No civilized nation produces crap like the teletubbies and Pokemon.
I don't know, the Japanese making money off of Pokemon and the Power Rangers and every other goofy-ass trend sort of reminds me of Manhattan being bought for a handful of beads. It's like other nations have realized that US consumers can't resist the lure of shiny things.
Maybe it should be "no civilized nation consumes crap like Pokemon and the teletubbies"
Sun hasn't just bitched and moaned- they've filed legal action against MS in the states, and maybe elsewhere. There is a difference between complaining and taking legal action against a company that violates the terms of your agreement with them.
I'd wait before buying up to the VII. Palm has announced that wireless access will be available on all their Palm lines (the V and the III, including the color model) soon, probably by the end of the year, if I recall. Adding wireless capabilities to the IIIxe will obsolete the VII, which is basically just a III with that nifty antenna on the side. Plus, they'll be more options once they add wireless to the whole line.. There was an article on/. a little while ago in the palm section on the announcement, which might be found here.
In most record stores in the US, you cannot listen to music before buying it, that I know of. Or if you can, they do a good job of making it unclear that it is allowed. Some stores do offer 'listening stations' where you can hear music off of certain selected CD's that the store is choosing to promote. Sales policies are also usually set to discourage returning music if you don't like it. The policy at most stores is that once the package is opened, you can only return it for the same thing (to allow you to get rid of defective media).
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:Napsters is a Service, not a Product
on
Two-Faced Napster?
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· Score: 2
But Napster is more actively involved in the exchange than that. If you ran a bar and posted on the wall a list of the whores currently in the bar, and their description, and helped the Johns find the hooker they were looking for, and then put a big sign outside the bar saying "Come here for hookers", than I would say that you're liable in the event of a prostitution bust.
Napster does not just provide an open forum that might be abused to exchange MP3's. That's more like FTP. It maintains databases with lists of MP3's. It is becoming actively involved in the exchange by indexing the files currently inside the network centrally. If they are taking the clearly active step of collecting file information and processing queries against those files, than it seems that they are responsable for more actively attempting to ensure that copyrighted material stays off the system.
None of the things that you mention are illegal. According to the terms of the DMCA that bans means of avoiding copy-control products, DeCSS might be. Gun manufacturers cannot really be held liable as long as they sell their actual product in accordance with the law, and there is no question that selling specs or blueprints for guns is legal. The sourcecode for DeCSS can be used to create something potentially illegal, which is where the trouble comes. Providing a legal tool is not a crime- be it a gun, a knife, or a potato peeler, as long as it is sold in accordance with the law (which is where the gun manufacturers could be exposed to liablity- if it is illegal for so many felons to own guns, how are they getting them? It's more likely that the individual reseller will get dinged, though). Providing an illegal tool- LSD, high-yield explosives, is obsiously illegal. Providing a description of an illegal tool- bomb recipes, LSD recipes, is legal, as long as they are not used in commiting a crime. If I can prove you gave Timmy McVeigh the recipe for a high-yield fertilizer bomb, you can be held liable in the crime. So, if a tool created from the DeCSS source is illegal, than the source is legal to publish, but you incur liability if the illegal tool derived from it is used in a crime.
The design of a typical 500 year old cathedral is actually mainly based on functionality
Partially true- if it were wholly true, all cathedrals would be identical. And even given the similarities in cathedrals, it is still clear that their design is influenced a great deal by personal (or communal) expression as much as functionality. Why are cathedrals in the shape of a cross, with the main alter at the meeting of the two beams? Why are there so many upward-pointing structures (spires, steeples, the pointed-topped arches)? Why were they built to that size at all, with huge vaulted ceilings and massive internal fixtures? Functionality controlled how these features were achieved (ie- flying buttresses et al.), but why set out to create those features at all? If the people who had conceived of and built the cathedrals had not been religious people, there design(not to mention existance) would have been wholly different. Features were chosen, based on what the designers and patrons wanted the building to express, and then the means to achieve that vision were used where necesary.
A piece of code is no more expressive than an accountant's books or a differential equation.
