Exactly. Ask yourself, what other products do Novell make - the Exchange connector, Evolution, and a whole bunch of other enterprisy directory and security software.
Novell are very keen to make SUSE extremely interoperable. This deal ensures that they can closely integrate, and even if they infringe some of MS's patents along the way, no one gets sued. At least, no one gets sued if they are a paying customer.
Of course, longer term, if Novell's technology does start to include technology that infringes MS patents, it means that no one can use it except as a paying customer. The source code will be freely available, but you couldn't safely use it for anything. This would reduce the value of the software to the open source community to near zero.
But that's OK. I would guess if it was useful, someone would just fork it and rewrite the infringing bits. And Novell would lose the benefit of all the open source contributers working on their version. The beauty of open source.
So basically, I see this deal as a way of making large customers feel easy about using SUSE alongside other products. Built in risk management for the customers. Novell still don't want to put patent infringing technology in their products though, even if they have this deal, as it hurts them too.
With respect, I don't think you understand IP law. What do you mean "withdraw their copyrights from Novell?". If it's your copyright, then it's already yours. If it's Novell's then it's Novell's.
If Novell have the open source code and are abiding by the terms of the license under which it was distributed, then you have no rights to do anything to them. Your copyright is still yours - you can choose not to distribute further code under the license you originally distributed it. You can't retrospectively rewrite a license under which you distributed your copyrighted code.
That's the beauty of the open source licenses - they protect all our freedoms. If open source developers could unilaterally rewrite the terms under which their code was used *after* distributing it, it would be untouchable - no one could ever use it for anything critical, as the risk would be too great.
"Here's some free code for everyone to use under the blah blah license.... {some time later} Oh - wait - I don't like you - my license now says you owe me £10 million, or you can't use the code." See, it would never fly.
No one seriously working in digital preservation is trying to make a single thing that will last for 50, 100 or 1000 years. The point is not to preserve information in the event of a total civilization collapse, to make it easier for future archaologists, or some such scenario. The point is to keep our historical digital records *currently* readable at any given point in time. If our civilization collapses, it will be up to those who come after to figure out what we were up to.
There are two basic strategies to keep our digital files *currently* accessible:
1) emulation. Check out IBM's Universal Virtual Computer project. 2) migration. Not only migration of storage media, but migration to new and currently readable formats.
We will need to migrate all of our digital files every 5-10 years or so to keep them current. And yes, information will get lost along the way - everything decays eventually.
Re:Context switching, aka, incompetence
on
You Call This Agile?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've been a sysadmin and a programmer. They are completely different jobs.
Programmers get paid to create something new. "Context switching" (haven't heard it called that before, but I know exactly what is meant by it) is a real performance hit for programmers. This is because you are focussing on difficult, abstract problems, over lengthy periods of time, and you need momentum and no distraction. Interuptions to that effort set you back way more than you would think.
Sysadmins get paid to make things work, and if you're lucky, make them work better. In my experience, being a sysadmin meant occasional bursts of intense effort (usually when things were going wrong), some very boring times (when everything just worked) and some rewarding times (when you figure out how to improve the setup in some way). Interruptions and a constant stream of new problems... well, it comes with the territory. Great job, but it's not nearly as abstract as programming.
Only in the last few weeks I had to find some creative ways to get one of my developers out of the office entirely, as he was being bugged by so many other ("small") demands on his time he couldn't function on the main project anymore.
Your competitive advantage? I can't see you have one, except for I.P. You guys have all the patents, and now you're working very hard to try to get everyone to sign up to similar versions of your over-reaching IP laws, thankfully with little success so far.
You can all sit back and relax! Oh wait... most people won't benefit from that will they? Hmmm... sounds like a recipe for short term profit by the few and long-term decline for the rest of the U.S.
"And of that we completely agree. There is no doubt that illegal distribution is not "legal theft". However, "theft" is an english word as well as a legal term."
Cool, it's always nice to find some common ground:)
Do you think it creates a problem for Justice Breyer to mix up his legal and common usage terms like that though? It seems to have created some confusion in people.
I was trying to point out that even Justice Breyer doesn't actually say that copyright infringment = theft. This may be more hair-splitting to some, but he actually only says that both crimes involve someone taking ("acquiring" might be a better word here) something illegally. This is indisputable, and certainly a common factor in both crimes.
