Books carry an implicit copyright licence that entitles the holder to a single copy. Copyright still applies, because the holder does not have the right to copy and redistribute the book. With a distributor such as a bookshop, they have the right to distribute as many copies as they own. The only difference between the software situation and my analogy is that the bookshop can only distribute a finite amount of books, whereas Novell can distribute as many copies of their GPLv3 software as they want.
You're absolutely correct in your summary of software licensing, but you've missed the point that I was trying to make, which was the issue of contributory infringement. Microsoft cannot be liable for contributory infringement if Novell is not infringing, in the same way that a book token distributor cannot be liable for contributory infringement if their partner bookshop is not infringing.
That analogy doesn't carry, because as I understand it Novell is not infringing. Microsoft would be infringing if it directly distributed GPLv3 software without patent pledges.
A better analogy would be a book token. Novell is a bookshop and has the right to distribute books. Microsoft is a book token printer and does not have the right to distribute books, but does have the right to distribute book tokens that are accepted by Novell in exchange for their books.
The attractive data roaming deals you're talking about only apply to Vodafone's data-only tariffs. Have a look at their roaming website. As an example, I selected Germany and an Anytime 1000-1200 tariff, and the data roaming charges were £10/MB. Compare with T-mobile, which charges £7.50/MB. They're on a relatively even footing.
The iPhone will not come with a data-only tariff. Apple may negotiate for lower data roaming charges instead of the Apple Tax which is included in the AT&T contract, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Of course, it gets a bit more complicated when Novell starts distributing GPLv3 code. I can only assume MS will stop giving out Linux support certificates.
How exactly does the action of Microsoft's partner implicate Microsoft? And what do the support certificates entail - is Microsoft actually providing code as part of a support contract?
Not trying to be smart, I genuinely would like to know.
First of all, I fail to see why roaming is any more important to the iPhone than to any other phone. Especially as it's not being targeted at business users.
The iPhone most likely will require a new tariff, yes. But guessing what that tariff might be is pure speculation. The best we can do for an informed guess is to compare the packages offered by the networks at the moment, and basing that speculation on the data-only tariffs offered is ludicrous. You've also got to take into account the price differentiation between these tariffs. The prices you quoted in an earlier comment are well above the £7.50 cost of the consumer-level internet access packages offered by both Vodafone and T-mobile, and don't include voice.
Just to underline my point, the iPhone will not come with a contract that in any way resembles Vodafone's data packages, no matter what network carries it.
Wrong product actually. Such contracts don't offer voice calls or text messaging, only data. Coming back to the iPhone, considering it's locked down to the extent that you can't use VoIP or IM unless Apple says so, these cards would be inappropriate.
- 90 quid for unlimited...
Is that unlimited as in unlimited, or unlimited as in fair use policy? Got to be careful with these meaningless marketing terms. T-mobile advertises its Web'n'Walk service as unlimited too, despite the fact that it blatantly isn't.
Unfortunately, their sales and customer service staff are a bunch of cretinous moronoids which do not even know that the tariffs exist.
Voda unfortunately has a host of known Data problems as well.
Agree and agree. When Vodafone introduced the tariff that I'm talking about (only a few weeks ago), they managed to break services for existing customers, including my company and our customers. Trying to persuade both the right hand and the left hand that there was a problem was an uphill task.
I laughed out loud at the recent Vodafone adverts, with pieces of clocks falling from the sky. I think it claimed something like "The internet has been set free." Of course, all their offering is the exact same deal that T-mobile has been offering for a while now (£1 a day maximum, or £7.50 a month), except that the T-mobile limit is 1GB/month, and the Vodafone limit is 120MB/month.
And maybe it's just me, with this particular Nokia handset and in this particular non-3G cell, but Vodafone's GPRS service seems appalling. It's so hard to get a reliable connection, even with a strong signal. Thankfully it's only the work phone, my personal one is T-mobile.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. According to the ISO, 'SA' is the 2-letter country code for Saudi Arabia. South Africa (Dutch: Zuid-Afrika) uses the 'ZA' designation.
Re:UK not part of World
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At risk of going way off topic, it's interesting to look at the leaders of the current parties at Westminster. Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell and Alex Salmond are Scottish. Tony Blair was born in Scotland and went to Edinburgh Uni. David Cameron has a Scottish father (and Cameron is a distinctively Scottish name), and last-but-not-least, Ian Paisley had a Scottish mother, meaning that the largest party in Westminster with a leader without an obvious Scottish connection is Sinn Féin. And they don't even take up their seats.
