I'm replying to SCO's argument, not you personally:
SCO will say that GPLed code cannot be restricted by export controls, thus violates national security laws.
To quote the GPL:
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
Depending on how strictly this is interpreted, SCO may or may not have a point - is this limited to "patents and copyrighted interfaces" limitations? It would be better if they left out that clause, or added export laws to it.
While I'm at it, the GPL ought to include something affirming that contributors, and specifically not end users, are responsible for verifying the code they contribute is theirs. Also, how about a clause that specifically states that an author can limit what he believes is a derivative work. I once knew someone who thought that Linus's comment at the top of linux/COPYING had no legal force, and that proprietary userland programs are at risk, which is of course crazy.
When exactly will it hit? One modded-up reply said it would hit at 8am UTC (2am CST) on the 28th, which is a few hours from now. But this news story says midday CST tomorrow. So my question is, what are some estimates of when it will strike, and who is in a position to know? Where does this data come from? Also, when will we know what the polarity of the cloud is?
I think that "because it's there" is a perfectly good reason to go to Mars. Though that wouldn't be the main reason, the main reason would have to be science.
Yeah, Columbus came to America looking for a new route to China. He was wrong, but finding America was still a good idea. (For the Europeans, anyway.) Guess what - there's no way to know what will come from exploration until you try. Unfortunately, at present, there isn't much motivation, real or otherwise, for a manned Mars mission. Before, it was to beat the communists - perhaps now we should start a rumor that Mars is full of terrorists, oil, and weapons of unimaginable destructive power.
I don't think that the short-lived poor would tolerate the long-lived rich for very long. Mortals don't dig the immortals who deny mortals immortality.
Yeah, OK. The kernel gods on LKML are zealots, but thankfully we have that guardian of sanity, Slashdot's own Anonymous Coward, to set us straight. Sure.
Given the current political and legal debates regarding the effects of computers on the music industry, it's not a good idea to allow CD-ROM drives to be destroyed by software. This includes firmware upgrades - there should be a jumper either to restore the original firmware or to disable firmware upgrading.
My crystal ball has given me this quote from the future: "The track you attempted to burn has been identified as pirated or indie music. Windows Media Player 11 has disabled your CD-ROM for your protection. Call 1-900-THE-RIAA to re-enable it."
Actual moral of story: Don't store your master's thesis exclusively on a CD-RW! Removeable media has always sucked - if it's that important, use a hard drive, and have multiple backups. When will people learn?
Sunspots follow an 11 year cycle. The economy also tends to be cyclical, though I'm not sure of it's period. I'd be very skeptical of a causal relationship between sunspots and the economy, at least until there was an explanation that made sense and could be tested.
What you say is true, but there's a big downside. A computer that can recieve spam SMB popups is a computer with a HUGE SECURITY HOLE! So disabling popups, while not a hack in the sense of illegal, is a hack in the sense of a kludge. It would be far preferable for AOL to set up a firewall (after asking).
Nobody's mentioned my number-one reason I work on my project - need. Scratching the proverbial itch. Gaining experience was a motivating factor also, but VLevel started because nothing else did what I wanted. I certainly don't think it will earn me money.
With an already-existing project, it's easy for a knowledgeable person who needs a feature to look at the source, play with it, and add that feature - something you can never do with closed source unless you work for the company. He's not doing it for pride, or money, or altruism - he needs the feature, he writes it, and he figures "why not contribute it back?" This is how drivers get written, and how many features are added. It also puts an additional selective pressure on projects: if a project is easy for others to understand, than it will get features faster. Modular, well designed, and documented software is therefore more likely to succeed.
I think lawyers are a contributing factor - increasing penalties is fine, but the only way to stop frivolous lawsuits is if lawyers stop filing them. Unfortunately, if you tell your client that you won't persue some frivolous or abusive case, they'll just find somebody else with fewer scruples. So the legal system is brought down to the lowest common denominator. I'm not sure how to fix this, though. In reality, what you suggest may be the only out. Maybe there should be some new failure mode wherby the prosecuting lawyers would get points against them, and if they get too many, they'd be disbarred.
