1. Why Linux? True, the eetimes article is discombobulated and provides little explanation of why Linux should matter at all for wargaming simulations. And the explanation it implies (that Linux helps data compatibility) is nonsensical.
However, I've seen several military simulation projects that run on Linux. The obvious reasons: The Pentagon isn't a fast or flexible software developer. These games may take decades of to produce and shape into something workable, and we can't throw them out just because new OSes (Windows XP, etc) come along.
So many projects that were first written for big iron SGI or Solaris machines are now running on Linux desktops. I've heard several ancedotes of software getting a 5x speed boost alongside a 10x drop in platform cost when changing hardware vendors from SGI to Dell.
One major simulation project is OneSAF ("One Semi-Automated Force"). You can go read the PowerPoint they gave at a Linux conference years ago. (The "CCTT" project mentioned in the article is an ancient fork of OneSAF)
2. 100 entities is small The article says they will be reaching the point of simulating 100 entities in their exercise, up from 20 in the previous test. And it'll take place at 3 different locations.
That is tiny compared to the number already used in a military simulation last year. Millenium Challenge 2002 took place on ~15 sites around the US, and involved 13500 human participants, many of them controlling more than one "entity" in the game.
3. The Pentagon is trending back towards DIS The article mentions this project is using the IEEE 1278 standard DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation). That is a fairly old specification- finalized at least 10 years ago. It worked well back then, and still does. However, it fell out of popular use in the late 90s because a vantity project from Defense Modeling & Simulation Office mandated that all simulations be switched to use their new improved HLA infrastructure, which is IEEE 1516.
The HLA was a traditional example of Fred Brook's Second-System effect. That is, when a person first makes a project of a certain type, he will be conservative and careful to make something that works and he can understand. (In this case, the DIS protocol). But once the first system works well, programmers tend to get overconfident and decide to fill the second system will all manner of elaborate stuff that distracts from the real purpose. That is what happened with the HLA protocol.
HLA is a real kitchen-sink system, addressing all uses but satsifying none. Only in the past year has DMSO's political power been reduced so that wargame developers can stop using the bad, unpredictable HLA and get back to the clean, efficient, and comprehensible DIS.
4. HLA does have one advantage over DIS The DIS protocol is a global publication system. Each computer controlling simulated entities broadcasts their position to ever other computer. (Originally this used ethernet broadcast, now it might change to internet multicast UDP). That meant that in a large exercise, people out-of-range from each other would still recieve positional updates clogging their network card. HLA included specifications to describe, geographically, who should recieve which packets. This allowed for world-spanning scenarios to be played with thousands of vehicles spread around.
The article suggests that new projects (DFIRST? I haven't heard of that before) will bring some of this capability to DIS.
ASCAP collects first from the station's purchase of the CD, second from the radio station's own broadcast license, and third from the clothing store itself to have a "public performance" license.
Do they really do this? I thought that lobbyists from retailers+restaurantes had been successful in amending the 1997 copyright act to specifically exempt them from liablity for playing the radio.
The reasoning went that if one organization had already paid a public performance fee, the licensor couldn't "double dip".
They probably use the same methods that determined that Mitnick caused $200billion in damages.
Exactly. The situations are very similar. However typical "hacker attacks" are even more like spam than the Mitnick case. Mitnick actually copied some files which had a dollar value. Normal hackers (Mafiaboy et al) only really deface or DOS some machines, forcing a few days of shutdown and hardening.
In both hacking and spam, the victim doesn't lose actual money- only some time (which is opportunity to earn money).
Spam and normal malicious hacking are both ways to subvert other people's computers to waste their time. The Feds prosecute those offenses rather differently, of course.
Yet another problem of something DOS got right from the start.
(a default place to install everything)
Unless you're Microsoft, of course. Then you can put Excel in C:\MSOffice, and IE in C:\Windows.
And how about that name, "Program Files"? Could we get a little more ambiguous please? Very little of the contents of a computer hard drive is not "a file for a program". However, the situation has improved since that directory's introduction in Windows95. Before Microsoft created the separate "C:\My Documents" directory, all programs saved by default to "C:\Program Files\Vendorname", which made a lot of sense.
No text printed on the side of a CD has any validity. I'm not obligated to read it or agree to it.
If it grants me some abilities beyond those inherent in the relevant law (the US Uniform Commercial Code primarily), then I might decide to abide by it. But just because a stranger wrote some words doesn't mean I have to obey them. For example, there's text at the bottom of this post. Will you obey it?
Be right back...
Having just checked a few DVDs, I have learned there is no text forbidding rental. Mine say "For private home use only", which doesn't preclude rental for home viewing. (That might explain why Sumner Redstone hasn't been arrested yet)
Any text that did exist could only be considered as a reminder of perinent fractions of copyright law (such as the famous "FBI Warning"), and not a commandment from a publisher.
"By closing this browser window, you agree to mail the author of this sentence $254."
I see little difference between a piece of land and a piece of music.
Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You apparently suffer the mental aberration called synesthesia.
Me, I can't see a piece of music at all. Or touch it, feel it, or especially hold it.
Property, by definition, can only be used by a limited number of people at once. Once written, music is not like that.
I'm not a capitalist but doesn't capitalism and free markets call for strong property rights?