I should probably say that I'm a Scot, I voted SNP at the last election, and I think that the only viable solution to the West Lothian Question is Scottish independence.
Re:UK not part of World
on
ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 1
I find it amusing that Sky One was showing Braveheart on the day that Gordon Brown became leader of the Labour party.
Okay, that's enough off-topic posts from me today.
Re:UK not part of World
on
ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 1
Written for an American audience perhaps, where America is the world, and ships fall off the edge of US territorial waters.
Just to underline the fact that the UK isn't quite yet the 51st state.
First of all, a couple of inaccuracies in your comment:
The shuffle... doesn't have sequential playback ability.
Yes, it does.
iPhone is great since it doesn't have... 3G camera and mobile internet.
Maybe you meant "3G mobile internet and a camera"? It certainly does have a camera, and it does have mobile internet over GPRS and WiFi.
Other than that your points are largely valid, although I think you missed the point of the comment you replied to. Loading devices with features without thinking of the user interface renders those features pretty much unusable, so you're better off without them.
The whole point of the lack of a keyboard is that you gain more screen real-estate when you don't need the keyboard. If you do a lot of texting this will be most of the time and the iPhone probably isn't for you. If you don't, all the other things you do on your phone become much easier. Remember, just because the lack of a keyboard doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it won't appeal to anybody. Full QWERTY keyboards on smartphones sure as hell don't appeal to me.
Don't dodgems use 360 steering? I haven't been on them for years, mind you. We could also power our cars in the same way, just like in the Super Mario Brothers film. And of course, evolved dinosaurs would rule the Earth.
It depends on whether whatever religious order you've been indoctrinated into uses the word 'minister'. Mine did/does. When I was young I thought Margaret Thatcher was the head of the Church of Scotland.
iTunes uses the Quicktime framework and offers full-screen video. Comes free with OS X. You can also download free and open source software, such as NicePlayer, that uses the Quicktime framework and offers full-screen video.
The fact that the barebones Quicktime player doesn't play video in full-screen is unfortunate, but Apple are by no means holding you to ransom.
We've managed this for our contract phones, but as I understand it there's still an issue with pre-pay phones. I will confess that I don't know the full details, I'm just a lowly grunt myself.
This is interesting, because I just bought a T-Mobile contract phone. The retail grunt told me in no uncertain terms, in reference to the Web'n'Walk package, "You can use VoIP over it." Maybe he meant, "You can try and use VoIP over it."
This doesn't particularly bother me, I've got more free minutes/texts than I'm ever going to use, and I'm not in a 3G coverage area anyway. I just don't like being lied to.
Oh, and there's an inaccuracy in the article:
Since then, Vodafone has introduced a new policy which makes it more expensive to use data plans for anything other than browsing and email.
This was true up until two weeks ago, when they returned to an agnostic approach. In the process, they broke services for existing customers (such as my company) because they now use lossy compression on some of their connections. It's possible that we might actually move our services over to T-Mobile because their connections are usually more reliable.
As I've said already, releasing software under the GPL doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be used in non-free software. The BSD licence ensures that the freedom to use software in this way is available to any commercial operator, not just those that are willing to pay for the closed-source licence.
Except the BSD licence doesn't take freedom away from anybody. The code is still free no matter what downstream developers do with it.
A better analogy would be this: BSD is like Iceland, a free country that doesn't force its freedom upon other countries. The GPL is like the USA, a free country which tries to bring freedom to other parts of the world.
I think software under the two licences should co-exist. Certainly the world would be worse off if Linux and the like didn't exist. But isn't it great that Microsoft were able to make their software better by using the BSD TCP-IP stack? Isn't it great that Apple were able to build OS X on top of BSD?
Also worth mentioning is the fact that closed-source software can build on GPL'd software if the owner releases it separately under a paid-for commercial licence (such as MySQL). So derivatives aren't necessarily free - but this helps the open source industry as it provides a revenue stream. So freedom at all costs isn't necessarily desirable.
Point taken. I may have read the summary with the domain knowledge that I was on Slashdot, and this is really what some people here think;)
Copyright, as it stands today is badly broken. Everybody agrees on that.