The problem is that patents are just too slow and expensive. Contrast that with copyrights, which are free just for opening your mouth. I think a huge Wiki full of prior art is a better idea - though you still need someone like the EFF to foot the bill of defending OSS people in court by using that database.
iTunes actually provides some hope for DRM free music. They are in the best position to do studies of how unDRMing, say, one artist would affect their sales. Our hypothesis seems to be that if iTunes choose an artist, provided unencrypted AACs, and notified people that those files were unencrypted, it would have no effect, or a positive affect, on sales.
The only problem is who would propose such a thing. Artists would probably have the best position - a popular, perhaps indie group of artists could get iTunes to consider such a trial. Or, and this is a long shot, Apple could convince the RIAA to try this with one of their artists. The point is, if there were a bunch of experimental evidence that DRM can only hurt sales, perhaps the RIAA would get the drift.
Unfortunately, Apple probably won't lead the crusade to let iTunes be accessed by open source multiplatform clients or a web interface, but if they were to show that DRM free music could work, then the RIAA might allow it and somebody might fill that niche.
The fact is, once you buy music over iTunes, it *IS*, indeed YOURS. You are dismissing far too quickly the fact that you can burn it onto a CD and play it onto an unrestricted amount of devices.
By that logic, even the most DRM'd music is "yours" because you can put it through the analog hole. Granted, iTunes is currently the least restricted way to get mainstream music, but it's still putting up completely pointless speedbumps, barriers that block the sale for many Slashdotters (obviously, the public doesn't care.)
If music is to legally be sold in a digital format, that digital format NEEDS to have some sort of digital rights management. I challenge you to prove otherwise.
What about CDs? Let's face it, no DRM, ever, will stop determined users from puting music on P2P. This means it's smart to drop the whole DRM thing and give consumers what they want - complete ownership and format choices.
There are some people who only abide by laws or morals because of the consequences. IOW, the reason some people don't shoplift CDs isn't because they think it's wrong or illegal (it is), but because it's not worth the risk. If each CD cost $1500 but was no more risky to steal, these people would shoplift them without batting an eyelash. This is very bad, but it is the reality - in a large enough group of people, there will always be someone who thinks that way. The internet is a just such a group.
There are only two ways to stop these people's mass copyright infringement. One is to increase the risk, which is easy enough to do. Although this could change (Freenet), right now the sources of P2P music are easy to find and sue. For the forseeable future, good watermarking can also trace the source of files on P2P. For the short term, Vorbis serial numbers are sufficient. The second way is to increase the value of legitimate music. To me, this means completely DRM free, preferably -q5 Vorbis downloads with album art. Put up a nice web store, with an optional iTunes-like frontend, and sell high quality rips in a choice of formats and real "ownership," and P2P would no longer be worth the risk or inconvience.
Because, as people here are so quick to point out, iTunes's DRM is so pointless, why does it exist at all?
Predictably (given that the review mentions it), 90% of all the posts say "Gator is spyware." (Me too, BTW.) Now, I'm not seriously contending that any of us will be sued over that, but isn't it a bit scary that we are all liable?
What happened to free speech? Obviously, there are limits (kiddie porn, yelling "Fire!," slander, copyright infringement), but in general, we are supposed to be able to speak out against things we don't like. It used to be the government you couldn't badmouth, though for the most part, we're over that. Now, however, it's companies.
I'm amazed Slashdot hasn't had more coverage of Caterpillar (as in tractors) suing Disney, trying to get an injunction against Disney releasing Tarzan 2, which portrayed a Caterpillar tractor in an environmentally unfriendly way. This was laughed out of court yesterday, but the point stands - in this great country of ours, you only have free speech until you piss off someone who employs lawyers.
It's perfectly reasonable that most people don't care about open formats or DRM-free content. But why must you be so asinine towards those of us who do? It's like bitching about seeing a SCO story you don't care about - nobody's forcing you to read it. If it weren't for people who care (about anything, not just open formats), we'd all be going to hell in a handbasket even faster than we are now. Stupid AC Microsoft astroturfers.
