I think you're right. But...it is only illegal to circumvent the protection (which includes unscrambling a scrambled work, as a normal DVD player might do when you purchase it) when you do not have authorization to do so from the copyright holder.
If I use DeCSS on my Linux box to watch a DVD I purchased, haven't I obtained authorization from the copyright holder to descramble it implicitly, given that I purchased the DVD for home viewing from the copyright holder? Surely purchasing the DVD is authorization to descramble it for purposes of home viewing, yes? In this respect, I would assume DeCSS is no different than your standard DVD player.
A related question would be whether the actions a totally legal DVD player engage in to watch a DVD quality as "circumvention" as it is defined in 1201. It look like it would: "descramble a scrambled work, decrypt an encrypted work..."
However, this would have a huge impact on "fair use" backups that I copy to my laptop for travel, for example. Is it illegal for me to copy my DVDs that I purchased to my laptop for viewing on an airplane? It would seem so, given the reading you propose (but not under the reading I've been assuming all this time).
Fair use absolutely is a defense for DMCA violations. This is a factual dispute and can be easily resolved by reading the actual law. In section 1201(c) of the DMCA text:
"(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title."
Not sure they can be much more clear than that.
"then all is well" was a reference not to the law, but rather my determination that "all is well" when the average consumer doesn't have to violate the DMCA to circumvent the protection for (supposedly) fair use. If a normal user, in the course of exercising fair use, was made a criminal by this law (which can happen, say, with DeCSS), then all would not be well. It was just a statement of my opinion on the subject, not a legal determination.
Its not a violation of the DMCA to circumvent the protection on a DVD (or BluRay, or HD-DVD) for purposes of fair use. It is a violation of the DMCA to distribute software which allows the user to circumvent the protection on said media, whether designed for fair use or not. If the mechanism protecting the media is trivial enough that the average user can circumvent it without sepcial tools, then all is well. But if it is as complex as CSS, and therefore requires a piece of software to execute that most people couldn't write themselves (DeCSS), then the DMCA steps in an legality becomes an issue.
Well, as a tech-savvy libertarian, I take exception to your remarks. =)
For me, it is really a question of what role the government should play in a society. I heartily believe that lots of people, through no fault of their own, will be "down and out" from time to time. The world *is* imperfect. However, I do not believe it is the government's job to remedy this. I believe that charities and non-profits are a much better means to that end, and that they should get standing as such from the government for tax purposes.
Indeed, if you spend much time at all working in government programs, you too would want to minimize the number of things the government runs, especially things you care about. Government tends to be one of the least efficient means to the ends we seek because they can simply hemorrhage money with no impact to the workers allowing it to happen...government is an inherent money sink, so there are no incentives to be efficient. This wouldn't be such a problem except that the money they are wasting is coming directly out of the pockets of those who need it.
My opinion in this regard has nothing to do with my lack of empathy for some other social class, rather, it has to do with my desire for a solution that will actually work to help those in trouble get back on their feet in a way that is sustainable. I do disagree that it is the rich people's (or the government's) responsibility to help the disadvantaged (the jury is still out on whether I feel this way because I am egotistical, as you suggest). Your use of the word "responsibility" is disturbing to me, because that does not equal "money" in my mind, but actual real responsibility (time, attention, money, use of my house, etc.). The only people to whom I have real responsibility are my close friends, wife, and family. If you are suggesting that rich people should simply throw money at the problem, I would be disappointed. Indeed, as the homeless blogger mentioned in one of his recent posts, he suggests that you not give money to homeless people, but rather stop what you are doing, get to know them, figure out what they need (even if they don't know what it is), and then provide it to the best of your ability. This kind of effort takes a lot more than money, and from the perspective of how "rich" people are, the distribution of wealth is a lot more uniform among people for this type of wealth than it is with monetary wealth.
Here in San Diego there is an awesome non-profit that employs the homeless to help other homeless people get back on their feet. It offers them responsibility, pay, and a chance to build a track record of doing good work and being responsible so they can move up and do more challenging work if they desire.
