This is becoming increasingly true but certainly was not always so. The robber barons, people who treated the country just as badly as Bill Gates ever did, set up enormous charitable foundations and helped an enormous number of people, long before there was any such thing as a tax writeoff for charitable donations.
There are decent people out there. Some people can be complete dickweeds when it comes to destroying every business that might in some way oppose them, putting thousands of people out of work, abusing their workers, and so forth, and still, in the end, give enormous amounts of money to charitable foundations because they want to help people and for no other reason.
Does it strike anyone else as funny that, when I tried to claim my settlement money for all the MS OSes and such that I had been forced to buy for testing purposes even though my platform of choice has always been the Mac OS......the settlement web site doesn't work with any Mac browsers?
Laugh, cry, or throw up. And throwing up is bad for your electrolyte balance, I hear.
So what he said was 'skirting induces a downforce' and what you're saying is 'skirting creates a low pressure area under the car and a higher pressure area over the car and that induces a downforce'.
That's like saying, "No, actually, when you push that button it doesn't turn on the computer. When you push that button it connects two contacts inside the computer, which allows an electrical current to flow through the various circuits inside, thus turning on the computer.'
Yes, you are a pedant, but no, you're not in the least bit sorry to be one. If you were, you wouldn't have 'corrected' him, you would just have posted a quick followup explaining the science.
So, then, I personally find the GPL offensive, and believe that it actively makes the world a worse place. What do you recommend that I do to undermine it?
> In other words, if you don't agree to the terms of the contract, there are plenty of other ways to register your disagreement > without denying yourself the use of the product/service.
That is to say, 'I am the ultimate arbiter of what is fair and right, as long as I'm pretty sure I won't get caught at it.'
> Not only that - the terms may not be legal in all areas of the world, in which case it's quite legal to agree to the terms and > simply ignore them.
I am assuming that you mean it's quite legal to agree to the terms and ignore them IF you are in a place where they aren't legal. However, even this is not the case, as anyone with a smattering of knowledge of international contract law could tell you. Otherwise you'd never end up with contracts between two countries at all.
Oops. Time for me to leave for the day. Sorry, more enlightenment tomorrow.
See, right now Visual Studio doesn't have any real competitors, its market share being over 80% last I looked. However,.net and csc are still *sort* *of* competing with other technologies, or at least MS thinks they are. So look, they're free!
> Fuck you buddy. No one has the right to tell someone what they can or can't do with something that they have purchased
That's right! They have no right to expect that you won't break the encryption, sell their music online, and pocket the money for yourself! Who do they think they are? Those dirty bastards!
I think most of us agree that they have some right to tell you SOME things you can't do with 'something you have purchased'. (Licensed, actually, but whatever.) So then it just becomes a question of what they can and can't tell you.
You might not agree. That's your prerogative. But you live in a society that does, and every once in a while you have to acknowledge that the universe doesn't revolve around your ideals.
> If DRM is offensive to you, than FairPlay is no better than WMA.
FairPlay is pretty obviously aimed at doing exactly what it does now, including not limiting CD burning and all the rest. Apple made it as restrictive as they were going to, and since they were the first they had the hardest job of convincing the labels and the RIAA that what they wanted was fair.
WMA is clearly a Microsoft profit center first and foremost, and as such is clearly aimed at being able to control every aspect of your usage, so that any license restriction request (by any media provider), no matter how arbitrary and bizarre, can be accomidated.. Want to make a media file that can only be played on alternate tuesdays between the hours of 3 and 4 AM, Pacific Standard Time? It's in the APIs. You can even make it check a central time server, to guard against people changing their computer's clock.
You can say that all DRM is the same. That's fine. All killing is the same, including self-defense, war, murder, accident, and possibly abortion. Are any of these more or less obnoxious than any of the others? Discuss.
> What if sales of music in this format increase, because people are more likely to buy songs they can use as they please instead > of buying songs that have annoying DRM restrictions on them?
Let's think this through. What if they do?
Then the RIAA claims that Apple is in violation of their licensing terms. They could ask Apple to rewrite FairPlay, which I think is unlikely because it'll just get cracked again, given the way quicktime works. (I suspect, though I'm not certain, that I could have written a crack for this myself, because I know how QuickTime's guts work.)
They could impose some much more restrictive DRM scheme on iTunes. This is the way I suspect they'd go.
They could let things go on the way they are. I think that unlikely.
Or they could just pull Apple's license altogether.
Before you see this as a good thing, it might be wise to wonder which they'll do?
> Sounds like you've found something that is still more restrictive than WMA music, but you're happy with it.
