Are they trying to say this is literally a *thought crime*?
Yes.
(Their spin-doctors must have been on an off day. That slip about Sir Billy's evil world domination plan to take over all our minds and control our thoughts should not have got past the powers that be.)
I was actually calling for an even balance between the two if that was not clear.
Obviously RL is text-based to some extent, but fundamentally it is graphical (and aural) because that is how RL goes into our senses (even if it is then converted into text by our brains).
Even text-books are very graphical (with different size and style text, and diagrams) and I assume you do not spend your entire RL reading text books;-).
But the FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe) claim that the BSA (Business software Alliance) (aka Microsoft's hitmen) asked [item 6] the FSFE for help to combat the Italian governments latest crazily stringent proposed copyright laws (which require formal permission from the government before copying anything in digital form even if one has a "copyright" license or even if one holds the "copyright"--from what I can tell).
Microsoft's practices are akin to those of the Mafia.
Their licensing schemes are more like the fifdom taxation scheme of Olde England (I'm Welsh so I guess I can agree with that).
Their very existence threatens innovation and the advancement of technology.
I guess I'm saying these things in a public forum, and am in the position to influence the buying decisions of thousands (hey wait...people who read/. make buying decisions [& based on/. comments]?...ummm).
Are you implying that Sir Billy is a billygoat. That is surely defamatory!
Mind you, I suppose many call the spiritual leader of the free-software movement a gnu. Then, he does likes that, and it is actually true (well, at least he is a GNU/Human (cross)--I wonder which parent was the gnu and how they went about...ummm...conceiving him).
Calling windows "operational" HAS to be a crime...
I find windows very useful when I want to do anything remotely graphical in nature (and I use a WIMP GUI much more than a CLI).
Maybe you were joking but people who say windows are evil still live in the Dark Ages; RL (and, indeed, the WWW) is graphical, not text-based, (thank god!), therefore there are many times when you want (especially when displaying pictures) a GUI. Before I get flamed, I do not want to get rid of CLIs as they have their uses and many of us could not do without their flexibility (to do things that no one has made a GUI for).
Windows (& WIMP in general) seem to be the easiest to use and most efficient GUI paradigm ATM--also systems like XWindows (with different DEs) tend to be very flexible and customisable (unlike alternative paradigms).
You alread can text msg over landlines in the UK. A lot of new phones have that functionality. AFAIK it is just the same as a normal phone call but with special beeps (like modems or fax machines).
You mean there are closed-source voting machines in the USA? LOL.
Ummm...what happened to the voting/counting process being open and open to insepction by anyone?
You would think that they'd at least give some source to fool USans into believing that they live in some sort of pseudo-representative democracy (as Bush claims that he was democratically elected and that the US is a democracy).
Since when did Apple care about anything else but look & feel wrt the I-pod. People buy I-pods because they look cool. If you want a really good technical spec, you'd get a Neuros Audio player or something like that (and I think its cheaper). There are plenty of less-well-speced but perfectly good players for a lot cheaper than a Neuros or I-pod around too.
FreeLists.Org (or find someone who will host it if it's for a non-profit organisation or sthg).
Still, I agree totally with your sentiments.
I've given up on Yah**Groups because it loses my messages and has all sorts of bugs for users and owners (it won't currently let me post on a group I *own*), and it would be nice to have a full-featured system like Yah** with a web interface and document archive, which is hopefully what Google's offering will be.
Hopefully it will also be very easy to create a group on Google, so all the organisations I belong to who insist on having their groups on Yah**Groups will move over to GoogleGroups2.
>>There have been recent reports about programs from Israel, Canada, and The Philippines that let you run Windows software in Linux. Are they really new? Can they succeed?
This is a late April fool, right? Ye, it's called XWindows--runs windows on top of Linux just fine.
Slashdot news using the
right unit, i.e. MiB = Mebibytes = 2^20 bytes = 1 048 576 bytes, as opposed to MB = Megabytes = 10^6 bytes = 1 000 000 bytes.[my emphasis]
NO, this is totally wrong. MiB is not more correct than MB (where MB = 1 000 000 B).