I am not a strict libertarian, however...I align with libertarians because I object to our culture of "another law will fix this problem!", which tends to simply produce criminals, rather than solving the root problem. We need to incentivize the populous to do the right thing, rather than dis-incentivize them from doing the wrong thing. They may sound like the same thing, but they are worlds apart. But that is a discussion for another time. =)
Sure it is. The increases *are* minimal...The KDE 2.0 developer docs call for a Pentium 100 MHz with 32 MB of RAM to run KDE 2.0 as a user. These are "bare minimum" numbers.
For KDE 3.2, the developers recommend a bare minimum of a Pentium 200MHz MMX with 80 MB RAM. (I found this on a developer mailing list - info is hard to come by, try googling "kde system requirements").
After searching, KDE never really talks about minimum system requirements to run the environment, and I only have machines 1700MHz and up around the house. My overwhelming impression however is that even the newest versions of KDE will run happily on computers between 750MHz and 1GHz, which certainly cannot be said for the newest versions of any commercial OS (OS X or Windows XP or Windows Vista).
Well, this is refreshing. I mean, lets face it, vendors are peddling crippled products for their convenience, not the customers'. Often, people don't even realize what they're buying, so it would be nice to have a notice.
This reminds me of a prediction I made about the iTMS - I think a lot of people are OK with paying $.99 per song *now*, but in a few years when perhaps they've gone through a couple more computers, and the iPod isn't as in-style as it is now, there will be a backlash of customers realizing that they paid for something they cannot easily use on "other" players (the burn-to-CD-and-rerip technique notwithstanding). I can visualize a similar diffculty with these crippled CDs - they will want to play them in a laptop or similar device that won't handle the DRM gracefully, and only then will they discover they paid for something only to find that it doesn't provide the value expected. It makes sense to notify the customer of what they are buying up front, rather than hiding it and hoping they never notice (obviously, some never will).
But, as my sister told me when we discussed this, they will likely chalk it up to "technology has moved on" and view it the same way they view VHS as not playing in DVD players, and simply rebuy the same movie/album, again. I sure hope that doesn't become the mainstream attitude - it will give the record companies and movie studios yet-another-reason to implement DRM any chance they get.
I'm posting this from a Dell 700m (with some extras, like the extended battery) running Kubuntu Dapper. I did some hand tweaking after install last week and have it "sleeping" (suspend to RAM) perfectly when I close the lid. It will come back to exactly where it was within 5 seconds after reopening the lid.
For those interested, I found that the whole KDE power management was a bit buggy. If instead you simply go to/etc/acpi and rename lid.sh to lid-original.sh and then "ln -s sleep.sh lid.sh" it works perfectly and qiuckly. These are the same tricks I used on my LAC Linux laptop running Arch Linux. Never had to tackle it on my desktop running Gentoo, but I'm sure it would work there too, assuming ACPI and suspend2 were installed.
One other thing - if you do this, NetworkManager is a must. With Dapper including the new KNetworkManager, even after bringing my laptop out of sleep, I'll have wireless access back up in 10-15 seconds with no intervention, including notices in the system tray letting me know when it is coming back up and the status of obtaining a lease.
After doing some tests, it uses about 1% of its battery power per hour in the sleeping state. I have taken flights spanning days only putting the notebook into suspend-to-RAM and made the battery last through the whole thing. This ends up being a pretty rigorous test, since I'm sending it into and puling it out of sleep many times between reboots, sometimes only a few seconds apart.
I don't know if a sleeping laptop counts as a "powered off portable electronic device" to the airlines or not, but I didn't have any problems on my flights. My impression was that a lot of the radio noise generated by laptops came from the hard drive, but I honestly have no idea whether suspend-to-RAM will be noticed by the pilots or not. I always thought they were being overly broad in their requirements for the shutdown of electronic devices. Oh well.
You said a lot of things, but I'm I didn't get any actual critcism out of it. By criticism, I mean anything Google should do differently than what it is doing.
That said, I agree with the underlying sentiment of your post - which basically boils down to "Google is in a position of great power." We all know that, and there are no laws against corporations being in positions of great power. This should not (in and of itself) be a cause for concern, because it is the nature of the market.
