Absolutely not. An imprecise summary of the GPL rules --
1. Don't take credit for what you didn't do. 2. If you provide somebody a binary, you have to provide the source to them as well (if they ask) for a nominal fee (at most). 3. If you received software under the GPL, and you redistribute it, you must provide them the same rights and obligations you received.
That's my understanding as well -- basically, that it's a wrapper which understands enough about MS Windows executables,.dlls, and the MS Windows environment sufficiently to map API calls. It can use the actual MS Windows libraries if you have an installation, or some replacements written for Wine, but it doesn't provide a virtual x86.
The bureaucratic desire for power transcends party politics.
'sides, the GOP has generally been more of a friend to the intelligence and defense community than the Democrats, who tend to prefer focusing on the social services and diplomacy.
If you believe that Kadri Gopalnath would benefit from his music being distributed online for free, you are free to communicate your wishes to him barring extreme circumstances such as his being held incommunicado. Even if he is under contract, contracts are finite -- and if your case is SO CONVINCING that he would benefit, then surely you will be able to sway tens, no, hundreds of musicians from signing contracts with the EVIL RIAA and moving voluntarily to online distribution. All they need to do is grant permission instead of signing away their rights to somebody else, and they're into the WONDERFUL world of having their work distributed at large.
It's really their choice. Now, we have an interesting experiment -- how many artists will, in fact, move away from the RIAA model of massive marketing, and instead onto the P2P online distribution model? Or do they still seem to believe that the marketing and production actually *helps* them? Really, if the AudioGalaxy service fails to take off, there aren't that many possible conclusions other than that artists believe that the RIAA is offering a service of sufficient value as to outweigh these benefits of you listening to their music.
And it would be convenient, to, for Mercedes-Benz to only sell cars at cost, but they are under absolutely no obligation to you to do so.
If AudioGalaxy weren't profiteering off copyright infringement, perhaps they wouldn't have gotten into this mess in the first place, any more than a thug or any other criminal deserves an "acceptable settlement".
The RIAA is entitled to charge whatever the market can bear -- and whether or not the market is truly involved (as in -- is it a price-fixing cartel?) is an actual, but completely separate, issue that does not justify willful infringement on their property except by judicial action if and when they are found to be being anticompetitive.
In any fair transaction (*), neither party can impose terms on the other -- there is always the option to walk away. You, as a customer, may choose not to buy a CD -- but you are not then entitled to the music in any form if you reach no agreement. The copyright holder may choose not to sell at a price or in a form that you desire -- but it is then not entitled to seize your money. Both sides may negotiate, but the main principle of reasonable theories of entitlement is an informed consent -- both sides should properly disclose their terms, and no transaction takes place unless agreed upon.
(*) Determining the ethics of state transactions is often hairy. So, for that matter, are nigh-automatic transactions such as pollution; in that case, determining compensation becomes a problem.
When it's ill-considered action that's not rationally justified by a situation, that's when. Acting without thought is often a far worse option than waiting and considering.
Programmable curve adjustment so as to be able to reduce glare and provide greater contrast. Controls suitable for passive night vision would also be handy.
A programmable HUD overlay would also be interesting -- e.g. displaying motion vectors of significant objects, et al, or displaying ID information gained from recognizing people (e.g. contact information).
Just don't go visiting there if you antagonize them. Same goes for pretty much any domain ruled with an iron fist.
If you visit, it doesn't matter if you shouldn't be held accountable, since you quite possibly would be. If life were fair, Mugabe would already imprisoned or dead for being a corrupt, incompetent, race-baiting dictator who cares more about crushing all dissent such as the MDC instead of, oh, averting famine associated with the dramatic drop in food production which just might possibly have something to do with the fact that ZANU-PF goons have been terrorizing the most productive farmers throughout his country.
'sides, there's a big difference between can win the original suit and will win all such suits. If IBM's portfolio is large enough that Sun is likely to actually have been infringing -- not necessarily on the seven in the initial suit, but something else -- then it might be worth it to pay IBM to just go away and stop bothering them.
