Incorrect. It is in fact the best way to advance the law. Otherwise, it is unclear about how the law actually does apply to these types of situations. What actually works well are legal cases where the concepts are tried, and they succeed or fail, but something is learnt and charts a course for how the law is to be used and interpreted in the future.
I believed the same fallacy that you do, but I grew up and realised that this legal churn is in fact productive for society, so long as the integrity of the legal system itself is there, and it charts the right direction.
You can quote statutory law, but you might not understand the big picture. This is typical of what I see on slashdot when it comes to legal issues: a lot of geeks who know how to navigate detail.
Reverse Engineering is a topic for debate, as it is allowed by some jurisdictions, and also by international treaty, also supported by case law.
For example,
The UK CDPA 1988:
" 50BA Observing, studying and testing of computer programs
(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to observe, study or test the functioning of the program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to do.
(2) Where an act is permitted under this section, it is irrelevant whether or not there exists any term or condition in an agreement which purports to prohibit or restrict the act (such terms being, by virtue of section 296A, void).".
The WTO TRIPS agreement, to which the US is a signatory: "Article 9. 2. Copyright protection shall extend to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such."
Copyright law is here to protect the little guys as well.
We maintain a ghosted image of a "developer workstation" with Windows 2000 + Office + MSVC + Rational Tools + etc; and we're using (oldish now) Compaq AP550's - so the hardware is equivalent.
When new developers arrive, or existing drives are corrupted (rare), we just ghost up a machine and boot. In fact, I last suggested that we keep at least one pre-prepared ghost'ed drive available to further speed up the process.
If I could burn DVD's, I would ghost my home machine as a backup occasionaly. Recovery time is far faster than file based backup and restore.
Wow. Active Perl 5.6 is now Active Perl 5.8, and supports Threads let's put the incrementally supported features on the front page even though it doesn't apply to any other Perl installation...
Why is this newsworthy ? Partial specialisation of C++ templates and function templates are C++ 101 - there's nothing new or interesting here. If you're C++ coder and you don't already know about this, then you shouldn't be in your job.
There's no protection in copyright law for copying ideas, style and design (this is why we have patent and design protection). There's nothing to stop one person reading a copyright protected work, and extracting basic ideas, style, themes, etc and using that in their own work.
So, there's nothing that can stop one programmer from looking at one set of code, and then walking away and producing an independent version of similar design, but different expression. This could mean that there are similar functions and mechanisms, but looking at the detail it would be obvious that they might be similar, but are not exact copies.
There's a difference here between commercial strategy of clean-room software development. In clean-room approach, what you're getting around is not just copyright, but issues of commercial confidentiality and so on. Confidentiality is not a problem with open source software.
The FT is taking the lead from this Economist article that appeared on 30th October(http://www.economist.com/printedition/disp layStory.cfm?Story_ID=2177567) suggesting that as a result of the Verisign and ICANN debarcle, that the ITU and related parties have been making noises about regulation of the Internet.
Here's the article (copied for fair use of news reporting, criticism and review):
Time for UN intervention?
Oct 30th 2003 From The Economist print edition
A regime change may topple ICANN, the controversial internet regulator
WHEN Augustine arrived in Carthage, the saint found a seething, bubbling cauldron of wickedness. A similar fate has befallen the controversial internet address regulator, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which hosted its trimestrial public board meeting this week in the Tunisian city. Five years after it was founded as a quasi-private body with the backing of many governments, ICANN now faces its most severe test. The environment for which it was designed has radically changed: the business of selling domain names collapsed; governments are keener to oversee the internet; and ICANN itself proved maladroit in carrying out its tasks. This autumn, these three factors collided. How ICANN handles the situation will determine whether the internet's core infrastructure remains managed by industry rather than by international treaty--and highlights the need to balance stability and innovation.
The most visible dispute is between ICANN and VeriSign, a firm that operates the.com and.net databases (and earns $6 a year per address). In September, VeriSign launched a service that automatically redirected users who mistyped a non-existent.com or.net address to VeriSign's own search engine, where it earned advertising revenue. Alas, this disrupted other internet technologies: it fooled certain spam filters into assuming that some junk e-mail was legitimate, for example. After ICANN threatened legal action, VeriSign agreed to suspend the service.
