A good idea, though not a complete solution. Some software patents aren't held by software vendors (some have lately given up on selling software, some don't do anything but attack innocent infringers with submarine patents), and they can't be swayed by offers to license others' patents.
GPL only patents won't help in this situation either.
Perfect freedom can't exist in the presence of people opposed to it. Meta-restrictions (that prevent further restrictions) better serve freedom than allowing anyone to impose any restrictions they care to.
Another "meta-restriction" which I think would serve freedom far more effectively, would be to create a new "Public Patent License". PPL patents would be usable by anyone, as long as they made all of their patents (past and future) also PPL. In some ways this is a stronger restriction than the "GPL only patents", because it forces the users of the patent to open all of their patents, not just the source to the one program that uses the patent. It's a far less onerous restriction though, because it's using patents to fight patents, not patents to fight everyone who doesn't use GPL.
It doesn't take that much intelligence, artificial or not, to get a "first post".
Now, a duplicate story detector for Slashdot.. that would be interesting. Make a 'bot' that reads all of the articles ever posted on Slashdot, and acts as an extra level of screening (after "meat" approval by Taco et. al). If the article looks familiar, it could warn about it.
Another idea: an artificial moderator that would read all posts, and based on the way other things have been moderated in the past, tries to figure out how these new posts will be moderated. You probably don't want this doing actual moderations, but it would be interesting to see how well it's able to predict the behaviour of the Slashdot moderators. It could also potentially be used to check for moderation abuses... things that differ significantly from the prediction are likely to be abuses (assuming the prediction was very accurate).
One more idea, but one that isn't/.-centric, would be something like Ask Jeevesthat actually works.
All of these ideas are pretty heavy on the NLP aspect.
He isn't invoking someone else's name in his crusade though, like the crusaders who "killed for Christ".
No, he isn't invoking someone else's name. Instead he's invoking the word "freedom", but in reality he means something only tangentally related to freedom.
How is this hypocrisy? The FSF does not promote software that is unrestricted.
Then they should stop using the term "Free Software". If the FSF cares about freedom, then the only patents that should be allowed in GPLed software would be completely unrestricted ones. Patents are intrinsically anti-freedom, unless they are freely licensed to everyone.
This is about power and the freedom that comes from having power, not about pacifism.
Oh yes, freedom for RMS. But what about the rest of us who can't live off of donations?
Why pretend that the GPL doesn't represent a political agenda. It does. If you can't or won't live with it, you still have the Microsoft option.
If you can only see the two extremes, then you've probably been brainwashd by one of them.
I hate software patents. I don't have any problems with copyright though. I believe creators should be able to do what they want with what they create. Copyright is consistent with that, but patents are totally counter to it.
The more I look, the more evidence I see that RMS doesn't give a damn about anyone's freedom but his own.
That's not sharing--that's "helping yourself". Sharing is when I own something and I give it to you. Helping yourself is when I own something and you come and take it.
So what do you call it when someone independently develops a piece of software, licenses it under something other than GPL, and is then told "sorry, there's a GPL patent on that algorithm you use". This is the problem with patents. If someone were to go and develop the same thing completely independently, then they're still restricted. This is why patents are evil, because they restrict us without us even knowing about them. (the same isn't true of copyright, since you can't infringe upon a copyrighted work without knowing of its existance)
If members of the free software movement start using patents to fight proprietary software, then they're really no better than people in the crusades who "killed for Christ".
I have no problem with GPL software. I'm writing software right now that I intend to release under GPL. But I believe software patents are wrong, no matter who is using them. For the FSF to condone software patents that are restricted in any way is the epitome of hypocrisy.
And this would definitely put a huge hole in the argument that GPL isn't any stronger than copyright. Copyright allows clean room reimplementation, patents do not.
If searching for your name in Altavista brought up garbage, then you didn't perform the search properly. Altavista supports phrases so you can search for "first_name last_name", and it will bring up all pages with that phrase.
Google does support phrase searching. If you search for:
foo bar
you get pages with "foo" and "bar". But if you search for:
"foo bar"
You'll get pages containing the phrase foo bar.
As for "near", Google already uses that when ranking things. In the first example, pages with "foo" near "bar" would be ranked higher than ones where they were far apart (all other things being equal).
Google also lets you use "-" as a logical not. The only thing it's really missing is logical "or", but for that you can do multiple queries. Maybe you should read Google's Search Tips page.
I used to use Altavista. When I first found out about Google I started using it when Altavista failed to find what I was searching for. I was impressed by the results, so I started going to Google first, and Altavista afterwards if I couldn't find what I was looking for with Google. After a while I noticed that if Google couldn't find it, Altavista almost never would.
We all know that radar has it's limited capabilities (such as the ones listed above) and one of these is that radar likes round things.. Thus planes are built in such away (without round[ed] edges) to avoid detection from radar.
Uh... no. The reason the F117A is angular is because the computer systems used at the time it was designed couldn't practically compute the radar profile for anything but objects that have only planar surfaces. If you look at pictures of the B2 stealth bomber, you can see that it's actually got quite a few smooth curves. It was developed after the F117A, and computers had advanced enough that it was practical for them to compute the radar profile of curved surfaces. That's very useful, because angular shapes like that of the F177A aren't very stable aerodynamically.
Whether he's right or not doesn't matter - the GPL does not impose additional restrictions beyond those imposed by copyright law. Maybe some of it cannot be enforced, due to certain restrictions not being imposed by copyright law, but that's an issue that has no precedent, so RMS's stand is perfectly reasonable.
EULA's often impose additional restrictions beyond copyright. Where does copyright law say I'm limited by the number of clients that connect to a server? I'm not creating additional copies, so copyright is irrelevant. But go take a look at the EULA for Windows NT Workstation 4.0. Maybe you're right, maybe this condition of the GPL can't be enforced, or maybe it can. But my point is that GPL is at least trying to enforce something that I'm fairly certain is outside of the scope of copyright.
But the issue does have a precedent. Taka a look at this comment I wrote just a minute ago. Look at the part about emulators. Does copyright prevent emulators that require ROM files? I don't think that would make any sense, since nothing is being copied. The same goes for dynamically linking. If someone distributes code that depends on someone else's library, but doesn't actually distribute (ie: copy) that library, then they're not infringing any copyrights.
Now the GPL claims that a program which uses a library is a derived work of that library, but if this turns out not to be true (it's not been tested in court AFAIK) then that section of the GPL doesn't carry any weight.