Me too! Still no reply. I wonder how the poll would have been affected with a write-in box. Especially if it was Slashdotted then, SCO and McBride could have won easily.
Remember that being a weasel isn't the same as being evil. Serial killers, for example, are evil but they rank low on the weasel scale because they give you exactly what they promise. World-class weasels are people with hidden agendas and cynical motives. They're greedy, selfish, and power-hungry and they think you're not smart enough to stop them. Often they're right, and that's the most annoying thing about weasels.
Assuming you only meant to quote the first quoted paragraph...
The registry concept does not "kick Unix's ass," in fact, it sucks. Yes, it's a single point of failure, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the registry doesn't provide anything that a filesystem optimized for small files (ReiserFS?) doesn't. Sometimes people think the network transparent RPC interfact to the registry is great - how is that different from a network filesystem? The registry is redundant.
Dotfiles suck also. Here, my problem is simply that ~/.* isn't good. I'd much prefer ~/config - it's easier to back up, easier to maintain with symlinks, and most importantly, it doesn't hide things from a curious user.
Other than that, the Unix idea of system-wide configs in/etc and user configs elsewhere is much better than Window's idea of having registry entries generated when the program first runs. The registry also doesn't do comments. If there was one good config-file library, Linux would be perfect - instead, we have many.
int message(istream& in, ostream& out, string search, size_t min_distance, size_t max_distance) { int retval = 1; unsigned int linenum = 1; size_t first = 0; size_t dis, i; char ch; bool match;
// converts search to lower case and removes all but letters for(i = 0; i < search.length(); ++i) { if(!isalpha(search[i])) { search.erase(i, 1); } else { search[i] = tolower(search[i]); } }
// allocate the buffers. size_t datalength = search.length(); size_t length = datalength * max_distance; const char * const data = search.data(); char * const charbuf = new char[length]; streampos * const posbuf = new streampos[length]; unsigned int * const linebuf = new unsigned int[length]; size_t eofs_left = length;
for(i = 0; i < length; ++i) charbuf[i] = 0; in.unsetf(ios::skipws); while(eofs_left) { // the eofs_left system is so that we get all of the file. if(!in.eof()) { in >> ch; if(ch == '\n') ++linenum; if(!isalpha(ch)) continue; else ch = tolower(ch); } else { --eofs_left; ch = 0; } // get and validate a character, put it at first, and increment first. charbuf[first] = ch; posbuf[first] = in.tellg(); linebuf[first] = linenum; first = (first + 1) % length;
Slashdot Mirror
Everybody knows that the african swallow is fastest, with the cheetah and the llama bringing up the rear. It uses a lot of CPU, though.
SCO will say that GPLed code cannot be restricted by export controls, thus violates national security laws.
To quote the GPL:
Depending on how strictly this is interpreted, SCO may or may not have a point - is this limited to "patents and copyrighted interfaces" limitations? It would be better if they left out that clause, or added export laws to it.While I'm at it, the GPL ought to include something affirming that contributors, and specifically not end users, are responsible for verifying the code they contribute is theirs. Also, how about a clause that specifically states that an author can limit what he believes is a derivative work. I once knew someone who thought that Linus's comment at the top of linux/COPYING had no legal force, and that proprietary userland programs are at risk, which is of course crazy.
When exactly will it hit? One modded-up reply said it would hit at 8am UTC (2am CST) on the 28th, which is a few hours from now. But this news story says midday CST tomorrow. So my question is, what are some estimates of when it will strike, and who is in a position to know? Where does this data come from? Also, when will we know what the polarity of the cloud is?
Yeah, Columbus came to America looking for a new route to China. He was wrong, but finding America was still a good idea. (For the Europeans, anyway.) Guess what - there's no way to know what will come from exploration until you try. Unfortunately, at present, there isn't much motivation, real or otherwise, for a manned Mars mission. Before, it was to beat the communists - perhaps now we should start a rumor that Mars is full of terrorists, oil, and weapons of unimaginable destructive power.
Just look what happened to Numenor!