There are two conflicting definitions of capitalism. Both are valid, but one (the more "Liberal" interpretation) calls for external intervention to enable competition, even overriding property rights. (This is the justification for anti-monopoly laws, which violate the sancity of property)
If a for-profit company copies a work "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage," it isn't fair use.
Still wrong. The quantity of the material copied (as compared to the work as a whole) is enormously more important than the company's profit motive.
A newspaper excerpting in a book review has no motive other than profit- but it's such a small section that fair use protects them.
A college student hosting MP3s on his webserver is not making profit (in fact he's expending his own funds with no compensation), but his copying the work is completely illegal, because it's the whole work.
The commerical/non-profit character of use will be a factor in the evaluation of any court, but it's drastically less important than the quantity and market effect of the use.
It is impossible for me to conceive how a for-profit company could copy the CDs to compress them, or copy them over the wire to
Cringley's proposal is nonsensical, but it would "work" just as well with a non-profit company.
There is plainly no way an organization, profit or non-, may make numerous copies of a single work for the use of its employees, customers, or shareholders. This is well established.
Consider this, you buy the song when you hit play for $1.05. When the song stops, the company buys back the song for $1.
There's no reason for that silly "buy it from us, then sell it right back" rigamarole.
A temporary transfer of permission to use is called "rental". It's perfectly legal. If you own a DVD or CD, you can rent it for others. Blockbuster needs no special relationship with the movie studios to run their business.
If you were (for some reason) to claim in court that the CDs were being "sold", when it was plainly intended to act like rental, you'd be in trouble. It doesn't look much like a sale if you make no attempt to send the physical CD to the "buyer"'s home.
PS. Blockbuster (and other rental places) do have semi-special relationships to studios, but they're not strictly necessary. Publishers have no right to prevent someone from renting out a DVD once she owns it- so they charge enormous prices for the first few months of release. Only a rental house will be willing to pay $130 for a DVD of Shrek. Later they'll cut the price to $29.95 to make it attractive for the general public.
In capitalism, the price is whatever the market sets it to
The current price for music isn't set by the market alone. It is the result of government interference: copyright laws. The government (police and courts) spend a fair amount of money helping corporations stop people from duplicating music.
If government-issued copyright went away, a possible (but unlikely!) result is that the free market will settle on a new, lower equilibrium price for music CDs.
The critical difference between CleanFilms and Cringley's stupid idea is that CleanFilms has that 1 to 1 ratio thing going.
For each movie they give to a customer/"co-owner", they've purchased one DVD from the publisher.
Cringley's plan is to somehow achieve a 1:200000 ratio. Buy one copy of each CD, and somehow let multiple shareholders play several of them at the same time.
That's just illegal. One entity (single person, or a corporation) is allowed to buy a CD and make backup copies. But if you play more than 1 of those at a time, you're breaking the law- because playing it isn't a "backup" use.
Cringley's idea is as dumb as suggesting Merril Lynch can buy one copy of Microsoft(tm) Windows XP(r) and install it on 9000 PCs, because they're all property of 1 corporation.
If we have all these robots running around doing all the low-paying jobs so much more efficiently and effectively, why aren't they working in the farms, in the meatpacking plants, etc?
Obviously, the article was describing near-future events. That the scenarios haven't happened yet is no argument against them.
However, it can be argued that "robots" (of a sort) are working in the farms and meatpacking plants. In the past 50 years, both of those industries have seen an 80% drop in the number of employees needed to produce the same output.
The most important skill for a modern farmer isn't agriculture, but tractor maintenance...
Japan has the "advantage" of being compact. We don't.
For 90% of computer-use considerations, the majority of the US can be safely ignored. Just treat it as two separate, densely packed nations on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The "square states" form a barren wasteland separating the mighty nations of Yankee and Destiny. (With the possibility of a cluster of civilization or two, prehaps around the Great Lakes)
The New York metropolitan area, for example, has 20% of the population of Japan within a day's drive. Any high-tech recycling plant which is profitable on Honshu should be able to scrape by on Long Island.
Does the federal government have any authority to mandate such a disposal regime under the interstate commerce power?
Individual states do. In Massachusetts, for example, the trash collector will fine you $35 for giving him a CRT monitor. (And he'll only accept it at all on one day per month). That's to cover the cost of safe disposal. If recycling revs up so that old CRTs become an asset instead of a liability, then that fee could be removed.
(I'm joking! The MA state budget is so far in the hole that the government can't possibly cut any income source. If they're smart, they'll earn recycling dollars and keep charging the fee)
3. Will the RIAA object to anyone recycling a DRM enabled device under the DMCA?
If you're melting it into raw materials, they have no way to object. But if you refurbish the devices or salvage replacement parts, a company could claim that illegal "reverse engineering" has occured.
This already happens with recylcing printer cartridges- Lexmark uses the DMCA to claim that refilling the ink is illegal. "Criminal hackers are circumventing the microchip whose software records the ink level remaining!"
* resizing text works, in fact you can easily resize/zoom the entire flash movie. I never have a problem with unreadable flash files,
It barely works. The word "easy" is not valid here. If a page is made with flash and tiny fonts, I can individually right-click each Flash area to zoom in the size by 2x. The amount of space allocated on the page doesn't change, so now I"m stuck dragging it around with the mouse to see the whole thing. Is there a way to resize a flash within a page, not just zoom in on it? I can't find one- and it certainly doesn't automatically bind to the browser's text magnification setting, which will be an advantage of Mozilla's native SVG.
