But by taking this responsibility to cater to _all_, would this be valid grounds to demand the specs be opened up so that third parties can create compatible players?
I'd say so. Is there some kind of problem with that?
I imagine microsoft would refuse to license their formats to the bbc if a court ruled they had to open up the specs.
Good! This is just another indication that the BBC shouldn't be using a Microsoft format to begin with.
If something is supported in a standardized and widely implemented extension, it's supported. [emphasis added]
But that's my point: if it's an extension, you don't know how "widely supported" it is, can't count on it to be there, and therefore can't [easily] code against it.
That'd be like saying that Apache doesn't support PHP because it requires an "extension" to make it work.
Right: Apache doesn't support PHP. An extension to Apache supports PHP. So in the system requirements for some PHP-based web system, it'll have to list "Apache, PHP extension."
Now, that's fine for something like that, because its target audience is server admins. But when you're talking about a game, you can't really say "this game requires OpenGL 2.1, foo_bar_NV, EXT_baz, etc. In fact, even requiring a particular major version is complex enough!
This is DirectX's advantage: if the system supports "DirectX 9," you know that exactly all of the features of Direct3D 9 are supported. If it supports "DirectX 10," you know that all features of Direct3D 10 are supported. You don't have to worry about writing multiple different sets of code to handle people that have NV_* vs. ATI_* vs. SGI_* vs. not having support at all, etc.
The bottom line is that, because of this, using advanced features in OpenGL becomes a pain in the ass compared to doing it in Direct3D. I really wish the OpenGL ARB would get their act together and standardize this stuff more quickly, because (as a Mac and Linux user) it really pisses me off that they've let it fall behind Direct3D.
Duplicating the software is a copyright infringment. But what about the box and the other stuff?
What about it, indeed? He didn't copy it! If he had, then he would possibly be "counterfeiting" the item, because he would have been trying to pass it off as the original. However, he was instead providing these games as files on a hard disk, making no attempt to disguise the fact that they were unauthorized copies, presented in (explicitly) a different form than the original thing. That's why I say it doesn't qualify as "counterfeiting."
He's not creating new commercial packaging and passing these off as if he were authorized to manufacture them; his presenting them as files on a hard drive! Therefore, this fails the "represented as the original" portion of your cited definition and does not qualify as "counterfeiting."
"Counterfeiter" is misleading too. After all, those are the real games; they're just illegally duplicated and distributed. A completely correct title would have to read something more like "ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Copyright-Infringer of Games."
So, WHY would he want to get arrested? There's only 1 way to get a law off the books: Fight it in court.
No, I'm sure he was just a stupid criminal, in it only for the money. Why? Because he was committing massive copyright infrigement too. If the whole thing was a ploy to dispute the "circumvention device" parts of the DMCA, he would have only installed modchips, but not distributed games also.
I'm not sure I understand why everyone is outraged at the fact that the Beeb is not catering to an OS that has less than 2% of the desktop market?
It's the government. That means it has a responsibility to all citizens, not just the ones who use commercial OSs! Ignoring Linux (and other) users by refusing to use open standards is like ignoring disabled people by refusing to provide wheelchair access to government buildings*. Would you be equally okay with that?
I'd be more outraged if we were talking OS X here, but that's not even the case.
Why? At this point, there's probably at least as many users of Linux as there are of OS X.
I surmise that they need DRM because the BBC Trust requires that only TV tax-paying Britons can watch the taxpayer-funded content. If that's the case, then I don't see what the alternative would be for them, since there are no "free" file formats that support DRM in a stable, tested way.
Don't use DRM, and accept that non-Britons might have access to it. It should be obvious that it's better to give it to extra people for free than to restrict it from people who already have a claim to it! After all (and here my American bias shows through), the whole point of creating a work is to show it to people, not to hide it from them; copyright and licensing is only a necessary(?) evil to begin with!
(* aside from the unfortunate implication that Linux users are "disabled," which they're not -- DRM users are the disabled ones!)
...and am also stuck with EDGE data (there is only one clamshell WM device, and it is EDGE).
Don't feel bad. The iPhone isn't a clamshell, so you wouldn't want it anyway. Or, conversely, if you would accept the iPhone then you could also accept a non-clamshell WM device.
If proper grammar and spelling are so important to a software developer that you would fire one on your staff for making too many of these types of mistakes, then by all means it's legitimate to ignore resumes that contain these mistakes.
You don't get it, do you? Rejecting an applicant for having grammatical errors on the résumé makes sense regardless of whether the job requires good grammar. Why? Because it shows that the applicant is careless. If he can't be bothered to proofread a very important document, why would he bother to debug his code, either?
If you are more interested in indistrial application in a non-tech industry (i.e. Fin Services, Pharma) rather than the beauty of CS, you will prob have no problem.
