient ruts were made by the wheels of Roman war chariots, and their wheels were exactly four feet, eight-and-a-half-inches wide. Why? Because Roman war chariots were just wide enough to accomodate two Roman war horses.
The moral of the story is that every specification in the world can trace its history back to some horse's ass.
The Whole poin of N1 is to allow many many smaller servers to act as one big virtual server
Virtual smirtual. The goal here-- in my little thought-experiment-- is to have scalability and cost effectiveness without unnecessary complexity. Clusters, apart from being unsuited for many tasks, are unnecessarily complex. N1, as I understand it, is basically a glorified cluster with some additional layers of complexity on top to make it seem simpler. (Which strikes me as wrong-headed, but that's just me.)
Thats 714 CPUs in one system image with *near* linear scalability.
Yawn. You can buy an Origin 3000 with 1,024 CPU's with considerably better bandwidth than what you described with nothing more than a phone call. The systems ship preconfigured from SGI's Eagan plant. They're not special orders or anything; they're in the price list, for cryin' out loud.
This has been the case since about 1996. The size of the largest supported system image has increased-- from 64 processors to 128 to 512 and now to 1,024, with 2,048 coming later this year-- and the interconnects have gotten faster over time, but the software and the overall system architecture have remained essentially unchanged for the past seven years.
It's good to see that Sun is finally catching up to where SGI was in the mid-1990's.
Worse case scenario, since Linus is the whiner, the OS is distributed as GNU, with a small bit of text in the corner of the box that says "using the Linux kernel".
Excellent. Childish remarks about whiners aside, that would satisfy me perfectly. Thanks.
You have the right to distribute Linux in anyway you want, pursuant to the GPL.
Okay, then, please point to the passage in the GPL that gives you permission to modify a registered trademark. You could go through the source and change every instance of "Linux" to "jgerman's nifty operating system," if you like, but you still can't call it "GNU/Linux." That's modifying a trademark without permission, and it's not okay.
A slash is a common and accepted notation for separating names for descriptive purposes.
Since when? I think you're making things up now.
Thus GNU/Linux the name of the operating system. Linux the name of the kernel. Case closed.
Whatever, dude. But don't come crying back to Slashdot to complain if you get a cease-and-desist letter. You can ignore trademark law if you want; the rest of us will play by the rules and respect Torvalds's rights.
We have yet to reach that limit. I've personally seen 1,024-processor systems-- well, one system, but there are others out there-- and I've heard that 2,048 is working in the lab. The limit right now has nothing to do with anything intrinsic; it's a cost issue. It's really expensive to get two 1,024-processor systems in the same place at the same time.
That said, please decide what you want.
I already have. I want a scalable blade system.;-)
But there won't ever be, as single system images limit scalability.
Single... what? SSI defines scalability. "How far does this system scale?" "Uh. Two processors. But you can cluster them!" "So the answer is two processors, then. That sucks."
With Linux you already have the right to distribute and you do have the right to use the composite name.
On what planet? Please point out to me any document, anywhere that says that Linus Torvalds authorizes the use of the name "GNU/Linux." Anything. Seriously.
Now, let's talk about fair use, because your understanding of it is, at best, incomplete. There are four categories of fair use as applied to trademarks: statutory, nominative, comparitive, and parody.
Statuory fair use is defined in the Lanham Act, which is part of Title 17. The relevant part says, in paraphrase, that use of a trademark in good faith, other than as a mark, for the purpose of describing goods or services is non-infringing. In other words, you could say that your software product runs on Linux without getting permission from Torvalds for the use of his trademark, because you're using the trademark to describe-- not to name, but to describe-- your own product.
A good example of statutory fair use is WCVB-TV v. Boston Athletic Association, 1991. The Boston Athletic Association owns the trademark rights to the name "Boston Marathon." WCVB used that name in association with its coverage of the event. The court found that because the name "Boston Marathon" was being used to describe WCVB's program-- not name, but describe-- that the use was fair under the statute.
Nominative fair use is just what it sounds like: the right to use a trademark without explicit permission in order to identify the product or service being referenced. The criteria for nominative fair use, established in New Kids on the Block v. News America Publishing, Inc., are as follows: "First, the product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; second, only so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service; and third, the use must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder."
Comparitive fair use applies when using a competitor's trademark without explicit permission in the context of a comparison between the competitor's product to your own. For example, consider those old "Pepsi Challenge" ads from the 1970's and 1980's. PepsiCo used the Coca-Cola trademark in those ads for the purpose of identifying their competitor's product and drawing a comparison to their own product. That's comparitive fair use.