In the same vein,the reason Microsoft is such an issue for so many people is assuredly not because they have power. No, if that were the only problem, I would have no concern at all. The problem with Microsoft is that they abuse their power in one sphere to gain an unfair advantage in many other spheres, often stifling innovation (crushing smaller companies) in the process. The examples are numerous - the most obvious is IE's dominance purely due to it's inclusion with Windows.
I do not see this with Google. First off, Google doesn't even have a 50% share of the global searches. So your arguments about it being like Microsoft are premature to say the least. There is no indication that they will ever be a monopoly...it is simply too easy to switch search engines. If Google does something I don't like, switching is as simple as typing "yahoo.com" in the address bar of Firefox I would be very interested to hear any argument from anyone on this site regarding how Google would ever become a monopoly in the search market.
How long before google has to start opening up the algo for us to see or has to stat giving us the option to use some other search engines results?
Well, how about never? Why should Google open up their algorithm? It doesn't matter, the results are the results. If for some reason people believe that they unfairly favor some sites over others and the results are therefore less valid than Yahoo's, MSN's, Ask's or anyone else's, they'll just switch to some other engine. As for Google offering the option to see other engine's results? They already do: it's called DogPile.
Now, Google is in more markets than just search - as you pointed out, they provide free downloadable software. You characterized it as "unfair" for Google to bundle software and release it free. Umm, why? I assume you're referring to RealPlayer, and my reaction is "So what?" RealPlayer was already available free. They're not forcing anyone to download their software...it's not bundled with some other product their selling, and most of all, each piece is available individually. Besides, when installing their bundle, it gives you the option to only install certain parts of the bundle! I'm really not sure where you were going with that argument.
Google is quickly becoming a search monopoly...
Really? I don't see that. I'd like to see evidence anywhere that this is the case. As I said, almost by definition, there will be no search monopoly because the cost of switching is almost zero to the end user. One search engine may one day dominate in the manner of Microsoft with Windows, but the opportunity to abuse that dominance will be very small. The moment people even have the slightest distaste for either the results of their searches or the business practices of the company, they will simply use a competitor. This is clearly not the case with Windows - many people dislike Windows, but they have so much invested in it that it makes it almost impossible to switch for non-geeks, and annoying even for the technically saavy.
This is yet another step towards government-as-parent. Since when is it the school's job (as a government funded organization) to police students' activities when they are not on school property, and are not engaged in activities related to the school? Further, just because someone writes something in a blog does not mean it is true. Keywords: "Waste of resources".
This is a perversion of what schools should actually be focusing on. Why not focus on teaching students how to perform basic life skills, like manage credit, get a bank account, balance a checkbook, and spot shady deals when trying to buy a car? At least that would fall under "education", not "parenting" (although parents should be teaching their children all that as well).
You're missing the point: RMS doesn't think Sun *owes* any of us anything. This isn't about what they owe us.
It is about thhe media confusing Java with Free/Libre Open Source Software. Which it assuredly is *not*.
That said, the announcemment that they will help Linux distributions carry Java as part of their non-free package repositories is a completely different story than Sun's *intent* to release Java under some kind of open source license.
I say good for the new distribution terms. I'll take a wait-and-see attitude about the open source bit, though. We don't know what kind of license Sun will cook up yet.
I read GP's post as saying that it was rarely less than 50% as fast as C, and often significantly faster [than 50% as fast as C].
Which is to say, Java is typically somewhere between 50%-100% the speed of C. Specifically, this would mean it is typcially NOT as fast as C.
Not sure what you were saying, but this seems to be a _very_ reasonable claim, and perhaps a bit conservative. You can certainly craft some scenarios where Java could be faster, and I expect Java to typically be faster than half the speed of C.
Even in the java benchmark revisited, where the author is out to prove a point that Java is slow, Java performs fairly well (often better than 50% as fast as C using g++), and even sometimes being the fastest or in a dead heat with C (methcall and heapsort). This completely ignores that Java's performance will often be best in more complex applications, when it's own internal optimization can really pay off. Certainly, there are likewise instances where Java can be shown to be much slower than C as well.
