No doubt all fiction can be traced right back to a factual account of early humans' journey out of Africa... which by coincidence is exactly where the BSG re-imagined series ends.
Perhaps it can be traced right back to when the survivors of the 12 colonies landed in Africa, in which case all fiction can be traced to Battlestar Galactica.
It's not a re-imagining. It's a cashing-in on the name value of the original concept. I think it is nothing short of a rip off for those who loved the original series. It's also a rip off for those who like the new series itself but are forced to associate it with the original series.
Would it have been any less of a rip-off if the show and the characters had been given different names? I doubt it. I also doubt that completely rewriting the show to remove any and all allusions to the original series would have made it any better. I keep hearing on this site how no media content is completely novel, and the best content is that which builds on pre-existing ideas. The BSG re-imagining is an excellent practical example of this.
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
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· Score: 3, Informative
The GPL does not guarantee that you will get any changes back. The competing developer only needs to share the source with their own customer, and there is no guarantee that that customer will share the code or even take advantage of the offer of the source code at all.
That's certainly true, but if the code was provided by the original developer under the BSD licence then you would be free to re-licence it under the GPL if you chose to make it available to the community, and accept modifications under the terms of that licence. Likewise if you own the copyright.
That's surely a preferable situation to the code being covered by the GPL in the first place, in which case it is burdened with GPL restrictions whether or not you choose to accept community-based modifications.
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
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· Score: 3, Informative
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about open, community-driven projects. I'm talking about projects where a company (say, A Plc) commissions another company (say, Dev Ltd) to create custom software for it. A Plc would like to be able to use the software they are paying for without limitation.
Dev Ltd is providing a service as opposed to a product, and ideally A Plc would be assigned the copyright for the code so that they could licence it as they wish with no conditions. This approach is undesirable for the developer, because it reduces their ability to reuse code across projects for different customers.
What I'm suggesting is that Dev Ltd retains copyright over the code, but licenses it to A plc using a BSD-like licence. This gives A Plc the freedom to use the code they have paid for as they see fit, but also gives Dev Ltd the freedom to reuse code.
Remember that the reuse of code does not necessarily mean that commercially sensitive features will be transferred from A Plc to another of Dev Ltd's customers, if the customer is responsible for setting the specification. The only effect is that Dev Ltd is able to deliver more quickly.
I don't see how licensing the code under the GPL is any sort of safety net for Dev Ltd in comparison to the BSD licence, given that it wouldn't prevent a potential competitor who might get hold of the code from offering that code under the exact same terms, but without the cost overhead of actually having to do the development work.
Re:This isn't sensationalist, it's the truth
on
Leaving the GPL Behind
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The GPL is obviously preferable to closed-source software in this case, but I'm not sure how it's preferable to the BSD/MIT ilk of licences. If I'm paying for the development of a piece of software, I don't want to be limited in what I can do with it (including closed-source distribution) by the developers.
From the customer's point of view, assignment of the copyright to the customer would be preferable to any open source licence. The only impracticality here is that the developer should be free to use 'generic' code samples in projects for other customers.
Your assertion is probably incorrect. Headers, object design, function organization, and inline code are usually considered to be protected by Copyright.
I'll concede your point regarding inline code and (potentially) headers, although these are only relevant to compiled code - interpreted code would not be affected.
I would be surprised if object design and function organisation were covered by copyright. This would have a dangerous knock-on effect on those attempting to create an alternative API, for example. Also, the following section in the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 could potentially apply when creating a program to interface with an API:
It is not an infringement of any copyright in a design document or model recording or embodying a design for anything other than an artistic work or a typeface to make an article to the design or to copy an article made to the design.
Interpretation required on that one because we're not talking about physical models, but it suggests to me that following a technical design (i.e. the library documentation) does not constitute infringement.
I believe the FSF also disagrees with your interpretation.
And I disagree with their interpretation. Fortunately, neither of us is the ultimate authority on matters of law.