I'll agree that enforcement has become much more difficult, and that fair dealing / fair usage rights are too poorly defined at the moment. But copyright term extensions / reductions are largely irrelevant and a distraction from these points.
Slashdot Mirror
Up until this point I thought you had an iPod Shuffle.
Books carry an implicit copyright licence that entitles the holder to a single copy. Copyright still applies, because the holder does not have the right to copy and redistribute the book. With a distributor such as a bookshop, they have the right to distribute as many copies as they own. The only difference between the software situation and my analogy is that the bookshop can only distribute a finite amount of books, whereas Novell can distribute as many copies of their GPLv3 software as they want.
You're absolutely correct in your summary of software licensing, but you've missed the point that I was trying to make, which was the issue of contributory infringement. Microsoft cannot be liable for contributory infringement if Novell is not infringing, in the same way that a book token distributor cannot be liable for contributory infringement if their partner bookshop is not infringing.
That analogy doesn't carry, because as I understand it Novell is not infringing. Microsoft would be infringing if it directly distributed GPLv3 software without patent pledges.
A better analogy would be a book token. Novell is a bookshop and has the right to distribute books. Microsoft is a book token printer and does not have the right to distribute books, but does have the right to distribute book tokens that are accepted by Novell in exchange for their books.
There's also the fact that a significant proportion of the screen is hidden from view when your hand/finger is stretched across it.
The attractive data roaming deals you're talking about only apply to Vodafone's data-only tariffs. Have a look at their roaming website. As an example, I selected Germany and an Anytime 1000-1200 tariff, and the data roaming charges were £10/MB. Compare with T-mobile, which charges £7.50/MB. They're on a relatively even footing.
The iPhone will not come with a data-only tariff. Apple may negotiate for lower data roaming charges instead of the Apple Tax which is included in the AT&T contract, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
How exactly does the action of Microsoft's partner implicate Microsoft? And what do the support certificates entail - is Microsoft actually providing code as part of a support contract?
Not trying to be smart, I genuinely would like to know.
First of all, I fail to see why roaming is any more important to the iPhone than to any other phone. Especially as it's not being targeted at business users.
The iPhone most likely will require a new tariff, yes. But guessing what that tariff might be is pure speculation. The best we can do for an informed guess is to compare the packages offered by the networks at the moment, and basing that speculation on the data-only tariffs offered is ludicrous. You've also got to take into account the price differentiation between these tariffs. The prices you quoted in an earlier comment are well above the £7.50 cost of the consumer-level internet access packages offered by both Vodafone and T-mobile, and don't include voice.
Just to underline my point, the iPhone will not come with a contract that in any way resembles Vodafone's data packages, no matter what network carries it.
Uh, I did. Just to check my figures.
Wrong product actually. Such contracts don't offer voice calls or text messaging, only data. Coming back to the iPhone, considering it's locked down to the extent that you can't use VoIP or IM unless Apple says so, these cards would be inappropriate.
Is that unlimited as in unlimited, or unlimited as in fair use policy? Got to be careful with these meaningless marketing terms. T-mobile advertises its Web'n'Walk service as unlimited too, despite the fact that it blatantly isn't.
Agree and agree. When Vodafone introduced the tariff that I'm talking about (only a few weeks ago), they managed to break services for existing customers, including my company and our customers. Trying to persuade both the right hand and the left hand that there was a problem was an uphill task.
I laughed out loud at the recent Vodafone adverts, with pieces of clocks falling from the sky. I think it claimed something like "The internet has been set free." Of course, all their offering is the exact same deal that T-mobile has been offering for a while now (£1 a day maximum, or £7.50 a month), except that the T-mobile limit is 1GB/month, and the Vodafone limit is 120MB/month.
And maybe it's just me, with this particular Nokia handset and in this particular non-3G cell, but Vodafone's GPRS service seems appalling. It's so hard to get a reliable connection, even with a strong signal. Thankfully it's only the work phone, my personal one is T-mobile.
They made motor powered versions on Scrapheap Challenge a while back.
You're right, but for the wrong reason. According to the ISO, 'SA' is the 2-letter country code for Saudi Arabia. South Africa (Dutch: Zuid-Afrika) uses the 'ZA' designation.
Population: crab.