Remember - Eunichs are more stable.
Hi, Bill!
Yeah, OK. The kernel gods on LKML are zealots, but thankfully we have that guardian of sanity, Slashdot's own Anonymous Coward, to set us straight. Sure.
My crystal ball has given me this quote from the future: "The track you attempted to burn has been identified as pirated or indie music. Windows Media Player 11 has disabled your CD-ROM for your protection. Call 1-900-THE-RIAA to re-enable it."
Actual moral of story: Don't store your master's thesis exclusively on a CD-RW! Removeable media has always sucked - if it's that important, use a hard drive, and have multiple backups. When will people learn?
Sunspots follow an 11 year cycle. The economy also tends to be cyclical, though I'm not sure of it's period. I'd be very skeptical of a causal relationship between sunspots and the economy, at least until there was an explanation that made sense and could be tested.
Verbing weirds language.
What you say is true, but there's a big downside. A computer that can recieve spam SMB popups is a computer with a HUGE SECURITY HOLE! So disabling popups, while not a hack in the sense of illegal, is a hack in the sense of a kludge. It would be far preferable for AOL to set up a firewall (after asking).
With an already-existing project, it's easy for a knowledgeable person who needs a feature to look at the source, play with it, and add that feature - something you can never do with closed source unless you work for the company. He's not doing it for pride, or money, or altruism - he needs the feature, he writes it, and he figures "why not contribute it back?" This is how drivers get written, and how many features are added. It also puts an additional selective pressure on projects: if a project is easy for others to understand, than it will get features faster. Modular, well designed, and documented software is therefore more likely to succeed.
I think lawyers are a contributing factor - increasing penalties is fine, but the only way to stop frivolous lawsuits is if lawyers stop filing them. Unfortunately, if you tell your client that you won't persue some frivolous or abusive case, they'll just find somebody else with fewer scruples. So the legal system is brought down to the lowest common denominator. I'm not sure how to fix this, though. In reality, what you suggest may be the only out. Maybe there should be some new failure mode wherby the prosecuting lawyers would get points against them, and if they get too many, they'd be disbarred.
Go for it - competition is good.
The problem is that patents are just too slow and expensive. Contrast that with copyrights, which are free just for opening your mouth. I think a huge Wiki full of prior art is a better idea - though you still need someone like the EFF to foot the bill of defending OSS people in court by using that database.
The only problem is who would propose such a thing. Artists would probably have the best position - a popular, perhaps indie group of artists could get iTunes to consider such a trial. Or, and this is a long shot, Apple could convince the RIAA to try this with one of their artists. The point is, if there were a bunch of experimental evidence that DRM can only hurt sales, perhaps the RIAA would get the drift.
Unfortunately, Apple probably won't lead the crusade to let iTunes be accessed by open source multiplatform clients or a web interface, but if they were to show that DRM free music could work, then the RIAA might allow it and somebody might fill that niche.
Magnatune does most of that.
By that logic, even the most DRM'd music is "yours" because you can put it through the analog hole. Granted, iTunes is currently the least restricted way to get mainstream music, but it's still putting up completely pointless speedbumps, barriers that block the sale for many Slashdotters (obviously, the public doesn't care.)
If music is to legally be sold in a digital format, that digital format NEEDS to have some sort of digital rights management. I challenge you to prove otherwise.
What about CDs? Let's face it, no DRM, ever, will stop determined users from puting music on P2P. This means it's smart to drop the whole DRM thing and give consumers what they want - complete ownership and format choices.
There are some people who only abide by laws or morals because of the consequences. IOW, the reason some people don't shoplift CDs isn't because they think it's wrong or illegal (it is), but because it's not worth the risk. If each CD cost $1500 but was no more risky to steal, these people would shoplift them without batting an eyelash. This is very bad, but it is the reality - in a large enough group of people, there will always be someone who thinks that way. The internet is a just such a group.
