>was very small, disintegrated before impact, and anything that might have reached the ground intact would have been cold to the touch
so what they're saying is that the UFO was small, capable of disintegration at very high speeds (obviously a sign of an advanced life form), and cold, eh? They were probably just searching for some nice hot cambells chick noodle soup...
I went to Waterloo, and their solar car project is one of the babies of the university. I'm very proud to hear of both Waterloo and Queen's doin' the top 5! I did a 94% in highschool, and Waterloo kicked the crap out of me (Electrical engineering.) It's rumoured that the U of Waterloo's engineering program is one of the top 5 egineering programs (electrical, computer, systems) in north america.. I definately know it's the hardest in Canada.
I'm a c/c++ developer. CORBA, in a MySQL environment. Some XML.. you know, the fun stuff. I've done some stuff in perl (I could hack my way through it), but the only fun I can extract from it is how the hell is it going to interpret what I'm coding?
So I say, if Larry is going to formalize Perl more, bring it on.. it's definately useful, but I'd say more for the here-and-there patch of glue rather than high load cgis. As a c++ developer, the more unambiguous he can make the language, the better.:) All I know is the main way people brag about their perl skills is through regex's and general text processing craziness.
The good:
The gadget is designed to aid players of fighting and boxing games who typically have to hit several buttons in sequence on a joypad to perform a combination or special move that could knock out or maim an onscreen opponent. Sounds good to me.
The thing you're missing is that the complicated button sequences are designed to seperate the amateurs from the pros. The complication is the challenge of the game.. make the special moves easy to execute, and you kill your dedicated user base. Sure, the reacreational users might not appreciate this, but as the saying goes, 20% of your user base (your heavy users) is 70% of your profit, in the form of the merchandising and spinoffs and such. So, while this thing might be fun for the uninitiated, the afficionado will hate the fact that any joe shmoe now knows how to execute the 15 hit combo without having to proove his dedication to the game via practicing the button sequences. Nenermind that bigger or more agile (or whatever) people now have an advantage, totally killing the attraction of games for the geek set that loved games for the fact that it gave them the opportunity to 'kick anyone's ass', regardless of size. Thats the beauty of games.. you can compete with someone regardless of their physical or (to a lesser degree) mental level.
Anyhow, yes it's got gee-wiz factor, but it totally kills the idea behind games, if you ask this fighter-game veteran.
On a side note, can you imagine having two of these things in the same household; seeing two guys kick the air between each other, with their eye on the screen to see what's happening is an absolutely priceless mental image. Why not just wrassle like real boys (and men) do?!
The companies are only responsible for bringing the disinterested neophytes online. Now they want control, seeing as the model they slapped over the Internet isn't as profitable as they had hoped. But this is like a group of 'anarchistic hippies' building a fun lane for people to walk through, then having a business come in and commercialize the road, making it admittedly many times fatter and longer. Then, people stop showing up, cause now it costs money, and its plagued by people using it who don't understand it. So the businesses wave the white flag, and do everything in their power to obtain the lease to the land, including that original kick-ass lane, so they can put a parking lot on it. But fuck that.. in the case of the Internet, there's no way to keep the original lane. In other words, in the long run, we're fucked. At some point, we'll be saying "It was fun while it lasted..." Hell, you can even say it now.. sometimes I lament that the damn web killed the kick-ass Gopher protocol!
The claim that it forces humans to turn and look is probably a little outlandish. You'll become accustomed to the sound if it becomes ubiquitous in advertising.
It/is/ interesting, however, that the sound is far mor easily locatable than previous alarm sounds.
Incidentally, every time I hear a siren, I tend to turn and look (even if the sound isn't as easily locatable). But I dont hear that siren sound in advertising all the time. So I'm not as fearful as others here in terms of advertisers monopolizing this sound, as the claim that you HAVE to turn towards it is probably exaggurated a little. In conjunction with noise pollution laws, I doubt you'll see a proliferation of this sound in advertising. I'd imagine emergency alarms and cellphones might make a little more use of it.
You're completely ignoring the relevance of this information.
If you're poor, how do you afford the solutions offered online? (IE, information is free, but implementation rarely is) What good is information on a world you live in if you can't afford to go anywhere? (Nevermind that 95% of that information inherently assumes you're from a completetly different culture, thus much of it loses its relevence, usefulness, or poingancy.)
But lets say, for whatever reason, that browsing the net enriches your mind, and makes you happy, a la any given MSN Messenger commercial. So, you give people jobs building this internet. Where does the money come from? Presumably from people who now have jobs. But what are they buying? I don't imagine the culture is quite at the stage where people have the luxury of shopping online or purchasing content. We take for granted that our food, water, house, lawnmower etc, are forgone conclusions. Thus, much of our purchasing, which in turn fuels jobs, is spent on frivilous things like access to porn sites, movies, etc. Remember the crash? That was about people thinking other people would be buying into a new cultural economy. CISCO comes to mind for fueling this hype (I still havn't puchased bon-bons from a quaint european candy shoppe chain). Companies placed their bets, but it didn't quite work out. So what's the payoff with AfricaNet? Who's the end consumer that gets the money going through the pipeline? I think you'd be left with a big FO link, and tons (not all! I'm not saying all!) people standing around either not wanting it or not understanding how it fits into their culture.