If that's what you want, then you shouldn't be in a "CS" program at a "University" in the first place. Instead, you could just spend two years at ITT Tech studying information technology and be done with it.
Sure, DRM is "security through obscurity," but, when fully implemented, Vista's Treacherous Computing stores the keys in hardware. When it requires a logic probe to get the key, I consider it to be pretty damn obscure!
In other words, even though DRM is mathematically insecure, it can still be "good enough," and that makes it dangerous.
Sure, I don't get Aero (which just looks bad to me anyhow -- honestly, how is an alpha-blended window title a good thing?)
It's not, except that it also has the background blurred so that you get the fancy effect, yet the title still remains readable. This is something I wish would be implemented on Linux and OS X (especially for things like terminal backgrounds), as I like my eye-candy but want to maintain usability as well.
Incidentally, I responded because this is one of the very few things about Vista that I actually like (the other two are the fact that MS gave the home directory a sane name without spaces ("Users" instead of "Documents and Settings") and that it has good Tablet PC support).
BULLSHIT! You know what has to happen before we're considered to be "at war?" Congress -- not the President -- has to formally declare it. And that hasn't happened since World War II!
The original post does indeed use it in a rather strange way, but it nevertheless makes some sense. Basically, jx100 meant this:
Your point on MP3 mostly stands, except for the fact that it is more or less [by the fact [that MS claims not to plan to sue]] available to anyone who wishes to implement it. Certainly not as good as [guaranteed by law [as Ogg is free of patents and released under a BSD-style license]] availablility like Ogg though.
In other words, the difference between "de facto" and "de jure" availability is that the former is by the grace of Microsoft, whereas the latter is by the force of law.
There's no justifying the social cost of business method patents, which is what software patents ultimately are.
No, software patents are patents on math, not business methods. They're still unjustifiable bullshit, but for a slightly different reason than you say.
This is the first post so far that gets the distinction between passing along the original vs. passing along a copy. As a copyright license, the GPL only applies in the latter case.
use a very efficient client based around VIA/mini-itx for the frontend, which is still a bit more than a set top box, but is still an improvement.
Not to mention that there are now purpose-built devices for that, such as the AppleTV, Slingbox, etc. You just have to do some research to find one that works with MythTV.
Buy a $1K color laser however and you get a decent workgroup class printer with good paper handling (I have no problem printing cardstock or envelopes.)
I have a Brother HL-2070N, which is a black-and-white network laser that goes for less than $100 these days (i.e., it's about the cheapest one I've ever found), and I have no problem printing envelopes either, except that they come out a little flatter than they went in and are slightly stuck-together because the glue gets heated. I haven't tried printing on cardstock, but I imagine it would come out a little rolled-up, but otherwise fine.
AFAIK, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and everywhere else in the world tends to use cane sugar in their soft drinks. It's only in the U.S., where farmers are inexplicably Hell-bent on growing corn or nothing, that soft drink companies use corn syrup instead.
I wasn't talking in terms of specific, rigorous OSI definitions; I was talking about "Open Source" as in "you can see the source code" vs. "Free Software" as in "you're allowed to do stuff with the source code."
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I'd say so. Is there some kind of problem with that?
Good! This is just another indication that the BBC shouldn't be using a Microsoft format to begin with.
But that's my point: if it's an extension, you don't know how "widely supported" it is, can't count on it to be there, and therefore can't [easily] code against it.
Right: Apache doesn't support PHP. An extension to Apache supports PHP. So in the system requirements for some PHP-based web system, it'll have to list "Apache, PHP extension."
Now, that's fine for something like that, because its target audience is server admins. But when you're talking about a game, you can't really say "this game requires OpenGL 2.1, foo_bar_NV, EXT_baz, etc. In fact, even requiring a particular major version is complex enough!
This is DirectX's advantage: if the system supports "DirectX 9," you know that exactly all of the features of Direct3D 9 are supported. If it supports "DirectX 10," you know that all features of Direct3D 10 are supported. You don't have to worry about writing multiple different sets of code to handle people that have NV_* vs. ATI_* vs. SGI_* vs. not having support at all, etc.
The bottom line is that, because of this, using advanced features in OpenGL becomes a pain in the ass compared to doing it in Direct3D. I really wish the OpenGL ARB would get their act together and standardize this stuff more quickly, because (as a Mac and Linux user) it really pisses me off that they've let it fall behind Direct3D.
What about it, indeed? He didn't copy it! If he had, then he would possibly be "counterfeiting" the item, because he would have been trying to pass it off as the original. However, he was instead providing these games as files on a hard disk, making no attempt to disguise the fact that they were unauthorized copies, presented in (explicitly) a different form than the original thing. That's why I say it doesn't qualify as "counterfeiting."