Maybe the case. My point is that the intent of the GPL is to be restrictive in a way that copyright actually isn't (AFAIK). Whether this is actually possible or not, I don't know.
In particular, it's perfectly legal for me to create a proprietary program that relies on some copyrighted shared library (.dll,.so, whatever-your-OS-uses) made by someone else.
Are you sure? Without the permission of whoever wrote the library? Have a look at the files for Microsoft Office, pick a DLL at random and distribute your own program linking with that DLL. See what happens.
No, I'm not 100% sure. There is a precedent though. A lot of emulators (Mac emulators, Amiga emulators, dosemu, video game emulators) require that the user get some software, usually ROMS or a "boot disk", from the system to be emulated. The emulator then does something that isn't significantly different from "dynamic linking" with this code. I haven't heard of anyone getting sued about this. Even if copyright law doesn't explicitly allow this, I doubt that any proprietary software author would pursue the issue, since they're getting paid for their work in any case.
As for linking with DLL's from MS Office, that's essentially done by any application that embeds Excel or Word OLE objects. One could probably argue that that was explicitely allowed by Microsoft though.
Another interesting example: Suppose someone documented the interface of libreadline (which is GPL) and placed this on the web. Now suppose someone else who had never even heard of GPL saw this documentation, and produced (and distributed) a proprietary closed-source program that called the documented libreadline interface. They've now violated the intent of the GPL. I'm reasonably certain they haven't broken copyright law (but of course, IANAL). Perhaps, by being a "licence agreement", GPL is able to do things independent of copyright though. It's not copyright law that prevents people from using Microsoft's Kerberos documentation to add support to Samba. It's the license agreement.
As I understand it, you can create a proprietary work that does not itself contain the shared library. If the library is proprietary, the customer is responsible for getting his own copy. If the library is GPL, the customer can get his own copy, or you can supply the customer with the GPL'd library, including source if asked.
RMS doesn't think so. RMS has made it pretty clear that he thinks that things that link with shared libraries are "derivative works", and so are subject to the restrictions of the GPL. So RMS believes that the situation you're describing is not allowed by the GPL.
He could be wrong though. I believe (though IANAL, so I'm not 100% certain) that plain old copyright alone would allow the above. Whether GPL can actually legally do things "beyond copyright" is another issue. I don't know if it can. (Microsoft's EULA's certainly tries to do things beyond plain copyright.) My point is that RMS's intent is for GPL to be more restrictive than I believe normal copyrighted works actually are.
Incidently, the situation you describe is explicitely allowed by LGPL.
One day I was channel surfing and came upon a channel (which turned out to be the aforementioned TV Guide channel) displaying the Amiga boot screen and asking for an infinite number of disks!!!
Years ago I had seen the local TV listings channel show "Please insert disk in DF0:". DF0: is the first floopy drive on an Amiga. This was actually an odd message, because the Amiga usually asks for a disk in "any drive". This message was also done as an "alert", not as a "requestor", so it was some weird thing in their software, not the system doing it. ("alerts" are a blinking red or orange box that appears at the top of the display, while "requestors" are on a window)
Another time, on the same channel, I actually saw a Guru Meditation. I wonder what people who had never heard of a Guru meditation thought of that.
Fine. But my point is that with normal copyright, I can distribute works that rely on someone else's shared library.
No you can't -- unless given permission to distribute something, copyright does not allow you to distribute it, incorporate it into another program, whatever. You can't take a.dll (dynamic library) from a commercial Windows program, include it in your program, and then distribute that program.
Did you fail reading comprehension? Read again where I said:
If I wanted to, I could write a program that relied on some other company's shared library, and I could sell tht program (and yes, distribute it). As long as I don't include the copyrighted library itself then copyright won't restrict me from doing that.
The GPL lets you make derivative works based on a shared library. It just doesn't let you DISTRIBUTE those derivative works.
Fine. But my point is that with normal copyright, I can distribute works that rely on someone else's shared library. With GPL you can't legally do this, or at least RMS hopes you can't.
Just like I might make a picture and say ``its free for you to use on webpages, but you can't sell t-shirts with it.'', the GPL is the same way.
No, it's more like, "you can link to my web page only if your web page meets certain conditions". I'm talking about dynamic linking here, which is actually quite a bit like linking web pages in a sense.
That's not taking away any rights you otherwise might have had.
I think you completely missed the point. If I wanted to, I could write a program that relied on some other company's shared library, and I could sell tht program (and yes, distribute it). As long as I don't include the copyrighted library itself then copyright won't restrict me from doing that. However, with GPL, RMS's hope is that people are not allowed to create non-GPL programs that "depend upon" GPL code, even through dynamic linking.
To give an example: it would be legal for me to create a non-GPL Macintosh emulator that required you to get your own Mac ROM files. The Mac ROMs are copyrighted, but it's okay (IANAL, but I'm fairly certain this is the case) for me to create software that depends on that copyrighted code, provided I don't go and give people that copyrighted code.
If the Mac ROMs were under GPL though, I wouldn't be allowed to distribute a non-GPL emulator. My emulator would clearly be dependant upon the Mac ROMs, and the GPL states that in such a situation it had better be GPL too if I want to distribute it. Whether that would actually hold up in court, I don't know. But RMS's intent is obvious, and he's stated it publicly many times.
You're just bitching because its not giving you the rights you want.
I think you're confusing independent thought with bitching. I have no problem with the restrictions GPL places. I'm working on some code right now that I plan on releasing under GPL. Does that mean I agree with all of RMS's philosophies? No. I think content creators should get to name their price. If they want to give it away free, fine. If they want to get a million dollars, fine. If they want you to give away your source, fine. You don't like the price? Don't use the code. I write proprietary software too. That's how I pay the rent. I don't get donations like RMS.
That said, I do have serious doubts about the dynamic linking restriction being legally enforceable, but I don't care much either way in this situation. It would set a rather nasty precedent, but as far as GPL goes, I have no intention of writing non GPLed code that dynamically links with GPLed code. That restriction (real, or only intended) is one that normal copyrighted code doesn't have though.
Ah, but the GPL grants you additional rights that you would not normally have under copyright law.
While the GPL gives you certain priveledges that you wouldn't have with normal copyrighted works, it also takes some normal rights away. In particular, it's perfectly legal for me to create a proprietary program that relies on some copyrighted shared library (.dll,.so, whatever-your-OS-uses) made by someone else.