Anyway, I can see your point in general, but I think so all the "extravagant claims about Java peroformance posts" to respond to, you picked the wrong one.
The DMCA has a specific fair-use clause. Which means, if the action you are engaging in constitutes fair use (i.e. ripping media you already own to watch it on your computer), then it is not illegal. This specifically means that the whether the content is protected by encryption has no bearing on what constitutes fair use, and therefore no bearing in whether or not the use is actionable under the DMCA.
Specifically, under section 1201, subsection c, you will find this text:
(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
The really atrocious thing about the DMCA (IMHO) is that while it allows users to all their fair use defenses that are provided in normal copyright law (including reverse engineering for interoperability, ripping media you purchased legally for personal use, etc.), it outlaws the distribution (and manufacture, which may or not be the creation) of tools which facilitate such actions. We're being fundamentally dishonest with ourselves: we allow people do engage in certain activities, but disallow the distribution of tools that make it feasible for common users.
This, for example, is what makes certain Linux distros have to use offshore (or volunteer run) servers for programs like dvdcsslib, which is used in lots of programs like Xine and Mplayer. It forces distributions like Fedora and Suse to rely on 3rd party servers like livna.org and pacman to host mplayer RPMs.
No one here (that I've seen so far) advocates child pornogrpahy as being OK.
But, what most readers (including myself) do believe is that we should only treat criminals like criminals, not ordinary citizens who haven't broken the law. Part of being treated like a criminal is being watched at all times, having your telephone conversations tapped, and having all your activity on the internet watched. I believe in punishing the criminals as much as you do, but not at the expense of ordinary citizens' freedoms.
Does that philsophy make it harder to prosecute and track down criminals? You bet. But that is what I'm paying the police to do: their job. And they have to do their job without infringing on citizens' rights, including privacy.
The fact that is hyperbole means that it *is* an excellent summation. GP was right - often hyperbole (and other non-literal descriptions like analogy) is the best way to sum up a situation because it takes the bare essence of a tactic (or situation) and brings it to light. Then, you can focus on the reasoning used in the argument without muddling your thinking about purly emotional response to the subject the reasoning is being used to promote.
In other words, isolating the reasoning from the argument often makes analysis of it more objective. And, in that way, it makes for an excellent summation of just how invalid that reasoning may be.
What Digg is accused of doing is deleting entire stories along with comments.
What everyone here is talking about is moderation (either how a comment was moderated, or whether they were allowed to moderate). Moderation (in either form) != censorship. Moderation is a tool to make the comments section tractable for casual readers - making the "good" comments readily available, and keeping trolls, flamebait, etc. off to the side. If you want to read all the trash, go ahead, set your threshold at -1. In other words, the comments are not censored, just assigned on score upon which individual users can filter them according to their needs.
Unless I'm very mistaken, I don't think there have been *any* cases on Slashdot of entire stories disappearing along with all their comments. That actually would be censorship of the ideas people expressed, and, as I read the article in question, appears to be the approach Digg takes to stories. To Kevin's credit, he indicates that the system is going to be changed to a more Slashdot-like approach soon. The stories will be "buried", but not deleted, much as modded down comments are here.
People want stuff for free because we have been conditioned to expect it and we know that it is possible.
Never, in the entire history of radio, has there been a situation where you were somehow prevented from listening only to a program and not the adverts that came with it. People grew up on the broadcast technology knowing that they could flip stations on a whim, usually to avoid the adverts. Radios come with preset buttons to make switching just that much easier.
Similarly with television. TVs have presets now, as well as "last channel" and picture-in-picture functions to allow you to flip quickly back to the program you were watching before the adverts started. TiVo and MythTV both allow (each in their way) commercial skipping.
What is my point? My point is that for 70 (or longer) years, as long as broadcast media has been around, people have found (perfectly legal) ways to avoid advertisements. So, as a result, people have come to expect that they will continue to be able to avoid advertisements. This is a reasonable expectation.