I'd be eager to read about court decisions in which these matters have been decided.
IMO, if the internals of your application are dictated by a GPL'd library -- *regardless* of how that library is linked, integrated, called, or plugged in -- your application is a derivative work.
If a closed-source program dynamically links with a GPL'd library, and that library isn't distributed by the developer, then it doesn't matter what the GPL says because no copyright infringement occurs. The GPL is not a contract; it can only permit what is otherwise prohibited by copyright.
What you're proposing is that the judge use the guise of 'intent' to extend the reach of copyright.
The problem with that reasoning is that an act has to take place that without the GPL would be a copyright violation, otherwise the GPL's terms aren't relevant.
If I create a closed-source program that dynamically links to GPL libraries and distribute it, but don't distribute the libraries, then technically I am violating the GPL... but I'm not violating copyright, so there's nothing stopping me from doing so.
Forgive me if I've not followed the thread of the discussion properly, but my problem with this is, if you don't accept the GPL and standard copyright restrictions come into force, at what point does copyright violation occur?
I'll assume that the scenario is that a developer has distributed a closed-source application that links to GPL licensed libraries on the end-user's computer. The developer does not distribute the libraries themselves. The end-user runs the program, but does not do anything else with it.
Because the developer has not distributed any material covered by the GPL, he has not violated any copyrights.
Because the end-user does not copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the libraries, he has not breached the GPL.
If the copyright holder of the libraries wanted to make a case against the developer of the application, then he would have to first make a case against the end-user and then allege that the developer was accessory to or encouraged the end-user to breach copyright. I can't see that happening without a huge stink being made of it by the open source community.
The problem is that the Daily Mail article suggests that a check against the central database won't happen in most cases, primarily due to the £2 a pop charge. The only check that will take place is the one against the details stored on the chip.
Perhaps ads that don't make you want to kick puppies also don't function particularly well as adverts. Or perhaps News Corp can't afford to alienate the puppy-kicking advertisers that it relies on financially.
I think you're the one buying into the con. Noise is free, information is not. Information needs to be found, extracted, interpreted, organised in a comprehensible format, fact checked, and presented in context (i.e. opposing points of view, background information).
If you had instead argued that The Sun and Fox News were distributing noise rather than information, you might have had a point.
Talking with your friends is not comparable. There is the possibility that your friends are talking shite. There's no guarantee that they're going to be coherent. They might only be presenting one side of a story.
Now, we have an insanely cheap technology for distribution and the old guard are trying to change the model to pay-for-information without anyone noticing.
We also have things like adblock which we didn't have before. Information was never free-as-in-beer; it had to be paid for by advertising, and advertisers have to see a return on their investment in advertising space.
I think the summary is sensationalist; Sony's withdrawal of the ads seems to me to be a response to the fact that they didn't abide by the rules, and nothing at all to do with 'uproar' as the summary claims (without citation).
Advertising in a loading screen isn't even unprecedented in the WipEout series; WipEout 2097 carried Red Bull sponsorship that would show up while the game booted, while races loaded and during the race as part of the track artwork. It fitted with the overall look and style of the game. It seems that what Sony is trying now is a continuation of that.
Patrick Moore is somehow still on the go, presenting The Sky At Night along with Chris Lintott. There are usually a good few astronomers and astrophysicists on as guests.
Brian Cox has already been mentioned... I can't think of any more.
It really annoys me that the vast majority of documentaries these days are people-oriented, at the expense of science documentaries. I'm not saying that women are ruining the BBC, but I'm certainly thinking it loudly...
1) Lost productivity when the local ISP or some some intermediate router is down? Multiply by each user. (In a lot of places that's pretty significant. Lots of places suffer multiple hours of network down time / flaky internet every month.)
We can route our network through a mobile 3G dongle if our company network goes down. It's extremely unlikely that both of these would go down at the same time.