Of course, by doing that, and putting it in that language, I think he's trying to make a moral equivalence. He seems to think we should be just as outraged by copyright infringment as "garden-variety theft". He ignores the issue of deprivation of property in theft, but then, he is not arguing that the crimes are actually equivalent crimes, as some here seem to think he was implying. Which was really the point I was trying to make.
""...and it's not even a particularly accurate one (as the "thief" gains nothing that is lost by the victim)."
and that is irrelevant."
Sorry, can't resist going into this, as not only is it not irrelevant, it is central. The definition of theft involves a thief depriving their victim of their property, by taking it. If someone infringes copyright, the victim still has their own copy - the victim has not been deprived, therefore, it is not theft.
If you want to make the argument that the victim has been deprived of their right to control copying, the problem is that the "thief" has not gained any such "right". They have not taken what the victim has been deprived of. So it isn't theft, any which way you cut it.
You may see this as hairsplitting, but it's this kind of hairsplitting that determines what kinds of crimes you can be tried for, and essentially underpins the legal system in both our nations. Morally, you may regard copyright infringement as "stealing" from someone, but legally it just isn't. What Justice Breyer actually said in concurring opinion on the Grokster trial was:
"And deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft."
He is not attempting to legally define copyright infringment as theft. He is saying that unlawful copying amounts to unlawful *taking of property* and that "garden-variety theft" also involves taking of property. He is not saying that the two crimes are equivalent crimes, merely that they both involve the taking of property. In theft, *by definition*, the victim is deprived of the property that is taken. He may be trying to derive a moral equivalence, but there is no legal equivalence, and nor is he trying to create one.
No, you're right, why am I even debating a complete non-argument with you...? Probably because I spent the last year studying Information Crime (in the UK), and it gets on my nerves when I hear this fallacy repeated again and again.
Anyway, good luck with your personal world-view; it's not one I share, along with most information security professionals and lawyers (point taken about your Breyer dude).
It would only be possible to steal IP if there was only one copy in existence, and the thief took it. That would be stealing (victim is deprived of what is gained by the thief). And even then, I'm not sure if it would be theft of the IP, or of the medium, it was stored on.
Look dude, legally, copyright infringment is not theft. You cannot be prosecuted for theft if you infringe copyright. By the way, I'm in the UK here, not the US, but our laws in this regard are very, very similar.
You might be making some kind of emotional, "but morally speaking it looks like theft to me" argument, and that's nice and all, and it probably reflects the fact that you care deeply about starving artists or something.
BUT: it's just your emotional opinion. It has no legal or ethical bearing, and it's not even a particularly accurate one (as the "thief" gains nothing that is lost by the victim). Why do you persist in banging this drum so loudly? It doesn't change the FACT that copyright infringement is *not theft*, by any accepted definition of these terms, by the vast majority of people and I believe every single laywer on the planet.
No, it isn't. It's not legally theft, you can't be prosecuted for theft if you infringe copyright. It's also not morally theft. You don't gain something that the other person loses when you infringe it.
You may not like it, you may think copyright infringement is a terrible thing, but it isn't theft. It's not theft. NOT THEFT. IT ISN'T THEFT. Repeat after me: COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT IS NOT THEFT.
Well said, I knew there was a logical flaw in the "copyright is theft" argument. Although it was one of the better ones I've seen, as it actually was reasoned out to some extent.
Intriguing... but can you provide a link, or at least some more contextual information so I can find out what this precedent actually is?
Can't seem to find it from the information you've provided, and I suspect it would be shot down very quickly if anyone else relied upon it... say someone defending themselves from the RIAA!
So if a major music label releases a video of one of their expensive artis^^^^ products onto popular video sharing sites, and grants a license to anyone to reproduce this video anywhere they like (but not to remix the images and sounds contained within them into another product), they can't sue anyone who takes the music, or any of the images and uses it in something else?
So no marketing trailers or snippets can be protected by copyright anyone? I don't think this precendent means what you think it means. And can you provide a link to it please...?
Peter Jenner actually makes the argument that live performances will become much more important. I think he would fully agree with your assessment of the problems of digital media in the internet age. I have met him on several occasions, and we have talked about these issues, so I can say this with some confidence.