If I tried to make a proprietary program that relied on a dynamically linked "libreadline" for example, I'd be in trouble though. According to RMS, GPL doesn't allow non-GPL programs to link with GPL code in this way, because the code "depends on" the GPL code.
So I can do certain things with normal copyrighted works that I cannot do within the constraints of GPL (or at least the GPL's intent, according to RMS).
There are other document formats which deliver the same power, have been around longer, have not *radically* changed, and are open to implementation by other vendors. HTML and XML-based grammars are only one example of this. PostScript would be an even better example.
Just one nit: PostScript is actually a pretty bad example of this, because while it's reasonably easy to generate, it's horrendously hard to extract any useful information from.
Tools that take PostScript as input tend to be fairly fragile if they're trying to do anything beyond just rendering the document. "2up" converters often fail on PostScript generated from certain sources. Many graphics packages that allow insertion of EPS simply can't render the EPS on-screen unless there's an embedded TIFF "preview". PostScript to text converters rarely, if ever, work.
PostScript is a nice language for talking to printers. It isn't a good language for talking to software though. That fact that it's Turing complete means a lot of the analyses that would be useful to do on documents simply can't be done with PostScript without actually executing it, and there's no way you can tell if it'll ever halt. PostScript documents also tend to just be filled with low-level rendering information, not high-level semantic information required for things like searching, translation, converson into other formats, etc.
XML is far superior in this respect. XML documents can encode semantic information, and they're easy to analyze. They're also a heck of a lot easier to parse. There are many XML parsers available. I can only think of one PostScript parser that isn't built into a printer (GhostScript). XML isn't a panacea though. Even if every application vendor switched to XML, they'd probably all use different DTD's. That's still better than unreadable binary formats though, because it's a lot easier to reverse engineer the file format, if it isn't published.
This sounds a lot like DSL/ADSL in that it sends the data down the line at frequencies outside the normal hearing range. British telecomm use a similar system in their Home-highway and cheap second line products (I don't know if there is equivalent technology being used in the US). Does anyone know if the HP system will interfere with these other technologies, besides am I thought all you guys had wired your houses for Ethernet as well.:-)
HPNA, POTS, and DSL all use different "channels" of your phone line, so they don't interfere with eachother. Intel's "AnyPoint" home networking thing uses HPNA as well. They have a reasonably good FAQ which explains a bit about how it works, and it says that it works fine with DSL.
you've obviously never created any art:) BTW- neither has Metallica
Re-read where I said FULL TIME. How can anyone do anything full time without getting paid enough to survive? Food and shelter cost money in the real world. If there was absolutely no money in art, there would be virtually no "full time" artists. They woould all have to do something else for a living, or perhaps live off of charity/welfare.
That you must resort to personal attacks indicates that you can't think of a good argument. If you can't think of a good argument to support your opinion, then your reasoning is probably flawed. QED
As for whether Metallica creates art: I don't know, nor do I care. They do create something that some perople want though. Those people should pay the creator's asking price, or do without. It's not that hard. That said, suing Napster and universities is not the right way to get what they want.
Art is a naturally occuring substance. You might not think so (We live in a capitalistic society. People expect and need to make money from their efforts), but I guarantee that people will be making music wether or not they might ever profit from it.
Do you think people would create art full time if the knew there was no way they would get any compensation for it? Do you think weekend artists would be as skilled on average as full time artist?
Then maybe they should get a "real" job, unless, like some idiot said here a while back, you believe that anyone who makes music *must* be compensated for it. That's like saying anyone who plays football should be compensated, just because they are playing. The fact of the matter is that to make any money at "play" you have to be damn good at it, so good that people are willing to pay just to watch you play.
I'm not sure, but I think I might be the "idiot" you refer to. Nice to see that you discuss your point of view rationally, rather than resulting to name calling.
If I am the person you're referring to, then you misinterpreted what I said. I believe that if someone creates something, they are entitled to ask whatever price they want for it, and if someone wants to benifit from that creation, they are required to pay the price. I don't think they must be compensated simply for creating. There's a significant difference.
If the creation sucks, and/or the creator sets their price too high, no-one will buy it. That's fine, and it's fair. It isn't fair for people who want the creation to obtain it without paying the creator's price. If you don't like the price, go elsewhere, or wait and see if the creator reduces their price. You could even try to convince the creator to lower the price, or perhaps convince them to change to a diferent business model. But simply obtaining the benefits of their work is
It's like if I had a farm, and I produced food there. Way more food than I could ever eat. Now, I should be able to ask whatever price I want. If I say "$80 for an English cucumber", that's the price. You can't say "oh, that's too much, I'll just take one. He'll never know, and he's got way more cucumbers than he could eat on his own anyways." You either pay the price, or find someone else who's got cucumbers at a lower price.
Let me get this straight. Is it a function of the boot loader or the OS whether it can be booted above the 1024th cylinder? I've just ordered a 30GB drive... will I be able to re-install NT above 1024 and boot it using LILO? I bet the NT setup program (I have an SP1 NT Workstation disk) can't handle the installation tho.
It's a combination of the two. To put it simply, the loader needs to be able to find the OS, and the OS needs to find itself. The way LILO loads Linux is different from the way it loads other operating systems, so the precise limitations aren't identical.
The Microsoft supplied generic IDE driver (Atapi.sys) may not be fully compatible with drives larger that 8 GB. This issue only affects IDE-based drives 8 GB and larger.
SP4 fixes his problem, but of course you can't install SP's until after you install NT. The Installation will fail, so normally you'd be screwed. MS has worked out a hack (in the linked article) that works around this problem by installing SP4's updated Atapi.sys. Also note:
The system parition[sic] (boot partition) is still limited to 7.8 GB whether an updated version of the Atapi.sys file is installed or not.
Why do I know this crap? I was installing NT4 on my Dad's new 20GB HD a few months ago. It took me three days to figure out why neither NT 4.0 or Windows 95 would install. I actually thought the HD was damaged at first, but Linux (Mandrake 6.0) installed with no problems. (He uses AutoCAD all day, so he wanted NT...)
Well, as for me, I'd like to see copyrights expire (with no grandfather clauses, preferably) after 10 years, and no future extensions of copyright law permitted to apply retroactively.