The M prefix has been a standard for centuries. Mi is not yet an Iso standard although it may be one day.
Mi is a stop-gap (standardised by the IEC) to save people who traditionally (and erroneousley) misuse M to mean 1 048 576 from translating all their current figures (so they can just change the prefix to Mi without having to alter the number). Ki is also useful in situations were something actually is an exact number of Ki (for instance due to FS's or HDD's splitting streams into 1024 or 512 bytes).
However, using MB is actually far preferable to MiB, because it makes more sense, and it is much easier to divide or mutiply by 1000 than 1024.
[When outputting the size of a user's file in an OS or sthg, it is, of course, a good idea to use both because users often need the *i form for some applications. This also makes it clear to users who have used certain OS's that erroneously use K to mean 1024 (i.e.: MSW) that K means K and not Ki.]
I believe that what happened in Canada was that a GM form of a crop (Maize I think) spread to other farms due to its resistance to herbicides. The GM company then went round in a plane and dropped tons of herbicide on all the land of nearby farmers. If the farmers' crops did not die when they droppoed the herbicide, they (succesfully) sued the farmer for violating their patents and copyrights on the GM crop (even though the GMOs were spread naturally). Go figure...
In any sensible country, the GM companies would be commiting a criminal offence by allowing GMO's to spread into the wild in the first place.
In retrospect, I am not sure why RMS is campaigning against this so much as I cannot see anyone patenting or making copies of RMS's genes (unless, maybe, they're *really* evil), and I cannot see RMS being likely to make copies of them himself (if you get my meaning) any time soon(and therefore doesn't have much to be worried about someone else patenting them).
Actually this is totally correct. It is perfectly possible in the USA for me to find one of your hairs lying around and patent your genetic sequence so you have to pay me to reproduce. Muhehhawww.... No, I am not joking.
It is common for existing wild plants (oriduced purely by natural selection) to be patented and then people who have them on their land or use them are sued (e.g.: indigenous peoples who have used them for medicine for thousands of years). It's called biopiracy (see the book of that name). RMS is currently campaigning against this.
You want supposedly straight facts and not much else? Try news.google.com.
News.Google.Com. is not at all a reputable source and doesn't claim to be as it is just a bot-generated collection of information that looks like news from other sources (i.e.: it is a search engine like Google.Com).
All remotely news-like sites (inluding/. and many really biased sites) are used by News.Google.Com.
This is as silly as saying that if something is linked to from Google's general WWW SERP's it must be true. The only reason that I know why Google might not list a site is if it uses underhand techniques to increase its PageRank (and, also now, if it violates the DMCA in which case they link to a copy of the DMCA order which links to the banned page;-) ). AFAIK Google do not remove sites from any of the SERP's due to factual inaccuracy of the content--if they did this they would not be able to list 99.999% percent of pages on the WWW--actually 0.999999999% of the web as the other 99% of pages have no content (so their contetn cannot be innaccurate);-).
Not if the laws are unethical and/or not made through an open democratic process (as it seems from what I know is the case with the PatRiot Act). If the law in the US tells you to kill lots of people (oh...wait...it actually does), you would do that with no qualms?
I'm so glad I don't live in the USA. It seems to me that the USA is ironically one of the countries that has the least respect for the ideals set forward by the US constitution in the same way that the USSR went against the ideals of communism or socialism but became a dictatorship (which is were the US is heading).
Maybe the reason for this is that when there is a written constitution governments have an actual document that kind of states the will of the people so they have something to fight against (i.e.: an ideal government has little power but politicians tend to be power-hungry and want something to do-- when they cannot think of useful laws to make a constitution gives them a clear list of rules which they try and pass laws to break for want of somwthing better to do, for a challenge and for the power kicks they get out of exercising cntrol of the people and their human rights.)
I cannot even be botherred replying but briefly.