In an oblique way, it does -- recall the fun "attach a random document" programs like Klez and SirCam. Essentially, while your computer may be safe, the safety of your information depends on the cluelessness of the most ignorant, laziest sysadmin that has ever processed information on your behalf. And what we should be REALLY interested in protecting is people, not computers, since the individual computer systems aren't normally the objective but instead the tool.
Combat Mission = "Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord", distributed by Battlefront.com. It's over a year old (maybe two, don't recall) and the East Front (CM:Barbarossa to Berlin) version is expected for later this year with some engine updates as well.
It's a purely tactical (no campaigns, for instance; closest thing is a multi-battle operation) WWII game, set entirely in NW Europe post-Normandy, with a heavy emphasis on accuracy (e.g. historical TO&Es and units, down to variations e.g. PzIVG, PzIVH, PzIVJ, if memory serves; numerous Sherman types, et al. Armor is modeled via location, tanks carry multiple shell types, vehicles can get bogged down in bad ground conditions...). Typical actions are battalion-sized or smaller, with control down to the squad/team level for men and individual for vehicles.
It's not perfect -- for instance, spotting is absolute (IOW, if any of your units can see something, it's shown to the player regardless of radio contact et al) and will remain so until the engine is rewritten. It is, however, pretty darn good, netting highly favorable reviews and having a pretty fanatic user base.
I wonder how much $ could be shaved off the price if they trimmed extras, like cut-scenes, movies, expensive voice talent (if any; Westwood has more of a reputation for hiring names, IIRC, than Blizzard, but I could be wrong 'bout that), and so forth. I wouldn't mind paying $ for well-done gameplay, excellent documentation, historical research (for wargames -- e.g. CM:BB development requires researching TO&E for a huge number of formations), Q/A testing, and that sort of thing, but for peripheral extras, ugh. Beyond a certain point (Illwinter's "Dominions", for instance, while a deep and intriguing game, does have a horrible UI that could be greatly improved if they had more people and HCI testers), extras just don't impress me that much.
You don't mention Myth. I've never played it, but my understanding is that there's no base-building in it, nor unit building for that matter. The Close Combat series is also quite different, although dead AFAIK and pretty horrible in certain respects (notably the vehicle pathing is possibly the worst I've ever seen in any game, period -- e.g. tanks taking wild detours, slamming into buildings, and getting stuck).
There are also some interesting hybrids. Combat Mission is a hybrid TBS/RTS -- more of a TBS, but you give orders that are executed in 60-second phases, so a) you can get fine control, because you have ample time to give your orders, and b) the simultaneous WEGO execution eliminates some of the artificiality common to sequential TBS play. Of course, it's still fairly demanding on tactical AI.
But given that it's Blizzard, I'd figure that there's probably not a whole lot of innovation -- they seem to be quite happy pushing out clickfests that require vast amounts of micromanagement (e.g. limiting groups to 12 units, minimal unit autonomy, no coordination commands like Go Codes, no ability to put in SOPs / ROEs, no AI scripting, that sort of thing). They could learn a lot more from games with planning phases (e.g. the Rainbow Six series of FPSes -- e.g. go codes for waypoints), unit AI settings (done pretty early in Dark Reign, which I thought was pretty good if a bit high tempo), et al.
Re:The issue is not Open Source versus Proprietary
on
Warcraft III Gone Gold
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· Score: 3, Insightful
That's a nice little bogus viewpoint. Committing wrongs for free doesn't make them right... and would open up the door for companies funding neat little non-profits for mangling other companies. Hell, they're already willing to legally relocate to Bermuda to cut their taxes via some interesting financial manuevers...
Hm. You can't be too sure that the fundamentals are being taught, however, if certification standards are so low that many teachers can score at the 25% percentile and still pass their skills tests. Some teachers might find relying on calculators or PDAs a useful crutch to hide their incompetence.