While I do agree that copyrights shouldn't last forever, I think that arbitrary timeouts (in programming, or in life) are a Bad Thing. What if someone spends 20 years developing something? What if someone spends some time developing some content, but isn't able to find a suitable use for it until 15 years later? I'm not sure how best to resolve this, but I don't think an arbitrary time limit is the right answer.
As for not stealing, it's not. You are absolutely not depriving someone else of the copyrighted material. What you're doing is copying it. Think about why copyright should have that name. It's the right to copy (specifically the right to distribute copies)
No, you'r not depriving them of the material. You are, however, (for all practical purposes) depriving them of the ability to get compensation for work they did that you're benefitting from.
And it's not property either. Property is tangible. It's a thing. Copyrighted material is not, although some particular expression of it - like _your_ copy of a book might be property, though the information in the book is not.
Funny, my dictionary explicitly mentions "intangible property". Anyway, while copyright infringement is "theft" in a sense, it isn't theft of the data. It's theft of the creator's right to profit from their work.
If someone creates some "content", they should be able to ask whatever price they want for it. If you want it, pay the price. If you don't like the price, go elsewhere. Your rights aren't being infringed any more than they would be if the person hadn't come up with the content in the first place. Obtaining a copy of the content without the (explicit or implicit) consent of the creator hurts content creators because it sginificantly reduces their chance to get a return on their investment. It's partly because of people who think it's okay to violate copyright that we have to put up with crap like copy protection, SDMI, and DMCA.
Copyrights are simply a limited-duration monopoly on the distribution of copies of that information. You obviously don't own it. You just control the distribution of copies of it. And that monopoly ends after a certain amount of time, which means that you lose your control. If it were property, none of this would be the case. And yet, it is the case.
You lose everything when you die. Does that mean you have no property at all?
I don't reject the _idea_ of copyrights per se. I do think that modern copyright law is blatantly unconstitutional and is in serious need of being reformed. IIRC the framers of the constitution came very close to never implementing copyright law at all, because of their fears of the sort of situation we have today. (in which they are perpetually and tight-fistedly held)
To be honest, I could care less what is or isn't "Constitutional". I'm not an American. What I do care about is what is fair. Is it fair that someone spends a great deal of effort developing something in the hopes that they can make a living off of it, and instead they get nothing while others benefit from their work? I don't think so.
And of course, copyrights are being granted to all kinds of things that don't promote the arts or useful sciences. They shouldn't be automatic - if you want a copyright, I think you ought to have to justify it, rather like how patents work, when examiners don't give them out willy-nilly either.
Copyrights are very different from patents. If someone has a copyright on some content, you're not deprived of anything. If you don't want to pay to use their content, you can freely develop your own. Your rights are the same as if the content was never created in the first place.
With patents it's different. If someone patents something, and you independently develop the same thing, you're in trouble. So when a patent is granted, the "rights" of non-patent holders have been reduced. If you have a patent on "Kangarooskicizers", I am no longer allowed to develop one, even if I don't look at your design. With copyrights it's different. If you copyright a piece of software called "Kangarooski Office", I can make a virtually identical piece of software, as long as I don't actually copy your code.
So in the case of copyrights, the things I can do if I don't want to license from you are the same as if you'd never developed the thing in the first place. In the case of patents, I actually lose my right to develop a "kangarooskicizer", even if I don't know that you've already developed such a thing.
If
Well, as for me, I'd like to see copyrights expire (with no grandfather clauses, preferably) after 10 years, and no future extensions of copyright law permitted to apply retroactively.
While I do agree that copyrights shouldn't last forever, I think that arbitrary timeouts (in programming, or in life) are a Bad Thing. What if someone spends 20 years developing something? What if someone spends some time developing some content, but isn't able to find a suitable use for it until 15 years later? I'm not sure how best to resolve this, but I don't think an arbitrary time limit is the right answer.
As for not stealing, it's not. You are absolutely not depriving someone else of the copyrighted material. What you're doing is copying it. Think about why copyright should have that name. It's the right to copy (specifically the right to distribute copies)
No, you'r not depriving them of the material. You are, however, (for all practical purposes) depriving them of the ability to get compensation for work they did that you're benefitting from.
And it's not property either. Property is tangible. It's a thing. Copyrighted material is not, although some particular expression of it - like _your_ copy of a book might be property, though the information in the book is not.
Funny, my dictionary explicitly mentions "intangible property". Anyway, while copyright infringement is "theft" in a sense, it isn't theft of the data. It's theft of the creator's right to profit from their work.
If someone creates some "content", they should be able to ask whatever price they want for it. If you want it, pay the price. If you don't like the price, go elsewhere. Your rights aren't being infringed any more than they would be if the person hadn't come up with the content in the first place. Obtaining a copy of the content without the (explicit or implicit) consent of the creator hurts content creators because it sginificantly reduces their chance to get a return on their investment. It's partly because of people who think it's okay to violate copyright that we have to put up with crap like copy protection, SDMI, and DMCA.
Copyrights are simply a limited-duration monopoly on the distribution of copies of that information. You obviously don't own it. You just control the distribution of copies of it. And that monopoly ends after a certain amount of time, which means that you lose your control. If it were property, none of this would be the case. And yet, it is the case.
You lose everything when you die. Does that mean you have no property at all?
I don't reject the _idea_ of copyrights per se. I do think that modern copyright law is blatantly unconstitutional and is in serious need of being reformed. IIRC the framers of the constitution came very close to never implementing copyright law at all, because of their fears of the sort of situation we have today. (in which they are perpetually and tight-fistedly held)
To be honest, I could care less what is or isn't "Constitutional". I'm not an American. What I do care about is what is fair. Is it fair that someone spends a great deal of effort developing something in the hopes that they can make a living off of it, and instead they get nothing while others benefit from their work? I don't think so.
And of course, copyrights are being granted to all kinds of things that don't promote the arts or useful sciences. They shouldn't be automatic - if you want a copyright, I think you ought to have to justify it, rather like how patents work, when examiners don't give them out willy-nilly either.
Copyrights are very different from patents. If someone has a copyright on some content, you're not deprived of anything. If you don't want to pay to use their content, you can freely develop your own. Your rights are the same as if the content was never created in the first place.
With patents it's different. If someone patents something, and you independently develop the same thing, you're in trouble. So when a patent is granted, the "rights" of non-patent holders have been reduced. If you have a patent on "Kangarooskicizers", I am no longer allowed to develop one, even if I don't look at your design. With copyrights it's different. If you copyright a piece of software called "Kangarooski Office", I can make a virtually identical piece of software, as long as I don't actually copy your code.