The last class of fair use as applied to trademarks is parody. That should be self-explanatory.
The important thing to note here is that none of these classes of fair use authorize the modification of a trademark or the use of a trademark in a composed mark. If you released a distribution called "Bob's Linux," you'd be in the clear thanks to nominative fair use. You're using the mark "Linux" to identify the software you're distributing, and without the use of the mark identification would be very difficult. So that's fine. But you couldn't call your distribution "BobLinux" or any other combined mark without explicit permission from Torvalds.
The name "GNU/Linux" is, in fact, unauthorized, and should he wish to do so, Torvalds could take action in remedy of its use. It is not the correct term, although I agree that there's a petty jackass involved here. His name is Richard Stallman.
They can disagree all they want, however, in a court case, and I'm not looking up a precedent, they will likely lose.
You should have looked up the precedents. It would have prevented your being totally wrong about this in this way.
If I packaged a Coke with a Subway sub, and called the package Coke/Subway sub, that's a perfectly legal use of trademarks.
No, it is not. That would be trademark dilution, and if you did it without the permission of both the Coca-Cola company and Subway, you'd get a cease-and-desist letter in the mail the very next morning.
Here's the basic rules of trademark use. You can use a trademark conversationally to refer to a product: I had a Coke with my lunch today. I use Linux on my computer. That kind of thing. You can also use a trademark to advertise a product for sale: Buy Coke at the Try-n-Save for $2.99 each, this week only! You cannot use somebody else's trademark to advertise your own product without their permission. For example, if you invented a resealable bottle for sodas and called it the CokeSaver, you'd be illegally using Coca-Cola's trademark, and you'd have to stop or face legal action. You cannot dilute somebody else's trademark by using it as a part of a composite name, like your "Coke/Subway" example. If you did that, you'd get a cease-and-desist right away, too.
You really, really should have read up on this before posting so stridently.
Have you heard the fan on these things? Imagine a jetplane taking of 100m from your ear.
Yeah, I've heard 'em. It's nothing compared to a really loud machine, like an Origin 3000. Spend some time in a real machine room, and you'll welcome the little quiet moments you can enjoy by standing next to the Xserves.
God, dude, I really appreciate your input, but you are so missing the point. Read my original post, okay? I started with the Origin series and said, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if you had a system that scaled like a blade server but used a single system image like an Origin?"
So like I said, while I appreciate your input, we are now right back where I started from.;-)
A couple of years ago we were starting a new software company. We were going to make digital media asset management systems. We were going to be like Media 360 or Cumulus only better, if those names mean anything to you.
One day I was talking to an important prospective customer, a customer who did a lot of different things with their media. They asked me how one system could solve problem X and problem Y, when problems X and Y didn't really have much to do with each other at that company.
"We don't consider asset management to be a single problem," I said. "Instead, we think of it in terms of a problem space. There are lots of problems that can all be called asset management problems, even though they don't really have anything to do with each other. Rather than trying to solve the asset management problem-- of which there really is no such thing-- we instead apply our technology to the different problems we encounter in the asset management problem space."
A week later, the entire fucking marketing department was talking about problem spaces. "Problem space" became a synonym for "problem," which is the exact opposite of what I mean. I sat in on a marketing meeting once, and heard the marketing manager say, in all seriousness, "How are we doing on those data sheet problem spaces?" I nearly lost it.
That company is now teetering on the brink of collapse. I'm no longer with them-- I was ousted by the president because I guess I laughed too hard at his use of the word "paradigm" one time-- but if you get somebody in your office talking about a "problem space," throw him out immediately.
Yes. That's what "single system image" means. But it would be cool if the systems were more scalable and less expensive. The V880 scales from 2 to 8 processors and the V1280 only goes up to 12. That blows in terms of scalability. It seems that there should be a way to make a system scale from 1 to N processors, for some very large value of N, for a lot less money up front and preferably less money per upgrade step.
Single system images are easy, for some very large value of easy, up to 1024 processors; SGI sells 1024-processor machines right off their price list. You can phone them up and order one. Why can't we apply blade server technology, high-speed interconnects, and single-system-image operating systems to make a system with a low entry price that scales economically?
Oh, and speaking of economically, you got ripped off something big. A thousand bucks per desktop? That's terrible. You either overpaid for your server, or you're seriously underusing it.
Tough. His contribution to the OS is only one part of the whole. He can't make a blanket decision like that.