However, a) it's a digital camera, not a film camera, meaning that LCDs are actually possible; and b) LCDs screens are actually quite common on digitals, for good reason. They can be useful for framing, thus compensating slightly for non-TTL viewfinders.
(And if you want true TTL in a digital, not just a parallax viewfinder or a grainy EVF, you'll have to pay much, much more...)
Hmm. You might want to browse www.dpreview.com; they let you filter cameras based on various criteria such as megapixels and whether or not nonlossy format is provided.
I've got a Minolta S304 -- 3.1MP (actual; 3.3MP is sensor size), 35-140mm zoom (35mm equiv) w/ 35.5mm threads (so certain Olympus step-up rings will work, for instance), CompactFlash (so just about any CF card should work AFAIK; I use 128MB SanDisk cards. Only Type 1 slot, 'tho, so no MicroDrive.), takes 4 AA (in my case, 1600 NiMH). I figure it's pretty good for what I paid for it (~$400 late last year), although at 14.9 oz and 4.5"x2.6"x2.3in it's not particularly compact if that's important to you. It's good enough for squirrels, not good enough for (non-caged) hawks...
If macro is particularly important to you, be aware that the S304's "macro" doesn't focus well within 6" or so. Also, the TIFF format it can use is, 'natch, pretty big, so you'd want a big CF card. The newer S404 is similar, from what I've read, although at 4MP you'd want a bigger CF card for those TIFFs, heh.
It's no DSLR (standard parallax viewfinder + LCD), but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a Canon D60 + lenses.
Well, the article also notes that basically it's a marketing fib in this case, much like backup tape capacities pretty much always assume 50% savings from compression (but tape companies tend to be pretty upfront about that, labelling TR5s as having 10GB/20GB capacities for instance).
Megapixel does equal 1M pixels. Given 307,200 pixels actually used to compose the image, the camera presumably can interpolate to create a 1.3MP image. Of course, it won't have anywhere near the detail that a true 1.3MP sensor would provide...
On the other hand, everybody else on the same cable segments that had their bandwidth drop to nothing because some bandwidth hog was sharing full-length movies 24/7 will probably rejoice -- they'all actually be able to USE what they're paying for.
The file system and memory management, however, would be part of a larger work which WOULD be a derivative work of the TCP/IP stack. In fact, the GPL specifically says that a "work based upon the PRogram" includes "a work containing the Program or a portion of it".
That's one reason why the LGPL and GPL differ. LGPL'd libraries can be safely linked with your code without having to change the license for the rest of it. GPL, however, is strongly viral; even the slightest bit of GPL contamination requires that the rest of the code become GPL.
The counterargument is that the disclosure necessarily provides more information -- namely, whether or not they even have been collecting such information, and what they already have. For instance, allowing a suspect in an investigation to find out what the government already knows about him may tip him off about the sources of such -- possibly endangering the sources, if they're sufficiently identifiable. I suspect that's why FOIA has such a clause, and why I would think that the interceptors in the UK would likewise at least strongly lobby for similar language.
If that's the case, then you do actually need to compromise or work with (or be) an insider to get full information, which is probably far easier with some agencies than others (like infiltrating a competent counterintelligence service versus, oh, food safety inspectors). Of course, a food safety inspector might come under scrutiny if he makes odd intercept requests (unless his superiors are also compromised), so they payoff might be limited, but *shrug* depends on compartmentalization and institutional safeguards.
I suspect that most guerilla wars have actually been versus rebels in South America and Africa as waged by governments and government-aligned para militaries under extremely loose rules of engagement (as in death squads, maiming and mutilations, forced conscription, summary executions, massacres, et al). There have been a few in Europe (Soviet-backed partisan formations and Communist movements in Europe, for instance) and Asia (assorted Communist revolutions and civil wars, Karen rebels, "God's Army", et al) but fewer, and very few currently.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely not. An imprecise summary of the GPL rules --
1. Don't take credit for what you didn't do.
2. If you provide somebody a binary, you have to provide the source to them as well (if they ask) for a nominal fee (at most).