At risk of going way off topic, it's interesting to look at the leaders of the current parties at Westminster. Gordon Brown, Menzies Campbell and Alex Salmond are Scottish. Tony Blair was born in Scotland and went to Edinburgh Uni. David Cameron has a Scottish father (and Cameron is a distinctively Scottish name), and last-but-not-least, Ian Paisley had a Scottish mother, meaning that the largest party in Westminster with a leader without an obvious Scottish connection is Sinn Féin. And they don't even take up their seats.
I should probably say that I'm a Scot, I voted SNP at the last election, and I think that the only viable solution to the West Lothian Question is Scottish independence.
I find it amusing that Sky One was showing Braveheart on the day that Gordon Brown became leader of the Labour party.
Okay, that's enough off-topic posts from me today.
Written for an American audience perhaps, where America is the world, and ships fall off the edge of US territorial waters.
Just to underline the fact that the UK isn't quite yet the 51st state.
First of all, a couple of inaccuracies in your comment:
Yes, it does.
Maybe you meant "3G mobile internet and a camera"? It certainly does have a camera, and it does have mobile internet over GPRS and WiFi.
Other than that your points are largely valid, although I think you missed the point of the comment you replied to. Loading devices with features without thinking of the user interface renders those features pretty much unusable, so you're better off without them.
The whole point of the lack of a keyboard is that you gain more screen real-estate when you don't need the keyboard. If you do a lot of texting this will be most of the time and the iPhone probably isn't for you. If you don't, all the other things you do on your phone become much easier. Remember, just because the lack of a keyboard doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it won't appeal to anybody. Full QWERTY keyboards on smartphones sure as hell don't appeal to me.
Don't dodgems use 360 steering? I haven't been on them for years, mind you. We could also power our cars in the same way, just like in the Super Mario Brothers film. And of course, evolved dinosaurs would rule the Earth.
It depends on whether whatever religious order you've been indoctrinated into uses the word 'minister'. Mine did/does. When I was young I thought Margaret Thatcher was the head of the Church of Scotland.
Congratulations on not reading the first two sentences of my post.
iTunes uses the Quicktime framework and offers full-screen video. Comes free with OS X. You can also download free and open source software, such as NicePlayer, that uses the Quicktime framework and offers full-screen video.
The fact that the barebones Quicktime player doesn't play video in full-screen is unfortunate, but Apple are by no means holding you to ransom.
We've managed this for our contract phones, but as I understand it there's still an issue with pre-pay phones. I will confess that I don't know the full details, I'm just a lowly grunt myself.
This is interesting, because I just bought a T-Mobile contract phone. The retail grunt told me in no uncertain terms, in reference to the Web'n'Walk package, "You can use VoIP over it." Maybe he meant, "You can try and use VoIP over it."
This doesn't particularly bother me, I've got more free minutes/texts than I'm ever going to use, and I'm not in a 3G coverage area anyway. I just don't like being lied to.
Oh, and there's an inaccuracy in the article:
This was true up until two weeks ago, when they returned to an agnostic approach. In the process, they broke services for existing customers (such as my company) because they now use lossy compression on some of their connections. It's possible that we might actually move our services over to T-Mobile because their connections are usually more reliable.
As I've said already, releasing software under the GPL doesn't necessarily mean that it can't be used in non-free software. The BSD licence ensures that the freedom to use software in this way is available to any commercial operator, not just those that are willing to pay for the closed-source licence.
Except the BSD licence doesn't take freedom away from anybody. The code is still free no matter what downstream developers do with it.
A better analogy would be this: BSD is like Iceland, a free country that doesn't force its freedom upon other countries. The GPL is like the USA, a free country which tries to bring freedom to other parts of the world.
I think software under the two licences should co-exist. Certainly the world would be worse off if Linux and the like didn't exist. But isn't it great that Microsoft were able to make their software better by using the BSD TCP-IP stack? Isn't it great that Apple were able to build OS X on top of BSD?
Also worth mentioning is the fact that closed-source software can build on GPL'd software if the owner releases it separately under a paid-for commercial licence (such as MySQL). So derivatives aren't necessarily free - but this helps the open source industry as it provides a revenue stream. So freedom at all costs isn't necessarily desirable.
Point taken. I may have read the summary with the domain knowledge that I was on Slashdot, and this is really what some people here think ;)
I'll agree that enforcement has become much more difficult, and that fair dealing / fair usage rights are too poorly defined at the moment. But copyright term extensions / reductions are largely irrelevant and a distraction from these points.