The authorities in charge of trademarks disagree with you. Because he has a registered trademark, Torvalds gets to decide who can and who can't use the name "Linux," and in what context. And he's said that "GNU/Linux" is not okay. So you can call it "GNU/something else," but you can't call it "GNU/Linux."
This page has a pretty lengthy discussion on the matter. The author actually has a whole site full of interesting trivia and commentary about the Dune books. He includes my favorite interpretation. He says,
Many people hold the opinion that Marty and Daniel represent Frank Herbert and Bev his wife, and that in the last chapter Frank Herbert is waving goodbye to us, by the famous last words:
Gholas. He's welcome to them. And although this interpretation is strengthed by the Eulogy for Beverly by Frank in the back of the book, it would not surprise me, that he has put this in, with the thought in mind that he might not be able to finish his last book. This 'literary' interpretation does not conflict with the `factual' interpretation that Marty and Daniel are Face Dancers.
Never. I implied-- I don't think I every actually said-- that it was wrong before the DMCA was passed, and that it should have been illegal. But the specific acts with which the DMCA dealt were not illegal before the bill's passage. Which should be blindingly obvious; a bill that merely restates that which is already written in the statutes would serve no purpose.
Why can't you take the next step, and admit that the copyright owners gained new powers from the passage of the DMCA, at the direct expense of consumers?
Because "powers" is a loaded word, and one completely inappropriate in this context. A better word is the one that the legislation itself uses: remedies. Previously, if you broke a license agreement by circumventing an access control mechanism, you could be sued, but there was no explicit statutory civil remedy. Now there is.
Copyright holders have always had the right to tell you what you can and can't do with their works. This right is implicit in the copyright act. Only the copyright holder is authorized to give you a copy of the work, so the copyright holder can set whatever terms for that transaction he wants. Unfortunately, there was no direct legal option if you decided, after the fact, to break the license agreement. Now there are remedies in place to make sure that the copyright holder has a recourse if you do circumvent an access control mechanism without permission.
If you want to couch the discussion in terms of words like "power," that's your business. But don't think that's the best way to describe the situation.
Suffice to say that there are any number of overly broad, and insufficiently unique patents that have been issued over the years.
In whose opinion? Yours? We've already established that you're not qualified to make meaningful value judgments about these sorts of questions, due to your obvious bias.
I apologize that I missed your kinda-sorta acknowledgement that time-shifting was a right.
I acknowledged no such thing. Time-shifting is not a right. Show me the statute that protects time-shifting as a right. Show me the statute that says it is unlawful to prevent time-shifting.
it is also important to remember copyright can encourage (or discourage) important scholarship and social situations.
I do not accept this assertion. Copyrighthas absolutely no effect on scholarship, because uses of copyrighted material for scholarly purposes are explicitly excepted as being non-infringing by statute. And as for "social situations," I don't even know what you mean by that.
Don't forget the first copyright laws were actually designed to censor and control information.
The very first copyright law, the 1710 Statute of Anne, was passed to make it unlawful for printers to print and distribute copies of a book without authorization. You might want to read up a bit on this so you don't stick your foot in your mouth again in future with some off-the-cuff remark about censorship.
In this web page, Gibson discusses the importance of cultural influences upon the process of creation.
Since copyright has absolutely no impact on what you call "cultural influences," I question the value of the effort it took you to cut-and-paste this paragraph.
In fact, since copyright protection encourages authors to create new works, by giving them a temporary monopoly that they can use to make money from their work, I dare say that this point supports my own argument, not yours.
Slashdot Mirror
As any Mac OS X user knows, command-option-w no longer closes all open windows. Option-clicking the close button does, however.
Try it with TextEdit; that's the canonical Mac OS X document-based application. All other document-based application should behave like TextEdit does.
Are you sure the update panel in OS X lists Safari?
Yes. Absolutely, totally, no question in my mind, 100% positive.
Chimera is much snappier on initial launching of the application
Something is very wrong. On my dual GHz G4 (MDD), Chimera always took several seconds to launch the first time, during which I had to stare at that oh-so-1990's splash screen of theirs. Safari launches more-or-less instantly, in a second or less. (Unless my computer is swapping; it's not that hard to fill up 512 MB of RAM these days.)
Use one of the various available utilities or tricks to enable the Debug menu-- I think you can do it with defaults, but I forget exactly how; google it-- and you can change your browser ID string. Wells Fargo's site works just fine if you pretend to be running IE 5 for Mac, for example.