There's also the possibility of using Google Docs offline.
2) Lost productivity as your employees are clicking on google ads and browsing online when they should be working on that spreadsheet or word document, or simply lost productivity as the ads become insufferably intrusive and distracting.
As opposed to the lost productivity when your employees are playing solitaire and minesweeper? Your productivity problem here is with your employee, not with your technology.
And the ads aren't at all intrusive. Avoiding Google Docs because they might become intrusive is like avoiding siting your business in a building because it might burn down.
It sounds odd to me when countries are singled out of comparisons because of their natural resources. You can't really make any direct comparisons between any countries without taking natural resources into account. And it's not just about things that you can dig up or chop down - would you discount a country with a large tourism sector from an argument because it happens to be blessed with lots of sun and clean beaches? Would you discount a country with a large shipbuilding industry because it happens to have a coastline to launch into?
Also, Norway's success is as much to do with the management of its oil resources as the presence of the oil itself. The UK also drills for North Sea oil, but hasn't seen the same low levels of unemployment. Ironically, in the early days of North Sea drilling much of the revenue from oil taxes was used to pay the benefits bill, when our state run industries were being shut down by the government and thousands were being made unemployed.
I had an iBook G4 that broke down during its 1 year warranty period. It wouldn't boot at all. I took it to the local Apple Authorised Service Provider and got it repaired. It came back, and worked for a few days, and then the same thing happened again. It went back for repair again, and this time it stayed for weeks. I'm told by the AASP that it went through a couple of motherboards during this time.
Three weeks after the initial fault, I phoned Apple and asked for a replacement, but was told that there was no way that could happen and I would just have to wait for it to be repaired. I gave the guy an earful before I hung up.
Four weeks after the initial fault, I phoned again. This time the Apple rep described my situation as 'clearly unacceptable' and immediately offered me the choice of a refund or replacement. (I took the refund and bought the latest higher-spec, lower price iBook, and pocketed the change. It's still going strong today.)
Sometimes it really does depend on who you get to talk to at the call centre (and this goes for all companies).
What taxpayer money? This report was written before the bank collapsed. And I believe - correct me if you know better - that the bank is being managed by an Icelandic government agency, but has received no public investment in the way that the UK banks have.
Wikileaks could have anonymised this data, but they chose not to. It's a privacy violation.
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory SPOILER ALERT
No doubt all fiction can be traced right back to a factual account of early humans' journey out of Africa... which by coincidence is exactly where the BSG re-imagined series ends.
Perhaps it can be traced right back to when the survivors of the 12 colonies landed in Africa, in which case all fiction can be traced to Battlestar Galactica.
So get the original series on DVD and show them that.
Would it have been any less of a rip-off if the show and the characters had been given different names? I doubt it. I also doubt that completely rewriting the show to remove any and all allusions to the original series would have made it any better. I keep hearing on this site how no media content is completely novel, and the best content is that which builds on pre-existing ideas. The BSG re-imagining is an excellent practical example of this.
The GPL does not guarantee that you will get any changes back. The competing developer only needs to share the source with their own customer, and there is no guarantee that that customer will share the code or even take advantage of the offer of the source code at all.
That's certainly true, but if the code was provided by the original developer under the BSD licence then you would be free to re-licence it under the GPL if you chose to make it available to the community, and accept modifications under the terms of that licence. Likewise if you own the copyright.
That's surely a preferable situation to the code being covered by the GPL in the first place, in which case it is burdened with GPL restrictions whether or not you choose to accept community-based modifications.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm not talking about open, community-driven projects. I'm talking about projects where a company (say, A Plc) commissions another company (say, Dev Ltd) to create custom software for it. A Plc would like to be able to use the software they are paying for without limitation.
Dev Ltd is providing a service as opposed to a product, and ideally A Plc would be assigned the copyright for the code so that they could licence it as they wish with no conditions. This approach is undesirable for the developer, because it reduces their ability to reuse code across projects for different customers.