Not so. A DifEq or the bank books are just a way of cenceptualizing an existing phenomenon. The equation describes and predicts behavior of something- a moving object or a wave, the books describe the state and history of a bank account. They describe and nothing more. Code on the other hand, both describes and creates. If I code a beautiful GUI, is that any less of a creative expression than any other picture, be it in a marketing campaign or the Louvre? I decide how the problem is to be solved. Looking at the problem, you could not predict the precise way in which I as opposed to someone else will solve it. Maybe I think C is appropriate, and someone else would rather use pure assembly, or C++. The solution is unique to me, not the the problem
Computing is not an art, it is a science governed by mathematical laws and logical premises. There is no creativity involved, merely a process of logical deduction and algorithmic optimization
It seems that if that were true, most source would be written by computers by now. Coding is more than a logical batch process. It involves conceptualizing potentially new solutions to existing problems. A novel method of solving a problem has as much to do with the person solving as it does the problem. It is the creation of a model and a method, and those are both creative acts.
Expression does not have to be poetry; we aren't talking about "what is art" here. Source code can constitue expression, because it describes the way in which you (the coder) uniquely feel a set of problems ought to be solved. Consider this: I need to solve a complex problem, so I come up with a solution. I write a paper expressing my method of solving the problem, and why I think it is most appropriate (talking here about engineering-style problems, where solutions have to take into account existing conditions and other factors, not a pure-mathematics problem where solutions can be proved). Then I make some psuedocode describing the procedure, with comments explaining certain orderings or optimizations. Finally, I sit down and pound it out in C, or Java, or Perl, or (insert favored language here), creating a source file that includes the methods that I described for solving the problem expressed in code, with comments that explain why a particular statement is in a certain order, or why certain optimizations or algorythms are appropriate at a certain juncture. I think most people would say that the first of these three examples is expression. Now, why, I ask, can the last two be considered any differently, simply because they do not use regular English (or other) grammer? I am yet to see a reason why an idea expressed in one form (a paper) is expression, but the same idea expressed in another way (code) is nothing.
It's called fecundism, and it is a pretty big issue for a lot of religious groups, particularly the monotheists. Most religions that embrace fecundism have their background in being the tribal god of some specific group of people. The commandment 'be fruitful and multiply' has a lot of meaning for a tribe that may be in careful equilibrium with a lot of other groups. A change in breeding rates could be the difference between holding onto your land or going extinct due to conquest or assimilation. Unfortunately, most of these doctrines have never been updated for a modern world where the size of the population can eventually exceeed the ability of the planet to provide resources. A religious scholar recently wrote a letter to the Pope protesting his stance on contraception based on the ideas of fecundism being the root for much church rhetoric on the issue. He also brought in the perspective of non-fecundist religions (Buddhism was the example he used) as an alternative view of the role of human reproduction. I doubt it would sway the Pope, but it is in interesting read in Tricycle if you're interested.
I think this is an issue of fair use and not of muzzling a free press or free distribution of information. It is acknowledged as law that some information is owned- i.e movies and music. Putting aside the morality of that decision for a moment, if we assume that to be true, the fudamental issue being debated in this case is: what are you buying when you purchse the right to use someone else's information? No one has stopped someone from distributing publicly available and non-owned information. Rather, we are seeing a settlement of an issue concerning fair use, which is different from free expression and a free press. Freedom of expression is what you can do with information that you gather or create- Fair Use is what you can do with the information that someone else puts out as expression. And to have balance, we need some of both. Certainly there should not be restrictions on what I can say that are my own opinions. But we restrict someone presenting patently false information as truth in the interest of a party damaged by it. That is what libel is about. Getting rid of libel causes problems for everyone, even if it is sometimes abused, because it becomes impossible to tell what is correct anymore. If company X tells me that company Y's product kills babies, than I don't but it. Company Y is harmed, and I loose the use of their product. Everyone looses, except company X, which probably folds after disgruntled company Y employees spread rumors that company X releases harmful levels of Carbon Monoxide into your living room.