I can tell you EXACTLY why misguided efforts like these are bad:
Companies are salivating at the mouth for new consumer bases. The internet would give them unprecendented new access to consumers. The WTO would be pulled in MANY times so companies could exploit the relative weakness of the african economies and cultures to fuel a one way 'import-only' trend into these countries, which at the end of the day will realize they're networks are really only the 20th century version of a dog leash. Western companies are ALL about access to foreign markets. Whatever humanitarian benifits that come out of education and access to information will be obliterated by the greediness of companies to exploit these new markets, turning african countries into just another economy-on-the-westernized-leash.
As for those who took pot-shots at the violence, desease and conditions in africa, ya got alotta nerve. Many will claim that the current conditions are a direct result of outside influences meddling with a once-self-contained culture.
true enough.. I was only attempting to justify WINE over Windows itself. But you're right, if a Linux version of a game exists, then purchasing the Windows version and running it in WINE does support MS moreso than buying the Linux version.
Not neccessarily true. There are one-way property checks such as:
Input: request for door to open
Output: door opens or error reported IF (this or that or that)
While this logic may be complex (lets say the API to the door is a nightmare), verifying that the output matches a set of desired conditions can be far simpler in certain cases than the actual logic to implement the desired behaviour? Especially depending on the language you are using to implement.. think of doing something with assembler, when correct operation is verified simply by walking through some memory and doing a few checks like 'not everything is null', and other trivial possible outputs you know you won't EVER want. His program almost sounds to me like high-level asserts, where the app goes through all the possible inputs you specify to check against the asserts.
... unless you're ethical and like to follow the law.
Cause the screwdriver costs 200$, while the hammer and it's respective screwdriver-emulator is free. Nevermind that switching between your hammers and screwdrivers can take minutes.
At any rate, using your reasoning, no one should ever give up Windows, since the development support is there because people run it. If you're then saying run it because the development support isn't available for the alternative OS, well then, you'd be a part of the very problem you wish would get solved.
The nice thing is, if you run WINE, no money goes to MS, thus you contribute to possible market reduction, thus making it far more likely that developers and gaming/video API-makers will take into account *nix portability from the game development's get-go. Yes, it's like littering.. you can't stop it all, but you can certainly do your part if you choose to commit yourself to your ideals and accept the inconveniences and downsides that come with Doing The Right Thing (tm).
In this case, I'd have to say that the developer is in no way liable, since technically, the copy of the app s/he distributed included a non-GPL'd lib. If the distro then switches up libraries, it is the distro'er who is distributing binaries that violate the GPL, not the developer. If the developer provides LGPL libs with their distrobution, it is the distro'ers responsibility to ensure that that library ships along with it.
I havn't read the full GPL in some time, but I believe the key issue is in how the binary is distributed. If it is distributed with a LGPLd lib, they are not violating the GPL. If the distro then goes and switches things around, I'd imagine they would be the ones violating the GPL, and could be held liable for damages to the GPL'd lib they substituted in. It really is up to the distro'er to adhere to the licences attached to the software they plan on redistributing.
All that said, this relies on me assuming that dynamically linked libs DO fall under the umbrella of GPL? It doesn't seem like an unfair proposition, but maybe that's not true?
This is true. Although for the ethical publisher, the idea of a watermark convention for GPL'd code would help then, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have to know the development details in order to have some sort of standardized check for GPL'd code.
I guess part of my assumption, and I do admit its a big one, is that unethical violations are less significant than intentional violations. Of course, this also assumes everyone has the same measuring stick for valuing loss due to violations.... I guess I was thinking that it was more worth concentrating on how to detect intentional violators. It would probably be easier to catch them, easier to prosecute, and thus fuel the neccessary awareness to reduce unintentional violations? Just a guess, tho.
And thanks from the other guy above.. yes, DMCA, not DCMA.. damnit, when it comes to acronyms, I just choose the one that rolls off my tongue the easiest. I hope it doesn't distract from the point of my comment. Thanks!
Considering the grey-area of what constitutes 'stolen code', I don't think there will ever be a way of being 100% sure. Is taking a clever 2 line 'for' loop from someone elses code (that doesn't contribute greatly to the core functionality of either the GPL or the code-stealer's product) stealing? This has probably been discussed at length at/. before, but I thought it was worth pointing out that nothing is black and white (or whatever colors you've set in your terminal;).