But I think you're naive to suggest that people will not attempt to extract money from digital content. Maybe when the human race has no need to make money out of these things, in some future nano-tech money-less Star Trek world, but in our lifetime, people will continue to try to (and need to) make money from it. The question then becomes, what is the least evil way of doing this?
Yeah, just look at the abject failure of music radio over the last 50 years or so. How copyrighted material is paid for has a long history of bloody battles when new production and distribution technology renders the old models ineffective. It is quite evident that the current models are not working for anyone anymore.
Disclaimer: I know Peter Jenner, and he's a very articulate and intelligent guy - the interview doesn't really do justice to his thinking. He doesn't argue that a licence fee approach is a stunningly new idea, or the only way that money can be generated from music. Just that the current models don't work, and there does not appear to be any other realistic alternative. It would be the lesser of evils, and one that might result in the artists getting more money, the end of DRM, and a vibrant business model (just not one that the current industry would recognise or desire).
I find the tone of this whole discussion ironic, as the vast majority of posters on here don't seem to have a problem with downloading music from P2P networks. Just what do you all suggest, as you don't seem to be able to control yourselves? The funny thing is, you end up hurting the artists you like the most. Don't bash the man unless you can do better. Come on you braniacs, let us know how it should be done then!
Nah. I think Vista will be on most people's desktops. I use linux, several of my geekier friends and colleagues use linux, and a few non-geeks, but not many.
But longer term, I think MS is in trouble if it sticks with its current business models. MS have to keep "innovating" - throwing more features in to an already bloated and monolithic product to keep people "upgrading". They are already quite publicly suffering from this complexity overload. Open source software doesn't suffer from this tendency so much, probably because a distributed development model forces modularity on you.
On the other hand, linux just has to keep getting better, at its own pace. It doesn't have to convince anyone of anything in particular, and it doesn't have a revenue stream and deals with content providers dictating its direction.
I'm not saying Linux will end up on the average joe's desktop either - it may be some other operating system entirely, but I can see the end of commercial operating systems. There is a law of diminishing returns in creating new complicated operating systems every 5-10 years or so. It will be hard to argue with open systems that just keep getting better. Who creates commercial networking protocols for general usage anymore? It's TCP/IP all the way. Open, standard and very well understood.
I agree with most of what you say, except the very last part. It sends exactly the right message. The British Library is raising a serious point about DRM and how it interferes with our legal protections. Of course they are library focussed - that's what they do.
Do you think they would be taken seriously if they went on an anti-DRM crusade? No - and neither do they want to. They actually use DRM themselves to allow them to publish copyrighted material on the internet. Without the protection it affords (to satisfy individual requests to copyrighted works) they couldn't do that, and users would have to physically visit the library to see much of their stuff.
They are making the point that even the British Library finds the new technology dangerous to our legal rights, and we should be very careful about allowing those rights to be superceded by technologically enforced contracts. Great message, to the point and relevant. If there are other interest groups with similar messages, speak up!
The thing is, there aren't really any other sides. Almost no climate scientists disagree that mankind has contributed significantly to global warming. Yes, there are a few who disagree with that proposition, but not many at all. Statistically irrelevant. Of course, they *could* be correct and all the other scientists in the world could be wrong. It's just not very likely.
As far as predicting the weather goes, you're confusing the difficulty of making specific predictions about local weather conditions with long term predictions about the system. If you look at a pan of water that's being heated, you won't be able to predict where the bubbles will rise as it begins to boil, but you know it's going to boil.
No, 0-day refers to an exploit that is released the same day as the vulnerability it exploits is announced. If the vulnerability hasn't been announced at all, it's not a 0-day exploit.
What boundary? According to the theory, the big bang created space, time and everything else. There isn't an edge or a boundary you can exist at - the big bang happened literally everywhere. Of course, there wasn't much space right at the start, and it has expanded considerably since then, but again, it's expanded everywhere, not "outwards" from some center. Or alternatively, anywhere has as much right to be called the "center" as anywhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Ask yourself, what other products do Novell make - the Exchange connector, Evolution, and a whole bunch of other enterprisy directory and security software.