3. If you received software under the GPL, and you redistribute it, you must provide them the same rights and obligations you received.
That's my understanding as well -- basically, that it's a wrapper which understands enough about MS Windows executables, .dlls, and the MS Windows environment sufficiently to map API calls. It can use the actual MS Windows libraries if you have an installation, or some replacements written for Wine, but it doesn't provide a virtual x86.
The bureaucratic desire for power transcends party politics.
'sides, the GOP has generally been more of a friend to the intelligence and defense community than the Democrats, who tend to prefer focusing on the social services and diplomacy.
If you believe that Kadri Gopalnath would benefit from his music being distributed online for free, you are free to communicate your wishes to him barring extreme circumstances such as his being held incommunicado. Even if he is under contract, contracts are finite -- and if your case is SO CONVINCING that he would benefit, then surely you will be able to sway tens, no, hundreds of musicians from signing contracts with the EVIL RIAA and moving voluntarily to online distribution. All they need to do is grant permission instead of signing away their rights to somebody else, and they're into the WONDERFUL world of having their work distributed at large.
It's really their choice. Now, we have an interesting experiment -- how many artists will, in fact, move away from the RIAA model of massive marketing, and instead onto the P2P online distribution model? Or do they still seem to believe that the marketing and production actually *helps* them? Really, if the AudioGalaxy service fails to take off, there aren't that many possible conclusions other than that artists believe that the RIAA is offering a service of sufficient value as to outweigh these benefits of you listening to their music.
You're conveniently ignoring the or part of the and/or that you bolded.
And it would be convenient, to, for Mercedes-Benz to only sell cars at cost, but they are under absolutely no obligation to you to do so.
If AudioGalaxy weren't profiteering off copyright infringement, perhaps they wouldn't have gotten into this mess in the first place, any more than a thug or any other criminal deserves an "acceptable settlement".
The RIAA is entitled to charge whatever the market can bear -- and whether or not the market is truly involved (as in -- is it a price-fixing cartel?) is an actual, but completely separate, issue that does not justify willful infringement on their property except by judicial action if and when they are found to be being anticompetitive.
In any fair transaction (*), neither party can impose terms on the other -- there is always the option to walk away. You, as a customer, may choose not to buy a CD -- but you are not then entitled to the music in any form if you reach no agreement. The copyright holder may choose not to sell at a price or in a form that you desire -- but it is then not entitled to seize your money. Both sides may negotiate, but the main principle of reasonable theories of entitlement is an informed consent -- both sides should properly disclose their terms, and no transaction takes place unless agreed upon.
(*) Determining the ethics of state transactions is often hairy. So, for that matter, are nigh-automatic transactions such as pollution; in that case, determining compensation becomes a problem.
When it's ill-considered action that's not rationally justified by a situation, that's when. Acting without thought is often a far worse option than waiting and considering.
Parent deserves to be modded up for mentioning that it's an vague, unsupported urban legend promulgated by a publication with an anti-Congress agenda.
Programmable curve adjustment so as to be able to reduce glare and provide greater contrast. Controls suitable for passive night vision would also be handy.
A programmable HUD overlay would also be interesting -- e.g. displaying motion vectors of significant objects, et al, or displaying ID information gained from recognizing people (e.g. contact information).
Just don't go visiting there if you antagonize them. Same goes for pretty much any domain ruled with an iron fist.
If you visit, it doesn't matter if you shouldn't be held accountable, since you quite possibly would be. If life were fair, Mugabe would already imprisoned or dead for being a corrupt, incompetent, race-baiting dictator who cares more about crushing all dissent such as the MDC instead of, oh, averting famine associated with the dramatic drop in food production which just might possibly have something to do with the fact that ZANU-PF goons have been terrorizing the most productive farmers throughout his country.