Okay, so once you can really define what is 'stolen' code, I'd imagine that it shouldn't be too hard to:
- check the symbols in the binary to see if there are any symbols that match up against the GPL'd lib in question
- check what the binaries are dynamically linking against (although I doubt you'd be so lazy as to link against a GPL library dynamically and not expect to be caught)
- check the strings in the binary to see if they contain any strings known in the GPL'd code in question
Of course, this assumes you already have a suspicion that a binary might be violating the GPL of software 'X'.
I almost wonder if it shouldn't be a convention to include some sort of static char buffer 'watermark' in GPL'd libs/APIs, so you could search a suspect binary. Granted, the stealer could recompile the GPL'd libs without the string, or just steal code verbatim, but like I said, its impossible to get 100% certainty.
You know what tho.. with all the DCMA bruhaha going on, the core issue is trying to catch 100% of all infractions. I'd think it to be slightly hypocritical to suggest that the GPL community should go all out to ensure 100% compliance given the resistance to similar efforts from the content/media industry. I think 10% of technical infractions (and I'll argue that they are the visible, obvious, easy to detect infractions) of both the GPL and DCMA misuse constitutes 90% of the loss for both licences/acts. In the case of media, the loss is revenue and control, in the case of GPL, the benifits of collaberation, credit, and revenue to the original authors of code. In fact, if it can be prooven that not writing up tons of technical barriers and legal restrictions beyond the core purposes of the GPL doesn't damage the community to a large extent, it'd be good fodder to throw back to the backers of the DCMA.. you'd be able to say, 'Chill... we know there is some misuse, but we're still in business and benifiting off of the existance of the GPL. Same should go for the DCMA.' You know, like J-walking.. its technically illigal but not econmically or socially viable to persure means of ensuring 100% compliance. In other words, the possible loss in value resulting from infractions of the GPL and DCMA are not worth the inconvenience of pursuing 100% compliance.
Just a few thoughts.. okay, putting on my flame retardant suit now. Interesting question tho.. I've thought about this a few times myself.
a) I'm not upset that I can't record Cagney and Lacey reruns. However, I'm sure Cagney and Lacey fans would be upset. Me, I'd be upset over different shows. Deliberately using an outdated show as an example isn't particularly effective or clever if you are interested in actually discrediting my justification in being upset.
b) I'm not American. I'm Canadian. And I'm civil war constitutes people versus their own government. Perhaps the one nice offshoot of globalization is that the eventual backlash will be globalized as well. Neato.
c) People are probably more shallow than anyone else thinks, although I realize this is subjective. Note I'm not putting myself above this group.. there are things that mean a crap-load to me, and nothing to the next man. But when everyone is forced to play by someone elses rules-for-unearned-profit, I don't think you have to be shallow to want to fight back. Almost the opposite.. I think that those that are shallow just assume everything will be hunky-dory until their coffin lid is closed.
d) Civil wars are foregone conclusions. The question isn't if, but when. A glance at history will indicate that no (or very very few) societies have endured long-term political/economic/social stability. So I think my question is valid, in so far as pondering when issues like these may finally push people to action outside of the democratic and judicial process. Indeed, we can see this happen from time to time already, in the form of protests, violence, and terrorism.
I'm not referring to this only. I'm referring to ALL efforts to protect 100% of IP and copyrights. Eventually the populace will feel like they can't even walk up the street without first making sure they arn't infringing on copyrights or patents. Since the government has long-since resigned itself to pandering to their financial backers (otherwise you dont have the money to hammer your name into the heads of the increasingly disinterested members of a democracy), no one will step in to provide the neccessary 'balances' against companies 'checks' (pun intended). This is why I don't think it's such a crazy idea to suggest that we're only a century or so away from some kind of uprising. Yes, obviously, the scope of my jabbering probably isn't deserved in this thread, but I can come to slashdot everyday and read about 5 more companies attempting to go from super-rich to unaccountably-rich by making sure that 95% of all fair-use activity that doesn't result in a loss of profitability is squashed for the 5% that does cause a chip in their bottom line.
I really wonder how long it will take before we collectively (and by this, I mean, including the technophobe business types) admit that fair-use and lack of nazi-like-restrictions were probably responsible for at least SOME of the stability and complatency of the public at large during the 20th century? How much longer till people say 'the hell with it' and starting throwing around flaming beer bottles like in some other countries that contain regular, average people who are sick of their government-imposed disposition?
Honestly, if this keeps up, I really dont see how the western world can survive under its own canabilistic economically-driven laws and policies. Time/Warner, you're rich enough. Stop paying the drug addicts and bimbos millions of dollars to ply on the ignorance of mass media consumers so you can start affording your own business without having to chase pervasive fair-use-infringing legislation (oh wait, too late.)