I have read the GNU GPL and I understand what it says. I was discussing this from a practical/moral PoV not a legal one. I have no doubt that they are compliant.
>>When you use the same _technoloy_ in your own file-format, the patents for JPG still aply.>They havent trademarket ".JPG". It infringment will also apply to ".jpeg", ".JpEg", etc.
We were not discussing trademarks (but FYI a file extension cannot be a trademark violation and trademarks are generally case-insensitive from an enforcement PoV).
I am aware that JNG uses JPEG as I state--that is why it is called JPEG Network Graphics (JNG).
Slashdot Mirror
(Their spin-doctors must have been on an off day. That slip about Sir Billy's evil world domination plan to take over all our minds and control our thoughts should not have got past the powers that be.)
Obviously RL is text-based to some extent, but fundamentally it is graphical (and aural) because that is how RL goes into our senses (even if it is then converted into text by our brains).
Even text-books are very graphical (with different size and style text, and diagrams) and I assume you do not spend your entire RL reading text books ;-).
But the FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe) claim that the BSA (Business software Alliance) (aka Microsoft's hitmen) asked [item 6] the FSFE for help to combat the Italian governments latest crazily stringent proposed copyright laws (which require formal permission from the government before copying anything in digital form even if one has a "copyright" license or even if one holds the "copyright"--from what I can tell).
According to the UK Government's FLOSS policy (which /. linked to recently), the GNU GPL was written by OSI (among other hilarious misunderstandings).
I guess I'm saying these things in a public forum, and am in the position to influence the buying decisions of thousands (hey wait...people who read /. make buying decisions [& based on /. comments]?...ummm).
Mind you, I suppose many call the spiritual leader of the free-software movement a gnu. Then, he does likes that, and it is actually true (well, at least he is a GNU/Human (cross)--I wonder which parent was the gnu and how they went about...ummm...conceiving him).
Maybe you were joking but people who say windows are evil still live in the Dark Ages; RL (and, indeed, the WWW) is graphical, not text-based, (thank god!), therefore there are many times when you want (especially when displaying pictures) a GUI. Before I get flamed, I do not want to get rid of CLIs as they have their uses and many of us could not do without their flexibility (to do things that no one has made a GUI for).
Windows (& WIMP in general) seem to be the easiest to use and most efficient GUI paradigm ATM--also systems like XWindows (with different DEs) tend to be very flexible and customisable (unlike alternative paradigms).
You alread can text msg over landlines in the UK. A lot of new phones have that functionality. AFAIK it is just the same as a normal phone call but with special beeps (like modems or fax machines).
This is common sense. Maybe stating the obvious but not a troll.
Ummm...what happened to the voting/counting process being open and open to insepction by anyone?
You would think that they'd at least give some source to fool USans into believing that they live in some sort of pseudo-representative democracy (as Bush claims that he was democratically elected and that the US is a democracy).
Since when did Apple care about anything else but look & feel wrt the I-pod. People buy I-pods because they look cool. If you want a really good technical spec, you'd get a Neuros Audio player or something like that (and I think its cheaper). There are plenty of less-well-speced but perfectly good players for a lot cheaper than a Neuros or I-pod around too.
IANAIANA but AFAIK IANA belongs to ICANN therefore all your IP's belong to ICANN.
Still, I agree totally with your sentiments.
I've given up on Yah**Groups because it loses my messages and has all sorts of bugs for users and owners (it won't currently let me post on a group I *own*), and it would be nice to have a full-featured system like Yah** with a web interface and document archive, which is hopefully what Google's offering will be.
Hopefully it will also be very easy to create a group on Google, so all the organisations I belong to who insist on having their groups on Yah**Groups will move over to GoogleGroups2.
>>There have been recent reports about programs from Israel, Canada, and The Philippines that let you run Windows software in Linux. Are they really new? Can they succeed? This is a late April fool, right? Ye, it's called XWindows--runs windows on top of Linux just fine.
The M prefix has been a standard for centuries. Mi is not yet an Iso standard although it may be one day.