If we really want to be honest with ourselves, we have to recognize that advertising is as old as broadcast media, and was the original way to fund that media. The advertisers knew that their advertisements wouldn't reach all the viewers, and knew that even fewer would buy the product. The networks charged for advertising accordingly. This in no way means it is theft to skip commercials - it merely means that if you do, you are in the percentage of the audience that those adverts do not reach.
What about when everyone skips commercials? Well, then it is time to come up with a new business model. Face it: technology created the broadcast advertising business model, and technology will destroy it. The industry has to evolve to survive through those changes.
Oh, and with respect to your comment:
Free/opensource software falls victim to the same tripe -- people pretend that they stand by the ideologies but really just want stuff for free -- and use the ideology as a guise to pirate non-free software like photoshop or Windows.
That may be, but a lot of us actually stand by the ideologies and, amazingly, aren't pirating Windows and Photoshop. Heck, some of us actually donate real money to the organizations that support that free software. Who are you to judge?
Well, if they were actually interested in discussing the issues at hand, rather than politics, we'd simply leave out Republicans and Democrats altogether and talk about how the bill was voted down, and the implications of that.
Instead, we get a bunch of comments talking about Republicans vs. Democrats and arguing over liberal bias in the media, which frankly isn't nearly as interesting to me as if we had just talked about what the internet is going to look like as a result of the bill be voted down.
This is a tech site, and while political discussion has its place, this wasn't placed in that section (it was placed in IT) and it would be nice to discuss content, rather than politics.
P.S. Yeah, I know that some of yout think of the politics as the content, but I think it doesn't make for as cool of a discussion as the high tech stuff does. =)
I have the same problem with this I have with most all blanket rules and/or policies.
I usually agree with the intent (get students to pay attention in class and focus on learning, not web browsing). But the technique is horrible. This kind of thing comes from the mentality that "yet another law will fix it." In this case, the law only applies in the classroom, but it is still a law.
Did the professor start a lecture one day in class and say: "I've noticed a number of you are using laptops during the class. I like the idea that you are enhancing your learning experience and perhaps taking notes on your laptops, but I would appreciate it if you would keep their use to a minimum during the lecture to avoid distracting other students. If you feel that you must take notes on a laptop for the entire lecture, please make use of the back three rows in the lecture hall to avoid disturbing the other students."
Often, we can solve problems by simply *communicating* with people, rather than implementing some blanket policy that bans laptops. A simple request from the professor goes quite some way, and she could even suggest that if people feel strongly they come see her during office hours to discuss it.
The teacher/student relationship is one of give and take, and both should be willing to communicate to work out a arrangement that benefits the other and themselves. The simple act of talking about a topic is underrated, I think, often in favor of laws, rules and policy.
So, would you want such a nutcase to enter your country?
Would you want them living down the steet from you?
Well, see, the thing is, it doesn't matter much what I would
want, because Free Speech isn't about me. It's about people that I
don't like saying things I don't like, and being allowed to do so even
though I don't like it. Why is this so important?
Because as soon as you start shutting people up because you don't like
what they say is the moment someone else can shut you up because they
don't like what you say. This is an issue regarding the
free exchange of ideas, even if those ideas are things you
don't want to hear (especially if those ideas are things you
don't want to hear!)
Now, there are certainly examples where you can "incite" others to do
harm in ways that are not protected by free speech (a lynch mob comes
to mind). In that case, it is not just the speech, but also the
circumstances that make the action illegal. On the Internet,
we should be extremely wary of ever claiming that certain
speech is illegal because usually the circumstances that would make it
illegal (as with a lynch mob) simply do not exist. In particular:
People are free to visit your site or not, as they see
fit
The speech may be directed towards a group (in a general
sense, as your quotes above indicate), but are not directed against
particular people (as with a lynch mob)
But, as is it with yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, the lynch mob
is the edge case. Unless you wish to repeat history where certain
groups are oppressed because of their beliefs (and the oppression
comes in the form of making it illegal for them to express those
beliefs), we should fight tooth and nail to keep Free Speech pure.