I don't know what your standard for comparison is, but Project Builder is an excellent IDE in my opinion. Yes, the tabbed-window, paned-window, multi-document editor thing is hard to use and confusing, but you can change the way PB handles its windows in the preferences.
Essentially anything that messes with the kernel or kernel extensions is going to require you to reboot, or at least to strongly suggest that you reboot. It's possible to unload and reload kernel extensions without rebooting, of course, but dicey. For example, what would happen if you were in the middle of burning a CD and the installer decided to try to unload your CD-RW driver? It's just safer to reboot.
Safari, at least so far, does not prompt a software update window...
Yes, it does. Did on mine, at least, about 20 minutes ago. (It's now 6:00 EST.)
I never meant to imply that I thought it was actually true. I just meant to imply that I thought it was funny.
I like this old one. I don't remember it verbatim, so I'll paraphrase.
In the United States, the standard railroad gauge is exactly four feet, eight-and-one-half inches wide. Why? Because that's the way they built them in England. Why did they build them that way in England? Because that's how wide English tramways were. And why were they that width? Because the people who built the trams also built wagons, and wagons wheels were that far apart. Why? Because the ancient Roman roads in England had wheel ruts exactly that far apart. Why? Because those ancient ruts were made by the wheels of Roman war chariots, and their wheels were exactly four feet, eight-and-a-half-inches wide. Why? Because Roman war chariots were just wide enough to accomodate two Roman war horses.
The moral of the story is that every specification in the world can trace its history back to some horse's ass.
The Whole poin of N1 is to allow many many smaller servers to act as one big virtual server
Virtual smirtual. The goal here-- in my little thought-experiment-- is to have scalability and cost effectiveness without unnecessary complexity. Clusters, apart from being unsuited for many tasks, are unnecessarily complex. N1, as I understand it, is basically a glorified cluster with some additional layers of complexity on top to make it seem simpler. (Which strikes me as wrong-headed, but that's just me.)
Thats 714 CPUs in one system image with *near* linear scalability.
Yawn. You can buy an Origin 3000 with 1,024 CPU's with considerably better bandwidth than what you described with nothing more than a phone call. The systems ship preconfigured from SGI's Eagan plant. They're not special orders or anything; they're in the price list, for cryin' out loud.
This has been the case since about 1996. The size of the largest supported system image has increased-- from 64 processors to 128 to 512 and now to 1,024, with 2,048 coming later this year-- and the interconnects have gotten faster over time, but the software and the overall system architecture have remained essentially unchanged for the past seven years.
It's good to see that Sun is finally catching up to where SGI was in the mid-1990's.
Worse case scenario, since Linus is the whiner, the OS is distributed as GNU, with a small bit of text in the corner of the box that says "using the Linux kernel".
Excellent. Childish remarks about whiners aside, that would satisfy me perfectly. Thanks.
You have the right to distribute Linux in anyway you want, pursuant to the GPL.
Okay, then, please point to the passage in the GPL that gives you permission to modify a registered trademark. You could go through the source and change every instance of "Linux" to "jgerman's nifty operating system," if you like, but you still can't call it "GNU/Linux." That's modifying a trademark without permission, and it's not okay.
A slash is a common and accepted notation for separating names for descriptive purposes.
Since when? I think you're making things up now.
Thus GNU/Linux the name of the operating system. Linux the name of the kernel. Case closed.
Whatever, dude. But don't come crying back to Slashdot to complain if you get a cease-and-desist letter. You can ignore trademark law if you want; the rest of us will play by the rules and respect Torvalds's rights.
This is the scalability limit I meant.
;-)
We have yet to reach that limit. I've personally seen 1,024-processor systems-- well, one system, but there are others out there-- and I've heard that 2,048 is working in the lab. The limit right now has nothing to do with anything intrinsic; it's a cost issue. It's really expensive to get two 1,024-processor systems in the same place at the same time.
That said, please decide what you want.
I already have. I want a scalable blade system.
But there won't ever be, as single system images limit scalability.
Single... what? SSI defines scalability. "How far does this system scale?" "Uh. Two processors. But you can cluster them!" "So the answer is two processors, then. That sucks."
With Linux you already have the right to distribute and you do have the right to use the composite name.
On what planet? Please point out to me any document, anywhere that says that Linus Torvalds authorizes the use of the name "GNU/Linux." Anything. Seriously.
Now, let's talk about fair use, because your understanding of it is, at best, incomplete. There are four categories of fair use as applied to trademarks: statutory, nominative, comparitive, and parody.