In Fair Use, it is the same issue. The content is 'expressed' not by the end user, but by the company producing it. If there are no restrictions on what does and does not constitute Fair Use, than all control is lost. You're own words can be used against you, or used without any compensation, reducing the incentive for creation. The public as a whole then loses the benefits of that expression.
Fair Use is not about the government telling you what you can or cannot say, or what of your own information can be made available- it determines what you can do with information that is belong to someone else.
I would actually like to see King's attempt suceed. Yeah, there are some who think that it is a cash grab or a ego-trip on his part, but all that aside, I'm getting bored waiting for a real online bookstore. That is, one where I can buy a book at reduced cost (given that the publisher gets around all the actual production costs) from a full selection of existing, published authors and books. I somehow came by an electronic copy of Ender's Game more than a month ago in plain ASCII. I ran it through a Palm DOC converter, and read it on Aportis in my spare moments. I loved it. I don't get wicked screen eye from my Palm the way I do with the desk/laptop, and the Palm is a good size to simulate the feel of reading a book. I've done the same thing with some Gutenberg texts, but I'm just as interested in being able to do it with some. . . shall we say more current material. Or if they at least had a wider selection of Dostoevsky novels.
Alas, I wonder at the prospects of a publisher 1)taking a gamble at making money on online electronic distributin 2)publishers being willing to convert exisitng hard copy into e-text, and 3)publishers being willing to send out books in a universally intelligble format that doesn't require a special reader or software, so that they can be read anywhere one sees fit. King succeeding on this one could make some distributors and publishers think a little harder about the possibilities (and profitability) of online distribution.
You don't think that the interpretation of intellectual property (a legal fiction to begin with) influences how people make their livings, or how well they will be educated?
I think that it definately will have an effect. I think that the effect will, however, be less than the effect of segregation and the systems that existed before the Civil Rights movement. If I seemed to diminish the impact of the Fair Use issue, it is only because I think that it's moral implications pale beside generations of officially enshrined injustice. Fair Use has very important implications, but the struggle to defend Fair Use remains, in my mind, less significant than the struggle for Civil Rights
But not all unjust laws are equally unjust. I doubt that Dr. King saw every possible legal issue as a battle of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil. And if he did, I must respectfully disagree with him. There are shades of injustice, and some are worse than others. All tha I am maintaining is that the injustice perpetrated by restricting the fair use of DVD's is less than the injustice perpetrated by systematically depriving a large portion of the population of rights to equal employment, equal access to all public services, and equal rights to be free from persecution.
I agree that the Betamax analogy was a bit weak. I think what I was trying to say is that I am confused why people are pitching their money into DVD's that are made by the MPAA, knowing 1)there is not a player available, and 2)the MPAA will continue to make money off of the deal as long as people continue to pay for the format.
I definately can see fair use considerations, but I wonder why people are fighting so hard for the closed format of a media conglomerate. I never maintained that what the lawsuit is doing is a vioaltion of fair use, which is serious business. I meerly think that comparing it to the civil rights struggly is inflationary language. The term Nazi gets bandied about already for perpetrators of relatively minor violations (I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one reference to "SS-like corporate thugs" or something of the sort somewhere on this page), and I see this as a related issue. People infringing on fair use and intellectual property is a serious issue, but nowhere near as serious as the systematic deprivation of the fundamental rights of millions of Americans (or anyone else, for that matter).
Here here. I find it kind of frightening that people's comprehension of the pre-segregation world is so confused that they can equate violating fundamental rights of movement and association with the right to watch a movie. Even if there are larger intellectual property issues, people need to recall that the Civil Rights movement was in no way about abstract concepts of freedom. It was about people putting their lives in danger every day they went out, to try and gaurantee the saftey and freedom of those that came after them. Yeah, corporations can play legally dirty when their bottom line is at stake. But no one's going to get lynched over this trial, or over how they watch their DVD's. Martin Luther King's struggle cost him his life so that the people he was fighting for would have a chance to do basic, simple things without fear, while being accorded basic human respect.