Novell are very keen to make SUSE extremely interoperable. This deal ensures that they can closely integrate, and even if they infringe some of MS's patents along the way, no one gets sued. At least, no one gets sued if they are a paying customer.
Of course, longer term, if Novell's technology does start to include technology that infringes MS patents, it means that no one can use it except as a paying customer. The source code will be freely available, but you couldn't safely use it for anything. This would reduce the value of the software to the open source community to near zero.
But that's OK. I would guess if it was useful, someone would just fork it and rewrite the infringing bits. And Novell would lose the benefit of all the open source contributers working on their version. The beauty of open source.
So basically, I see this deal as a way of making large customers feel easy about using SUSE alongside other products. Built in risk management for the customers. Novell still don't want to put patent infringing technology in their products though, even if they have this deal, as it hurts them too.
With respect, I don't think you understand IP law. What do you mean "withdraw their copyrights from Novell?". If it's your copyright, then it's already yours. If it's Novell's then it's Novell's.
If Novell have the open source code and are abiding by the terms of the license under which it was distributed, then you have no rights to do anything to them. Your copyright is still yours - you can choose not to distribute further code under the license you originally distributed it. You can't retrospectively rewrite a license under which you distributed your copyrighted code.
That's the beauty of the open source licenses - they protect all our freedoms. If open source developers could unilaterally rewrite the terms under which their code was used *after* distributing it, it would be untouchable - no one could ever use it for anything critical, as the risk would be too great.
"Here's some free code for everyone to use under the blah blah license.... {some time later} Oh - wait - I don't like you - my license now says you owe me £10 million, or you can't use the code." See, it would never fly.
No one seriously working in digital preservation is trying to make a single thing that will last for 50, 100 or 1000 years. The point is not to preserve information in the event of a total civilization collapse, to make it easier for future archaologists, or some such scenario. The point is to keep our historical digital records *currently* readable at any given point in time. If our civilization collapses, it will be up to those who come after to figure out what we were up to.
There are two basic strategies to keep our digital files *currently* accessible:
1) emulation. Check out IBM's Universal Virtual Computer project.
2) migration. Not only migration of storage media, but migration to new and currently readable formats.
We will need to migrate all of our digital files every 5-10 years or so to keep them current. And yes, information will get lost along the way - everything decays eventually.
I've been a sysadmin and a programmer. They are completely different jobs.
Programmers get paid to create something new. "Context switching" (haven't heard it called that before, but I know exactly what is meant by it) is a real performance hit for programmers. This is because you are focussing on difficult, abstract problems, over lengthy periods of time, and you need momentum and no distraction. Interuptions to that effort set you back way more than you would think.
Sysadmins get paid to make things work, and if you're lucky, make them work better. In my experience, being a sysadmin meant occasional bursts of intense effort (usually when things were going wrong), some very boring times (when everything just worked) and some rewarding times (when you figure out how to improve the setup in some way). Interruptions and a constant stream of new problems... well, it comes with the territory. Great job, but it's not nearly as abstract as programming.
Only in the last few weeks I had to find some creative ways to get one of my developers out of the office entirely, as he was being bugged by so many other ("small") demands on his time he couldn't function on the main project anymore.
Your competitive advantage? I can't see you have one, except for I.P. You guys have all the patents, and now you're working very hard to try to get everyone to sign up to similar versions of your over-reaching IP laws, thankfully with little success so far.
You can all sit back and relax! Oh wait... most people won't benefit from that will they? Hmmm... sounds like a recipe for short term profit by the few and long-term decline for the rest of the U.S.
"And of that we completely agree. There is no doubt that illegal distribution is not "legal theft". However, "theft" is an english word as well as a legal term."
:)
Cool, it's always nice to find some common ground
Do you think it creates a problem for Justice Breyer to mix up his legal and common usage terms like that though? It seems to have created some confusion in people.
Yeah, I know, I wasn't being very clear.
I was trying to point out that even Justice Breyer doesn't actually say that copyright infringment = theft. This may be more hair-splitting to some, but he actually only says that both crimes involve someone taking ("acquiring" might be a better word here) something illegally. This is indisputable, and certainly a common factor in both crimes.