He's not creating new commercial packaging and passing these off as if he were authorized to manufacture them; his presenting them as files on a hard drive! Therefore, this fails the "represented as the original" portion of your cited definition and does not qualify as "counterfeiting."
"Counterfeiter" is misleading too. After all, those are the real games; they're just illegally duplicated and distributed. A completely correct title would have to read something more like "ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Copyright-Infringer of Games."
No, I'm sure he was just a stupid criminal, in it only for the money. Why? Because he was committing massive copyright infrigement too. If the whole thing was a ploy to dispute the "circumvention device" parts of the DMCA, he would have only installed modchips, but not distributed games also.
It's the government. That means it has a responsibility to all citizens, not just the ones who use commercial OSs! Ignoring Linux (and other) users by refusing to use open standards is like ignoring disabled people by refusing to provide wheelchair access to government buildings*. Would you be equally okay with that?
Why? At this point, there's probably at least as many users of Linux as there are of OS X.
Don't use DRM, and accept that non-Britons might have access to it. It should be obvious that it's better to give it to extra people for free than to restrict it from people who already have a claim to it! After all (and here my American bias shows through), the whole point of creating a work is to show it to people, not to hide it from them; copyright and licensing is only a necessary(?) evil to begin with!
(* aside from the unfortunate implication that Linux users are "disabled," which they're not -- DRM users are the disabled ones!)
Being made of Cocoa-based apps (except for iTunes), iLife could more easily be made to run on NeXTStep than it could on OS 9.
So, all of those things are supported without extensions? Or are they still prefixed with NV or EXT, which doesn't really count as "support?"
Don't feel bad. The iPhone isn't a clamshell, so you wouldn't want it anyway. Or, conversely, if you would accept the iPhone then you could also accept a non-clamshell WM device.
You don't get it, do you? Rejecting an applicant for having grammatical errors on the résumé makes sense regardless of whether the job requires good grammar. Why? Because it shows that the applicant is careless. If he can't be bothered to proofread a very important document, why would he bother to debug his code, either?
If that's what you want, then you shouldn't be in a "CS" program at a "University" in the first place. Instead, you could just spend two years at ITT Tech studying information technology and be done with it.
I don't know, but I do know that Richard Stallman predicted such an eventuality 10 years ago, long before Treacherous Computing existed. Perhaps more people should listen to him.
Sure, DRM is "security through obscurity," but, when fully implemented, Vista's Treacherous Computing stores the keys in hardware. When it requires a logic probe to get the key, I consider it to be pretty damn obscure!
In other words, even though DRM is mathematically insecure, it can still be "good enough," and that makes it dangerous.
It's not, except that it also has the background blurred so that you get the fancy effect, yet the title still remains readable. This is something I wish would be implemented on Linux and OS X (especially for things like terminal backgrounds), as I like my eye-candy but want to maintain usability as well.
Incidentally, I responded because this is one of the very few things about Vista that I actually like (the other two are the fact that MS gave the home directory a sane name without spaces ("Users" instead of "Documents and Settings") and that it has good Tablet PC support).
BULLSHIT! You know what has to happen before we're considered to be "at war?" Congress -- not the President -- has to formally declare it. And that hasn't happened since World War II!
Hover does work with Wacom digitizers though, because they can sense the pen even when it's half a centimeter or so above the screen.
The original post does indeed use it in a rather strange way, but it nevertheless makes some sense. Basically, jx100 meant this:
In other words, the difference between "de facto" and "de jure" availability is that the former is by the grace of Microsoft, whereas the latter is by the force of law.
No, software patents are patents on math, not business methods. They're still unjustifiable bullshit, but for a slightly different reason than you say.
This is the first post so far that gets the distinction between passing along the original vs. passing along a copy. As a copyright license, the GPL only applies in the latter case.
Novell , damnit! Two 'l's!
Not to mention that there are now purpose-built devices for that, such as the AppleTV, Slingbox, etc. You just have to do some research to find one that works with MythTV.
I have a Brother HL-2070N, which is a black-and-white network laser that goes for less than $100 these days (i.e., it's about the cheapest one I've ever found), and I have no problem printing envelopes either, except that they come out a little flatter than they went in and are slightly stuck-together because the glue gets heated. I haven't tried printing on cardstock, but I imagine it would come out a little rolled-up, but otherwise fine.
AFAIK, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and everywhere else in the world tends to use cane sugar in their soft drinks. It's only in the U.S., where farmers are inexplicably Hell-bent on growing corn or nothing, that soft drink companies use corn syrup instead.
I wasn't talking in terms of specific, rigorous OSI definitions; I was talking about "Open Source" as in "you can see the source code" vs. "Free Software" as in "you're allowed to do stuff with the source code."