I'm sorry that people can't play their DVD's on Linux. I really am. But comparing your ability to watch a movie to someone's ability to make a living for themselves, to attend a decent school- that is a confusion of scale that I just don't understand.
And yes, I do appreciate the intellectual property cosiderations. I think that the DMCA is junk, and I would love it if more manufacturers would embrace open standards. But if you don't like it, why not abandon it? You buy a media format knowing what platforms it works on. No one buys Betamax expecting it was their god given right to have it work in a VHS machine. So DVD doesn't work on your machine? Screw 'em. Don't buy DVD's. Watch regular videotapes. It might inconvenience you, but not nearly as much as minorities were "inconvenienced" by generations of segregation, prejudice, and violence. If enough people drop it, the manufacturers will relent, or the format will die.
But there is no need to demean someone else's struggles by comparing the life and death of a good percentage of the American population to the tribulations of a group of movie buffs.
OK, like this in that it involved a big string. It seems like NASA tried a shuttle experiment a while back that involved dragging a satelite or probe from a big long wire off of the back of the shuttle. The tether broke, and the experiment was abandoned. It seems as if the object at the end of the tether was going to be used to generate power, to reduce fuel costs. Anyone remember the details on this one? It was a few years back, IIRC.
First, WSP says "Support all standards! Drop any development on the old codebase and work on the new codebase! We'll whine unless you don't."
WSP urged Netscape to comply with standards on its next release of the browser. Frankly, for NS and MS I think that standards compliance should be a basic expectation, and not a special favor that advocacy groups have to ask for. Secondly, the reason that NS dropped work in the old codebase was that it was a total mess. They didn't think that the effort that was needed to put it into shape was justified. So they dumped the old base. I think to imply that WSP was responsable for Netscape's decision overstates their influence. Yeah, WSP can whine. But they whine about MS complience too. NS could have taken the same route as MS. Instead, they chose to be complient, and they chose to discard the old codebase. Netscape had taken big projects before, and should have known the risks and scale of what they were undertaking before they went in. And frankly, the WSP isn't the only body saying that they're taking too long; people on every side of the issue seem to agree that NS is missing the boat. No one expects software from the sky, but you do expect software to be released before it (or the standards it supports) becomes obsolete.
First, many people write pages to be compliant with 20% market share; just not enough, it seems.
I should clarify; I don't mean that people won't write pages that work. I mean that people will not take the time to make things fully standards complient if it is easier to do things in IE that look right on 80-86% of screens. One of the complaints on IE's standards complience is that it is too lenient; by violating standards, IE has made it easier to make a page that "looks right". And there are people who would rather take the easy path to "looks right" rather than work through a more complex method that is fully complient.
As for the continuing release. . . 1)As the letter says, they have never fixed some of the fundamental problems with the 4.x series. It is still a worse standards violater than more current IE releases, and is slow and oversized. Mozilla has released versions in the form of milestones and nightlies, but they were pre-alpha until a few months ago (March, IIRC). Average users are not willing to (and probably should not) install pre-alpha, or even beta quality software. Large companies are not willing to risk irritating their customers by bundling pre-alpha software with their product. Bottom line is the releases that NS has had have not had what it takes to make a dent in the dominance of IE.
I have been interested in the Mozilla project for a while, and have done some work for them when I've had the chance. Nonetheless, I see this as more than "pointless whining". Mozilla has taken a long time to complete, which makes since,as they abandoned the old codebase. But I can't help but feel that some of the delay is not just a product of that change. Too many features have been crammed into the "platform", making it more bloated and complex than it need be. The Milstone release schedule that they created is two months behind; by the measures of the Mozilla project, we should be getting Milestone 18 within the next week, whereas we haven't actually seen MS 17 yet. And this is after the date has slipped several times. Time may do a better job of killing NS and the standards they're trying to support than MS ever could. Mozilla and Netscape took up the banner of maintaining open standards, and right now they're not even on the battlefield.
Continuing to periodically "upgrade" your old browser while failing to address its basic flaws has made it appear that you still consider Navigator 4 viable.
