It's important to understand exactly what the GPL is. Have you ever seen the copyright notice on the back of a CD case or in a book? It says something like, "Copying without express written permission of the author is prohibited." Well, the GPL is exactly that "express written permission." It grants exceptions to copyright law under certain conditions. It's a broad waiver of the monopoly right.
Especially since rival companies that want to figure out how some piece of hardware works (supposedly the reason they keep the specs private in the first place) have a lot of EEs on hand who will just reverse engineer the damn thing. Like the original PC BIOS.
Ah, you must have missed it. National sovereignty died when a bunch of self appointed moralists decided that we needed to "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." People like Harry Truman.
The real problem was that those responsible for passing the DMCA have *no understanding* of the Copyright and Patent clause of the Constitution! Quite frankly, hardly anyone else has any idea what the Constitution says either. Corporations are merely taking advantage of an opportunity. The enemy is the ignorance of the citizenry (including those elected from our ranks).
you can support your local, unsigned, indie bands.
Be careful though--many independent labels are really owned by major RIAA member corps. It can take a lot of digging to find out who these independents are really associated with, too.
Y'know, people have been pulling this, "Americans are nothing but uneducated hicks who can't spell their own names or count to three" stuff for a long time and it's getting really old. It's as bad as the idea that anyone who sees an advertisement on TV becomes a slobbering hypnotized zombie and immediately purchases the advertised product.
Are there idiots and dupes in the world? Yes. Is everyone a robot under the control of an enormous conspiracy to enslave the world? Come on.
By the way, I:
Hate the destruction of national sovereignty around the globe as much as you do; and I'm distressed that many of our leaders are taking such an active role in it.
Am completely aware of the fruitless folly of trying to force our social values on cultures that don't have our background and I'm well aware of the power hungry nature of our government.
Oppose the building of the SDI for the same reasons that you oppose it. (Oh, and so did the poster that you called a "troll." His point, had you actually read his post, was that no one in power throws that power away by nuking another country in this day of MAD.)
But hey, I'm just a drooling "Merkin" under the control of the Illuminati--what do I know?
Seriously, even madmen have a goal: to maintain their power--that's what gets them off. Living the rest of your days in some underground bunker with a few hundred generals does NOT fulfil this goal adequately. Really, MAD is the only reasonable way to stop nuclear war.
I think they're scared that they may become irrelevant. I mean, when's the last time you heard environmentalists complain about the cost of a plan or research?
On top of that, most of these folks aren't philosophers, thinking deeply about the role of government and the enforcement of possibly unjust laws.
The really sad thing it isn't just the cops--almost *nobody* in this country thinks deeply about the role of government and the enforcement of possibly unjust laws.
I don't know. I'm sure that they're being used though. Criminals have AK-47s and flame throwers, why not kevlar? Of course, those criminals are more likely to be in the mafia or Black Panthers but still...
My local library lends books, audio CDs, videos, DVDs and even some (mainly educational) CD-ROMs.
Same here.
Books rentals are free, video rentals cost £1/$1.50 per week (compared to £3/$4.50 per night from Blockbuster), and the cost of the others varies.
*Everything* is free here (unless you return it past the due date). At least, that's the way it is in our local libraries (North and South Carolina) and the University libraries I've been to.
No, see, they're DEFINED as terrorists retroactively because the FBI and ATF had to go Get Them and protect We The People from Dissident Elements. You know, defending Truth, Justice, and the American Way and all that.
Yeah. I'll bet they'd *really* like to get their hands on that crazy Thomas Jefferson guy. That right-wing extremist nut wanted to have a revolution every 20 years! Man, can you believe to what lengths some of these radicals will go to? Disturbing the good honest law abiding citizens like that--they should be ashamed of themselves!
Law exists to protect them against a type of theft that is particular to their industry.
Well, it isn't theft because copyright isn't property, although copyright violation *is* illegal. But I digress--let's continue.
Suddenly, technology exists to make it incredibly easy to accomplish this type of theft, potentially threatening their industry's existence.
Is any industry legally entitled to remain relevant for eternity? Where are blacksmiths then? Just wondering.
Would you expect the people involved to do anything less than vigorously defend themselves by applying the related law, and even sharpening the law?
Not really, no.
I also remark that if these content-based industries failed to defend themselves, and collapsed, the content they provide would likely dry up as well - because there wouldn't be any money in providing it.
Why do you say that? Do you honestly believe that good content is produced primarily for monetary gain?