So in the case of copyrights, the things I can do if I don't want to license from you are the same as if you'd never developed the thing in the first place. In the case of patents, I actually lose my right to develop a "kangarooskicizer", even if I don't know that you've already developed such a thing.
Let's face it, be it a musician, writer, etc. these people are getting 10% of what we pay. Where does all of that money go? Personally, I'd rather have it go directly to the artists, not to these corporations.
So would I. But removing copyright laws would lower the artists profits to 0. 10% is better than 0.
There are not more distribution costs, it's called the internet. We don't need extensive advertising if content can roam around freely. That's whay the entertainment groups are scared of: losing their monopoly on distribution of content.
You still need some amount of advertising so people know about it. While the distribution costs are lower, having content "roam around freely" would just mean that the content creators won't get paid for their work at all. And please don't bring up the tired old "they can make money off of performances" argument. Many content creators simply can't perform. And if the content they create is good, and others benefit from it, shouldn't that be good enough? Why do some people think content should always take the role of "loss leader"?
We need a system where content creators can get paid fairly for the effort they put into creation. The current system is far from perfect, but it's better than one with no copyright laws. With no copyright, the situation would only be worse.
OTOH, illegally copying copyrighted material (it's not stealing, and it's not property) violates copyright law. No license need be involved. In fact, if you reject the GPL, you're still allowed to use it - you're just bound by copyright law, which is more restrictive than the GPL is.
But if you reject copyright law (which you seem to, with your assertion that "it's not stealing, and it's not property"), and you reject the GPL, you can do things that GPL doesn't allow. Namely, take the software, modify it, and re-release without source.
Am I saying you should do this? No. But if you want people to respect the GPL, you'd better also respect copyright. If you go around selectively choosing which IP laws to respect, you shouldn't be surprised if others start violating ones you actually care about.
Slashdot Mirror
so? Linux/unix web browsing accounts for far far less than 1% when I look at our browser logs (major search site)
Maybe most of the Linux users are using a better search site?
A good idea, though not a complete solution. Some software patents aren't held by software vendors (some have lately given up on selling software, some don't do anything but attack innocent infringers with submarine patents), and they can't be swayed by offers to license others' patents.
GPL only patents won't help in this situation either.
Perfect freedom can't exist in the presence of people opposed to it. Meta-restrictions (that prevent further restrictions) better serve freedom than allowing anyone to impose any restrictions they care to.
Another "meta-restriction" which I think would serve freedom far more effectively, would be to create a new "Public Patent License". PPL patents would be usable by anyone, as long as they made all of their patents (past and future) also PPL. In some ways this is a stronger restriction than the "GPL only patents", because it forces the users of the patent to open all of their patents, not just the source to the one program that uses the patent. It's a far less onerous restriction though, because it's using patents to fight patents, not patents to fight everyone who doesn't use GPL.
It doesn't take that much intelligence, artificial or not, to get a "first post".
/.-centric, would be something like Ask Jeeves that actually works.
Now, a duplicate story detector for Slashdot.. that would be interesting. Make a 'bot' that reads all of the articles ever posted on Slashdot, and acts as an extra level of screening (after "meat" approval by Taco et. al). If the article looks familiar, it could warn about it.
Another idea: an artificial moderator that would read all posts, and based on the way other things have been moderated in the past, tries to figure out how these new posts will be moderated. You probably don't want this doing actual moderations, but it would be interesting to see how well it's able to predict the behaviour of the Slashdot moderators. It could also potentially be used to check for moderation abuses... things that differ significantly from the prediction are likely to be abuses (assuming the prediction was very accurate).
One more idea, but one that isn't
All of these ideas are pretty heavy on the NLP aspect.
He isn't invoking someone else's name in his crusade though, like the crusaders who "killed for Christ".
No, he isn't invoking someone else's name. Instead he's invoking the word "freedom", but in reality he means something only tangentally related to freedom.
How is this hypocrisy? The FSF does not promote software that is unrestricted.
Then they should stop using the term "Free Software". If the FSF cares about freedom, then the only patents that should be allowed in GPLed software would be completely unrestricted ones. Patents are intrinsically anti-freedom, unless they are freely licensed to everyone.
This is about power and the freedom that comes from having power, not about pacifism.
Oh yes, freedom for RMS. But what about the rest of us who can't live off of donations?
Why pretend that the GPL doesn't represent a political agenda. It does. If you can't or won't live with it, you still have the Microsoft option.
If you can only see the two extremes, then you've probably been brainwashd by one of them.
I hate software patents. I don't have any problems with copyright though. I believe creators should be able to do what they want with what they create. Copyright is consistent with that, but patents are totally counter to it.
The more I look, the more evidence I see that RMS doesn't give a damn about anyone's freedom but his own.
That's not sharing--that's "helping yourself". Sharing is when I own something and I give it to you. Helping yourself is when I own something and you come and take it.
So what do you call it when someone independently develops a piece of software, licenses it under something other than GPL, and is then told "sorry, there's a GPL patent on that algorithm you use". This is the problem with patents. If someone were to go and develop the same thing completely independently, then they're still restricted. This is why patents are evil, because they restrict us without us even knowing about them. (the same isn't true of copyright, since you can't infringe upon a copyrighted work without knowing of its existance)
If members of the free software movement start using patents to fight proprietary software, then they're really no better than people in the crusades who "killed for Christ".
I have no problem with GPL software. I'm writing software right now that I intend to release under GPL. But I believe software patents are wrong, no matter who is using them. For the FSF to condone software patents that are restricted in any way is the epitome of hypocrisy.
And this would definitely put a huge hole in the argument that GPL isn't any stronger than copyright. Copyright allows clean room reimplementation, patents do not.
Google does support phrase searching. If you search for:you get pages with "foo" and "bar". But if you search for:You'll get pages containing the phrase foo bar.
As for "near", Google already uses that when ranking things. In the first example, pages with "foo" near "bar" would be ranked higher than ones where they were far apart (all other things being equal).
Google also lets you use "-" as a logical not. The only thing it's really missing is logical "or", but for that you can do multiple queries. Maybe you should read Google's Search Tips page.