This shows how much the market for internet addresses has changed. VeriSign needs new services to generate revenue, since selling names and operating the registration system is not as lucrative as it once appeared. In 1998, it had a monopoly on.com and.net addresses; now, after ICANN introduced competition, its market share is roughly 25%. When VeriSign acquired the registration business in 2000 for a staggering $21 billion in shares, it justified the price tag based on the potential to bolt its web-security software on to the underbelly of the internet's address infrastructure. But such synergies failed to materialise. In October, VeriSign sold its retail name-registration business to Pivotal Private Equity for a paltry $100m.
More importantly, VeriSign's willingness to risk antagonising its regulator reveals the extent to which ICANN's authority is in doubt. Some governments feel that they could do a better job. At a pre-meeting in September for the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society, which begins in Geneva in December, a number of countries backed a proposal that a different body, the UN-affiliated International Telecommunication Union, should take on the activities that are currently within ICANN's remit. In policy circles, the idea represents a significant snub to the notion of private-sector management of the internet's addressing system.
The threat of being ousted in favour of the ITU helped to push ICANN to confront VeriSign, to prove that it was up to the task of keeping order on the net. But it also exposed an irony that was made clear at this week's board meeting in Carthage, where ICANN's allies and enemies congregated. In the past, the debate over how to run the internet has focused on the risk that too much government regulation might stall innovation. Indeed, industry and governments themselves
The point is that while everyone argues about the specific things that the UN has or hasn't done, what everyone agrees upon is that the UN provides a forum of debate between parties. There is no where else that all countries can come together, even if they do spit the dummy at each other at times.
Take a straw poll of Belkin Engineers, and you'll probably find that most of them also think that this was a stupid idea. I'm sure its a Marketing decision - no real Engineer I know would sanction such a thing. I know that where I work we've had to do stupid things to keep Marketing happy - and it's always enjoyable when the shit comes back to hit the fan and Marketing takes it in face. This kind of Engineering sport is enjoyable:-).
The other good thing is this: now that it's been so embarrasing for Belkin, we can be reasonably confident that no one else will repeat the idea. Any marketing person who wants to keep their job will make sure of this: delivering and supporting firmware upgrades is not cheap, nor is the loss of goodwill for your product.
Does anyone have time to tell whether any other Belkin products have similar bozo-features ? Or, can we watch Belkin in the next month or two to see whether any other firmware upgrades are released ?
Grow up. The prosecutor couldn't care less about open source software (and probably doesn't even know what it means): what he/she cares about is making a strong case against Ng and the essay aims to help prove that the person was not just an innocent infringer, but was aware of the law. Combined with other evidence (e.g. of cloaking the web site), this makes the case against Ng even stronger, should Ng refute the allegations.
You're trying to read between the lines, and in doing so, you're just inserting things you think that are there, but are not supported by any evidence.
Will that open me to the possibility of a civil suit for the circumvention of rights management information? Effectively I would be working around the DRM on the WSJ (i.e. the agreement to the T&C of the site), and the web site logs would make it clear that it was a request from my DSL static IP ?
Under the DMCA (which is just an interpretation of the WIPO WCT and so has equivalent coverage in other worldwide jurisdictions) that's an infringement of the WSJ's copyright in the article.
Aren't you also now in a precarious position because you have provided means to work around the DRM ? Is it possible that the WSJ could serve a DMCA take-down notice against slashdot to have your information removed ?
You're probably thinking that I'm joking about this, but I'm quite serious!
You seem to be asleep, how do you equate "you may read the DMCA complaint" with "does self-police their content" ? Doesn't that mean that someone else filed the complaint, and google acted in accordance with the DMCA provisions. That is not self-policing. Self-policing would be google somehow deciding _itself_ to screen out contents.
That's a nice idea, but you seem to be talking "pop-law".
The judges and courts are not to have the wool pulled over their eyes, and case law illustrates that when someone is trying to "beat the system" and weasel around the law, then the courts are not usually going to find in their favour.
If you practice law, you will realise that the statutes are not the be-all and end-all of the law: you need to look at case law as well. It is subject to interpretation on the specific facts of the case at hand.