The continued existence of 4.x is due to the fact that there is nothing to replace it. People who don't want to use IE or use a platform where IE is unavailable have no choice but to use a 4.x release. Mozilla/Netscape 6 is still an early beta development project. 4.x is still the Netscape in-production browser, solely because of the absence of a new release. If you look at a fine level break down of browser usage, most people have already switched to IE 5.0 at least if they're using Internet explorer. If there was a Netscape 5/6, than you would assume that a comperable portion of NS 4.x users would jump to the new release.
I think what they were implying was that if NS doesn't get it in gear, than by the time the next version of NS comes out, the standards they were writing for will be irrelevant. The web will have moved on, and de facto standards will have taken over. No one is going to rewrite thousands of pages of HTML to be more compatable with a 20% market share browser, all the while loosing features they've built into non-complient HTML. If Netscape had released in a time frame when they could call the browser v 5.0 without looking hopelessly out of date, they could have maintained and recovered market share, which gives people an incintive to write to the standards. By delaying the browser release, they hemorraged market share, and as a result there is no incentive to write to standards. What the guys were saying is that a slightly less standards complient browser that released on time and gradually moved HTML authors and editors towards complient HTML would be better than a two year old browser that fits the standards to a T but is ignored by the world at large.
The "sell one person at a time" really throws a wrench into things. For one thing, this means that AMD can't sell bulk anywhere. They have to handle direct, individual level sales, which is a significant administrative burden. Secondly, they're never going to make enough money on individual Mobo sales. Manufacturers make their money selling to retailers and wholesalers in bulk. They cut out admin and other costs. Turning any profit for AMD would be very unlikely, once they've gone to the trouble of developing a board (especially since that isn't their area) and building the infrastructure to sell and move the things.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, the Japanese making money off of Pokemon and the Power Rangers and every other goofy-ass trend sort of reminds me of Manhattan being bought for a handful of beads. It's like other nations have realized that US consumers can't resist the lure of shiny things.
Maybe it should be "no civilized nation consumes crap like Pokemon and the teletubbies"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Sun hasn't just bitched and moaned- they've filed legal action against MS in the states, and maybe elsewhere. There is a difference between complaining and taking legal action against a company that violates the terms of your agreement with them.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Viddy the sig.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I'd wait before buying up to the VII. Palm has announced that wireless access will be available on all their Palm lines (the V and the III, including the color model) soon, probably by the end of the year, if I recall. Adding wireless capabilities to the IIIxe will obsolete the VII, which is basically just a III with that nifty antenna on the side. Plus, they'll be more options once they add wireless to the whole line.. There was an article on /. a little while ago in the palm section on the announcement, which might be found here.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
In most record stores in the US, you cannot listen to music before buying it, that I know of. Or if you can, they do a good job of making it unclear that it is allowed. Some stores do offer 'listening stations' where you can hear music off of certain selected CD's that the store is choosing to promote. Sales policies are also usually set to discourage returning music if you don't like it. The policy at most stores is that once the package is opened, you can only return it for the same thing (to allow you to get rid of defective media).