Further, I think we agree that causing harm to people is not
beneficial to society. In that case, let us make it illegal to cause
the harm, rather than speak about causing the harm. I find that we
like to muddle the issue by tracing back too far in what we would like
to think the causality was. There are people that want to outlaw Doom
because the kids who slaughtered other students at Columbine played
the game. We would love to go out and find that the vehement racist
who killed people of the race he despised did so because he read some
website that "incited his hatred", when in fact we should probably
just make the killing of the people illegal, and allow they guy who
wrote the website to speak his mind.
I find it disconcerting that you went out of your way to address the
substance of what GP was saying:
BTW - if you
follow the linky http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson/journal/130969, where
I've outlined what's going on, and links to other posts by this
person, you'll see he believes "immoral sex" includes any sex when
you're not trying to make a baby. So, anyone who's engaged in a
"blow-job" or "carpet-munching" is fair game, as is anyone who's used
any form of birth control. Talk about being "more Catholic than the
Pope"...
That is all totally irrelevant. If you truly
had faith that his ideas were so absurd, then surly you wouldn't feel
so threatened by them, would you? Let him speak as he sees fit - I am
a better person for hearing his thoughts and knowing that there are
people out there that feel the way he feels. If we feel somehow so
threatened by someone's speech on the Internet that we feel he or she
should not be able to express themselves, we should question our own
motives before going after the person expressing ideas we don't agree
with.
Open exchange of ideas is what makes the United States (I realize this
occurred in Canada) different than many other countries (China and
North Korea come to mind). It is our most valuable asset, and it's
logical extension lies in the democratic system itself, where everyone
(is supposed to) have a voice if they so desire. We need to remember
these ideals and constantly work towards them, recognizing that we may
never get there.
Ah, yes, but I don't accept that the download figures are meaningless. They are simply suggestive of a trend, and should not be taken as gospel, that's all.
Thinking less of someone because they choose to promote something they like by reinforcing that it is popular seems a bit odd. But I won't think less of you for it. =)
Seriously though, the number is far from meaningless. First of all, though many people download multiple times, there are many people that are users who don't ever download. The big examples I like to cite are people who use Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and other prominant Linux distributions that use a package management system. Obviously, there are also the corporate intranet cases where one person downloads and mirrors it locally to 50 others. So yes, the number is inaccurate in both directions (doesn't count large groups, other groups counted twice). But that simply doesn't equate with it being "meaningless". For example, Dillo can't claim to have 150 million downloads...Firefox is more popular than Dillo.
My last point regards the article: this guy is trolling, plain and simple. He starts off with:
I agree that Firefox has literally changed the way we browse the Internet...
and then wraps up with this:
I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes another over-hyped application with nothing of value.
So, ummm, which is it? I realize he says "becomes" in the second quote, but honestly, you either think it changed the way we browse or you think it is over-hyped and has no value. It isn't going to go from one to the other because I promote Firefox by advertising that it has been downloaded 150,000,000 times.
Anyway, kind of surprised this made Slashdot front page, but hey, it wouldn't be the first time I wanted to mod an entire article (-1, Troll).
I am a professional software developer and I have a fair level of mastery of the English language. You are correct that the apostrophes were misused in my post, but I do not always do the checks I probably should since I was about to watch Battlestar with my wife but I wanted to get the post out before we started.
That said, it simply doesn't matter. Scores of "Insightful" usually refer to content, not delivery, as you should know. The fact that there are minor errors in my use of apostrophes to convey pronouns' possessiveness is immaterial.
On topic, my point regarding software being left to its own devices was simply an effort to say, albeit in shorthand, that Skype would actually have to *add* code to their client to *prevent* it from working with a particular type of CPU. Oddly, you don't see very many projects on sourceforge that aren't compatible with Intel or AMD CPUs because the developers didn't have time to add support. Rather, a normal program written in C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Fortran, Haskell, Scheme, or any other well known language (even VB!) would work equally well in the vast majority of cases on both AMD and Intel processors without developers having to add support specifically.