* That key intercepting thing was something I hadn't realized, and I agree something should be done about it. But it's something I personally never encountered, and is a problem with the implementation not the format.
The flash format allows the author of an SWF to intercept keystrokes for his own use.
if google can parse PDF's, why not SWF's, it's not like it's that much harder...?
Google makes a mess of many PDFs, but at least all PDFs can evaluate somehow to a linear sequence of text. Flash programs can be arbitrarily complex, in a Turing-complete way. For computer scientists, "Turning Complete" is the trivial way to demonstrate that something cannot be comprehended by a computer program. (Postscript is also Turing complete, but it's non-interactive, so non-degengerate files will complete after a reasonable time). If someone makes a website with 20 pages all in a Flash file, a web-crawler has no sure way to tell how those pages are linked relative to each other.
Maybe it can find an interesting text string inside the SWF, but then what? Does it print you an ascii dump of the file in its cache? Or just take you to the live SWF itself, where there will be no guarrantee that you can even navigate to the desired page within the flash?
(Some content providers will want to use Flash for this reason- because it makes deep-linking and other 'subversive' user techniques more difficult)
There are other problems with the Flash format, in that they enable or imply bad behavior by the implementation. Primarily, the assumption that Flash files are an executable program, and that they are constantly advancing through time (and animating as they go). Some websites (like Tom's Hardware will have 4 embedded Flash files per page. Playing them uses a significant chunk of CPU power, even if you're not viewing the page. But if someone tries Mozilla's tabbed-browsing feature to keep reviews of several different products handy for comparison, the CPU consumption just keeps climbing and climbing.
Other problems with Flash are purely with the implementation- I can't easily turn down the default rendering quality, for example (or just set them to not even animate until I click on one). But Macromedia has no desire to improve the end-user's ability to control his view of SWF files. To do that would make them less attractive to advertisers. "If consumers could de-activate the constant bouncing, they might be able to focus on content they want to read!"
I really don't like the ProCd decision... it wasn't the Supreme Court though, so I have some hope it could be overturned if it went higher. It is starkly in disagreement with Supreme decisions from 1948 and 1915 (whose names and accurate dates escape me at the moment) that unequivocally barred shrinkwrap from applying to books. I especially don't think the ProCD case was valid in dismissing UCC 2.207 like that- the shrinkwrap EULA has to be a secondary license; the first license was provided implicitly at point-of-sale, but it did exist!
The funny thing about ProCd is that it was hardly about software at all. The CD in question was virtually just a long textfile of nonexecutable information. A case that's more focused on software might get better attention- especially now that the Lexmark printer-refill matter is getting attention. The judges will notice that in a few years, almost any trivial product will include a little software with it, and that greater validity of post-purchase "contracts" will harm consumers.
The simplest way to get EULAs banned once and for all (or at least restricted to a specific set of approved boilerplate, like UCITA tried to do) would be for a software publisher (ideally Microsoft) to hold a "reverse lottery". Every 1000th EULA requires the buyer to pay an extra $100. That would be squashed pronto! But since existing EULA terms are fairly minor encroachments, the courts have let them slide by.
I'd actually expect ClickWrap to have a better chance of passing Supreme judicial review. It's difficult to argue that people have entered into a contract if one party has never seen or communicated with the others. Most clickwrap doesn't entail communication, but some forms do (click-to-download, or the rarer click-for-obligatory-registration), so they more resemble a traditionally binding agreement.
Agh! Not another person who thinks the GPL is anything at all like an EULA! That's the third one today! We should get a page on snopes debunking this myth. Or you can just search for it.
I suppose I should also make some boilerplate to explain the difference. Here's the short version:
The GPL permits you, at your option, to violate the copyright on a piece of software, which is otherwise against the law.
An EULA (attempts to) forbid you, without your consent, from re-selling software to another person, which is completely within the law. (Different EULAs may forbid many other things)
You are NOT required to agree to the GPL before using a program. (That's why you've never seen it- because you didn't have to agree to it, unless you were actually going to look at the source). According to the software publishing houses, you ARE required to agree to an EULA before using their programs.
I feel that if such a case were pushed to the Supreme court, however, EULAs would be invalidated. When you sell someone a box of software (or a book, or a music CD), you are giving him permission to use it normally in private. Once he's got that permission, you can't interpret his normal use as consenting to some extra contract. "By closing this web browser window, you are consenting to mail me $500". That's not a valid license, because you're allowed to close the window without permission from me. Once you buy software and have walked out of the store with the box, you're also allowed to use it without further permission, but that's not what software publishers claim.
PS. I've answered this question so much today, I can actually quote GPL section 9 verbatim: "You are not required to abide by this license, as you have not signed it. However, nothing else gives you permission to redistribute the software, which is a violation of international copyright law..."
There isn't such a thing, if you insist on strictness... you can grant a license, and you can do it for free or for money, but that is not a sale in any way.
The phrase "sell software" can be interpreted as an abbreviation of either of two things: "selling a copy of software" or "selling the copyright to software".
The first of those possibilities is vastly more common than the other, so it is what that abbreviation should be understood to mean, unless otherwise stated.
(Some people claim that "selling a copy of software" should always be called "selling a license to software", but all modern nations have laws supporting an implicit license to use copies of intellectual property that have been sold. It's why you can buy books and CDs without finding an EULA on the wrapper)
as the high prices commanded by Cygnus's GNU toolchain product prove.