What I'm suggesting is that Dev Ltd retains copyright over the code, but licenses it to A plc using a BSD-like licence. This gives A Plc the freedom to use the code they have paid for as they see fit, but also gives Dev Ltd the freedom to reuse code.
Remember that the reuse of code does not necessarily mean that commercially sensitive features will be transferred from A Plc to another of Dev Ltd's customers, if the customer is responsible for setting the specification. The only effect is that Dev Ltd is able to deliver more quickly.
I don't see how licensing the code under the GPL is any sort of safety net for Dev Ltd in comparison to the BSD licence, given that it wouldn't prevent a potential competitor who might get hold of the code from offering that code under the exact same terms, but without the cost overhead of actually having to do the development work.
The GPL is obviously preferable to closed-source software in this case, but I'm not sure how it's preferable to the BSD/MIT ilk of licences. If I'm paying for the development of a piece of software, I don't want to be limited in what I can do with it (including closed-source distribution) by the developers.
From the customer's point of view, assignment of the copyright to the customer would be preferable to any open source licence. The only impracticality here is that the developer should be free to use 'generic' code samples in projects for other customers.
I'll concede your point regarding inline code and (potentially) headers, although these are only relevant to compiled code - interpreted code would not be affected.
I would be surprised if object design and function organisation were covered by copyright. This would have a dangerous knock-on effect on those attempting to create an alternative API, for example. Also, the following section in the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 could potentially apply when creating a program to interface with an API:
Interpretation required on that one because we're not talking about physical models, but it suggests to me that following a technical design (i.e. the library documentation) does not constitute infringement.
And I disagree with their interpretation. Fortunately, neither of us is the ultimate authority on matters of law.
I'd be eager to read about court decisions in which these matters have been decided.
If a closed-source program dynamically links with a GPL'd library, and that library isn't distributed by the developer, then it doesn't matter what the GPL says because no copyright infringement occurs. The GPL is not a contract; it can only permit what is otherwise prohibited by copyright.
What you're proposing is that the judge use the guise of 'intent' to extend the reach of copyright.
The problem with that reasoning is that an act has to take place that without the GPL would be a copyright violation, otherwise the GPL's terms aren't relevant.
If I create a closed-source program that dynamically links to GPL libraries and distribute it, but don't distribute the libraries, then technically I am violating the GPL... but I'm not violating copyright, so there's nothing stopping me from doing so.
Forgive me if I've not followed the thread of the discussion properly, but my problem with this is, if you don't accept the GPL and standard copyright restrictions come into force, at what point does copyright violation occur?
I'll assume that the scenario is that a developer has distributed a closed-source application that links to GPL licensed libraries on the end-user's computer. The developer does not distribute the libraries themselves. The end-user runs the program, but does not do anything else with it.
Because the developer has not distributed any material covered by the GPL, he has not violated any copyrights.
Because the end-user does not copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the libraries, he has not breached the GPL.
If the copyright holder of the libraries wanted to make a case against the developer of the application, then he would have to first make a case against the end-user and then allege that the developer was accessory to or encouraged the end-user to breach copyright. I can't see that happening without a huge stink being made of it by the open source community.
IANAL.
The problem is that the Daily Mail article suggests that a check against the central database won't happen in most cases, primarily due to the £2 a pop charge. The only check that will take place is the one against the details stored on the chip.
What would your ideal advert be?
Perhaps ads that don't make you want to kick puppies also don't function particularly well as adverts. Or perhaps News Corp can't afford to alienate the puppy-kicking advertisers that it relies on financially.
I think you're the one buying into the con. Noise is free, information is not. Information needs to be found, extracted, interpreted, organised in a comprehensible format, fact checked, and presented in context (i.e. opposing points of view, background information).
If you had instead argued that The Sun and Fox News were distributing noise rather than information, you might have had a point.