The courts are also quite happy to create new law in these circumstances as well.
Linking per se is not illegal, but linking to infringing material will be, especially when you have reasonable belief that the material is illegal.
In the case of google or a search engine, they have a good defence: file a DMCA take down notice to have the infringing material unlinked. It is unreasonable to expect that google would self-police their content, it's just intractible.
But when you have a site set up, specifically to provide references to infringing material, largely for the purpose of allowing people to access that material, then I'm afraid you probably don't have a strong case. It's already looking bad "in principle", despite any technical issues.
Attempting to "beat the system" by using this approach is really not the way forward for any advocacy over rights. It's effectively trying to cheat around the technical points while in principle supporting copyright infringement.
I think we need to know some more details before blaming one side or another.
Products have defects, and because of this, both hardware and software manufacturers need to be dilligent. Perhaps the real problem is a lack of close co-operation between hardware and software vendors. For example, Windows has a certified driver programme: as much as you may think that this is just marketing, it sets some basic level of guarantee that the driver has been verified to work against your hardware.
Some questions are:
Did LG know of the hardware problem ?
Is it a defect, or a bad design decision ? If a bad design decision, LG may be liable. If a defect, then warranty may only apply.
Had they published this and made software manufacturers aware of it (e.g. does the Windows device driver have code in it to prevent this problem from occurring with the specific model / version numbers of the drives ?)
Did Mandrake inspect LG release notes / details, or query LG, before putting this code into the kernel ? There's an obligation on any software manufacturer to _check the details_, if not by actual testing, then by asking.
Let's wait for the facts. Otherwise, this is sounding much like the usual public ranting you get before someone does a real and credible investigation.
Just about every other poster has been missing the point.
Everyone is talking about the technical issues of whether entire copies of books can be extracted: so basically about what type of copying can take place.
That's not the point.
The point is that the authors have rights in their works, and outside of fair use and limited other exceptions, the authors are entirely able to exercise their copyright and prevent reproduction of their work as they see fit.
Amazon may not have the right to make a copy (i.e. a scanned copy) of the book, irrespective of whether then the users can read/search that copy. A physical book is a different issue: because what you read in B&N with your coffee is that actual physical book: you may have read it, but not copying was performed in the mean time.
I've set up the same configuration (but a lower powered VIA); the power drain is low. Looking at my system statistics, the CPU is typically 0-10% idle (10% because I'm running background processing task). At 533mhz, it doesn't compare to the 2.4ghz of my desktop - but 533mhz is perfect for the requirements of home server.
That's what _you_ think - ever tried asking the musicians ?
This is a bad argument anyway. It's an undisputed fact that digital age makes it easier to copy, but that's not the point. Copyright is protecting the action of whether to copy or not (irrespective of how easy it is to make that copy), and therefore also protecting the investment placed in the creating the world.
Just because it's digital doesn't mean that there was no time and effort gone into its production. The fact that it's digital just changes the economics of distribution, not the economics of production.
Why do you have a problem with this ? The copyright owners deserve to be rewarded. In fact, this is a good thing. We're talking about the Internet where webcasting can be carried out by mostly anyone (at least, the bar is lowered).
This removes the overhead of a costly broadcasting station and probably makes it more possible for non-mainstream artists to have their content played (and remunerated). Certainly that's my experience with local AM/FM radio station: they play the independent labels rather than involving themselves in marketing pushes of bad music for commercial reasons.
Let's take your proposition, though. The copyright owners get nothing. So this means that the funds collected by the webcaster for advertising and everything else (premium subscription?) go entirely to the webcaster, all because the webcast is using a copyright owners content. Sure, that sounds fair: webcast makes it all, copyright owner gets nothing. Great! That's really going to incentivize people to produce music, only to know that everyone else can rip it off without paying the owner.
Are you paying your own bills or is mamma still doing it for you ? Get a grip.
The intelligent approach to this (given many other comments to this story about how manufacturers will now drop Linux drivers and use DriverLoader, etc) is that what this company should be doing is:
(a) developing a common driver interface (CDI) that is portable for both Windows, Linux, BSD, etc; (b) _then_ producing the wrappers that allow existing Windows drivers to adapt to this new driver interface; (c) _then_ convincing manufacturers that they produce to the CDI, and once a CDI driver is creaed, it will work on all platfoms by way of a small harness;
This would be good way to go about it: as it would please all stakeholders and have more of a chance of gaining adoption.