'sides, there's a big difference between can win the original suit and will win all such suits. If IBM's portfolio is large enough that Sun is likely to actually have been infringing -- not necessarily on the seven in the initial suit, but something else -- then it might be worth it to pay IBM to just go away and stop bothering them.
In an oblique way, it does -- recall the fun "attach a random document" programs like Klez and SirCam. Essentially, while your computer may be safe, the safety of your information depends on the cluelessness of the most ignorant, laziest sysadmin that has ever processed information on your behalf. And what we should be REALLY interested in protecting is people, not computers, since the individual computer systems aren't normally the objective but instead the tool.
Combat Mission = "Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord", distributed by Battlefront.com. It's over a year old (maybe two, don't recall) and the East Front (CM:Barbarossa to Berlin) version is expected for later this year with some engine updates as well.
It's a purely tactical (no campaigns, for instance; closest thing is a multi-battle operation) WWII game, set entirely in NW Europe post-Normandy, with a heavy emphasis on accuracy (e.g. historical TO&Es and units, down to variations e.g. PzIVG, PzIVH, PzIVJ, if memory serves; numerous Sherman types, et al. Armor is modeled via location, tanks carry multiple shell types, vehicles can get bogged down in bad ground conditions...). Typical actions are battalion-sized or smaller, with control down to the squad/team level for men and individual for vehicles.
It's not perfect -- for instance, spotting is absolute (IOW, if any of your units can see something, it's shown to the player regardless of radio contact et al) and will remain so until the engine is rewritten. It is, however, pretty darn good, netting highly favorable reviews and having a pretty fanatic user base.
*frown*
I wonder how much $ could be shaved off the price if they trimmed extras, like cut-scenes, movies, expensive voice talent (if any; Westwood has more of a reputation for hiring names, IIRC, than Blizzard, but I could be wrong 'bout that), and so forth. I wouldn't mind paying $ for well-done gameplay, excellent documentation, historical research (for wargames -- e.g. CM:BB development requires researching TO&E for a huge number of formations), Q/A testing, and that sort of thing, but for peripheral extras, ugh. Beyond a certain point (Illwinter's "Dominions", for instance, while a deep and intriguing game, does have a horrible UI that could be greatly improved if they had more people and HCI testers), extras just don't impress me that much.
You don't mention Myth. I've never played it, but my understanding is that there's no base-building in it, nor unit building for that matter. The Close Combat series is also quite different, although dead AFAIK and pretty horrible in certain respects (notably the vehicle pathing is possibly the worst I've ever seen in any game, period -- e.g. tanks taking wild detours, slamming into buildings, and getting stuck).
There are also some interesting hybrids. Combat Mission is a hybrid TBS/RTS -- more of a TBS, but you give orders that are executed in 60-second phases, so a) you can get fine control, because you have ample time to give your orders, and b) the simultaneous WEGO execution eliminates some of the artificiality common to sequential TBS play. Of course, it's still fairly demanding on tactical AI.
But given that it's Blizzard, I'd figure that there's probably not a whole lot of innovation -- they seem to be quite happy pushing out clickfests that require vast amounts of micromanagement (e.g. limiting groups to 12 units, minimal unit autonomy, no coordination commands like Go Codes, no ability to put in SOPs / ROEs, no AI scripting, that sort of thing). They could learn a lot more from games with planning phases (e.g. the Rainbow Six series of FPSes -- e.g. go codes for waypoints), unit AI settings (done pretty early in Dark Reign, which I thought was pretty good if a bit high tempo), et al.
That's a nice little bogus viewpoint. Committing wrongs for free doesn't make them right... and would open up the door for companies funding neat little non-profits for mangling other companies. Hell, they're already willing to legally relocate to Bermuda to cut their taxes via some interesting financial manuevers...
Hm. You can't be too sure that the fundamentals are being taught, however, if certification standards are so low that many teachers can score at the 25% percentile and still pass their skills tests. Some teachers might find relying on calculators or PDAs a useful crutch to hide their incompetence.