There are only two ways to stop these people's mass copyright infringement. One is to increase the risk, which is easy enough to do. Although this could change (Freenet), right now the sources of P2P music are easy to find and sue. For the forseeable future, good watermarking can also trace the source of files on P2P. For the short term, Vorbis serial numbers are sufficient. The second way is to increase the value of legitimate music. To me, this means completely DRM free, preferably -q5 Vorbis downloads with album art. Put up a nice web store, with an optional iTunes-like frontend, and sell high quality rips in a choice of formats and real "ownership," and P2P would no longer be worth the risk or inconvience.
Because, as people here are so quick to point out, iTunes's DRM is so pointless, why does it exist at all?
What happened to free speech? Obviously, there are limits (kiddie porn, yelling "Fire!," slander, copyright infringement), but in general, we are supposed to be able to speak out against things we don't like. It used to be the government you couldn't badmouth, though for the most part, we're over that. Now, however, it's companies.
I'm amazed Slashdot hasn't had more coverage of Caterpillar (as in tractors) suing Disney, trying to get an injunction against Disney releasing Tarzan 2, which portrayed a Caterpillar tractor in an environmentally unfriendly way. This was laughed out of court yesterday, but the point stands - in this great country of ours, you only have free speech until you piss off someone who employs lawyers.
It's perfectly reasonable that most people don't care about open formats or DRM-free content. But why must you be so asinine towards those of us who do? It's like bitching about seeing a SCO story you don't care about - nobody's forcing you to read it. If it weren't for people who care (about anything, not just open formats), we'd all be going to hell in a handbasket even faster than we are now. Stupid AC Microsoft astroturfers.
It's almost spooky how much the description of a weasel matches McBride:
The registry concept does not "kick Unix's ass," in fact, it sucks. Yes, it's a single point of failure, but that's not the worst part. The worst part is that the registry doesn't provide anything that a filesystem optimized for small files (ReiserFS?) doesn't. Sometimes people think the network transparent RPC interfact to the registry is great - how is that different from a network filesystem? The registry is redundant.
Dotfiles suck also. Here, my problem is simply that ~/.* isn't good. I'd much prefer ~/config - it's easier to back up, easier to maintain with symlinks, and most importantly, it doesn't hide things from a curious user.
Other than that, the Unix idea of system-wide configs in /etc and user configs elsewhere is much better than Window's idea of having registry entries generated when the program first runs. The registry also doesn't do comments. If there was one good config-file library, Linux would be perfect - instead, we have many.
int message(istream& in, ostream& out, string search, size_t min_distance, size_t max_distance)
// converts search to lower case and removes all but letters
// allocate the buffers.
// the eofs_left system is so that we get all of the file.
// get and validate a character, put it at first, and increment first.
{
int retval = 1;
unsigned int linenum = 1;
size_t first = 0;
size_t dis, i;
char ch;
bool match;
for(i = 0; i < search.length(); ++i) {
if(!isalpha(search[i])) {
search.erase(i, 1);
} else {
search[i] = tolower(search[i]);
}
}
size_t datalength = search.length();
size_t length = datalength * max_distance;
const char * const data = search.data();
char * const charbuf = new char[length];
streampos * const posbuf = new streampos[length];
unsigned int * const linebuf = new unsigned int[length];
size_t eofs_left = length;
for(i = 0; i < length; ++i) charbuf[i] = 0;
in.unsetf(ios::skipws);
while(eofs_left) {
if(!in.eof()) {
in >> ch;
if(ch == '\n') ++linenum;
if(!isalpha(ch)) continue; else ch = tolower(ch);
} else {
--eofs_left;
ch = 0;
}
charbuf[first] = ch;
posbuf[first] = in.tellg();
linebuf[first] = linenum;
first = (first + 1) % length;
for(dis = min_distance; dis <= max_distance; ++dis) {
match = true;
for(i = 0; i < datalength && match; ++i) {
if(data[i] != charbuf[(first + (i * dis)) % length]) match = false;
}
if(match) {
cout << "each\t" << dis << "\tfrom\t" << posbuf[first] << "\tline\t" << linebuf[first] << endl;
retval = 0;
}
}
}
delete [] charbuf;
delete [] posbuf;
delete [] linebuf;
return retval;
}