It's important to have perspective here. The Economist is based in London UK and has a decidedly UK/European perspective to it.
My point is that mobiles have taken off spectacularly in Europe (80% penetration), in fact, other articles in the Economist show that household fixed line penetration is reversing: people are dumping fixed lines because they have mobiles.
This means that from a US perspective (which slashdot is) with an expensive, non-standardised and low-penetration market (40%?) lacking the kind of choice in handsets available in Europe with the GSM standard, it may seem strange to suggest that PDA's are dead for mobiles.
However, in Europe, it's a different matter: the sheer critical mass and economies of scale of the mobile handset market make it ripe for overtaking PDA's.
It's this type of information that does OSS a disservice - making it look amateur and unprofessional.
You used an pseudo-scientific method, i.e. your graphs are nice, your data points are nice, but you forgot the fundamentals of testing: you didn't clarify the exact projects you were testing (you should have asked the project leads for advice on which versions of the projects to test against), nor did you asked for feedback and determine the reasons for the anomalous conditions (e.g. the FreeBSD maxprocs could have been resolved by a quick question to a FreeBSD expert). This is a lowbrow technical approach.
Not only that, you presented the pseudo-science results to a large Linux congress, so that while Linux does perform well (undisputed) and everyone can pat themselves on the back, you make the congress look amateur and unprofessional.
The result is that many of us that do know a thing or two about methodology, experimentation, engineering, etc, will simply interpret your results as providing a "rough general guideline", but "leaving too many questions unanswered" and continue to think that "a lot of the linux community is still amateur and unprofessional".
Slashdot Mirror
Incorrect. It is in fact the best way to advance the law. Otherwise, it is unclear about how the law actually does apply to these types of situations. What actually works well are legal cases where the concepts are tried, and they succeed or fail, but something is learnt and charts a course for how the law is to be used and interpreted in the future.
I believed the same fallacy that you do, but I grew up and realised that this legal churn is in fact productive for society, so long as the integrity of the legal system itself is there, and it charts the right direction.
You can quote statutory law, but you might not understand the big picture. This is typical of what I see on slashdot when it comes to legal issues: a lot of geeks who know how to navigate detail.
Reverse Engineering is a topic for debate, as it is allowed by some jurisdictions, and also by international treaty, also supported by case law.
For example,
The UK CDPA 1988:
" 50BA Observing, studying and testing of computer programs
(1) It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to observe, study or test the functioning of the program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underlie any element of the program if he does so while performing any of the acts of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or storing the program which he is entitled to do.
(2) Where an act is permitted under this section, it is irrelevant whether or not there exists any term or condition in an agreement which purports to prohibit or restrict the act (such terms being, by virtue of section 296A, void).".
The WTO TRIPS agreement, to which the US is a signatory:
"Article 9. 2. Copyright protection shall extend to expressions and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such."
Copyright law is here to protect the little guys as well.
I can second this.
We maintain a ghosted image of a "developer workstation" with Windows 2000 + Office + MSVC + Rational Tools + etc; and we're using (oldish now) Compaq AP550's - so the hardware is equivalent.
When new developers arrive, or existing drives are corrupted (rare), we just ghost up a machine and boot. In fact, I last suggested that we keep at least one pre-prepared ghost'ed drive available to further speed up the process.
If I could burn DVD's, I would ghost my home machine as a backup occasionaly. Recovery time is far faster than file based backup and restore.
Wow. Active Perl 5.6 is now Active Perl 5.8, and supports Threads let's put the incrementally supported features on the front page even though it doesn't apply to any other Perl installation
Why is this newsworthy ? Partial specialisation of C++ templates and function templates are C++ 101 - there's nothing new or interesting here. If you're C++ coder and you don't already know about this, then you shouldn't be in your job.
Are we going to repeat this for other languages ?
There's no protection in copyright law for copying ideas, style and design (this is why we have patent and design protection). There's nothing to stop one person reading a copyright protected work, and extracting basic ideas, style, themes, etc and using that in their own work.