However, a) it's a digital camera, not a film camera, meaning that LCDs are actually possible; and b) LCDs screens are actually quite common on digitals, for good reason. They can be useful for framing, thus compensating slightly for non-TTL viewfinders.
(And if you want true TTL in a digital, not just a parallax viewfinder or a grainy EVF, you'll have to pay much, much more...)
Hmm. You might want to browse www.dpreview.com; they let you filter cameras based on various criteria such as megapixels and whether or not nonlossy format is provided.
I've got a Minolta S304 -- 3.1MP (actual; 3.3MP is sensor size), 35-140mm zoom (35mm equiv) w/ 35.5mm threads (so certain Olympus step-up rings will work, for instance), CompactFlash (so just about any CF card should work AFAIK; I use 128MB SanDisk cards. Only Type 1 slot, 'tho, so no MicroDrive.), takes 4 AA (in my case, 1600 NiMH). I figure it's pretty good for what I paid for it (~$400 late last year), although at 14.9 oz and 4.5"x2.6"x2.3in it's not particularly compact if that's important to you. It's good enough for squirrels, not good enough for (non-caged) hawks...
If macro is particularly important to you, be aware that the S304's "macro" doesn't focus well within 6" or so. Also, the TIFF format it can use is, 'natch, pretty big, so you'd want a big CF card. The newer S404 is similar, from what I've read, although at 4MP you'd want a bigger CF card for those TIFFs, heh.
It's no DSLR (standard parallax viewfinder + LCD), but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a Canon D60 + lenses.
64MB won't last very long with a decent-resolution camera generating TIFF images instead of lossy JPEGs.
Well, the article also notes that basically it's a marketing fib in this case, much like backup tape capacities pretty much always assume 50% savings from compression (but tape companies tend to be pretty upfront about that, labelling TR5s as having 10GB/20GB capacities for instance).
Megapixel does equal 1M pixels. Given 307,200 pixels actually used to compose the image, the camera presumably can interpolate to create a 1.3MP image. Of course, it won't have anywhere near the detail that a true 1.3MP sensor would provide...
On the other hand, everybody else on the same cable segments that had their bandwidth drop to nothing because some bandwidth hog was sharing full-length movies 24/7 will probably rejoice -- they'all actually be able to USE what they're paying for.
The file system and memory management, however, would be part of a larger work which WOULD be a derivative work of the TCP/IP stack. In fact, the GPL specifically says that a "work based upon the PRogram" includes "a work containing the Program or a portion of it".
That's one reason why the LGPL and GPL differ. LGPL'd libraries can be safely linked with your code without having to change the license for the rest of it. GPL, however, is strongly viral; even the slightest bit of GPL contamination requires that the rest of the code become GPL.
The counterargument is that the disclosure necessarily provides more information -- namely, whether or not they even have been collecting such information, and what they already have. For instance, allowing a suspect in an investigation to find out what the government already knows about him may tip him off about the sources of such -- possibly endangering the sources, if they're sufficiently identifiable. I suspect that's why FOIA has such a clause, and why I would think that the interceptors in the UK would likewise at least strongly lobby for similar language.
If that's the case, then you do actually need to compromise or work with (or be) an insider to get full information, which is probably far easier with some agencies than others (like infiltrating a competent counterintelligence service versus, oh, food safety inspectors). Of course, a food safety inspector might come under scrutiny if he makes odd intercept requests (unless his superiors are also compromised), so they payoff might be limited, but *shrug* depends on compartmentalization and institutional safeguards.
I suspect that most guerilla wars have actually been versus rebels in South America and Africa as waged by governments and government-aligned para militaries under extremely loose rules of engagement (as in death squads, maiming and mutilations, forced conscription, summary executions, massacres, et al). There have been a few in Europe (Soviet-backed partisan formations and Communist movements in Europe, for instance) and Asia (assorted Communist revolutions and civil wars, Karen rebels, "God's Army", et al) but fewer, and very few currently.