Statuory fair use is defined in the Lanham Act, which is part of Title 17. The relevant part says, in paraphrase, that use of a trademark in good faith, other than as a mark, for the purpose of describing goods or services is non-infringing. In other words, you could say that your software product runs on Linux without getting permission from Torvalds for the use of his trademark, because you're using the trademark to describe-- not to name, but to describe-- your own product.
A good example of statutory fair use is WCVB-TV v. Boston Athletic Association, 1991. The Boston Athletic Association owns the trademark rights to the name "Boston Marathon." WCVB used that name in association with its coverage of the event. The court found that because the name "Boston Marathon" was being used to describe WCVB's program-- not name, but describe-- that the use was fair under the statute.
Nominative fair use is just what it sounds like: the right to use a trademark without explicit permission in order to identify the product or service being referenced. The criteria for nominative fair use, established in New Kids on the Block v. News America Publishing, Inc., are as follows: "First, the product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; second, only so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service; and third, the use must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder."
Comparitive fair use applies when using a competitor's trademark without explicit permission in the context of a comparison between the competitor's product to your own. For example, consider those old "Pepsi Challenge" ads from the 1970's and 1980's. PepsiCo used the Coca-Cola trademark in those ads for the purpose of identifying their competitor's product and drawing a comparison to their own product. That's comparitive fair use.
The last class of fair use as applied to trademarks is parody. That should be self-explanatory.
The important thing to note here is that none of these classes of fair use authorize the modification of a trademark or the use of a trademark in a composed mark. If you released a distribution called "Bob's Linux," you'd be in the clear thanks to nominative fair use. You're using the mark "Linux" to identify the software you're distributing, and without the use of the mark identification would be very difficult. So that's fine. But you couldn't call your distribution "BobLinux" or any other combined mark without explicit permission from Torvalds.
The name "GNU/Linux" is, in fact, unauthorized, and should he wish to do so, Torvalds could take action in remedy of its use. It is not the correct term, although I agree that there's a petty jackass involved here. His name is Richard Stallman.
They can disagree all they want, however, in a court case, and I'm not looking up a precedent, they will likely lose.
You should have looked up the precedents. It would have prevented your being totally wrong about this in this way.
If I packaged a Coke with a Subway sub, and called the package Coke/Subway sub, that's a perfectly legal use of trademarks.
No, it is not. That would be trademark dilution, and if you did it without the permission of both the Coca-Cola company and Subway, you'd get a cease-and-desist letter in the mail the very next morning.
Here's the basic rules of trademark use. You can use a trademark conversationally to refer to a product: I had a Coke with my lunch today. I use Linux on my computer. That kind of thing. You can also use a trademark to advertise a product for sale: Buy Coke at the Try-n-Save for $2.99 each, this week only! You cannot use somebody else's trademark to advertise your own product without their permission. For example, if you invented a resealable bottle for sodas and called it the CokeSaver, you'd be illegally using Coca-Cola's trademark, and you'd have to stop or face legal action. You cannot dilute somebody else's trademark by using it as a part of a composite name, like your "Coke/Subway" example. If you did that, you'd get a cease-and-desist right away, too.
You really, really should have read up on this before posting so stridently.
Have you heard the fan on these things? Imagine a jetplane taking of 100m from your ear.
Yeah, I've heard 'em. It's nothing compared to a really loud machine, like an Origin 3000. Spend some time in a real machine room, and you'll welcome the little quiet moments you can enjoy by standing next to the Xserves.
You see, modularity is there.
;-)
God, dude, I really appreciate your input, but you are so missing the point. Read my original post, okay? I started with the Origin series and said, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if you had a system that scaled like a blade server but used a single system image like an Origin?"
So like I said, while I appreciate your input, we are now right back where I started from.
A couple of years ago we were starting a new software company. We were going to make digital media asset management systems. We were going to be like Media 360 or Cumulus only better, if those names mean anything to you.
One day I was talking to an important prospective customer, a customer who did a lot of different things with their media. They asked me how one system could solve problem X and problem Y, when problems X and Y didn't really have much to do with each other at that company.
"We don't consider asset management to be a single problem," I said. "Instead, we think of it in terms of a problem space. There are lots of problems that can all be called asset management problems, even though they don't really have anything to do with each other. Rather than trying to solve the asset management problem-- of which there really is no such thing-- we instead apply our technology to the different problems we encounter in the asset management problem space."
A week later, the entire fucking marketing department was talking about problem spaces. "Problem space" became a synonym for "problem," which is the exact opposite of what I mean. I sat in on a marketing meeting once, and heard the marketing manager say, in all seriousness, "How are we doing on those data sheet problem spaces?" I nearly lost it.