That proves nothing. The bulk of those prices are for support, not the software itself. (Although there might still be a portion of the Cygnus kit that is neither free beer nor free speech- some compatibility DLL? I don't remember)
The statement "free speech implies free beer" is just as true as claiming that "humans have 10 fingers". (ie, it occasionally doesn't hold, but such situations as so rare they can be safely ignored)
You would suggest that either the FSF is not selling "quite a bit" of software, or else a large proportion of FSF software was paid for, when neither need be true.
I suggest that the FSF sells a teeny-tiny amount of software. This is quite true, although I can't prove it. I do have certain facts to support me, such as my never having met anyone who has bought software from them, even though I am seated just 6 km from an FSF office.
They're content with selling enough to pay the bills (in conjunction with donations and other means of support).
That's backwards. 67% of their income is from individual donations. Much of the rest from corporate patrons or foundation grants. Actual "sales" are a tiny bit on top of that.
And, try to imagine what's going through the head of a person about to "buy" softwrae from the FSF. Chances are, much of her motivation for the purchase is not just to acquire the software (which could probably be performed quicker either by downloading it, or grabbing a Linux CD from a local store), but to voluntarily contribute to the FSF. Their sales are virtually a disguised form of charity.
There are quite a lot of people who pay big bucks for support for GNU/Linux, gcc, GNU Ada etc.
You can't call that "selling software" though. They are selling support, which is a different thing. The people who sell this support are not necessarily affliated with the authors of the software.
The statement "any speech-free program is also beer-free if a non-trivial amount of copies have already been sold" is true, regardless of the possibility of selling support.
And even for unsupported installation media.
This is primarily a temporary effect- it's caused by insufficient information amoung customers. Businesses are used to buying software in boxes, so they're naturally inclined to continue doing so. Once they learn that it's unnecessary, they'll stop. (There will still be some sales for the convenience factor of not burning your own DVD-Rs)
(Additionally, many of the people who install Linux distribs for corporations are sympathetic to free software publishers. They're willing to waste $80 of company money on Red Hat media that they could easily download, because the money seems to be going to a good cause)
"Judge, I want to ignore this license which I never agreed to"
The BK license is a click-through EULA like any other. Just like all of them, it's not valid.
Unless your country decides to pass a law making them binding, it won't effect you. (Even if your nation allows electronic contracts, the software vendor would have to take some steps to record the agreement in a valid manner. BitKeeper, like most publishers, does not do that)
If a person permits you to download his software without obtaining an agreement as to how you'll use it, you can do whatever you want (execute the code) so long as you don't violate copyright (make copies of the program, which is unnecessary if you've already got a copy from the publisher)
RMS has stated time and again that he does not care if software is free as in beer-he believes it should be free as in freedom.
One implies the other. If a program is freedom-free, it's already beer-free. (The reverse is not true)
99+% of all software sales depends on the fact that the product is not free (beer or speech). If customers are moderately well informed, the only time they'll pay for the software is when it's too inconvenient to find a friend to copy from. (Witness Red Hat's dropping out of retail stores)
It may still be possible to earn money by writing software, if your proven mastery of that software positions you to charge for supporting it. But the practice of exchanging programs for dollars- the normal conception of "commercial software"- will be obliterated if Free Software wins.
If I am not horribly mistaken, the FSF themselves sell quite a bit of GPL'd
I doubt you could fairly describe it as "quite a bit". Of all the copies of emacs, gcc, and gdb that exist around the world, far less that 0.001% were obtained by writing a check to the FSF.
Those projects are not bigger than Linux. They might be if you count number of files- but that's not what matters. The number of developers is what's important. The *BSD projects are famous for having a rather small set of persons modifying the code repository.
The specific shortcomings of CVS in terms of the Linux kernel project is that the ability to write to the respository is all or nothing.
1. If you want a developers to be able to make changes, you basically have to give him 100% write access. (Yes, it's possible for others to back out his changes if he damages something, but this is messy.) (And yes, it's possible to create auxilliary scripts in the CVSROOT area to accept/reject individual parts of a checkin- but it would be a separate development project to write those scripts)
2. If you want developers to be able to make changes, you basically have to give them TCP/IP access to the repository 100% of the time. CVS doesn't contain "workflow" features, where a person submits a change and it is queued up for the maintainer to inspect and accept/reject.
With BK, Linus can be the only person able to change the actual source code. Everyone else mails him a "change set" file, which his local copy of BK helps him inspect and accept/reject it as he wishes. When the changes are accepted, BK handles the meta-data, automatically merging in the revision history of the edits.
Yes, it would be possible to implement something along those lines with CVS- Linus gets patches in his email (in Larry Wall format), applies them to his tree, and checks it into CVS if he approves. But BK provides many little helps to automate this.
There are other advantages to BK which you can find on LKML. All in all, BK and CVS are almost too different to be called competitors. It's like comparing rpm with apt-get.
Did you know that software publishers PAY companies like CompUsa and CircuitCity to put boxes on shelves?
You actually have to RENT the shelf space for your products. If your sale profits are small, this can easily become a money-loser. Cutting that expense might improve their short-term balance sheet; what it will do to consumer awareness long-term is a different question.
Slashdot Mirror
4 comments in one:
1. Why Linux?
True, the eetimes article is discombobulated and provides little explanation of why Linux should matter at all for wargaming simulations. And the explanation it implies (that Linux helps data compatibility) is nonsensical.