I'm sure you can make reference to other products/trademarks in your documentation/advertising, so long as they are not slanderous or make false claims. So, yes, KIllustrator, as renamed to Foobar, could have somewhere in its docs "This feature is very similar to Adobe Illustrator's feature X". Obviously, you'd have to include the trademark notice like the one in your comment. I think the scope of trademarks are only for names and slogans, because they are the 'root' handles of the product. As a consumer, you probably arn't going to refer to the product in your head as 'similar to Adobe Illustrator' or whatever. The name of a product will probably be repeated in speech and in your head thousands of times over your relationship with said company/product/application.
So there is, im my opinion, more importance that the name doesn't make reference to another trademark, since I think it's the subcouncious brand recognition that companies are worried about having subverted.
So I think we're in agreement here; it's not that you shouldn't be allowed to use the name or refer to another trademark/period/ - just that the name by which people refer to your product should not subvert brand recognition or consumer associations to competitors' and/or their products.
There is an interesting article here about Mastercard's attempts to sue Ralph Nader for using their 'Priceless' trademark in his campaign commercials. It's always a tough call, because, you essentially have to ask "Where do you draw the line between infringement (benifitting off of someone else's intellectual property or hard work), and things like parody and imitation-as-flattery?"
It's a tough call, and, unfortunately, in this winner-take-all capitalist-driven society, the money-makers are usually going to have their answer accepted as the truth. Anything that gets in the way of making a bigger profit is quickly labeled as anti-capitalist. Which is seen as a bad thing, since capitalism is the very social/economic foundation upon which western culture is built. I think, eventually, people will have to wake up and accept that socialist programs and mentalities provide the only real formal 'checks and balances' in grey-area issues like these; where the system would feel comfortable potentially err-ing on the side of less profitability. Mostly. To get back to the original issue, that's why it's nice that Adobe seems to have reacted to the court of public opinion proactively - something that happens all too rarely.
note that the agreement doesn't stipulate that you can remove IE from the machine pre-shipping.. it just means you can remove the start-menu and desktop icons pointing towards it (and that it CAN be uninstalled by the user via the add/remove panel). Mind you, considering that marketshare is a function of how easily newbies find the software, these stipulations are probably almost as effective as allowing the OEM to actually psysically deinstall IE pre-shipping.
I honestly never thought I'd see the day. Wait.. I know! They must have removed the desktop and startbar altogether from XP. That's why you can do anything you like to them now, if you're a distributor!;)
See my reply to a comment above, here. It will explain why you can't just exclude non-commercial products by default, in addition to why just because you can't confuse the names (ie, spelled differently, sounds different) it doesn't mean it's not a trademark infringement.
Just a reminder that I'm not arguing here that Adobe is doing the right thing. The following is just to clarify a point I think you're missing:
So I should be able to open a graphics software company called AsGoodAsAdobe? Spelled differently, pronounced differently.. but the point is, I'm abusing the name of another company in my industry space. It's not whether people will get them confused.. it's whether you are 'piggybacking' on prefabricated consumer associations (good graphics software, with respect to Adobe, imho). The consumer may not be neccessarily concious of the association they make in their head. In this case, while a consumer may not confuse the two products, there may be subconcious association going on. That is, it/could/ be said that the author of Killustrator is using the (arguably, obviously) hard-earned success of another product/company in order to foster it's own success/distribution.
Anyhow, I agree that the issue becomes hazy when you're dealing with non-commercial products, but theoretically one could use a naming scheme like this to foster the success of freeware, and/then/ go commercial. Even if you change the name at that point, you'd still have used the consumer association to the name Adobe in order to raise product awareness before you went commercial.
This really isn't so bad.. I can understand why I wouldn't be allowed to sell computers under a name like KApple. This is what trademarks were invented for in the first place.. products in competing spaces should have different names. It does service for the uninformed consumer too, as one new to the *nix/KDE environment may have thought KIllustrator was a KDE version of Illustrator. Now, if KIllustrator were a motorcycle or something, Adobe woulda been outta line. Frankly, I'm surprised alot of the KDE projects havn't had to change their name sooner (and a name change won't stop me or anyone else from using it.)
Bad thing. Why? A book's ability to be sold often depends on it being on a shelf. (You pick it up, flip the pages, and buy it, never having intented to buy this particular book when you entered the store.) These machines will simply facilitate more of the 'let them pick what we read, watch, eat and sleep with' mentatility content puclishers have, as they will subvert the browsing process and put only the books that the publishers want to sell front and center in advertising associated with the machine.
Slashdot Mirror
>was very small, disintegrated before impact, and anything that might have reached the ground intact would have been cold to the touch
...
so what they're saying is that the UFO was small, capable of disintegration at very high speeds (obviously a sign of an advanced life form), and cold, eh? They were probably just searching for some nice hot cambells chick noodle soup
Sigh ... I guess it's back to those paper-and-staples porn publications when I'm waiting for a client to call!