At any rate, what we're experiencing here is *not* the death of commercial content. We're experiencing a huge shift in business models and this has happened before. Old publishing companies that don't get it may die; but new companies will arise that will be able to understand the new model and profit from it.
Actually, it's not just frequency response--it's *dynamic* response too! I often hear significant compression in dynamic range on real music (read: not popular crap that's already been compressed to death anyway) with MP3. Additionally, in electronic music with complicated reverb effects, you can actually hear dropped reverberations!
Does this mean that we can expect MSOffice on Linux soon?
No.
Maybe I'm missing something here but how is MSOffice going to be on OSX if it's based on BSD and Microsoft's apparently not developing Office tools for UNIX.
As I've heard, it will be offered in both Carbon (legacy MacCrap [tm] API) and Cocoa (spiffy-keen NeXT OO API) versions. Of course, the Cocoa version might compile with some tweaking under GNUstep. But I'm not expecting MS to do something like that. Hell, we can't even get *OMNI* to do it with OmniWeb.
I don't think *any* free software should be ported to Apple's user interface API (Cocoa?).
Cocoa (the Object Oriented frameworks formerly known as OpenStep) is much more than UI. It's split into the Application Kit (a GUI framework) and the Foundation Kit (non graphical objects for common data and networking operations). It is an openly published standard and there is a GPL'd implementation called GNUstep that runs under various Unices (*BSD, Linux, Solaris...) and partially under Windows (someone needs to write a backend for the GUI stuff).
It seems to be missing much of the basic funtionality of X11, i.e. network tranceparency.
Cocoa has nothing to do with this--it's just an API. All display stuff (including network transparency) is handled by the Window Server. It was present in the good old days of OPENSTEP/Mach and was present for a while in MOSXS. Apple removed it...go complain to them to bring it back.
If Apple wants to pay for free software to be ported to their proprietary interface, that's their business.
Apple doesn't give a damn. Really, they don't care.
I just don't see how it benifits free software to port to OSX.
Do you oppose the use of GPL'd software in Windows? What about the poor users? Remember, the idea is to make great software available to others--regardless of their platform of choice.
It might be useful to build a Cocoa wrapper for X11. That would enable code written for OSX to run on Real Linux/Unix.
Again, try GNUstep. Better yet, go learn Objective C and help write some good Steppin' applications.
Not really. It's not the C++ support that they're working on (that *is* the gcc team's job) it's C++/Objective C integration. This would give coders the ability to mix C++ and Objective C in the same file. I believe that a Objective C runtime merge is going to happen as well. And *that* would be cool.
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Well, NeXT actually. Of course, you could say, "How long did it take NeXT to finally market their software well?"
It's important to understand exactly what the GPL is. Have you ever seen the copyright notice on the back of a CD case or in a book? It says something like, "Copying without express written permission of the author is prohibited." Well, the GPL is exactly that "express written permission." It grants exceptions to copyright law under certain conditions. It's a broad waiver of the monopoly right.
Especially since rival companies that want to figure out how some piece of hardware works (supposedly the reason they keep the specs private in the first place) have a lot of EEs on hand who will just reverse engineer the damn thing. Like the original PC BIOS.
You forget: these are the same people who call tech support to ask where the "any" key is. They really have no clue as to what they're doing.
How about, "the money doesn't belong to the government in the first place and they're wasting it" for a reason?
Ah, you must have missed it. National sovereignty died when a bunch of self appointed moralists decided that we needed to "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony." People like Harry Truman.
The real problem was that those responsible for passing the DMCA have *no understanding* of the Copyright and Patent clause of the Constitution! Quite frankly, hardly anyone else has any idea what the Constitution says either. Corporations are merely taking advantage of an opportunity. The enemy is the ignorance of the citizenry (including those elected from our ranks).
Be careful though--many independent labels are really owned by major RIAA member corps. It can take a lot of digging to find out who these independents are really associated with, too.
And you'd make a great German lawyer!
Are there idiots and dupes in the world? Yes. Is everyone a robot under the control of an enormous conspiracy to enslave the world? Come on.
By the way, I:
But hey, I'm just a drooling "Merkin" under the control of the Illuminati--what do I know?
Dunno, doesn't seem all that likely to *me*. Even for Russia.
*Did* Mao nuke India? No.
Seriously, even madmen have a goal: to maintain their power--that's what gets them off. Living the rest of your days in some underground bunker with a few hundred generals does NOT fulfil this goal adequately. Really, MAD is the only reasonable way to stop nuclear war.