I used to use Altavista. When I first found out about Google I started using it when Altavista failed to find what I was searching for. I was impressed by the results, so I started going to Google first, and Altavista afterwards if I couldn't find what I was looking for with Google. After a while I noticed that if Google couldn't find it, Altavista almost never would.
We all know that radar has it's limited capabilities (such as the ones listed above) and one of these is that radar likes round things.. Thus planes are built in such away (without round[ed] edges) to avoid detection from radar.
Uh... no. The reason the F117A is angular is because the computer systems used at the time it was designed couldn't practically compute the radar profile for anything but objects that have only planar surfaces. If you look at pictures of the B2 stealth bomber, you can see that it's actually got quite a few smooth curves. It was developed after the F117A, and computers had advanced enough that it was practical for them to compute the radar profile of curved surfaces. That's very useful, because angular shapes like that of the F177A aren't very stable aerodynamically.
Whether he's right or not doesn't matter - the GPL does not impose additional restrictions beyond those imposed by copyright law. Maybe some of it cannot be enforced, due to certain restrictions not being imposed by copyright law, but that's an issue that has no precedent, so RMS's stand is perfectly reasonable.
EULA's often impose additional restrictions beyond copyright. Where does copyright law say I'm limited by the number of clients that connect to a server? I'm not creating additional copies, so copyright is irrelevant. But go take a look at the EULA for Windows NT Workstation 4.0. Maybe you're right, maybe this condition of the GPL can't be enforced, or maybe it can. But my point is that GPL is at least trying to enforce something that I'm fairly certain is outside of the scope of copyright.
But the issue does have a precedent. Taka a look at this comment I wrote just a minute ago. Look at the part about emulators. Does copyright prevent emulators that require ROM files? I don't think that would make any sense, since nothing is being copied. The same goes for dynamically linking. If someone distributes code that depends on someone else's library, but doesn't actually distribute (ie: copy) that library, then they're not infringing any copyrights.
Maybe the case. My point is that the intent of the GPL is to be restrictive in a way that copyright actually isn't (AFAIK). Whether this is actually possible or not, I don't know.
Are you sure? Without the permission of whoever wrote the library? Have a look at the files for Microsoft Office, pick a DLL at random and distribute your own program linking with that DLL. See what happens.
No, I'm not 100% sure. There is a precedent though. A lot of emulators (Mac emulators, Amiga emulators, dosemu, video game emulators) require that the user get some software, usually ROMS or a "boot disk", from the system to be emulated. The emulator then does something that isn't significantly different from "dynamic linking" with this code. I haven't heard of anyone getting sued about this. Even if copyright law doesn't explicitly allow this, I doubt that any proprietary software author would pursue the issue, since they're getting paid for their work in any case.
As for linking with DLL's from MS Office, that's essentially done by any application that embeds Excel or Word OLE objects. One could probably argue that that was explicitely allowed by Microsoft though.
Another interesting example: Suppose someone documented the interface of libreadline (which is GPL) and placed this on the web. Now suppose someone else who had never even heard of GPL saw this documentation, and produced (and distributed) a proprietary closed-source program that called the documented libreadline interface. They've now violated the intent of the GPL. I'm reasonably certain they haven't broken copyright law (but of course, IANAL). Perhaps, by being a "licence agreement", GPL is able to do things independent of copyright though. It's not copyright law that prevents people from using Microsoft's Kerberos documentation to add support to Samba. It's the license agreement.
As I understand it, you can create a proprietary work that does not itself contain the shared library. If the library is proprietary, the customer is responsible for getting his own copy. If the library is GPL, the customer can get his own copy, or you can supply the customer with the GPL'd library, including source if asked.
RMS doesn't think so. RMS has made it pretty clear that he thinks that things that link with shared libraries are "derivative works", and so are subject to the restrictions of the GPL. So RMS believes that the situation you're describing is not allowed by the GPL.
He could be wrong though. I believe (though IANAL, so I'm not 100% certain) that plain old copyright alone would allow the above. Whether GPL can actually legally do things "beyond copyright" is another issue. I don't know if it can. (Microsoft's EULA's certainly tries to do things beyond plain copyright.) My point is that RMS's intent is for GPL to be more restrictive than I believe normal copyrighted works actually are.
Incidently, the situation you describe is explicitely allowed by LGPL.
One day I was channel surfing and came upon a channel (which turned out to be the aforementioned TV Guide channel) displaying the Amiga boot screen and asking for an infinite number of disks!!!
Years ago I had seen the local TV listings channel show "Please insert disk in DF0:". DF0: is the first floopy drive on an Amiga. This was actually an odd message, because the Amiga usually asks for a disk in "any drive". This message was also done as an "alert", not as a "requestor", so it was some weird thing in their software, not the system doing it. ("alerts" are a blinking red or orange box that appears at the top of the display, while "requestors" are on a window)
Another time, on the same channel, I actually saw a Guru Meditation. I wonder what people who had never heard of a Guru meditation thought of that.
Did you fail reading comprehension? Read again where I said: And yes, it was bold in the original post too.
The GPL lets you make derivative works based on a shared library. It just doesn't let you DISTRIBUTE those derivative works.
Fine. But my point is that with normal copyright, I can distribute works that rely on someone else's shared library. With GPL you can't legally do this, or at least RMS hopes you can't.
Just like I might make a picture and say ``its free for you to use on webpages, but you can't sell t-shirts with it.'', the GPL is the same way.
No, it's more like, "you can link to my web page only if your web page meets certain conditions". I'm talking about dynamic linking here, which is actually quite a bit like linking web pages in a sense.
That's not taking away any rights you otherwise might have had.
I think you completely missed the point. If I wanted to, I could write a program that relied on some other company's shared library, and I could sell tht program (and yes, distribute it). As long as I don't include the copyrighted library itself then copyright won't restrict me from doing that. However, with GPL, RMS's hope is that people are not allowed to create non-GPL programs that "depend upon" GPL code, even through dynamic linking.
To give an example: it would be legal for me to create a non-GPL Macintosh emulator that required you to get your own Mac ROM files. The Mac ROMs are copyrighted, but it's okay (IANAL, but I'm fairly certain this is the case) for me to create software that depends on that copyrighted code, provided I don't go and give people that copyrighted code.
If the Mac ROMs were under GPL though, I wouldn't be allowed to distribute a non-GPL emulator. My emulator would clearly be dependant upon the Mac ROMs, and the GPL states that in such a situation it had better be GPL too if I want to distribute it. Whether that would actually hold up in court, I don't know. But RMS's intent is obvious, and he's stated it publicly many times.