Absolutely; yes, they are. Look at their website, link included in many posts here.
I went to Waterloo, and their solar car project is one of the babies of the university. I'm very proud to hear of both Waterloo and Queen's doin' the top 5! I did a 94% in highschool, and Waterloo kicked the crap out of me (Electrical engineering.) It's rumoured that the U of Waterloo's engineering program is one of the top 5 egineering programs (electrical, computer, systems) in north america .. I definately know it's the hardest in Canada.
:)
So go Canada!
Just my input:
.. you know, the fun stuff. I've done some stuff in perl (I could hack my way through it), but the only fun I can extract from it is how the hell is it going to interpret what I'm coding?
.. it's definately useful, but I'd say more for the here-and-there patch of glue rather than high load cgis. As a c++ developer, the more unambiguous he can make the language, the better. :) All I know is the main way people brag about their perl skills is through regex's and general text processing craziness.
I'm a c/c++ developer. CORBA, in a MySQL environment. Some XML
So I say, if Larry is going to formalize Perl more, bring it on
The good:
.. make the special moves easy to execute, and you kill your dedicated user base. Sure, the reacreational users might not appreciate this, but as the saying goes, 20% of your user base (your heavy users) is 70% of your profit, in the form of the merchandising and spinoffs and such. So, while this thing might be fun for the uninitiated, the afficionado will hate the fact that any joe shmoe now knows how to execute the 15 hit combo without having to proove his dedication to the game via practicing the button sequences. Nenermind that bigger or more agile (or whatever) people now have an advantage, totally killing the attraction of games for the geek set that loved games for the fact that it gave them the opportunity to 'kick anyone's ass', regardless of size. Thats the beauty of games .. you can compete with someone regardless of their physical or (to a lesser degree) mental level.
The gadget is designed to aid players of fighting and boxing games who typically have to hit several buttons in sequence on a joypad to perform a combination or special move that could knock out or maim an onscreen opponent. Sounds good to me.
The thing you're missing is that the complicated button sequences are designed to seperate the amateurs from the pros. The complication is the challenge of the game
Anyhow, yes it's got gee-wiz factor, but it totally kills the idea behind games, if you ask this fighter-game veteran.
On a side note, can you imagine having two of these things in the same household; seeing two guys kick the air between each other, with their eye on the screen to see what's happening is an absolutely priceless mental image. Why not just wrassle like real boys (and men) do?!
Hahaha! Oh yeah, I know that the average console/PC gamer geek is just /dying/ to get out of his chair or couch and perform the moves for real.
I'm sure the demographics of 'person who likes to tae-bo' and 'person who loves playing fighting video games' have a sizable intersection set! HA!
What's next? Drugs that look, taste, feel like the real thing, but without the fun high or addiction?
The companies are only responsible for bringing the disinterested neophytes online. Now they want control, seeing as the model they slapped over the Internet isn't as profitable as they had hoped. But this is like a group of 'anarchistic hippies' building a fun lane for people to walk through, then having a business come in and commercialize the road, making it admittedly many times fatter and longer. Then, people stop showing up, cause now it costs money, and its plagued by people using it who don't understand it. So the businesses wave the white flag, and do everything in their power to obtain the lease to the land, including that original kick-ass lane, so they can put a parking lot on it. But fuck that .. in the case of the Internet, there's no way to keep the original lane. In other words, in the long run, we're fucked. At some point, we'll be saying "It was fun while it lasted ..." Hell, you can even say it now .. sometimes I lament that the damn web killed the kick-ass Gopher protocol!
The claim that it forces humans to turn and look is probably a little outlandish. You'll become accustomed to the sound if it becomes ubiquitous in advertising.
/is/ interesting, however, that the sound is far mor easily locatable than previous alarm sounds.
It
Incidentally, every time I hear a siren, I tend to turn and look (even if the sound isn't as easily locatable). But I dont hear that siren sound in advertising all the time. So I'm not as fearful as others here in terms of advertisers monopolizing this sound, as the claim that you HAVE to turn towards it is probably exaggurated a little. In conjunction with noise pollution laws, I doubt you'll see a proliferation of this sound in advertising. I'd imagine emergency alarms and cellphones might make a little more use of it.
You're completely ignoring the relevance of this information.
If you're poor, how do you afford the solutions offered online? (IE, information is free, but implementation rarely is) What good is information on a world you live in if you can't afford to go anywhere? (Nevermind that 95% of that information inherently assumes you're from a completetly different culture, thus much of it loses its relevence, usefulness, or poingancy.)
