First, you are wrong when you state that one could take Tivo's code, modify it, and use the modified software on one's own hardware. When one purchases a Tivo DVR, that device now belongs to the purchaser, not to the seller, and not to the manufacturer. The DRM hardware prevents the new owner from running his choice of operating systems and applications on his own Tivo DVR device. Thus your first statement is obviously and flatly false.
Yes but that has nothing to do with GNU, Linux or GPL. Hardware wasn't GPL'd, just the code...
Err... DRM prevents him using content which he hasn't bought but copied from somewhere without a valid license. DRM enables him to use content which he has bought which is under DRM. But of course Joe Sixpack gets his content from P2P for free without any DRM so that's not a concern either.
Or you could come here to Finland where good IT professionals always get a job (and even the bad ones). And afterall, it was one of us who founded the allmighty Linux;)
I agree with your writing totally but I'd need some clarification on something... I've asked this couple of times but no-one answered so maybe this is a stupid question or one too hard to answer. So here I go again. Any answer that clears this is highly appreciated.
I, with my little knowledge from business law (studied couple of years), am seeing no difference between MS offering some piece of paper, which you can send to Novell to obtain SUSE (which you can obtain with or without that piece of paper), and Google providing me link to SUSE download site. Is there any difference? If MS is conveying SUSE by offering vouchers why isn't, by the same logic, Google (or Yahoo or whatever) conveying SUSE by offering links to download sites? And how far this goes like if I tell someone "there's a good GNU/Linux distribution there" am I conveying Linux? If I write the URL to that download site into some paper am I conveying GNU/Linux? If I provide link to SUSE download site and offer some support for installation and configuratoin to my friend am I conveing GNU/Linux? Under any circumstance I am not distributing it so to my knowledge I'm not bound to any GPL license, be it v2 or v3.
No it isn't. TFA isn't about writing SQL engine. It is about computers and coding in general, if I understood correctly. You don't need deep math skills on every part of programming. Otherwise there wouldn't be those known as script kiddies:)
Well, I've done kernel and network stack coding and all I know about math is basic plus, minus etc. stuff. I managed to get it working allthough I first had to check some examples how to calculate checksums.
At my current work I just need to count numbers together. I don't care about optimizing algorithms since math operations are so light that they wont last long. Biggest bottleneck is making queries to SQL server (luckily ASP.NET has nice asynchoronous support for page and SQL queries).
So bottom line is, I know jackshit about math, my education is two years in business school, but I've coded almost 7 years for living now and something like 20 years for a hobby.
What the heck! How about if I install Google search, disable Windows search, and then some other 3rd party search (without disabling Google search). Then I'd have Google search causing performance issues which is Google's fault? This is just plain stupid. And that IE and Firefox thing is flawed since IE isn't performing system wide services on the background.
I'm wondering if Google should concentrate more on development and less on playing pool and tennis (see that Google video shown on Oprah, can be found from Youtube I think).
Yes I can see the problem now. But still there's technical solutions available. You can add plugins to Explorer like TortoiseSVN does for an example. You can control context menus in Explorer. You can do lot's of customization if you please. In fact I just found this . I don't know how and if it works or does it even work with Vista but I'm sure it can be made to work with Vista.
Thank you! Finally someone explained what's all this about. But still I don't see any problem here, at least without further explanation. If you click Start-button you will see "search" option there. What's preventing Google to add "Search using Google" button there? Or is it that Google want's to be the sole search engine and front-end in Windows?
Well what's the difference then if I google for ubuntu, Google provides me the link and I download & install Ubuntu? Is Google "procuring the distribution of" Ubuntu? Wow. If this holds true it leads to interesting things like if someone recommends me to use Linux then (s)he is procuring the distribution of GPL'd code and is bound by the (current) GPL license. I, personally, avoid recommendating anything this forward.