I think they're scared that they may become irrelevant. I mean, when's the last time you heard environmentalists complain about the cost of a plan or research?
The really sad thing it isn't just the cops--almost *nobody* in this country thinks deeply about the role of government and the enforcement of possibly unjust laws.
I don't know. I'm sure that they're being used though. Criminals have AK-47s and flame throwers, why not kevlar? Of course, those criminals are more likely to be in the mafia or Black Panthers but still...
No, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the guy before you.
Same here.
Books rentals are free, video rentals cost £1/$1.50 per week (compared to £3/$4.50 per night from Blockbuster), and the cost of the others varies.
*Everything* is free here (unless you return it past the due date). At least, that's the way it is in our local libraries (North and South Carolina) and the University libraries I've been to.
NO! We must dump all the books into Boston Harbor! THAT'S the message we want to send with this!
Yeah. I'll bet they'd *really* like to get their hands on that crazy Thomas Jefferson guy. That right-wing extremist nut wanted to have a revolution every 20 years! Man, can you believe to what lengths some of these radicals will go to? Disturbing the good honest law abiding citizens like that--they should be ashamed of themselves!
Well, it isn't theft because copyright isn't property, although copyright violation *is* illegal. But I digress--let's continue.
Suddenly, technology exists to make it incredibly easy to accomplish this type of theft, potentially threatening their industry's existence.
Is any industry legally entitled to remain relevant for eternity? Where are blacksmiths then? Just wondering.
Would you expect the people involved to do anything less than vigorously defend themselves by applying the related law, and even sharpening the law?
Not really, no.
I also remark that if these content-based industries failed to defend themselves, and collapsed, the content they provide would likely dry up as well - because there wouldn't be any money in providing it.
Why do you say that? Do you honestly believe that good content is produced primarily for monetary gain?
At any rate, what we're experiencing here is *not* the death of commercial content. We're experiencing a huge shift in business models and this has happened before. Old publishing companies that don't get it may die; but new companies will arise that will be able to understand the new model and profit from it.
Actually, it's not just frequency response--it's *dynamic* response too! I often hear significant compression in dynamic range on real music (read: not popular crap that's already been compressed to death anyway) with MP3. Additionally, in electronic music with complicated reverb effects, you can actually hear dropped reverberations!
No.
Maybe I'm missing something here but how is MSOffice going to be on OSX if it's based on BSD and Microsoft's apparently not developing Office tools for UNIX.
As I've heard, it will be offered in both Carbon (legacy MacCrap [tm] API) and Cocoa (spiffy-keen NeXT OO API) versions. Of course, the Cocoa version might compile with some tweaking under GNUstep. But I'm not expecting MS to do something like that. Hell, we can't even get *OMNI* to do it with OmniWeb.
Cocoa (the Object Oriented frameworks formerly known as OpenStep) is much more than UI. It's split into the Application Kit (a GUI framework) and the Foundation Kit (non graphical objects for common data and networking operations). It is an openly published standard and there is a GPL'd implementation called GNUstep that runs under various Unices (*BSD, Linux, Solaris...) and partially under Windows (someone needs to write a backend for the GUI stuff).
It seems to be missing much of the basic funtionality of X11, i.e. network tranceparency.
Cocoa has nothing to do with this--it's just an API. All display stuff (including network transparency) is handled by the Window Server. It was present in the good old days of OPENSTEP/Mach and was present for a while in MOSXS. Apple removed it...go complain to them to bring it back.
If Apple wants to pay for free software to be ported to their proprietary interface, that's their business.
Apple doesn't give a damn. Really, they don't care.
I just don't see how it benifits free software to port to OSX.
Do you oppose the use of GPL'd software in Windows? What about the poor users? Remember, the idea is to make great software available to others--regardless of their platform of choice.
It might be useful to build a Cocoa wrapper for X11. That would enable code written for OSX to run on Real Linux/Unix.
Again, try GNUstep. Better yet, go learn Objective C and help write some good Steppin' applications.
Not really. It's not the C++ support that they're working on (that *is* the gcc team's job) it's C++/Objective C integration. This would give coders the ability to mix C++ and Objective C in the same file. I believe that a Objective C runtime merge is going to happen as well. And *that* would be cool.
If this ends up being some stupid C++ hack I'm gonna puke! Repeat after me: Cocoa, Objective C...Cocoa, Objective C...