You're just bitching because its not giving you the rights you want.
I think you're confusing independent thought with bitching. I have no problem with the restrictions GPL places. I'm working on some code right now that I plan on releasing under GPL. Does that mean I agree with all of RMS's philosophies? No. I think content creators should get to name their price. If they want to give it away free, fine. If they want to get a million dollars, fine. If they want you to give away your source, fine. You don't like the price? Don't use the code. I write proprietary software too. That's how I pay the rent. I don't get donations like RMS.
That said, I do have serious doubts about the dynamic linking restriction being legally enforceable, but I don't care much either way in this situation. It would set a rather nasty precedent, but as far as GPL goes, I have no intention of writing non GPLed code that dynamically links with GPLed code. That restriction (real, or only intended) is one that normal copyrighted code doesn't have though.
Ah, but the GPL grants you additional rights that you would not normally have under copyright law.
.so, whatever-your-OS-uses) made by someone else.
While the GPL gives you certain priveledges that you wouldn't have with normal copyrighted works, it also takes some normal rights away. In particular, it's perfectly legal for me to create a proprietary program that relies on some copyrighted shared library (.dll,
If I tried to make a proprietary program that relied on a dynamically linked "libreadline" for example, I'd be in trouble though. According to RMS, GPL doesn't allow non-GPL programs to link with GPL code in this way, because the code "depends on" the GPL code.
So I can do certain things with normal copyrighted works that I cannot do within the constraints of GPL (or at least the GPL's intent, according to RMS).
There are other document formats which deliver the same power, have been around longer, have not *radically* changed, and are open to implementation by other vendors. HTML and XML-based grammars are only one example of this. PostScript would be an even better example.
Just one nit: PostScript is actually a pretty bad example of this, because while it's reasonably easy to generate, it's horrendously hard to extract any useful information from.
Tools that take PostScript as input tend to be fairly fragile if they're trying to do anything beyond just rendering the document. "2up" converters often fail on PostScript generated from certain sources. Many graphics packages that allow insertion of EPS simply can't render the EPS on-screen unless there's an embedded TIFF "preview". PostScript to text converters rarely, if ever, work.
PostScript is a nice language for talking to printers. It isn't a good language for talking to software though. That fact that it's Turing complete means a lot of the analyses that would be useful to do on documents simply can't be done with PostScript without actually executing it, and there's no way you can tell if it'll ever halt. PostScript documents also tend to just be filled with low-level rendering information, not high-level semantic information required for things like searching, translation, converson into other formats, etc.
XML is far superior in this respect. XML documents can encode semantic information, and they're easy to analyze. They're also a heck of a lot easier to parse. There are many XML parsers available. I can only think of one PostScript parser that isn't built into a printer (GhostScript). XML isn't a panacea though. Even if every application vendor switched to XML, they'd probably all use different DTD's. That's still better than unreadable binary formats though, because it's a lot easier to reverse engineer the file format, if it isn't published.
This sounds a lot like DSL/ADSL in that it sends the data down the line at frequencies outside the normal hearing range. British telecomm use a similar system in their Home-highway and cheap second line products (I don't know if there is equivalent technology being used in the US). Does anyone know if the HP system will interfere with these other technologies, besides am I thought all you guys had wired your houses for Ethernet as well. :-)
HPNA, POTS, and DSL all use different "channels" of your phone line, so they don't interfere with eachother. Intel's "AnyPoint" home networking thing uses HPNA as well. They have a reasonably good FAQ which explains a bit about how it works, and it says that it works fine with DSL.
you've obviously never created any art :) BTW- neither has Metallica
Re-read where I said FULL TIME. How can anyone do anything full time without getting paid enough to survive? Food and shelter cost money in the real world. If there was absolutely no money in art, there would be virtually no "full time" artists. They woould all have to do something else for a living, or perhaps live off of charity/welfare.
That you must resort to personal attacks indicates that you can't think of a good argument. If you can't think of a good argument to support your opinion, then your reasoning is probably flawed. QED
As for whether Metallica creates art: I don't know, nor do I care. They do create something that some perople want though. Those people should pay the creator's asking price, or do without. It's not that hard. That said, suing Napster and universities is not the right way to get what they want.
where are those needed? isn't the nt cd bootable.
Many PCs can't boot from CD-ROM...
Art is a naturally occuring substance. You might not think so (We live in a capitalistic society. People expect and need to make money from their efforts), but I guarantee that people will be making music wether or not they might ever profit from it.
Do you think people would create art full time if the knew there was no way they would get any compensation for it? Do you think weekend artists would be as skilled on average as full time artist?
Then maybe they should get a "real" job, unless, like some idiot said here a while back, you believe that anyone who makes music *must* be compensated for it. That's like saying anyone who plays football should be compensated, just because they are playing. The fact of the matter is that to make any money at "play" you have to be damn good at it, so good that people are willing to pay just to watch you play.
I'm not sure, but I think I might be the "idiot" you refer to. Nice to see that you discuss your point of view rationally, rather than resulting to name calling.
If I am the person you're referring to, then you misinterpreted what I said. I believe that if someone creates something, they are entitled to ask whatever price they want for it, and if someone wants to benifit from that creation, they are required to pay the price. I don't think they must be compensated simply for creating. There's a significant difference.
If the creation sucks, and/or the creator sets their price too high, no-one will buy it. That's fine, and it's fair. It isn't fair for people who want the creation to obtain it without paying the creator's price. If you don't like the price, go elsewhere, or wait and see if the creator reduces their price. You could even try to convince the creator to lower the price, or perhaps convince them to change to a diferent business model. But simply obtaining the benefits of their work is
It's like if I had a farm, and I produced food there. Way more food than I could ever eat. Now, I should be able to ask whatever price I want. If I say "$80 for an English cucumber", that's the price. You can't say "oh, that's too much, I'll just take one. He'll never know, and he's got way more cucumbers than he could eat on his own anyways." You either pay the price, or find someone else who's got cucumbers at a lower price.
wouldn't that then be "Unix is Not UNG"? :-)
No, it would be "Unix is Not UNU".
It's a combination of the two. To put it simply, the loader needs to be able to find the OS, and the OS needs to find itself. The way LILO loads Linux is different from the way it loads other operating systems, so the precise limitations aren't identical.