I thought that was Xenix code which MS owns or has owned? Also there were some parts from BSD I think which is not under any GNU license. Remember "GNU's not UNIX"
You are absolutely right. There is API for disabling services. There is API to interact with Windows Search. There is command line tool to disable services. Etc. Etc. I've written about this numerous times and if I remember correctly couple of my posts here in Slashdot even got +5 informative (woohoo!). So only question to ask is, when's the Google Operating System about to be released?
So I think the proper ordering of things goes like...
deal away with competition by using the court system
release your own OS with your own integrated desktop search
profile your own users with your own profiler service integrated to your own OS and to your own integrated desktop search
And actually that is partly wrong too:) IE and Explorer calls same COM components (forgot their names) under and above the hood to do their jobs.
It's always nice (talking generally, not directly to parent) to see people who don't know jackshit about Windows talking about Windows or people who know nothing about Linux talking about Linux. Could we start Slashdot's own Get The Facts Partly Right campaing?:)
Everytime I speak with some religious folk I start to wonder this same thing. You mention "absence of faith" and some other folks here talk about "lack of faith." Well now english isn't my native language (finnish is) so I don't know if english as language has some limitations here but when people say "lack of faith" it sounds awkward to me. Like there is some container for faith in humans and some people's containers are just a little empty, like they need refilling. This makes rational conversation absolutely impossible since you first have to acknowledge existence of God/Faith (or gods, what ever religion is under discussion), then you can start discussing about "lack of faith" or something like that.
Why not try other way around? Religious folk are "lacking common sense." (That's my opinion.) Then we can start discussing about if there's any solid proof that some superbeing(s) exists at all. From my point of view, it is impossible to attest that something-which-is-not doesn't exist. It's Catch 22!:)
But I've given up on this subject a long time ago. If you are religious, you couldn't care less about any proof that God exist. All the proof you need is Faith. I'll try to forget about this whole bs but unfortunately my ex-wife is brainwashing my son to be a sunday believer (she drinks, curses etc. but on every other sunday she crosses her fingers prays for something) and that's really pissing me off.
Yes, and that stupid thing TFA is talking about cannot work or some famous people are rolling around in their graves:)
Don't be childish. Of course not. But if someone steals my car, when I'm sitting at the back seat, to commit a crime, I would have hard time to explain why I wouldn't to be considered part of the crime. Of course you are guilty until proven otherwise, but if there's 1000 hacking attemps coming from your computer I think you have to assure at least your ISP that you have nothing to do with it, maybe the police too.
Yes but you, as a client of some ISP, are responsible of what goes through your internet line. I'm not sure how far that responsibility goes, that's some judge to find out I think. It would be silly if I was doing something illegal using my internet line and then getting away with it just by blaming "maybe someone hacked my wlan."
But, seriously, why the cloak-and-dagger approach? Just tell the user "Vista is now gonna send MS the following information about your system, anonymized so it can't be tracked, and we want it to see what hardware platforms our system should run best on. Thanks for your co-op."
Yes and same thing applies for any other software, no matter who wrote it or who is distributing it, here in Finland. There's even exception for computer software in copyright law. I don't remember exactly what is there but at least you are not supposed to make copies of the software even for your own use if licensor doesn't explicitly allow it.
It would lead to absurd situation if you would own software you get your hands to. That would mean that any license, GPL, BSD, whatever, would be invalid since you already own it. It would put software to public domain effectivily.
But to the topic. I won't believe for a second that MS is "watching me" unless you provide clear TCP dump log about my private information sent to MS server. It would lead to catastrophic situation for MS if this would be true and I don't think even SCO would be that stupid.
Yes I understood just couple of minutes ago (when I was reading all the replies) that my example was a lousy one and if I remember correctly, DWORD is actually defined as unsigned long, not unsigned int. I probably need to drink more coffee before posting to Slashdot:)
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Yes but that has nothing to do with GNU, Linux or GPL. Hardware wasn't GPL'd, just the code...