Mi is a stop-gap (standardised by the IEC) to save people who traditionally (and erroneousley) misuse M to mean 1 048 576 from translating all their current figures (so they can just change the prefix to Mi without having to alter the number). Ki is also useful in situations were something actually is an exact number of Ki (for instance due to FS's or HDD's splitting streams into 1024 or 512 bytes).
However, using MB is actually far preferable to MiB , because it makes more sense, and it is much easier to divide or mutiply by 1000 than 1024.
[When outputting the size of a user's file in an OS or sthg, it is, of course, a good idea to use both because users often need the *i form for some applications. This also makes it clear to users who have used certain OS's that erroneously use K to mean 1024 (i.e.: MSW) that K means K and not Ki.]
Ye, but they've got more lawyers (and after already suing the farmer for patent violation they should have bankrupted him/her).
I believe that what happened in Canada was that a GM form of a crop (Maize I think) spread to other farms due to its resistance to herbicides. The GM company then went round in a plane and dropped tons of herbicide on all the land of nearby farmers. If the farmers' crops did not die when they droppoed the herbicide, they (succesfully) sued the farmer for violating their patents and copyrights on the GM crop (even though the GMOs were spread naturally). Go figure...
In any sensible country, the GM companies would be commiting a criminal offence by allowing GMO's to spread into the wild in the first place.
In retrospect, I am not sure why RMS is campaigning against this so much as I cannot see anyone patenting or making copies of RMS's genes (unless, maybe, they're *really* evil), and I cannot see RMS being likely to make copies of them himself (if you get my meaning) any time soon(and therefore doesn't have much to be worried about someone else patenting them).
Actually this is totally correct. It is perfectly possible in the USA for me to find one of your hairs lying around and patent your genetic sequence so you have to pay me to reproduce. Muhehhawww.... No, I am not joking.
It is common for existing wild plants (oriduced purely by natural selection) to be patented and then people who have them on their land or use them are sued (e.g.: indigenous peoples who have used them for medicine for thousands of years). It's called biopiracy (see the book of that name).
RMS is currently campaigning against this.
All remotely news-like sites (inluding /. and many really biased sites) are used by News.Google.Com.
This is as silly as saying that if something is linked to from Google's general WWW SERP's it must be true. The only reason that I know why Google might not list a site is if it uses underhand techniques to increase its PageRank (and, also now, if it violates the DMCA in which case they link to a copy of the DMCA order which links to the banned page ;-) ). AFAIK Google do not remove sites from any of the SERP's due to factual inaccuracy of the content--if they did this they would not be able to list 99.999% percent of pages on the WWW--actually 0.999999999% of the web as the other 99% of pages have no content (so their contetn cannot be innaccurate) ;-).
I'm so glad I don't live in the USA. It seems to me that the USA is ironically one of the countries that has the least respect for the ideals set forward by the US constitution in the same way that the USSR went against the ideals of communism or socialism but became a dictatorship (which is were the US is heading).
Maybe the reason for this is that when there is a written constitution governments have an actual document that kind of states the will of the people so they have something to fight against (i.e.: an ideal government has little power but politicians tend to be power-hungry and want something to do-- when they cannot think of useful laws to make a constitution gives them a clear list of rules which they try and pass laws to break for want of somwthing better to do, for a challenge and for the power kicks they get out of exercising cntrol of the people and their human rights.)
I cannot even be botherred replying but briefly. I have read the GNU GPL and I understand what it says. I was discussing this from a practical/moral PoV not a legal one. I have no doubt that they are compliant.
>>When you use the same _technoloy_ in your own file-format, the patents for JPG still aply.>They havent trademarket ".JPG". It infringment will also apply to ".jpeg", ".JpEg", etc.
We were not discussing trademarks (but FYI a file extension cannot be a trademark violation and trademarks are generally case-insensitive from an enforcement PoV).
I am aware that JNG uses JPEG as I state--that is why it is called JPEG Network Graphics (JNG).