Of course, by doing that, and putting it in that language, I think he's trying to make a moral equivalence. He seems to think we should be just as outraged by copyright infringment as "garden-variety theft". He ignores the issue of deprivation of property in theft, but then, he is not arguing that the crimes are actually equivalent crimes, as some here seem to think he was implying. Which was really the point I was trying to make.
""...and it's not even a particularly accurate one (as the "thief" gains nothing that is lost by the victim)."
and that is irrelevant."
Sorry, can't resist going into this, as not only is it not irrelevant, it is central. The definition of theft involves a thief depriving their victim of their property, by taking it. If someone infringes copyright, the victim still has their own copy - the victim has not been deprived, therefore, it is not theft.
If you want to make the argument that the victim has been deprived of their right to control copying, the problem is that the "thief" has not gained any such "right". They have not taken what the victim has been deprived of. So it isn't theft, any which way you cut it.
You may see this as hairsplitting, but it's this kind of hairsplitting that determines what kinds of crimes you can be tried for, and essentially underpins the legal system in both our nations. Morally, you may regard copyright infringement as "stealing" from someone, but legally it just isn't. What Justice Breyer actually said in concurring opinion on the Grokster trial was:
"And deliberate unlawful copying is no less an unlawful taking of property than garden-variety theft."
He is not attempting to legally define copyright infringment as theft. He is saying that unlawful copying amounts to unlawful *taking of property* and that "garden-variety theft" also involves taking of property. He is not saying that the two crimes are equivalent crimes, merely that they both involve the taking of property. In theft, *by definition*, the victim is deprived of the property that is taken. He may be trying to derive a moral equivalence, but there is no legal equivalence, and nor is he trying to create one.
No, you're right, why am I even debating a complete non-argument with you...? Probably because I spent the last year studying Information Crime (in the UK), and it gets on my nerves when I hear this fallacy repeated again and again.
Anyway, good luck with your personal world-view; it's not one I share, along with most information security professionals and lawyers (point taken about your Breyer dude).
It would only be possible to steal IP if there was only one copy in existence, and the thief took it. That would be stealing (victim is deprived of what is gained by the thief). And even then, I'm not sure if it would be theft of the IP, or of the medium, it was stored on.
Look dude, legally, copyright infringment is not theft. You cannot be prosecuted for theft if you infringe copyright. By the way, I'm in the UK here, not the US, but our laws in this regard are very, very similar.
You might be making some kind of emotional, "but morally speaking it looks like theft to me" argument, and that's nice and all, and it probably reflects the fact that you care deeply about starving artists or something.
BUT: it's just your emotional opinion. It has no legal or ethical bearing, and it's not even a particularly accurate one (as the "thief" gains nothing that is lost by the victim). Why do you persist in banging this drum so loudly? It doesn't change the FACT that copyright infringement is *not theft*, by any accepted definition of these terms, by the vast majority of people and I believe every single laywer on the planet.
No, it isn't. It's not legally theft, you can't be prosecuted for theft if you infringe copyright. It's also not morally theft. You don't gain something that the other person loses when you infringe it.
You may not like it, you may think copyright infringement is a terrible thing, but it isn't theft. It's not theft. NOT THEFT. IT ISN'T THEFT. Repeat after me: COPYRIGHT INFRINGMENT IS NOT THEFT.
I feel a bit better now.
Well said, I knew there was a logical flaw in the "copyright is theft" argument. Although it was one of the better ones I've seen, as it actually was reasoned out to some extent.
Thanks, most interesting.
Intriguing... but can you provide a link, or at least some more contextual information so I can find out what this precedent actually is?
Can't seem to find it from the information you've provided, and I suspect it would be shot down very quickly if anyone else relied upon it... say someone defending themselves from the RIAA!
So if a major music label releases a video of one of their expensive artis^^^^ products onto popular video sharing sites, and grants a license to anyone to reproduce this video anywhere they like (but not to remix the images and sounds contained within them into another product), they can't sue anyone who takes the music, or any of the images and uses it in something else?
So no marketing trailers or snippets can be protected by copyright anyone? I don't think this precendent means what you think it means. And can you provide a link to it please...?
Peter Jenner actually makes the argument that live performances will become much more important. I think he would fully agree with your assessment of the problems of digital media in the internet age. I have met him on several occasions, and we have talked about these issues, so I can say this with some confidence.