So, there's nothing that can stop one programmer from looking at one set of code, and then walking away and producing an independent version of similar design, but different expression. This could mean that there are similar functions and mechanisms, but looking at the detail it would be obvious that they might be similar, but are not exact copies.
There's a difference here between commercial strategy of clean-room software development. In clean-room approach, what you're getting around is not just copyright, but issues of commercial confidentiality and so on. Confidentiality is not a problem with open source software.
The FT is taking the lead from this Economist article that appeared on 30th October(http://www.economist.com/printedition/disp layStory.cfm?Story_ID=2177567) suggesting that as a result of the Verisign and ICANN debarcle, that the ITU and related parties have been making noises about regulation of the Internet.
.com and .net databases (and earns $6 a year per address). In September, VeriSign launched a service that automatically redirected users who mistyped a non-existent .com or .net address to VeriSign's own search engine, where it earned advertising revenue. Alas, this disrupted other internet technologies: it fooled certain spam filters into assuming that some junk e-mail was legitimate, for example. After ICANN threatened legal action, VeriSign agreed to suspend the service.
.com and .net addresses; now, after ICANN introduced competition, its market share is roughly 25%. When VeriSign acquired the registration business in 2000 for a staggering $21 billion in shares, it justified the price tag based on the potential to bolt its web-security software on to the underbelly of the internet's address infrastructure. But such synergies failed to materialise. In October, VeriSign sold its retail name-registration business to Pivotal Private Equity for a paltry $100m.
Here's the article (copied for fair use of news reporting, criticism and review):
Time for UN intervention?
Oct 30th 2003
From The Economist print edition
A regime change may topple ICANN, the controversial internet regulator
WHEN Augustine arrived in Carthage, the saint found a seething, bubbling cauldron of wickedness. A similar fate has befallen the controversial internet address regulator, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which hosted its trimestrial public board meeting this week in the Tunisian city. Five years after it was founded as a quasi-private body with the backing of many governments, ICANN now faces its most severe test. The environment for which it was designed has radically changed: the business of selling domain names collapsed; governments are keener to oversee the internet; and ICANN itself proved maladroit in carrying out its tasks. This autumn, these three factors collided. How ICANN handles the situation will determine whether the internet's core infrastructure remains managed by industry rather than by international treaty--and highlights the need to balance stability and innovation.
The most visible dispute is between ICANN and VeriSign, a firm that operates the
This shows how much the market for internet addresses has changed. VeriSign needs new services to generate revenue, since selling names and operating the registration system is not as lucrative as it once appeared. In 1998, it had a monopoly on
More importantly, VeriSign's willingness to risk antagonising its regulator reveals the extent to which ICANN's authority is in doubt. Some governments feel that they could do a better job. At a pre-meeting in September for the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society, which begins in Geneva in December, a number of countries backed a proposal that a different body, the UN-affiliated International Telecommunication Union, should take on the activities that are currently within ICANN's remit. In policy circles, the idea represents a significant snub to the notion of private-sector management of the internet's addressing system.
The threat of being ousted in favour of the ITU helped to push ICANN to confront VeriSign, to prove that it was up to the task of keeping order on the net. But it also exposed an irony that was made clear at this week's board meeting in Carthage, where ICANN's allies and enemies congregated. In the past, the debate over how to run the internet has focused on the risk that too much government regulation might stall innovation. Indeed, industry and governments themselves
You'll get a lot of argument over this.
The point is that while everyone argues about the specific things that the UN has or hasn't done, what everyone agrees upon is that the UN provides a forum of debate between parties. There is no where else that all countries can come together, even if they do spit the dummy at each other at times.
Take a straw poll of Belkin Engineers, and you'll probably find that most of them also think that this was a stupid idea. I'm sure its a Marketing decision - no real Engineer I know would sanction such a thing. I know that where I work we've had to do stupid things to keep Marketing happy - and it's always enjoyable when the shit comes back to hit the fan and Marketing takes it in face. This kind of Engineering sport is enjoyable
The other good thing is this: now that it's been so embarrasing for Belkin, we can be reasonably confident that no one else will repeat the idea. Any marketing person who wants to keep their job will make sure of this: delivering and supporting firmware upgrades is not cheap, nor is the loss of goodwill for your product.