However, I've seen several military simulation projects that run on Linux. The obvious reasons: The Pentagon isn't a fast or flexible software developer. These games may take decades of to produce and shape into something workable, and we can't throw them out just because new OSes (Windows XP, etc) come along.
So many projects that were first written for big iron SGI or Solaris machines are now running on Linux desktops. I've heard several ancedotes of software getting a 5x speed boost alongside a 10x drop in platform cost when changing hardware vendors from SGI to Dell.
One major simulation project is OneSAF ("One Semi-Automated Force"). You can go read the PowerPoint they gave at a Linux conference years ago. (The "CCTT" project mentioned in the article is an ancient fork of OneSAF)
2. 100 entities is small
The article says they will be reaching the point of simulating 100 entities in their exercise, up from 20 in the previous test. And it'll take place at 3 different locations.
That is tiny compared to the number already used in a military simulation last year. Millenium Challenge 2002 took place on ~15 sites around the US, and involved 13500 human participants, many of them controlling more than one "entity" in the game.
3. The Pentagon is trending back towards DIS
The article mentions this project is using the IEEE 1278 standard DIS (Distributed Interactive Simulation). That is a fairly old specification- finalized at least 10 years ago. It worked well back then, and still does. However, it fell out of popular use in the late 90s because a vantity project from Defense Modeling & Simulation Office mandated that all simulations be switched to use their new improved HLA infrastructure, which is IEEE 1516.
The HLA was a traditional example of Fred Brook's Second-System effect. That is, when a person first makes a project of a certain type, he will be conservative and careful to make something that works and he can understand. (In this case, the DIS protocol). But once the first system works well, programmers tend to get overconfident and decide to fill the second system will all manner of elaborate stuff that distracts from the real purpose. That is what happened with the HLA protocol.
HLA is a real kitchen-sink system, addressing all uses but satsifying none. Only in the past year has DMSO's political power been reduced so that wargame developers can stop using the bad, unpredictable HLA and get back to the clean, efficient, and comprehensible DIS.
4. HLA does have one advantage over DIS
The DIS protocol is a global publication system. Each computer controlling simulated entities broadcasts their position to ever other computer. (Originally this used ethernet broadcast, now it might change to internet multicast UDP). That meant that in a large exercise, people out-of-range from each other would still recieve positional updates clogging their network card. HLA included specifications to describe, geographically, who should recieve which packets. This allowed for world-spanning scenarios to be played with thousands of vehicles spread around.
The article suggests that new projects (DFIRST? I haven't heard of that before) will bring some of this capability to DIS.
ASCAP collects first from the station's purchase of the CD, second from the radio station's own broadcast license, and third from the clothing store itself to have a "public performance" license.
Do they really do this? I thought that lobbyists from retailers+restaurantes had been successful in amending the 1997 copyright act to specifically exempt them from liablity for playing the radio.
The reasoning went that if one organization had already paid a public performance fee, the licensor couldn't "double dip".
They probably use the same methods that determined that Mitnick caused $200billion in damages.
Exactly. The situations are very similar. However typical "hacker attacks" are even more like spam than the Mitnick case. Mitnick actually copied some files which had a dollar value. Normal hackers (Mafiaboy et al) only really deface or DOS some machines, forcing a few days of shutdown and hardening.
In both hacking and spam, the victim doesn't lose actual money- only some time (which is opportunity to earn money).
Spam and normal malicious hacking are both ways to subvert other people's computers to waste their time. The Feds prosecute those offenses rather differently, of course.
C:\
Yet another problem of something DOS got right from the start.
(a default place to install everything)
Unless you're Microsoft, of course. Then you can put Excel in C:\MSOffice, and IE in C:\Windows.
And how about that name, "Program Files"? Could we get a little more ambiguous please? Very little of the contents of a computer hard drive is not "a file for a program". However, the situation has improved since that directory's introduction in Windows95. Before Microsoft created the separate "C:\My Documents" directory, all programs saved by default to "C:\Program Files\Vendorname", which made a lot of sense.
If it grants me some abilities beyond those inherent in the relevant law (the US Uniform Commercial Code primarily), then I might decide to abide by it. But just because a stranger wrote some words doesn't mean I have to obey them. For example, there's text at the bottom of this post. Will you obey it?
- Be right back...
Having just checked a few DVDs, I have learned there is no text forbidding rental. Mine say "For private home use only", which doesn't preclude rental for home viewing. (That might explain why Sumner Redstone hasn't been arrested yet)Any text that did exist could only be considered as a reminder of perinent fractions of copyright law (such as the famous "FBI Warning"), and not a commandment from a publisher.
"By closing this browser window, you agree to mail the author of this sentence $254."
I see little difference between a piece of land and a piece of music.
Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You apparently suffer the mental aberration called synesthesia.
Me, I can't see a piece of music at all. Or touch it, feel it, or especially hold it.
Property, by definition, can only be used by a limited number of people at once. Once written, music is not like that.
I'm not a capitalist but doesn't capitalism and free markets call for strong property rights?
There are two conflicting definitions of capitalism. Both are valid, but one (the more "Liberal" interpretation) calls for external intervention to enable competition, even overriding property rights. (This is the justification for anti-monopoly laws, which violate the sancity of property)
If a for-profit company copies a work "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage," it isn't fair use.