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Napster does not just provide an open forum that might be abused to exchange MP3's. That's more like FTP. It maintains databases with lists of MP3's. It is becoming actively involved in the exchange by indexing the files currently inside the network centrally. If they are taking the clearly active step of collecting file information and processing queries against those files, than it seems that they are responsable for more actively attempting to ensure that copyrighted material stays off the system.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
None of the things that you mention are illegal. According to the terms of the DMCA that bans means of avoiding copy-control products, DeCSS might be. Gun manufacturers cannot really be held liable as long as they sell their actual product in accordance with the law, and there is no question that selling specs or blueprints for guns is legal. The sourcecode for DeCSS can be used to create something potentially illegal, which is where the trouble comes. Providing a legal tool is not a crime- be it a gun, a knife, or a potato peeler, as long as it is sold in accordance with the law (which is where the gun manufacturers could be exposed to liablity- if it is illegal for so many felons to own guns, how are they getting them? It's more likely that the individual reseller will get dinged, though). Providing an illegal tool- LSD, high-yield explosives, is obsiously illegal. Providing a description of an illegal tool- bomb recipes, LSD recipes, is legal, as long as they are not used in commiting a crime. If I can prove you gave Timmy McVeigh the recipe for a high-yield fertilizer bomb, you can be held liable in the crime. So, if a tool created from the DeCSS source is illegal, than the source is legal to publish, but you incur liability if the illegal tool derived from it is used in a crime.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Partially true- if it were wholly true, all cathedrals would be identical. And even given the similarities in cathedrals, it is still clear that their design is influenced a great deal by personal (or communal) expression as much as functionality. Why are cathedrals in the shape of a cross, with the main alter at the meeting of the two beams? Why are there so many upward-pointing structures (spires, steeples, the pointed-topped arches)? Why were they built to that size at all, with huge vaulted ceilings and massive internal fixtures? Functionality controlled how these features were achieved (ie- flying buttresses et al.), but why set out to create those features at all? If the people who had conceived of and built the cathedrals had not been religious people, there design(not to mention existance) would have been wholly different. Features were chosen, based on what the designers and patrons wanted the building to express, and then the means to achieve that vision were used where necesary.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Not so. A DifEq or the bank books are just a way of cenceptualizing an existing phenomenon. The equation describes and predicts behavior of something- a moving object or a wave, the books describe the state and history of a bank account. They describe and nothing more. Code on the other hand, both describes and creates. If I code a beautiful GUI, is that any less of a creative expression than any other picture, be it in a marketing campaign or the Louvre? I decide how the problem is to be solved. Looking at the problem, you could not predict the precise way in which I as opposed to someone else will solve it. Maybe I think C is appropriate, and someone else would rather use pure assembly, or C++. The solution is unique to me, not the the problem
Computing is not an art, it is a science governed by mathematical laws and logical premises. There is no creativity involved, merely a process of logical deduction and algorithmic optimization
It seems that if that were true, most source would be written by computers by now. Coding is more than a logical batch process. It involves conceptualizing potentially new solutions to existing problems. A novel method of solving a problem has as much to do with the person solving as it does the problem. It is the creation of a model and a method, and those are both creative acts.
Expression does not have to be poetry; we aren't talking about "what is art" here. Source code can constitue expression, because it describes the way in which you (the coder) uniquely feel a set of problems ought to be solved. Consider this: I need to solve a complex problem, so I come up with a solution. I write a paper expressing my method of solving the problem, and why I think it is most appropriate (talking here about engineering-style problems, where solutions have to take into account existing conditions and other factors, not a pure-mathematics problem where solutions can be proved). Then I make some psuedocode describing the procedure, with comments explaining certain orderings or optimizations. Finally, I sit down and pound it out in C, or Java, or Perl, or (insert favored language here), creating a source file that includes the methods that I described for solving the problem expressed in code, with comments that explain why a particular statement is in a certain order, or why certain optimizations or algorythms are appropriate at a certain juncture. I think most people would say that the first of these three examples is expression. Now, why, I ask, can the last two be considered any differently, simply because they do not use regular English (or other) grammer? I am yet to see a reason why an idea expressed in one form (a paper) is expression, but the same idea expressed in another way (code) is nothing.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
It's called fecundism, and it is a pretty big issue for a lot of religious groups, particularly the monotheists. Most religions that embrace fecundism have their background in being the tribal god of some specific group of people. The commandment 'be fruitful and multiply' has a lot of meaning for a tribe that may be in careful equilibrium with a lot of other groups. A change in breeding rates could be the difference between holding onto your land or going extinct due to conquest or assimilation. Unfortunately, most of these doctrines have never been updated for a modern world where the size of the population can eventually exceeed the ability of the planet to provide resources. A religious scholar recently wrote a letter to the Pope protesting his stance on contraception based on the ideas of fecundism being the root for much church rhetoric on the issue. He also brought in the perspective of non-fecundist religions (Buddhism was the example he used) as an alternative view of the role of human reproduction. I doubt it would sway the Pope, but it is in interesting read in Tricycle if you're interested.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
In Fair Use, it is the same issue. The content is 'expressed' not by the end user, but by the company producing it. If there are no restrictions on what does and does not constitute Fair Use, than all control is lost. You're own words can be used against you, or used without any compensation, reducing the incentive for creation. The public as a whole then loses the benefits of that expression.