But I think you're naive to suggest that people will not attempt to extract money from digital content. Maybe when the human race has no need to make money out of these things, in some future nano-tech money-less Star Trek world, but in our lifetime, people will continue to try to (and need to) make money from it. The question then becomes, what is the least evil way of doing this?
Yeah, just look at the abject failure of music radio over the last 50 years or so. How copyrighted material is paid for has a long history of bloody battles when new production and distribution technology renders the old models ineffective. It is quite evident that the current models are not working for anyone anymore.
Disclaimer: I know Peter Jenner, and he's a very articulate and intelligent guy - the interview doesn't really do justice to his thinking. He doesn't argue that a licence fee approach is a stunningly new idea, or the only way that money can be generated from music. Just that the current models don't work, and there does not appear to be any other realistic alternative. It would be the lesser of evils, and one that might result in the artists getting more money, the end of DRM, and a vibrant business model (just not one that the current industry would recognise or desire).
I find the tone of this whole discussion ironic, as the vast majority of posters on here don't seem to have a problem with downloading music from P2P networks. Just what do you all suggest, as you don't seem to be able to control yourselves? The funny thing is, you end up hurting the artists you like the most. Don't bash the man unless you can do better. Come on you braniacs, let us know how it should be done then!
Nah. I think Vista will be on most people's desktops. I use linux, several of my geekier friends and colleagues use linux, and a few non-geeks, but not many.
But longer term, I think MS is in trouble if it sticks with its current business models. MS have to keep "innovating" - throwing more features in to an already bloated and monolithic product to keep people "upgrading". They are already quite publicly suffering from this complexity overload. Open source software doesn't suffer from this tendency so much, probably because a distributed development model forces modularity on you.
On the other hand, linux just has to keep getting better, at its own pace. It doesn't have to convince anyone of anything in particular, and it doesn't have a revenue stream and deals with content providers dictating its direction.
I'm not saying Linux will end up on the average joe's desktop either - it may be some other operating system entirely, but I can see the end of commercial operating systems. There is a law of diminishing returns in creating new complicated operating systems every 5-10 years or so. It will be hard to argue with open systems that just keep getting better. Who creates commercial networking protocols for general usage anymore? It's TCP/IP all the way. Open, standard and very well understood.
I think you forgot to turn on your irony detector.
;)
At least guns are easy to get hold of in the US, and you can share them with friends too
* On the death of the copyright holder, all their copyrighted works enter the public domain.
Great incentive to shoot your favorite artist!
I agree with most of what you say, except the very last part. It sends exactly the right message. The British Library is raising a serious point about DRM and how it interferes with our legal protections. Of course they are library focussed - that's what they do.
Do you think they would be taken seriously if they went on an anti-DRM crusade? No - and neither do they want to. They actually use DRM themselves to allow them to publish copyrighted material on the internet. Without the protection it affords (to satisfy individual requests to copyrighted works) they couldn't do that, and users would have to physically visit the library to see much of their stuff.
They are making the point that even the British Library finds the new technology dangerous to our legal rights, and we should be very careful about allowing those rights to be superceded by technologically enforced contracts. Great message, to the point and relevant. If there are other interest groups with similar messages, speak up!
The thing is, there aren't really any other sides. Almost no climate scientists disagree that mankind has contributed significantly to global warming. Yes, there are a few who disagree with that proposition, but not many at all. Statistically irrelevant. Of course, they *could* be correct and all the other scientists in the world could be wrong. It's just not very likely.
As far as predicting the weather goes, you're confusing the difficulty of making specific predictions about local weather conditions with long term predictions about the system. If you look at a pan of water that's being heated, you won't be able to predict where the bubbles will rise as it begins to boil, but you know it's going to boil.
No, 0-day refers to an exploit that is released the same day as the vulnerability it exploits is announced. If the vulnerability hasn't been announced at all, it's not a 0-day exploit.
What boundary? According to the theory, the big bang created space, time and everything else. There isn't an edge or a boundary you can exist at - the big bang happened literally everywhere. Of course, there wasn't much space right at the start, and it has expanded considerably since then, but again, it's expanded everywhere, not "outwards" from some center. Or alternatively, anywhere has as much right to be called the "center" as anywhere else.