So wait: iTunes: lets you play on iPods, Windows machines, Macs, and burn to CDs. Lets you transcode from the CDs back to whatever format you like, but you lose some quality if you reencode to anything other than lossless compression.
WMA: lets you play on Windows machines and some non-iPod players. Can't play on Macs. Can't transcode. Can't burn to CDs unless you want them to only play from your Windows machine.
So what you're really saying is, 'WMA is less restrictive than iTunes because Microsoft has browbeaten some MP3-player manufacturers into supporting it'? And that's all?
Got a link to that study? The only one I could find was one that was exclusively suicides, no homicides involved. I'd be curious to see what states they consider to be 'high-gun states'.
Or, to put it in balder terms, most people are too stupid to buy an expensive new tool even if it would save them enormous amounts of time and money and get things done better than their current tool, as long as their current tool is 'good enough'.
A Powerbook with Keynote on it is a competitor product to a Dell laptop with PowerPoint on it, but Keynote is not a serious competitor to PowerPoint.
> As does anybody who puts campaign rhetoric in their sig file.
That's right! Lord knows we don't want anything that would indicate that you actually give a shit about anything in your sig. After all, only self-absorbed, cynical bastards who would rather gripe about the way things are than actually do anything about it are supposed to be on Slashdot anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the article, you'd know you could spend it on anything, not just Microsoft crap.
For instance, I'm planning on using my $93 voucher to pay for 1/15th of the Apple Cinema Display 23" that I'm buying later this year.
-fred
This is becoming increasingly true but certainly was not always so. The robber barons, people who treated the country just as badly as Bill Gates ever did, set up enormous charitable foundations and helped an enormous number of people, long before there was any such thing as a tax writeoff for charitable donations.
There are decent people out there. Some people can be complete dickweeds when it comes to destroying every business that might in some way oppose them, putting thousands of people out of work, abusing their workers, and so forth, and still, in the end, give enormous amounts of money to charitable foundations because they want to help people and for no other reason.
People are complex. Get used to it.
-fred
Does it strike anyone else as funny that, when I tried to claim my settlement money for all the MS OSes and such that I had been forced to buy for testing purposes even though my platform of choice has always been the Mac OS... ...the settlement web site doesn't work with any Mac browsers?
Laugh, cry, or throw up. And throwing up is bad for your electrolyte balance, I hear.
-fred
Why, Hebrew is almost as hard as... saaaay... Japanese?
Oh, wait, no it isn't.
-fred
So what he said was 'skirting induces a downforce' and what you're saying is 'skirting creates a low pressure area under the car and a higher pressure area over the car and that induces a downforce'.
That's like saying, "No, actually, when you push that button it doesn't turn on the computer. When you push that button it connects two contacts inside the computer, which allows an electrical current to flow through the various circuits inside, thus turning on the computer.'
Yes, you are a pedant, but no, you're not in the least bit sorry to be one. If you were, you wouldn't have 'corrected' him, you would just have posted a quick followup explaining the science.
-fred
So, then, I personally find the GPL offensive, and believe that it actively makes the world a worse place. What do you recommend that I do to undermine it?
> In other words, if you don't agree to the terms of the contract, there are plenty of other ways to register your disagreement
> without denying yourself the use of the product/service.
That is to say, 'I am the ultimate arbiter of what is fair and right, as long as I'm pretty sure I won't get caught at it.'
> Not only that - the terms may not be legal in all areas of the world, in which case it's quite legal to agree to the terms and
> simply ignore them.
I am assuming that you mean it's quite legal to agree to the terms and ignore them IF you are in a place where they aren't legal. However, even this is not the case, as anyone with a smattering of knowledge of international contract law could tell you. Otherwise you'd never end up with contracts between two countries at all.
Oops. Time for me to leave for the day. Sorry, more enlightenment tomorrow.
-fred
Geez. It's the first MacOS X trojan.
Okay, it's not a Beethoven symphony. So what? It's a landmark, a milestone. It deserves mention.
-fred
So you wouldn't consider, for example, sharing your changes to Rendezvous back into the code tree?
If you would, then you're an Apple developer... you're developing something that's going to (potentially) run on the Mac.
-fred
An insightful comment. Er, or something.
.net and csc are still *sort* *of* competing with other technologies, or at least MS thinks they are. So look, they're free!
See, right now Visual Studio doesn't have any real competitors, its market share being over 80% last I looked. However,
-fred
> Of course, give me a G5 PowerBook and I'll overlook all that.
Don't be ridiculous. We'll just harvest you a little early...
-fred
> Fuck you buddy. No one has the right to tell someone what they can or can't do with something that they have purchased
That's right! They have no right to expect that you won't break the encryption, sell their music online, and pocket the money for yourself! Who do they think they are? Those dirty bastards!