That company is now teetering on the brink of collapse. I'm no longer with them-- I was ousted by the president because I guess I laughed too hard at his use of the word "paradigm" one time-- but if you get somebody in your office talking about a "problem space," throw him out immediately.
Leverage, ugh, it's most often found instead of "use"
I would prefer "leverage" to the more common obfuscation of "use" heard around here: "utilize." Nobody uses anything any more, we utilize things.
Other verbs that I've had about enough of: to empower, to facilitate, to take ownership of.
With all the mysterious hype Sun has given N1...
You know, they announced it about 10 hours ago now, and I still have no fucking idea what it is. Pfeh.
Ummm, isn't this the idea behind a multi-cpu box?
Yes. That's what "single system image" means. But it would be cool if the systems were more scalable and less expensive. The V880 scales from 2 to 8 processors and the V1280 only goes up to 12. That blows in terms of scalability. It seems that there should be a way to make a system scale from 1 to N processors, for some very large value of N, for a lot less money up front and preferably less money per upgrade step.
Single system images are easy, for some very large value of easy, up to 1024 processors; SGI sells 1024-processor machines right off their price list. You can phone them up and order one. Why can't we apply blade server technology, high-speed interconnects, and single-system-image operating systems to make a system with a low entry price that scales economically?
Oh, and speaking of economically, you got ripped off something big. A thousand bucks per desktop? That's terrible. You either overpaid for your server, or you're seriously underusing it.
Tough. His contribution to the OS is only one part of the whole. He can't make a blanket decision like that.
The authorities in charge of trademarks disagree with you. Because he has a registered trademark, Torvalds gets to decide who can and who can't use the name "Linux," and in what context. And he's said that "GNU/Linux" is not okay. So you can call it "GNU/something else," but you can't call it "GNU/Linux."
You claimed it was always illegal
Never. I implied-- I don't think I every actually said-- that it was wrong before the DMCA was passed, and that it should have been illegal. But the specific acts with which the DMCA dealt were not illegal before the bill's passage. Which should be blindingly obvious; a bill that merely restates that which is already written in the statutes would serve no purpose.
Why can't you take the next step, and admit that the copyright owners gained new powers from the passage of the DMCA, at the direct expense of consumers?
Because "powers" is a loaded word, and one completely inappropriate in this context. A better word is the one that the legislation itself uses: remedies. Previously, if you broke a license agreement by circumventing an access control mechanism, you could be sued, but there was no explicit statutory civil remedy. Now there is.
Copyright holders have always had the right to tell you what you can and can't do with their works. This right is implicit in the copyright act. Only the copyright holder is authorized to give you a copy of the work, so the copyright holder can set whatever terms for that transaction he wants. Unfortunately, there was no direct legal option if you decided, after the fact, to break the license agreement. Now there are remedies in place to make sure that the copyright holder has a recourse if you do circumvent an access control mechanism without permission.
If you want to couch the discussion in terms of words like "power," that's your business. But don't think that's the best way to describe the situation.
Suffice to say that there are any number of overly broad, and insufficiently unique patents that have been issued over the years.
In whose opinion? Yours? We've already established that you're not qualified to make meaningful value judgments about these sorts of questions, due to your obvious bias.
I apologize that I missed your kinda-sorta acknowledgement that time-shifting was a right.
I acknowledged no such thing. Time-shifting is not a right. Show me the statute that protects time-shifting as a right. Show me the statute that says it is unlawful to prevent time-shifting.
it is also important to remember copyright can encourage (or discourage) important scholarship and social situations.
I do not accept this assertion. Copyrighthas absolutely no effect on scholarship, because uses of copyrighted material for scholarly purposes are explicitly excepted as being non-infringing by statute. And as for "social situations," I don't even know what you mean by that.
Don't forget the first copyright laws were actually designed to censor and control information.
The very first copyright law, the 1710 Statute of Anne, was passed to make it unlawful for printers to print and distribute copies of a book without authorization. You might want to read up a bit on this so you don't stick your foot in your mouth again in future with some off-the-cuff remark about censorship.
In this web page, Gibson discusses the importance of cultural influences upon the process of creation.
Since copyright has absolutely no impact on what you call "cultural influences," I question the value of the effort it took you to cut-and-paste this paragraph.
In fact, since copyright protection encourages authors to create new works, by giving them a temporary monopoly that they can use to make money from their work, I dare say that this point supports my own argument, not yours.