Does anyone have time to tell whether any other Belkin products have similar bozo-features ? Or, can we watch Belkin in the next month or two to see whether any other firmware upgrades are released ?
Grow up. The prosecutor couldn't care less about open source software (and probably doesn't even know what it means): what he/she cares about is making a strong case against Ng and the essay aims to help prove that the person was not just an innocent infringer, but was aware of the law. Combined with other evidence (e.g. of cloaking the web site), this makes the case against Ng even stronger, should Ng refute the allegations.
You're trying to read between the lines, and in doing so, you're just inserting things you think that are there, but are not supported by any evidence.
Will that open me to the possibility of a civil suit for the circumvention of rights management information? Effectively I would be working around the DRM on the WSJ (i.e. the agreement to the T&C of the site), and the web site logs would make it clear that it was a request from my DSL static IP ?
Under the DMCA (which is just an interpretation of the WIPO WCT and so has equivalent coverage in other worldwide jurisdictions) that's an infringement of the WSJ's copyright in the article.
Aren't you also now in a precarious position because you have provided means to work around the DRM ? Is it possible that the WSJ could serve a DMCA take-down notice against slashdot to have your information removed ?
You're probably thinking that I'm joking about this, but I'm quite serious!
You seem to be asleep, how do you equate "you may read the DMCA complaint" with "does self-police their content" ? Doesn't that mean that someone else filed the complaint, and google acted in accordance with the DMCA provisions. That is not self-policing. Self-policing would be google somehow deciding _itself_ to screen out contents.
That's a nice idea, but you seem to be talking "pop-law".
The judges and courts are not to have the wool pulled over their eyes, and case law illustrates that when someone is trying to "beat the system" and weasel around the law, then the courts are not usually going to find in their favour.
If you practice law, you will realise that the statutes are not the be-all and end-all of the law: you need to look at case law as well. It is subject to interpretation on the specific facts of the case at hand.
The courts are also quite happy to create new law in these circumstances as well.
Linking per se is not illegal, but linking to infringing material will be, especially when you have reasonable belief that the material is illegal.
In the case of google or a search engine, they have a good defence: file a DMCA take down notice to have the infringing material unlinked. It is unreasonable to expect that google would self-police their content, it's just intractible.
But when you have a site set up, specifically to provide references to infringing material, largely for the purpose of allowing people to access that material, then I'm afraid you probably don't have a strong case. It's already looking bad "in principle", despite any technical issues.
Attempting to "beat the system" by using this approach is really not the way forward for any advocacy over rights. It's effectively trying to cheat around the technical points while in principle supporting copyright infringement.
I think we need to know some more details before blaming one side or another.
Products have defects, and because of this, both hardware and software manufacturers need to be dilligent. Perhaps the real problem is a lack of close co-operation between hardware and software vendors. For example, Windows has a certified driver programme: as much as you may think that this is just marketing, it sets some basic level of guarantee that the driver has been verified to work against your hardware.
Some questions are:
Did LG know of the hardware problem ?
Is it a defect, or a bad design decision ? If a bad design decision, LG may be liable. If a defect, then warranty may only apply.
Had they published this and made software manufacturers aware of it (e.g. does the Windows device driver have code in it to prevent this problem from occurring with the specific model / version numbers of the drives ?)
Did Mandrake inspect LG release notes / details, or query LG, before putting this code into the kernel ? There's an obligation on any software manufacturer to _check the details_, if not by actual testing, then by asking.
Let's wait for the facts. Otherwise, this is sounding much like the usual public ranting you get before someone does a real and credible investigation.
Just about every other poster has been missing the point.
Everyone is talking about the technical issues of whether entire copies of books can be extracted: so basically about what type of copying can take place.
That's not the point.
The point is that the authors have rights in their works, and outside of fair use and limited other exceptions, the authors are entirely able to exercise their copyright and prevent reproduction of their work as they see fit.
Amazon may not have the right to make a copy (i.e. a scanned copy) of the book, irrespective of whether then the users can read/search that copy. A physical book is a different issue: because what you read in B&N with your coffee is that actual physical book: you may have read it, but not copying was performed in the mean time.