That said, you'll probably run into problems installing NT on such a large drive if it's IDE, but there are workarounds. See: Q197667 - Installing Windows NT on a Large IDE Hard Disk. Two things to note:
SP4 fixes his problem, but of course you can't install SP's until after you install NT. The Installation will fail, so normally you'd be screwed. MS has worked out a hack (in the linked article) that works around this problem by installing SP4's updated Atapi.sys. Also note:
Why do I know this crap? I was installing NT4 on my Dad's new 20GB HD a few months ago. It took me three days to figure out why neither NT 4.0 or Windows 95 would install. I actually thought the HD was damaged at first, but Linux (Mandrake 6.0) installed with no problems. (He uses AutoCAD all day, so he wanted NT...)
No, you'r not depriving them of the material. You are, however, (for all practical purposes) depriving them of the ability to get compensation for work they did that you're benefitting from.
Funny, my dictionary explicitly mentions "intangible property". Anyway, while copyright infringement is "theft" in a sense, it isn't theft of the data. It's theft of the creator's right to profit from their work.
If someone creates some "content", they should be able to ask whatever price they want for it. If you want it, pay the price. If you don't like the price, go elsewhere. Your rights aren't being infringed any more than they would be if the person hadn't come up with the content in the first place. Obtaining a copy of the content without the (explicit or implicit) consent of the creator hurts content creators because it sginificantly reduces their chance to get a return on their investment. It's partly because of people who think it's okay to violate copyright that we have to put up with crap like copy protection, SDMI, and DMCA.
You lose everything when you die. Does that mean you have no property at all?
To be honest, I could care less what is or isn't "Constitutional". I'm not an American. What I do care about is what is fair. Is it fair that someone spends a great deal of effort developing something in the hopes that they can make a living off of it, and instead they get nothing while others benefit from their work? I don't think so.
Copyrights are very different from patents. If someone has a copyright on some content, you're not deprived of anything. If you don't want to pay to use their content, you can freely develop your own. Your rights are the same as if the content was never created in the first place.
With patents it's different. If someone patents something, and you independently develop the same thing, you're in trouble. So when a patent is granted, the "rights" of non-patent holders have been reduced. If you have a patent on "Kangarooskicizers", I am no longer allowed to develop one, even if I don't look at your design. With copyrights it's different. If you copyright a piece of software called "Kangarooski Office", I can make a virtually identical piece of software, as long as I don't actually copy your code.
So in the case of copyrights, the things I can do if I don't want to license from you are the same as if you'd never developed the thing in the first place. In the case of patents, I actually lose my right to develop a "kangarooskicizer", even if I don't know that you've already developed such a thing.
If While I do agree that copyrights shouldn't last forever, I think that arbitrary timeouts (in programming, or in life) are a Bad Thing. What if someone spends 20 years developing something? What if someone spends some time developing some content, but isn't able to find a suitable use for it until 15 years later? I'm not sure how best to resolve this, but I don't think an arbitrary time limit is the right answer.
No, you'r not depriving them of the material. You are, however, (for all practical purposes) depriving them of the ability to get compensation for work they did that you're benefitting from.
Funny, my dictionary explicitly mentions "intangible property". Anyway, while copyright infringement is "theft" in a sense, it isn't theft of the data. It's theft of the creator's right to profit from their work.
If someone creates some "content", they should be able to ask whatever price they want for it. If you want it, pay the price. If you don't like the price, go elsewhere. Your rights aren't being infringed any more than they would be if the person hadn't come up with the content in the first place. Obtaining a copy of the content without the (explicit or implicit) consent of the creator hurts content creators because it sginificantly reduces their chance to get a return on their investment. It's partly because of people who think it's okay to violate copyright that we have to put up with crap like copy protection, SDMI, and DMCA.
You lose everything when you die. Does that mean you have no property at all?
To be honest, I could care less what is or isn't "Constitutional". I'm not an American. What I do care about is what is fair. Is it fair that someone spends a great deal of effort developing something in the hopes that they can make a living off of it, and instead they get nothing while others benefit from their work? I don't think so.
Copyrights are very different from patents. If someone has a copyright on some content, you're not deprived of anything. If you don't want to pay to use their content, you can freely develop your own. Your rights are the same as if the content was never created in the first place.
With patents it's different. If someone patents something, and you independently develop the same thing, you're in trouble. So when a patent is granted, the "rights" of non-patent holders have been reduced. If you have a patent on "Kangarooskicizers", I am no longer allowed to develop one, even if I don't look at your design. With copyrights it's different. If you copyright a piece of software called "Kangarooski Office", I can make a virtually identical piece of software, as long as I don't actually copy your code.
So in the case of copyrights, the things I can do if I don't want to license from you are the same as if you'd never developed the thing in the first place. In the case of patents, I actually lose my right to develop a "kangarooskicizer", even if I don't know that you've already developed such a thing.
Let's face it, be it a musician, writer, etc. these people are getting 10% of what we pay. Where does all of that money go? Personally, I'd rather have it go directly to the artists, not to these corporations.
So would I. But removing copyright laws would lower the artists profits to 0. 10% is better than 0.
There are not more distribution costs, it's called the internet. We don't need extensive advertising if content can roam around freely. That's whay the entertainment groups are scared of: losing their monopoly on distribution of content.
You still need some amount of advertising so people know about it. While the distribution costs are lower, having content "roam around freely" would just mean that the content creators won't get paid for their work at all. And please don't bring up the tired old "they can make money off of performances" argument. Many content creators simply can't perform. And if the content they create is good, and others benefit from it, shouldn't that be good enough? Why do some people think content should always take the role of "loss leader"?
We need a system where content creators can get paid fairly for the effort they put into creation. The current system is far from perfect, but it's better than one with no copyright laws. With no copyright, the situation would only be worse.
OTOH, illegally copying copyrighted material (it's not stealing, and it's not property) violates copyright law. No license need be involved. In fact, if you reject the GPL, you're still allowed to use it - you're just bound by copyright law, which is more restrictive than the GPL is.
But if you reject copyright law (which you seem to, with your assertion that "it's not stealing, and it's not property"), and you reject the GPL, you can do things that GPL doesn't allow. Namely, take the software, modify it, and re-release without source.
Am I saying you should do this? No. But if you want people to respect the GPL, you'd better also respect copyright. If you go around selectively choosing which IP laws to respect, you shouldn't be surprised if others start violating ones you actually care about.