"Software does what its creator tells it to do. It doesn't go around deciding by itself that it should work with AMD and then get coerced by evil coders to do something else."
Actually, it is funny you say this, because this is exactly what is happening here. All the software I've ever written works equally well on both AMD and Intel without any special action on my part. However, to make my software NOT work on AMD, I would have to make it do something extra, i.e. check for the presence of an AMD CPU and disable certain features. If you believe this is NOT the case with Skype, please explain why older versions of Skype are not crippled on AMD CPUs, and why a "crack" has surfaced that unlocks the new version of Skype to work equally well on both brands of processor.
A marketing arrangement, as you call it, is one thing. But in this case, it goes beyond a mere marketing arrangement...it is a very specific type of marketing arrangement in which one company (Skype), in exchange for cash, artificially cripples their product to only work with a certain other (unrelated) product (in this case, dual-core Intel CPUs). The key element here is that the product (Skype) would, if left to it's own devices, work with either Intel or AMD CPUs, but has been crippled in it's use with a certain subset of those artificially.
This is really a form of product tying, which was made illegal by the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), but only if a non-trivial amount of business is affected by the tying. This last requirement will likely be the reason the suit isn't successful, but that certainly dosn't mean that the behavior isn't borderline, at best.
Again, this isn't a compatibility issue, as you said, "Why should Skype have to write software to work on AMD?" The real question is "Why should Skype be allowed to artificially exclude AMD users in exchange for money from AMD's competitor?"
I wouldn't describe myself as a blind RMS follower (who would?), though I do agree with him.
I see where you're coming from with respect to the GPL (many people express the idea you mentioned by saying the GPL is "viral"). I understand this, and don't think the GPL is always appropriate.
However, if the developer's goal is to ensure that his or her software will always be available to the public in a human readable form (i.e. source code), then the GPL is what you're looking for. This can be useful in several scenarios:
1) You release MythTV (or the Linux kernel). Someone else modifies it, puts in spyware, and re-releases it with a modicum of new features to entice people to download, saying things like "Based on MythTV!" or "Based on Linux!". You now have a problem, since a product that is largely your code is now on the market, but it's users cannot verify that it isn't doing "evil" things.
2) You establish a community of companies that are providing competing products. They decide on certain core functionality that has become a commodity, but other features are the differentiators in the market. They choose to GPL the commodity code, reserving their seperate "feature rich" code internally. This forces changes made to the commodity code to be released back into the community pool by the members of the group. If they do not, then there are actual possible legal ramifications. With other licenses (MIT, BSD) this would not be the case.
3) You wish your program to have a chance for growth even in your absence. With GPL'd code, projects' maintainers can come and go, but the project is free for any motivated person to pick up and work with. This is useful for the project, since it ensures that even dead projects can be resurrected if they are deemed useful, but it is also useful for younger developers, since it provides them with vast bodies of source code to learn from. Other licenses may offer source code, but none guarantee it in the absence of the code's original author the way the GPL does.
This last is a difficult point for me to express, but I'm essentially trying to say that if the original author goes bankrupt (for example) and stops maintaining the code, there could occur a case where all surviving developers of that code simply don't wish to have their code be seen by others (these would be the authors of "derivative works"). In this case, the source would effectively be lost to the community.
All that said, I think there is a place for both MIT/BSD licenses as well as the GPL (as well as, (gasp), proprietary software, on occasion!) I recognize RMS as the zealot he is, but I also believe in a lot of what he believes. Mostly, I believe that the owners of the computers (the users of the code!) should have the option to control their computers and modify the code that runs on them if they choose. This option is only ever made available through a license like the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
Now you've piqued my interest. =)
I think you're right. But...it is only illegal to circumvent the protection (which includes unscrambling a scrambled work, as a normal DVD player might do when you purchase it) when you do not have authorization to do so from the copyright holder.
If I use DeCSS on my Linux box to watch a DVD I purchased, haven't I obtained authorization from the copyright holder to descramble it implicitly, given that I purchased the DVD for home viewing from the copyright holder? Surely purchasing the DVD is authorization to descramble it for purposes of home viewing, yes? In this respect, I would assume DeCSS is no different than your standard DVD player.