I've set up the same configuration (but a lower powered VIA); the power drain is low. Looking at my system statistics, the CPU is typically 0-10% idle (10% because I'm running background processing task). At 533mhz, it doesn't compare to the 2.4ghz of my desktop - but 533mhz is perfect for the requirements of home server.
Because of "getting brushed by VS's Customer Service", it can be considered in the public interest for him to take the matter elsewhere.
Society becomes bad if don't allow this to happen.
That's what _you_ think - ever tried asking the musicians ?
This is a bad argument anyway. It's an undisputed fact that digital age makes it easier to copy, but that's not the point. Copyright is protecting the action of whether to copy or not (irrespective of how easy it is to make that copy), and therefore also protecting the investment placed in the creating the world.
Just because it's digital doesn't mean that there was no time and effort gone into its production. The fact that it's digital just changes the economics of distribution, not the economics of production.
Why do you have a problem with this ? The copyright owners deserve to be rewarded. In fact, this is a good thing. We're talking about the Internet where webcasting can be carried out by mostly anyone (at least, the bar is lowered).
This removes the overhead of a costly broadcasting station and probably makes it more possible for non-mainstream artists to have their content played (and remunerated). Certainly that's my experience with local AM/FM radio station: they play the independent labels rather than involving themselves in marketing pushes of bad music for commercial reasons.
Let's take your proposition, though. The copyright owners get nothing. So this means that the funds collected by the webcaster for advertising and everything else (premium subscription?) go entirely to the webcaster, all because the webcast is using a copyright owners content. Sure, that sounds fair: webcast makes it all, copyright owner gets nothing. Great! That's really going to incentivize people to produce music, only to know that everyone else can rip it off without paying the owner.
Are you paying your own bills or is mamma still doing it for you ? Get a grip.
If you have to ask slashdot for advice on building a mission critical data center, I think that you should resign and hand over to someone else.
"from what I've heard it's damn near impossible to get datasheets from them"
Have you asked them yet ?
A quick search reveals mailing lists where VIA engineers freely handed out technical data sheets for earlier models.
The intelligent approach to this (given many other comments to this story about how manufacturers will now drop Linux drivers and use DriverLoader, etc) is that what this company should be doing is:
(a) developing a common driver interface (CDI) that is portable for both Windows, Linux, BSD, etc;
(b) _then_ producing the wrappers that allow existing Windows drivers to adapt to this new driver interface;
(c) _then_ convincing manufacturers that they produce to the CDI, and once a CDI driver is creaed, it will work on all platfoms by way of a small harness;
This would be good way to go about it: as it would please all stakeholders and have more of a chance of gaining adoption.
It's important to have perspective here. The Economist is based in London UK and has a decidedly UK/European perspective to it.
My point is that mobiles have taken off spectacularly in Europe (80% penetration), in fact, other articles in the Economist show that household fixed line penetration is reversing: people are dumping fixed lines because they have mobiles.
This means that from a US perspective (which slashdot is) with an expensive, non-standardised and low-penetration market (40%?) lacking the kind of choice in handsets available in Europe with the GSM standard, it may seem strange to suggest that PDA's are dead for mobiles.
However, in Europe, it's a different matter: the sheer critical mass and economies of scale of the mobile handset market make it ripe for overtaking PDA's.
It's this type of information that does OSS a disservice - making it look amateur and unprofessional.
You used an pseudo-scientific method, i.e. your graphs are nice, your data points are nice, but you forgot the fundamentals of testing: you didn't clarify the exact projects you were testing (you should have asked the project leads for advice on which versions of the projects to test against), nor did you asked for feedback and determine the reasons for the anomalous conditions (e.g. the FreeBSD maxprocs could have been resolved by a quick question to a FreeBSD expert). This is a lowbrow technical approach.
Not only that, you presented the pseudo-science results to a large Linux congress, so that while Linux does perform well (undisputed) and everyone can pat themselves on the back, you make the congress look amateur and unprofessional.
The result is that many of us that do know a thing or two about methodology, experimentation, engineering, etc, will simply interpret your results as providing a "rough general guideline", but "leaving too many questions unanswered" and continue to think that "a lot of the linux community is still amateur and unprofessional".