Fair Use is not about the government telling you what you can or cannot say, or what of your own information can be made available- it determines what you can do with information that is belong to someone else.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Alas, I wonder at the prospects of a publisher 1)taking a gamble at making money on online electronic distributin 2)publishers being willing to convert exisitng hard copy into e-text, and 3)publishers being willing to send out books in a universally intelligble format that doesn't require a special reader or software, so that they can be read anywhere one sees fit. King succeeding on this one could make some distributors and publishers think a little harder about the possibilities (and profitability) of online distribution.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
intellectual property (a legal fiction to begin
with) influences how people make their livings, or
how well they will be educated?
I think that it definately will have an effect. I think that the effect will, however, be less than the effect of segregation and the systems that existed before the Civil Rights movement. If I seemed to diminish the impact of the Fair Use issue, it is only because I think that it's moral implications pale beside generations of officially enshrined injustice. Fair Use has very important implications, but the struggle to defend Fair Use remains, in my mind, less significant than the struggle for Civil Rights
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
But not all unjust laws are equally unjust. I doubt that Dr. King saw every possible legal issue as a battle of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil. And if he did, I must respectfully disagree with him. There are shades of injustice, and some are worse than others. All tha I am maintaining is that the injustice perpetrated by restricting the fair use of DVD's is less than the injustice perpetrated by systematically depriving a large portion of the population of rights to equal employment, equal access to all public services, and equal rights to be free from persecution.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I definately can see fair use considerations, but I wonder why people are fighting so hard for the closed format of a media conglomerate. I never maintained that what the lawsuit is doing is a vioaltion of fair use, which is serious business. I meerly think that comparing it to the civil rights struggly is inflationary language. The term Nazi gets bandied about already for perpetrators of relatively minor violations (I would be surprised if there wasn't at least one reference to "SS-like corporate thugs" or something of the sort somewhere on this page), and I see this as a related issue. People infringing on fair use and intellectual property is a serious issue, but nowhere near as serious as the systematic deprivation of the fundamental rights of millions of Americans (or anyone else, for that matter).
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I'm sorry that people can't play their DVD's on Linux. I really am. But comparing your ability to watch a movie to someone's ability to make a living for themselves, to attend a decent school- that is a confusion of scale that I just don't understand.
And yes, I do appreciate the intellectual property cosiderations. I think that the DMCA is junk, and I would love it if more manufacturers would embrace open standards. But if you don't like it, why not abandon it? You buy a media format knowing what platforms it works on. No one buys Betamax expecting it was their god given right to have it work in a VHS machine. So DVD doesn't work on your machine? Screw 'em. Don't buy DVD's. Watch regular videotapes. It might inconvenience you, but not nearly as much as minorities were "inconvenienced" by generations of segregation, prejudice, and violence. If enough people drop it, the manufacturers will relent, or the format will die.
But there is no need to demean someone else's struggles by comparing the life and death of a good percentage of the American population to the tribulations of a group of movie buffs.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
OK, like this in that it involved a big string. It seems like NASA tried a shuttle experiment a while back that involved dragging a satelite or probe from a big long wire off of the back of the shuttle. The tether broke, and the experiment was abandoned. It seems as if the object at the end of the tether was going to be used to generate power, to reduce fuel costs. Anyone remember the details on this one? It was a few years back, IIRC.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Or:
I have to admit, it took me a while to be able to find the MS plan on purpose. . .