I think most of us agree that they have some right to tell you SOME things you can't do with 'something you have purchased'. (Licensed, actually, but whatever.) So then it just becomes a question of what they can and can't tell you.
You might not agree. That's your prerogative. But you live in a society that does, and every once in a while you have to acknowledge that the universe doesn't revolve around your ideals.
Sorry.
-fred
> With this, if you move out of the country (i.e. Canada, for all you bush-hating hippies)
Working on it.
> all your honestly-bought itunes won't become useless.
As usual, misinformation. After another few days of Apple Legal figuring out how this worked, he got to use them again. He just can't buy any more.
And anyway, anyone with a brain has them backed up on more than one computer, or an iPod, or an external drive, or a CD, or a DVD, or...
-fred
> If DRM is offensive to you, than FairPlay is no better than WMA.
FairPlay is pretty obviously aimed at doing exactly what it does now, including not limiting CD burning and all the rest. Apple made it as restrictive as they were going to, and since they were the first they had the hardest job of convincing the labels and the RIAA that what they wanted was fair.
WMA is clearly a Microsoft profit center first and foremost, and as such is clearly aimed at being able to control every aspect of your usage, so that any license restriction request (by any media provider), no matter how arbitrary and bizarre, can be accomidated.. Want to make a media file that can only be played on alternate tuesdays between the hours of 3 and 4 AM, Pacific Standard Time? It's in the APIs. You can even make it check a central time server, to guard against people changing their computer's clock.
You can say that all DRM is the same. That's fine. All killing is the same, including self-defense, war, murder, accident, and possibly abortion. Are any of these more or less obnoxious than any of the others? Discuss.
-fred
> What if sales of music in this format increase, because people are more likely to buy songs they can use as they please instead
> of buying songs that have annoying DRM restrictions on them?
Let's think this through. What if they do?
Then the RIAA claims that Apple is in violation of their licensing terms. They could ask Apple to rewrite FairPlay, which I think is unlikely because it'll just get cracked again, given the way quicktime works. (I suspect, though I'm not certain, that I could have written a crack for this myself, because I know how QuickTime's guts work.)
They could impose some much more restrictive DRM scheme on iTunes. This is the way I suspect they'd go.
They could let things go on the way they are. I think that unlikely.
Or they could just pull Apple's license altogether.
Before you see this as a good thing, it might be wise to wonder which they'll do?
> Sounds like you've found something that is still more restrictive than WMA music, but you're happy with it.
So wait:
iTunes: lets you play on iPods, Windows machines, Macs, and burn to CDs. Lets you transcode from the CDs back to whatever format you like, but you lose some quality if you reencode to anything other than lossless compression.
WMA: lets you play on Windows machines and some non-iPod players. Can't play on Macs. Can't transcode. Can't burn to CDs unless you want them to only play from your Windows machine.
So what you're really saying is, 'WMA is less restrictive than iTunes because Microsoft has browbeaten some MP3-player manufacturers into supporting it'? And that's all?
Pitiful misinformation.
-fred
Nice to see a lawyer among us.
Even one who hasn't ever actually opened a law book.
Come back when you know what 'fair use' actually means, or when you know what 'license' means or what a contract is.
-fred
Got a link to that study? The only one I could find was one that was exclusively suicides, no homicides involved. I'd be curious to see what states they consider to be 'high-gun states'.
-fred
> And how do you sell your soul to a book? That just has some mightily amusing implications depending on one's literary choices...
The bible?
-fred
Or, to put it in balder terms, most people are too stupid to buy an expensive new tool even if it would save them enormous amounts of time and money and get things done better than their current tool, as long as their current tool is 'good enough'.
A Powerbook with Keynote on it is a competitor product to a Dell laptop with PowerPoint on it, but Keynote is not a serious competitor to PowerPoint.
-fred
> ...there could be a huge market for Cobalt-style, low cost OS X servers [to heat] small offices.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
-fred
Just remember, twos-complement, big-endian.
-fred
It is indeed a carbon thing.
I'm not sure if there is a similar limitation in Cocoa or not.
-fred
> If knowledge is power... explain George W. Bush!
Hey now. George Bush may be an uncomplicated sort, but he sure knows this country.
Repeatedly. In a biblical sense.
-fred
Gawd. A post like that, posted as AC? They ought to take away your foe list.
-fred
> As does anybody who puts campaign rhetoric in their sig file.
That's right! Lord knows we don't want anything that would indicate that you actually give a shit about anything in your sig. After all, only self-absorbed, cynical bastards who would rather gripe about the way things are than actually do anything about it are supposed to be on Slashdot anyway.
Right?
Sheesh.
-fred