Err... DRM prevents him using content which he hasn't bought but copied from somewhere without a valid license. DRM enables him to use content which he has bought which is under DRM. But of course Joe Sixpack gets his content from P2P for free without any DRM so that's not a concern either.
Remember kids, saving clock cycles is like putting money in the bank.
Hmh. That sound funnier in finnish.
Or you could come here to Finland where good IT professionals always get a job (and even the bad ones). And afterall, it was one of us who founded the allmighty Linux ;)
Smells like, dare I even say it, FUD from FSF's part ;) Like Metallica sings "Figth fire with fire" but I doubt that the ending is not so near.
I agree with your writing totally but I'd need some clarification on something... I've asked this couple of times but no-one answered so maybe this is a stupid question or one too hard to answer. So here I go again. Any answer that clears this is highly appreciated.
I, with my little knowledge from business law (studied couple of years), am seeing no difference between MS offering some piece of paper, which you can send to Novell to obtain SUSE (which you can obtain with or without that piece of paper), and Google providing me link to SUSE download site. Is there any difference? If MS is conveying SUSE by offering vouchers why isn't, by the same logic, Google (or Yahoo or whatever) conveying SUSE by offering links to download sites? And how far this goes like if I tell someone "there's a good GNU/Linux distribution there" am I conveying Linux? If I write the URL to that download site into some paper am I conveying GNU/Linux? If I provide link to SUSE download site and offer some support for installation and configuratoin to my friend am I conveing GNU/Linux? Under any circumstance I am not distributing it so to my knowledge I'm not bound to any GPL license, be it v2 or v3.
No it isn't. TFA isn't about writing SQL engine. It is about computers and coding in general, if I understood correctly. You don't need deep math skills on every part of programming. Otherwise there wouldn't be those known as script kiddies :)
Well, I've done kernel and network stack coding and all I know about math is basic plus, minus etc. stuff. I managed to get it working allthough I first had to check some examples how to calculate checksums.
At my current work I just need to count numbers together. I don't care about optimizing algorithms since math operations are so light that they wont last long. Biggest bottleneck is making queries to SQL server (luckily ASP.NET has nice asynchoronous support for page and SQL queries).
So bottom line is, I know jackshit about math, my education is two years in business school, but I've coded almost 7 years for living now and something like 20 years for a hobby.
What the heck! How about if I install Google search, disable Windows search, and then some other 3rd party search (without disabling Google search). Then I'd have Google search causing performance issues which is Google's fault? This is just plain stupid. And that IE and Firefox thing is flawed since IE isn't performing system wide services on the background.
I'm wondering if Google should concentrate more on development and less on playing pool and tennis (see that Google video shown on Oprah, can be found from Youtube I think).
Yes I can see the problem now. But still there's technical solutions available. You can add plugins to Explorer like TortoiseSVN does for an example. You can control context menus in Explorer. You can do lot's of customization if you please. In fact I just found this . I don't know how and if it works or does it even work with Vista but I'm sure it can be made to work with Vista.
Thank you! Finally someone explained what's all this about. But still I don't see any problem here, at least without further explanation. If you click Start-button you will see "search" option there. What's preventing Google to add "Search using Google" button there? Or is it that Google want's to be the sole search engine and front-end in Windows?
Well what's the difference then if I google for ubuntu, Google provides me the link and I download & install Ubuntu? Is Google "procuring the distribution of" Ubuntu? Wow. If this holds true it leads to interesting things like if someone recommends me to use Linux then (s)he is procuring the distribution of GPL'd code and is bound by the (current) GPL license. I, personally, avoid recommendating anything this forward.
I thought that was Xenix code which MS owns or has owned? Also there were some parts from BSD I think which is not under any GNU license. Remember "GNU's not UNIX"
You are absolutely right. There is API for disabling services. There is API to interact with Windows Search. There is command line tool to disable services. Etc. Etc. I've written about this numerous times and if I remember correctly couple of my posts here in Slashdot even got +5 informative (woohoo!). So only question to ask is, when's the Google Operating System about to be released?