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
WSP urged Netscape to comply with standards on its next release of the browser. Frankly, for NS and MS I think that standards compliance should be a basic expectation, and not a special favor that advocacy groups have to ask for. Secondly, the reason that NS dropped work in the old codebase was that it was a total mess. They didn't think that the effort that was needed to put it into shape was justified. So they dumped the old base. I think to imply that WSP was responsable for Netscape's decision overstates their influence. Yeah, WSP can whine. But they whine about MS complience too. NS could have taken the same route as MS. Instead, they chose to be complient, and they chose to discard the old codebase. Netscape had taken big projects before, and should have known the risks and scale of what they were undertaking before they went in. And frankly, the WSP isn't the only body saying that they're taking too long; people on every side of the issue seem to agree that NS is missing the boat. No one expects software from the sky, but you do expect software to be released before it (or the standards it supports) becomes obsolete.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I should clarify; I don't mean that people won't write pages that work. I mean that people will not take the time to make things fully standards complient if it is easier to do things in IE that look right on 80-86% of screens. One of the complaints on IE's standards complience is that it is too lenient; by violating standards, IE has made it easier to make a page that "looks right". And there are people who would rather take the easy path to "looks right" rather than work through a more complex method that is fully complient.
As for the continuing release. . . 1)As the letter says, they have never fixed some of the fundamental problems with the 4.x series. It is still a worse standards violater than more current IE releases, and is slow and oversized. Mozilla has released versions in the form of milestones and nightlies, but they were pre-alpha until a few months ago (March, IIRC). Average users are not willing to (and probably should not) install pre-alpha, or even beta quality software. Large companies are not willing to risk irritating their customers by bundling pre-alpha software with their product. Bottom line is the releases that NS has had have not had what it takes to make a dent in the dominance of IE.
I have been interested in the Mozilla project for a while, and have done some work for them when I've had the chance. Nonetheless, I see this as more than "pointless whining". Mozilla has taken a long time to complete, which makes since,as they abandoned the old codebase. But I can't help but feel that some of the delay is not just a product of that change. Too many features have been crammed into the "platform", making it more bloated and complex than it need be. The Milstone release schedule that they created is two months behind; by the measures of the Mozilla project, we should be getting Milestone 18 within the next week, whereas we haven't actually seen MS 17 yet. And this is after the date has slipped several times. Time may do a better job of killing NS and the standards they're trying to support than MS ever could. Mozilla and Netscape took up the banner of maintaining open standards, and right now they're not even on the battlefield.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
The continued existence of 4.x is due to the fact that there is nothing to replace it. People who don't want to use IE or use a platform where IE is unavailable have no choice but to use a 4.x release. Mozilla/Netscape 6 is still an early beta development project. 4.x is still the Netscape in-production browser, solely because of the absence of a new release. If you look at a fine level break down of browser usage, most people have already switched to IE 5.0 at least if they're using Internet explorer. If there was a Netscape 5/6, than you would assume that a comperable portion of NS 4.x users would jump to the new release.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I think what they were implying was that if NS doesn't get it in gear, than by the time the next version of NS comes out, the standards they were writing for will be irrelevant. The web will have moved on, and de facto standards will have taken over. No one is going to rewrite thousands of pages of HTML to be more compatable with a 20% market share browser, all the while loosing features they've built into non-complient HTML. If Netscape had released in a time frame when they could call the browser v 5.0 without looking hopelessly out of date, they could have maintained and recovered market share, which gives people an incintive to write to the standards. By delaying the browser release, they hemorraged market share, and as a result there is no incentive to write to standards. What the guys were saying is that a slightly less standards complient browser that released on time and gradually moved HTML authors and editors towards complient HTML would be better than a two year old browser that fits the standards to a T but is ignored by the world at large.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
The "sell one person at a time" really throws a wrench into things. For one thing, this means that AMD can't sell bulk anywhere. They have to handle direct, individual level sales, which is a significant administrative burden. Secondly, they're never going to make enough money on individual Mobo sales. Manufacturers make their money selling to retailers and wholesalers in bulk. They cut out admin and other costs. Turning any profit for AMD would be very unlikely, once they've gone to the trouble of developing a board (especially since that isn't their area) and building the infrastructure to sell and move the things.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Sounds a lot like the Cross Pad.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"