Still wrong. The quantity of the material copied (as compared to the work as a whole) is enormously more important than the company's profit motive.
A newspaper excerpting in a book review has no motive other than profit- but it's such a small section that fair use protects them.
A college student hosting MP3s on his webserver is not making profit (in fact he's expending his own funds with no compensation), but his copying the work is completely illegal, because it's the whole work.
The commerical/non-profit character of use will be a factor in the evaluation of any court, but it's drastically less important than the quantity and market effect of the use.
It is impossible for me to conceive how a for-profit company could copy the CDs to compress them, or copy them over the wire to
Cringley's proposal is nonsensical, but it would "work" just as well with a non-profit company.
There is plainly no way an organization, profit or non-, may make numerous copies of a single work for the use of its employees, customers, or shareholders. This is well established.
Consider this, you buy the song when you hit play for $1.05. When the song stops, the company buys back the song for $1.
There's no reason for that silly "buy it from us, then sell it right back" rigamarole.
A temporary transfer of permission to use is called "rental". It's perfectly legal. If you own a DVD or CD, you can rent it for others. Blockbuster needs no special relationship with the movie studios to run their business.
If you were (for some reason) to claim in court that the CDs were being "sold", when it was plainly intended to act like rental, you'd be in trouble. It doesn't look much like a sale if you make no attempt to send the physical CD to the "buyer"'s home.
PS. Blockbuster (and other rental places) do have semi-special relationships to studios, but they're not strictly necessary. Publishers have no right to prevent someone from renting out a DVD once she owns it- so they charge enormous prices for the first few months of release. Only a rental house will be willing to pay $130 for a DVD of Shrek. Later they'll cut the price to $29.95 to make it attractive for the general public.
In capitalism, the price is whatever the market sets it to
The current price for music isn't set by the market alone. It is the result of government interference: copyright laws. The government (police and courts) spend a fair amount of money helping corporations stop people from duplicating music.
If government-issued copyright went away, a possible (but unlikely!) result is that the free market will settle on a new, lower equilibrium price for music CDs.
The critical difference between CleanFilms and Cringley's stupid idea is that CleanFilms has that 1 to 1 ratio thing going.
For each movie they give to a customer/"co-owner", they've purchased one DVD from the publisher.
Cringley's plan is to somehow achieve a 1:200000 ratio. Buy one copy of each CD, and somehow let multiple shareholders play several of them at the same time.
That's just illegal. One entity (single person, or a corporation) is allowed to buy a CD and make backup copies. But if you play more than 1 of those at a time, you're breaking the law- because playing it isn't a "backup" use.
Cringley's idea is as dumb as suggesting Merril Lynch can buy one copy of Microsoft(tm) Windows XP(r) and install it on 9000 PCs, because they're all property of 1 corporation.
But, again, it's not fair use if it's for profit.
Absolutely, 100% untrue. Many profitable actions can also be fair use.
If we have all these robots running around doing all the low-paying jobs so much more efficiently and effectively, why aren't they working in the farms, in the meatpacking plants, etc?
Obviously, the article was describing near-future events. That the scenarios haven't happened yet is no argument against them.
However, it can be argued that "robots" (of a sort) are working in the farms and meatpacking plants. In the past 50 years, both of those industries have seen an 80% drop in the number of employees needed to produce the same output.
The most important skill for a modern farmer isn't agriculture, but tractor maintenance...
Japan has the "advantage" of being compact. We don't.
For 90% of computer-use considerations, the majority of the US can be safely ignored. Just treat it as two separate, densely packed nations on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The "square states" form a barren wasteland separating the mighty nations of Yankee and Destiny. (With the possibility of a cluster of civilization or two, prehaps around the Great Lakes)
The New York metropolitan area, for example, has 20% of the population of Japan within a day's drive. Any high-tech recycling plant which is profitable on Honshu should be able to scrape by on Long Island.
Does the federal government have any authority to mandate such a disposal regime under the interstate commerce power?
Individual states do. In Massachusetts, for example, the trash collector will fine you $35 for giving him a CRT monitor. (And he'll only accept it at all on one day per month). That's to cover the cost of safe disposal. If recycling revs up so that old CRTs become an asset instead of a liability, then that fee could be removed.
(I'm joking! The MA state budget is so far in the hole that the government can't possibly cut any income source. If they're smart, they'll earn recycling dollars and keep charging the fee)
3. Will the RIAA object to anyone recycling a DRM enabled device under the DMCA?
If you're melting it into raw materials, they have no way to object. But if you refurbish the devices or salvage replacement parts, a company could claim that illegal "reverse engineering" has occured.
This already happens with recylcing printer cartridges- Lexmark uses the DMCA to claim that refilling the ink is illegal. "Criminal hackers are circumventing the microchip whose software records the ink level remaining!"
* resizing text works, in fact you can easily resize/zoom the entire flash movie. I never have a problem with unreadable flash files,
It barely works. The word "easy" is not valid here. If a page is made with flash and tiny fonts, I can individually right-click each Flash area to zoom in the size by 2x. The amount of space allocated on the page doesn't change, so now I"m stuck dragging it around with the mouse to see the whole thing. Is there a way to resize a flash within a page, not just zoom in on it? I can't find one- and it certainly doesn't automatically bind to the browser's text magnification setting, which will be an advantage of Mozilla's native SVG.
* That key intercepting thing was something I hadn't realized, and I agree something should be done about it. But it's something I personally never encountered, and is a problem with the implementation not the format.