So I think the proper ordering of things goes like...
And actually that is partly wrong too :) IE and Explorer calls same COM components (forgot their names) under and above the hood to do their jobs.
It's always nice (talking generally, not directly to parent) to see people who don't know jackshit about Windows talking about Windows or people who know nothing about Linux talking about Linux. Could we start Slashdot's own Get The Facts Partly Right campaing? :)
Yes, HP is unprofessional. I don't buy their products anymore.
Just a side notice, nothing to do with TFA...
Everytime I speak with some religious folk I start to wonder this same thing. You mention "absence of faith" and some other folks here talk about "lack of faith." Well now english isn't my native language (finnish is) so I don't know if english as language has some limitations here but when people say "lack of faith" it sounds awkward to me. Like there is some container for faith in humans and some people's containers are just a little empty, like they need refilling. This makes rational conversation absolutely impossible since you first have to acknowledge existence of God/Faith (or gods, what ever religion is under discussion), then you can start discussing about "lack of faith" or something like that.
Why not try other way around? Religious folk are "lacking common sense." (That's my opinion.) Then we can start discussing about if there's any solid proof that some superbeing(s) exists at all. From my point of view, it is impossible to attest that something-which-is-not doesn't exist. It's Catch 22! :)
But I've given up on this subject a long time ago. If you are religious, you couldn't care less about any proof that God exist. All the proof you need is Faith. I'll try to forget about this whole bs but unfortunately my ex-wife is brainwashing my son to be a sunday believer (she drinks, curses etc. but on every other sunday she crosses her fingers prays for something) and that's really pissing me off.
Yes, and that stupid thing TFA is talking about cannot work or some famous people are rolling around in their graves :)
Wow! That's cheap. I think I order one and install Windows to it since I have some spare licenses ;)
Heh. Well, english isn't my first language :)
Don't be childish. Of course not. But if someone steals my car, when I'm sitting at the back seat, to commit a crime, I would have hard time to explain why I wouldn't to be considered part of the crime. Of course you are guilty until proven otherwise, but if there's 1000 hacking attemps coming from your computer I think you have to assure at least your ISP that you have nothing to do with it, maybe the police too.
Yes but you, as a client of some ISP, are responsible of what goes through your internet line. I'm not sure how far that responsibility goes, that's some judge to find out I think. It would be silly if I was doing something illegal using my internet line and then getting away with it just by blaming "maybe someone hacked my wlan."
Well how about reading Windows Update Privacy Statement from here http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/lib rary/3998fef5-4e07-4128-881d-754375b679121033.mspx ?mfr=true or updated version from Windows Update site from here http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6 /default.aspx?ln=en-us. And if you are paranoid enough, just add TCP dump to somewhere on your network to see what's really submitted, don't know if it's encrypted though.
Yes and same thing applies for any other software, no matter who wrote it or who is distributing it, here in Finland. There's even exception for computer software in copyright law. I don't remember exactly what is there but at least you are not supposed to make copies of the software even for your own use if licensor doesn't explicitly allow it.
It would lead to absurd situation if you would own software you get your hands to. That would mean that any license, GPL, BSD, whatever, would be invalid since you already own it. It would put software to public domain effectivily.
But to the topic. I won't believe for a second that MS is "watching me" unless you provide clear TCP dump log about my private information sent to MS server. It would lead to catastrophic situation for MS if this would be true and I don't think even SCO would be that stupid.
Just my educated opinion.
That and I think drinking and login is out of the question too ;)
Yes I understood just couple of minutes ago (when I was reading all the replies) that my example was a lousy one and if I remember correctly, DWORD is actually defined as unsigned long, not unsigned int. I probably need to drink more coffee before posting to Slashdot :)