Talking with your friends is not comparable. There is the possibility that your friends are talking shite. There's no guarantee that they're going to be coherent. They might only be presenting one side of a story.
We also have things like adblock which we didn't have before. Information was never free-as-in-beer; it had to be paid for by advertising, and advertisers have to see a return on their investment in advertising space.
Given that advertising revenues are falling, businesses have to consider alternative business models.
I think the summary is sensationalist; Sony's withdrawal of the ads seems to me to be a response to the fact that they didn't abide by the rules, and nothing at all to do with 'uproar' as the summary claims (without citation).
Advertising in a loading screen isn't even unprecedented in the WipEout series; WipEout 2097 carried Red Bull sponsorship that would show up while the game booted, while races loaded and during the race as part of the track artwork. It fitted with the overall look and style of the game. It seems that what Sony is trying now is a continuation of that.
Patrick Moore is somehow still on the go, presenting The Sky At Night along with Chris Lintott. There are usually a good few astronomers and astrophysicists on as guests.
Richard Dawkins made an appearance, albeit brief, on Inside Nature's Giants.
Brian Cox has already been mentioned... I can't think of any more.
It really annoys me that the vast majority of documentaries these days are people-oriented, at the expense of science documentaries. I'm not saying that women are ruining the BBC, but I'm certainly thinking it loudly...
Wiggly ears are quite useful for pulling your glasses back up your nose when they slip down though.
We can route our network through a mobile 3G dongle if our company network goes down. It's extremely unlikely that both of these would go down at the same time.
There's also the possibility of using Google Docs offline.
As opposed to the lost productivity when your employees are playing solitaire and minesweeper? Your productivity problem here is with your employee, not with your technology.
And the ads aren't at all intrusive. Avoiding Google Docs because they might become intrusive is like avoiding siting your business in a building because it might burn down.
It sounds odd to me when countries are singled out of comparisons because of their natural resources. You can't really make any direct comparisons between any countries without taking natural resources into account. And it's not just about things that you can dig up or chop down - would you discount a country with a large tourism sector from an argument because it happens to be blessed with lots of sun and clean beaches? Would you discount a country with a large shipbuilding industry because it happens to have a coastline to launch into?
Also, Norway's success is as much to do with the management of its oil resources as the presence of the oil itself. The UK also drills for North Sea oil, but hasn't seen the same low levels of unemployment. Ironically, in the early days of North Sea drilling much of the revenue from oil taxes was used to pay the benefits bill, when our state run industries were being shut down by the government and thousands were being made unemployed.
To be fair, all of those are above 2%, which was the claim.
Natural resources provide employment? Stop the presses!
I had an iBook G4 that broke down during its 1 year warranty period. It wouldn't boot at all. I took it to the local Apple Authorised Service Provider and got it repaired. It came back, and worked for a few days, and then the same thing happened again. It went back for repair again, and this time it stayed for weeks. I'm told by the AASP that it went through a couple of motherboards during this time.
Three weeks after the initial fault, I phoned Apple and asked for a replacement, but was told that there was no way that could happen and I would just have to wait for it to be repaired. I gave the guy an earful before I hung up.
Four weeks after the initial fault, I phoned again. This time the Apple rep described my situation as 'clearly unacceptable' and immediately offered me the choice of a refund or replacement. (I took the refund and bought the latest higher-spec, lower price iBook, and pocketed the change. It's still going strong today.)
Sometimes it really does depend on who you get to talk to at the call centre (and this goes for all companies).
Invalid carriages are speed limited, whereas bikes are only limited by the ability of the rider.
What taxpayer money? This report was written before the bank collapsed. And I believe - correct me if you know better - that the bank is being managed by an Icelandic government agency, but has received no public investment in the way that the UK banks have.
Wikileaks could have anonymised this data, but they chose not to. It's a privacy violation.
Hm, true. And I can't even blame the English PM and Chancellor. Blast!