The flash format allows the author of an SWF to intercept keystrokes for his own use.
if google can parse PDF's, why not SWF's, it's not like it's that much harder...?
Google makes a mess of many PDFs, but at least all PDFs can evaluate somehow to a linear sequence of text. Flash programs can be arbitrarily complex, in a Turing-complete way. For computer scientists, "Turning Complete" is the trivial way to demonstrate that something cannot be comprehended by a computer program. (Postscript is also Turing complete, but it's non-interactive, so non-degengerate files will complete after a reasonable time). If someone makes a website with 20 pages all in a Flash file, a web-crawler has no sure way to tell how those pages are linked relative to each other.
Maybe it can find an interesting text string inside the SWF, but then what? Does it print you an ascii dump of the file in its cache? Or just take you to the live SWF itself, where there will be no guarrantee that you can even navigate to the desired page within the flash?
(Some content providers will want to use Flash for this reason- because it makes deep-linking and other 'subversive' user techniques more difficult)
There are other problems with the Flash format, in that they enable or imply bad behavior by the implementation. Primarily, the assumption that Flash files are an executable program, and that they are constantly advancing through time (and animating as they go). Some websites (like Tom's Hardware will have 4 embedded Flash files per page. Playing them uses a significant chunk of CPU power, even if you're not viewing the page. But if someone tries Mozilla's tabbed-browsing feature to keep reviews of several different products handy for comparison, the CPU consumption just keeps climbing and climbing.
Other problems with Flash are purely with the implementation- I can't easily turn down the default rendering quality, for example (or just set them to not even animate until I click on one). But Macromedia has no desire to improve the end-user's ability to control his view of SWF files. To do that would make them less attractive to advertisers. "If consumers could de-activate the constant bouncing, they might be able to focus on content they want to read!"
Contributing to the delinquency of a minor?
I really don't like the ProCd decision... it wasn't the Supreme Court though, so I have some hope it could be overturned if it went higher. It is starkly in disagreement with Supreme decisions from 1948 and 1915 (whose names and accurate dates escape me at the moment) that unequivocally barred shrinkwrap from applying to books. I especially don't think the ProCD case was valid in dismissing UCC 2.207 like that- the shrinkwrap EULA has to be a secondary license; the first license was provided implicitly at point-of-sale, but it did exist!
The funny thing about ProCd is that it was hardly about software at all. The CD in question was virtually just a long textfile of nonexecutable information. A case that's more focused on software might get better attention- especially now that the Lexmark printer-refill matter is getting attention. The judges will notice that in a few years, almost any trivial product will include a little software with it, and that greater validity of post-purchase "contracts" will harm consumers.
The simplest way to get EULAs banned once and for all (or at least restricted to a specific set of approved boilerplate, like UCITA tried to do) would be for a software publisher (ideally Microsoft) to hold a "reverse lottery". Every 1000th EULA requires the buyer to pay an extra $100. That would be squashed pronto! But since existing EULA terms are fairly minor encroachments, the courts have let them slide by.
I'd actually expect ClickWrap to have a better chance of passing Supreme judicial review. It's difficult to argue that people have entered into a contract if one party has never seen or communicated with the others. Most clickwrap doesn't entail communication, but some forms do (click-to-download, or the rarer click-for-obligatory-registration), so they more resemble a traditionally binding agreement.
Agh! Not another person who thinks the GPL is anything at all like an EULA! That's the third one today! We should get a page on snopes debunking this myth. Or you can just search for it.
I suppose I should also make some boilerplate to explain the difference. Here's the short version:
The GPL permits you, at your option, to violate the copyright on a piece of software, which is otherwise against the law.
An EULA (attempts to) forbid you, without your consent, from re-selling software to another person, which is completely within the law. (Different EULAs may forbid many other things)
You are NOT required to agree to the GPL before using a program. (That's why you've never seen it- because you didn't have to agree to it, unless you were actually going to look at the source). According to the software publishing houses, you ARE required to agree to an EULA before using their programs.
I feel that if such a case were pushed to the Supreme court, however, EULAs would be invalidated. When you sell someone a box of software (or a book, or a music CD), you are giving him permission to use it normally in private. Once he's got that permission, you can't interpret his normal use as consenting to some extra contract. "By closing this web browser window, you are consenting to mail me $500". That's not a valid license, because you're allowed to close the window without permission from me. Once you buy software and have walked out of the store with the box, you're also allowed to use it without further permission, but that's not what software publishers claim.
PS. I've answered this question so much today, I can actually quote GPL section 9 verbatim: "You are not required to abide by this license, as you have not signed it. However, nothing else gives you permission to redistribute the software, which is a violation of international copyright law..."
There isn't such a thing, if you insist on strictness... you can grant a license, and you can do it for free or for money, but that is not a sale in any way.
The phrase "sell software" can be interpreted as an abbreviation of either of two things: "selling a copy of software" or "selling the copyright to software".
The first of those possibilities is vastly more common than the other, so it is what that abbreviation should be understood to mean, unless otherwise stated.
(Some people claim that "selling a copy of software" should always be called "selling a license to software", but all modern nations have laws supporting an implicit license to use copies of intellectual property that have been sold. It's why you can buy books and CDs without finding an EULA on the wrapper)
as the high prices commanded by Cygnus's GNU toolchain product prove.