But lets say, for whatever reason, that browsing the net enriches your mind, and makes you happy, a la any given MSN Messenger commercial. So, you give people jobs building this internet. Where does the money come from? Presumably from people who now have jobs. But what are they buying? I don't imagine the culture is quite at the stage where people have the luxury of shopping online or purchasing content. We take for granted that our food, water, house, lawnmower etc, are forgone conclusions. Thus, much of our purchasing, which in turn fuels jobs, is spent on frivilous things like access to porn sites, movies, etc. Remember the crash? That was about people thinking other people would be buying into a new cultural economy. CISCO comes to mind for fueling this hype (I still havn't puchased bon-bons from a quaint european candy shoppe chain). Companies placed their bets, but it didn't quite work out. So what's the payoff with AfricaNet? Who's the end consumer that gets the money going through the pipeline? I think you'd be left with a big FO link, and tons (not all! I'm not saying all!) people standing around either not wanting it or not understanding how it fits into their culture.
I can tell you EXACTLY why misguided efforts like these are bad:
Companies are salivating at the mouth for new consumer bases. The internet would give them unprecendented new access to consumers. The WTO would be pulled in MANY times so companies could exploit the relative weakness of the african economies and cultures to fuel a one way 'import-only' trend into these countries, which at the end of the day will realize they're networks are really only the 20th century version of a dog leash. Western companies are ALL about access to foreign markets. Whatever humanitarian benifits that come out of education and access to information will be obliterated by the greediness of companies to exploit these new markets, turning african countries into just another economy-on-the-westernized-leash.
As for those who took pot-shots at the violence, desease and conditions in africa, ya got alotta nerve. Many will claim that the current conditions are a direct result of outside influences meddling with a once-self-contained culture.
true enough .. I was only attempting to justify WINE over Windows itself. But you're right, if a Linux version of a game exists, then purchasing the Windows version and running it in WINE does support MS moreso than buying the Linux version.
Not neccessarily true. There are one-way property checks such as:
.. think of doing something with assembler, when correct operation is verified simply by walking through some memory and doing a few checks like 'not everything is null', and other trivial possible outputs you know you won't EVER want. His program almost sounds to me like high-level asserts, where the app goes through all the possible inputs you specify to check against the asserts.
Input: request for door to open
Output: door opens or error reported IF (this or that or that)
While this logic may be complex (lets say the API to the door is a nightmare), verifying that the output matches a set of desired conditions can be far simpler in certain cases than the actual logic to implement the desired behaviour? Especially depending on the language you are using to implement
... unless you're ethical and like to follow the law.
.. you can't stop it all, but you can certainly do your part if you choose to commit yourself to your ideals and accept the inconveniences and downsides that come with Doing The Right Thing (tm).
Cause the screwdriver costs 200$, while the hammer and it's respective screwdriver-emulator is free. Nevermind that switching between your hammers and screwdrivers can take minutes.
At any rate, using your reasoning, no one should ever give up Windows, since the development support is there because people run it. If you're then saying run it because the development support isn't available for the alternative OS, well then, you'd be a part of the very problem you wish would get solved.
The nice thing is, if you run WINE, no money goes to MS, thus you contribute to possible market reduction, thus making it far more likely that developers and gaming/video API-makers will take into account *nix portability from the game development's get-go. Yes, it's like littering
In this case, I'd have to say that the developer is in no way liable, since technically, the copy of the app s/he distributed included a non-GPL'd lib. If the distro then switches up libraries, it is the distro'er who is distributing binaries that violate the GPL, not the developer. If the developer provides LGPL libs with their distrobution, it is the distro'ers responsibility to ensure that that library ships along with it.
I havn't read the full GPL in some time, but I believe the key issue is in how the binary is distributed. If it is distributed with a LGPLd lib, they are not violating the GPL. If the distro then goes and switches things around, I'd imagine they would be the ones violating the GPL, and could be held liable for damages to the GPL'd lib they substituted in. It really is up to the distro'er to adhere to the licences attached to the software they plan on redistributing.
All that said, this relies on me assuming that dynamically linked libs DO fall under the umbrella of GPL? It doesn't seem like an unfair proposition, but maybe that's not true?
This is true. Although for the ethical publisher, the idea of a watermark convention for GPL'd code would help then, wouldn't it? You wouldn't have to know the development details in order to have some sort of standardized check for GPL'd code.
.... I guess I was thinking that it was more worth concentrating on how to detect intentional violators. It would probably be easier to catch them, easier to prosecute, and thus fuel the neccessary awareness to reduce unintentional violations? Just a guess, tho.
.. yes, DMCA, not DCMA .. damnit, when it comes to acronyms, I just choose the one that rolls off my tongue the easiest. I hope it doesn't distract from the point of my comment. Thanks!