That proves nothing. The bulk of those prices are for support, not the software itself. (Although there might still be a portion of the Cygnus kit that is neither free beer nor free speech- some compatibility DLL? I don't remember)
The statement "free speech implies free beer" is just as true as claiming that "humans have 10 fingers". (ie, it occasionally doesn't hold, but such situations as so rare they can be safely ignored)
You would suggest that either the FSF is not selling "quite a bit" of software, or else a large proportion of FSF software was paid for, when neither need be true.
I suggest that the FSF sells a teeny-tiny amount of software. This is quite true, although I can't prove it. I do have certain facts to support me, such as my never having met anyone who has bought software from them, even though I am seated just 6 km from an FSF office.
They're content with selling enough to pay the bills (in conjunction with donations and other means of support).
That's backwards. 67% of their income is from individual donations. Much of the rest from corporate patrons or foundation grants. Actual "sales" are a tiny bit on top of that.
And, try to imagine what's going through the head of a person about to "buy" softwrae from the FSF. Chances are, much of her motivation for the purchase is not just to acquire the software (which could probably be performed quicker either by downloading it, or grabbing a Linux CD from a local store), but to voluntarily contribute to the FSF. Their sales are virtually a disguised form of charity.
There are quite a lot of people who pay big bucks for support for GNU/Linux, gcc, GNU Ada etc.
You can't call that "selling software" though. They are selling support, which is a different thing. The people who sell this support are not necessarily affliated with the authors of the software.
The statement "any speech-free program is also beer-free if a non-trivial amount of copies have already been sold" is true, regardless of the possibility of selling support.
And even for unsupported installation media.
This is primarily a temporary effect- it's caused by insufficient information amoung customers. Businesses are used to buying software in boxes, so they're naturally inclined to continue doing so. Once they learn that it's unnecessary, they'll stop. (There will still be some sales for the convenience factor of not burning your own DVD-Rs)
(Additionally, many of the people who install Linux distribs for corporations are sympathetic to free software publishers. They're willing to waste $80 of company money on Red Hat media that they could easily download, because the money seems to be going to a good cause)
Exactly. You do not have to follow the GPL.
It's not an EULA. EULAs try to forbid you from doing things which are legal. The GPL allows you to (optionally) do things which are illegal.
Read section 9 of the GPL:
9. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
"Judge, I want to ignore this license which I never agreed to"
The BK license is a click-through EULA like any other. Just like all of them, it's not valid.
Unless your country decides to pass a law making them binding, it won't effect you. (Even if your nation allows electronic contracts, the software vendor would have to take some steps to record the agreement in a valid manner. BitKeeper, like most publishers, does not do that)
If a person permits you to download his software without obtaining an agreement as to how you'll use it, you can do whatever you want (execute the code) so long as you don't violate copyright (make copies of the program, which is unnecessary if you've already got a copy from the publisher)
RMS has stated time and again that he does not care if software is free as in beer-he believes it should be free as in freedom.
One implies the other. If a program is freedom-free, it's already beer-free. (The reverse is not true)
99+% of all software sales depends on the fact that the product is not free (beer or speech). If customers are moderately well informed, the only time they'll pay for the software is when it's too inconvenient to find a friend to copy from. (Witness Red Hat's dropping out of retail stores)
It may still be possible to earn money by writing software, if your proven mastery of that software positions you to charge for supporting it. But the practice of exchanging programs for dollars- the normal conception of "commercial software"- will be obliterated if Free Software wins.
If I am not horribly mistaken, the FSF themselves sell quite a bit of GPL'd
I doubt you could fairly describe it as "quite a bit". Of all the copies of emacs, gcc, and gdb that exist around the world, far less that 0.001% were obtained by writing a check to the FSF.
Those projects are not bigger than Linux. They might be if you count number of files- but that's not what matters. The number of developers is what's important. The *BSD projects are famous for having a rather small set of persons modifying the code repository.
The specific shortcomings of CVS in terms of the Linux kernel project is that the ability to write to the respository is all or nothing.
1. If you want a developers to be able to make changes, you basically have to give him 100% write access. (Yes, it's possible for others to back out his changes if he damages something, but this is messy.) (And yes, it's possible to create auxilliary scripts in the CVSROOT area to accept/reject individual parts of a checkin- but it would be a separate development project to write those scripts)
2. If you want developers to be able to make changes, you basically have to give them TCP/IP access to the repository 100% of the time. CVS doesn't contain "workflow" features, where a person submits a change and it is queued up for the maintainer to inspect and accept/reject.
With BK, Linus can be the only person able to change the actual source code. Everyone else mails him a "change set" file, which his local copy of BK helps him inspect and accept/reject it as he wishes. When the changes are accepted, BK handles the meta-data, automatically merging in the revision history of the edits.
Yes, it would be possible to implement something along those lines with CVS- Linus gets patches in his email (in Larry Wall format), applies them to his tree, and checks it into CVS if he approves. But BK provides many little helps to automate this.
There are other advantages to BK which you can find on LKML. All in all, BK and CVS are almost too different to be called competitors. It's like comparing rpm with apt-get.
Did you know that software publishers PAY companies like CompUsa and CircuitCity to put boxes on shelves?
You actually have to RENT the shelf space for your products. If your sale profits are small, this can easily become a money-loser. Cutting that expense might improve their short-term balance sheet; what it will do to consumer awareness long-term is a different question.