I guess part of my assumption, and I do admit its a big one, is that unethical violations are less significant than intentional violations. Of course, this also assumes everyone has the same measuring stick for valuing loss due to violations
And thanks from the other guy above
Considering the grey-area of what constitutes 'stolen code', I don't think there will ever be a way of being 100% sure. Is taking a clever 2 line 'for' loop from someone elses code (that doesn't contribute greatly to the core functionality of either the GPL or the code-stealer's product) stealing? This has probably been discussed at length at /. before, but I thought it was worth pointing out that nothing is black and white (or whatever colors you've set in your terminal ;).
.. with all the DCMA bruhaha going on, the core issue is trying to catch 100% of all infractions. I'd think it to be slightly hypocritical to suggest that the GPL community should go all out to ensure 100% compliance given the resistance to similar efforts from the content/media industry. I think 10% of technical infractions (and I'll argue that they are the visible, obvious, easy to detect infractions) of both the GPL and DCMA misuse constitutes 90% of the loss for both licences/acts. In the case of media, the loss is revenue and control, in the case of GPL, the benifits of collaberation, credit, and revenue to the original authors of code. In fact, if it can be prooven that not writing up tons of technical barriers and legal restrictions beyond the core purposes of the GPL doesn't damage the community to a large extent, it'd be good fodder to throw back to the backers of the DCMA .. you'd be able to say, 'Chill ... we know there is some misuse, but we're still in business and benifiting off of the existance of the GPL. Same should go for the DCMA.' You know, like J-walking .. its technically illigal but not econmically or socially viable to persure means of ensuring 100% compliance. In other words, the possible loss in value resulting from infractions of the GPL and DCMA are not worth the inconvenience of pursuing 100% compliance.
.. okay, putting on my flame retardant suit now. Interesting question tho .. I've thought about this a few times myself.
Okay, so once you can really define what is 'stolen' code, I'd imagine that it shouldn't be too hard to:
- check the symbols in the binary to see if there are any symbols that match up against the GPL'd lib in question
- check what the binaries are dynamically linking against (although I doubt you'd be so lazy as to link against a GPL library dynamically and not expect to be caught)
- check the strings in the binary to see if they contain any strings known in the GPL'd code in question
Of course, this assumes you already have a suspicion that a binary might be violating the GPL of software 'X'.
I almost wonder if it shouldn't be a convention to include some sort of static char buffer 'watermark' in GPL'd libs/APIs, so you could search a suspect binary. Granted, the stealer could recompile the GPL'd libs without the string, or just steal code verbatim, but like I said, its impossible to get 100% certainty.
You know what tho
Just a few thoughts
Sigh.
.. there are things that mean a crap-load to me, and nothing to the next man. But when everyone is forced to play by someone elses rules-for-unearned-profit, I don't think you have to be shallow to want to fight back. Almost the opposite .. I think that those that are shallow just assume everything will be hunky-dory until their coffin lid is closed.
a) I'm not upset that I can't record Cagney and Lacey reruns. However, I'm sure Cagney and Lacey fans would be upset. Me, I'd be upset over different shows. Deliberately using an outdated show as an example isn't particularly effective or clever if you are interested in actually discrediting my justification in being upset.
b) I'm not American. I'm Canadian. And I'm civil war constitutes people versus their own government. Perhaps the one nice offshoot of globalization is that the eventual backlash will be globalized as well. Neato.
c) People are probably more shallow than anyone else thinks, although I realize this is subjective. Note I'm not putting myself above this group
d) Civil wars are foregone conclusions. The question isn't if, but when. A glance at history will indicate that no (or very very few) societies have endured long-term political/economic/social stability. So I think my question is valid, in so far as pondering when issues like these may finally push people to action outside of the democratic and judicial process. Indeed, we can see this happen from time to time already, in the form of protests, violence, and terrorism.
I'm not referring to this only. I'm referring to ALL efforts to protect 100% of IP and copyrights. Eventually the populace will feel like they can't even walk up the street without first making sure they arn't infringing on copyrights or patents. Since the government has long-since resigned itself to pandering to their financial backers (otherwise you dont have the money to hammer your name into the heads of the increasingly disinterested members of a democracy), no one will step in to provide the neccessary 'balances' against companies 'checks' (pun intended). This is why I don't think it's such a crazy idea to suggest that we're only a century or so away from some kind of uprising. Yes, obviously, the scope of my jabbering probably isn't deserved in this thread, but I can come to slashdot everyday and read about 5 more companies attempting to go from super-rich to unaccountably-rich by making sure that 95% of all fair-use activity that doesn't result in a loss of profitability is squashed for the 5% that does cause a chip in their bottom line.
I really wonder how long it will take before we collectively (and by this, I mean, including the technophobe business types) admit that fair-use and lack of nazi-like-restrictions were probably responsible for at least SOME of the stability and complatency of the public at large during the 20th century? How much longer till people say 'the hell with it' and starting throwing around flaming beer bottles like in some other countries that contain regular, average people who are sick of their government-imposed disposition?
Honestly, if this keeps up, I really dont see how the western world can survive under its own canabilistic economically-driven laws and policies. Time/Warner, you're rich enough. Stop paying the drug addicts and bimbos millions of dollars to ply on the ignorance of mass media consumers so you can start affording your own business without having to chase pervasive fair-use-infringing legislation (oh wait, too late.)
I'm sure you can make reference to other products/trademarks in your documentation/advertising, so long as they are not slanderous or make false claims. So, yes, KIllustrator, as renamed to Foobar, could have somewhere in its docs "This feature is very similar to Adobe Illustrator's feature X". Obviously, you'd have to include the trademark notice like the one in your comment. I think the scope of trademarks are only for names and slogans, because they are the 'root' handles of the product. As a consumer, you probably arn't going to refer to the product in your head as 'similar to Adobe Illustrator' or whatever. The name of a product will probably be repeated in speech and in your head thousands of times over your relationship with said company/product/application.
/period/ - just that the name by which people refer to your product should not subvert brand recognition or consumer associations to competitors' and/or their products.
So there is, im my opinion, more importance that the name doesn't make reference to another trademark, since I think it's the subcouncious brand recognition that companies are worried about having subverted.
So I think we're in agreement here; it's not that you shouldn't be allowed to use the name or refer to another trademark
There is an interesting article here about Mastercard's attempts to sue Ralph Nader for using their 'Priceless' trademark in his campaign commercials. It's always a tough call, because, you essentially have to ask "Where do you draw the line between infringement (benifitting off of someone else's intellectual property or hard work), and things like parody and imitation-as-flattery?"
It's a tough call, and, unfortunately, in this winner-take-all capitalist-driven society, the money-makers are usually going to have their answer accepted as the truth. Anything that gets in the way of making a bigger profit is quickly labeled as anti-capitalist. Which is seen as a bad thing, since capitalism is the very social/economic foundation upon which western culture is built. I think, eventually, people will have to wake up and accept that socialist programs and mentalities provide the only real formal 'checks and balances' in grey-area issues like these; where the system would feel comfortable potentially err-ing on the side of less profitability. Mostly. To get back to the original issue, that's why it's nice that Adobe seems to have reacted to the court of public opinion proactively - something that happens all too rarely.
note that the agreement doesn't stipulate that you can remove IE from the machine pre-shipping .. it just means you can remove the start-menu and desktop icons pointing towards it (and that it CAN be uninstalled by the user via the add/remove panel). Mind you, considering that marketshare is a function of how easily newbies find the software, these stipulations are probably almost as effective as allowing the OEM to actually psysically deinstall IE pre-shipping.
I honestly never thought I'd see the day. Wait .. I know! They must have removed the desktop and startbar altogether from XP. That's why you can do anything you like to them now, if you're a distributor! ;)
See my reply to a comment above, here. It will explain why you can't just exclude non-commercial products by default, in addition to why just because you can't confuse the names (ie, spelled differently, sounds different) it doesn't mean it's not a trademark infringement.
Just a reminder that I'm not arguing here that Adobe is doing the right thing. The following is just to clarify a point I think you're missing:
.. but the point is, I'm abusing the name of another company in my industry space. It's not whether people will get them confused .. it's whether you are 'piggybacking' on prefabricated consumer associations (good graphics software, with respect to Adobe, imho). The consumer may not be neccessarily concious of the association they make in their head. In this case, while a consumer may not confuse the two products, there may be subconcious association going on. That is, it /could/ be said that the author of Killustrator is using the (arguably, obviously) hard-earned success of another product/company in order to foster it's own success/distribution.
/then/ go commercial. Even if you change the name at that point, you'd still have used the consumer association to the name Adobe in order to raise product awareness before you went commercial.
So I should be able to open a graphics software company called AsGoodAsAdobe? Spelled differently, pronounced differently
Anyhow, I agree that the issue becomes hazy when you're dealing with non-commercial products, but theoretically one could use a naming scheme like this to foster the success of freeware, and
This really isn't so bad .. I can understand why I wouldn't be allowed to sell computers under a name like KApple. This is what trademarks were invented for in the first place .. products in competing spaces should have different names. It does service for the uninformed consumer too, as one new to the *nix/KDE environment may have thought KIllustrator was a KDE version of Illustrator. Now, if KIllustrator were a motorcycle or something, Adobe woulda been outta line. Frankly, I'm surprised alot of the KDE projects havn't had to change their name sooner (and a name change won't stop me or anyone else from using it.)
Bad thing. Why? A book's ability to be sold often depends on it being on a shelf. (You pick it up, flip the pages, and buy it, never having intented to buy this particular book when you entered the store.) These machines will simply facilitate more of the 'let them pick what we read, watch, eat and sleep with' mentatility content puclishers have, as they will subvert the browsing process and put only the books that the publishers want to sell front and center in advertising associated with the machine.