A related question would be whether the actions a totally legal DVD player engage in to watch a DVD quality as "circumvention" as it is defined in 1201. It look like it would: "descramble a scrambled work, decrypt an encrypted work..."
However, this would have a huge impact on "fair use" backups that I copy to my laptop for travel, for example. Is it illegal for me to copy my DVDs that I purchased to my laptop for viewing on an airplane? It would seem so, given the reading you propose (but not under the reading I've been assuming all this time).
Not sure they can be much more clear than that.
"then all is well" was a reference not to the law, but rather my determination that "all is well" when the average consumer doesn't have to violate the DMCA to circumvent the protection for (supposedly) fair use. If a normal user, in the course of exercising fair use, was made a criminal by this law (which can happen, say, with DeCSS), then all would not be well. It was just a statement of my opinion on the subject, not a legal determination.
Its not a violation of the DMCA to circumvent the protection on a DVD (or BluRay, or HD-DVD) for purposes of fair use. It is a violation of the DMCA to distribute software which allows the user to circumvent the protection on said media, whether designed for fair use or not. If the mechanism protecting the media is trivial enough that the average user can circumvent it without sepcial tools, then all is well. But if it is as complex as CSS, and therefore requires a piece of software to execute that most people couldn't write themselves (DeCSS), then the DMCA steps in an legality becomes an issue.
Well, as a tech-savvy libertarian, I take exception to your remarks. =)
For me, it is really a question of what role the government should play in a society. I heartily believe that lots of people, through no fault of their own, will be "down and out" from time to time. The world *is* imperfect. However, I do not believe it is the government's job to remedy this. I believe that charities and non-profits are a much better means to that end, and that they should get standing as such from the government for tax purposes.
Indeed, if you spend much time at all working in government programs, you too would want to minimize the number of things the government runs, especially things you care about. Government tends to be one of the least efficient means to the ends we seek because they can simply hemorrhage money with no impact to the workers allowing it to happen...government is an inherent money sink, so there are no incentives to be efficient. This wouldn't be such a problem except that the money they are wasting is coming directly out of the pockets of those who need it.
My opinion in this regard has nothing to do with my lack of empathy for some other social class, rather, it has to do with my desire for a solution that will actually work to help those in trouble get back on their feet in a way that is sustainable. I do disagree that it is the rich people's (or the government's) responsibility to help the disadvantaged (the jury is still out on whether I feel this way because I am egotistical, as you suggest). Your use of the word "responsibility" is disturbing to me, because that does not equal "money" in my mind, but actual real responsibility (time, attention, money, use of my house, etc.). The only people to whom I have real responsibility are my close friends, wife, and family. If you are suggesting that rich people should simply throw money at the problem, I would be disappointed. Indeed, as the homeless blogger mentioned in one of his recent posts, he suggests that you not give money to homeless people, but rather stop what you are doing, get to know them, figure out what they need (even if they don't know what it is), and then provide it to the best of your ability. This kind of effort takes a lot more than money, and from the perspective of how "rich" people are, the distribution of wealth is a lot more uniform among people for this type of wealth than it is with monetary wealth.
Here in San Diego there is an awesome non-profit that employs the homeless to help other homeless people get back on their feet. It offers them responsibility, pay, and a chance to build a track record of doing good work and being responsible so they can move up and do more challenging work if they desire.
I am not a strict libertarian, however...I align with libertarians because I object to our culture of "another law will fix this problem!", which tends to simply produce criminals, rather than solving the root problem. We need to incentivize the populous to do the right thing, rather than dis-incentivize them from doing the wrong thing. They may sound like the same thing, but they are worlds apart. But that is a discussion for another time. =)
Sure it is. The increases *are* minimal...The KDE 2.0 developer docs call for a Pentium 100 MHz with 32 MB of RAM to run KDE 2.0 as a user. These are "bare minimum" numbers.
For KDE 3.2, the developers recommend a bare minimum of a Pentium 200MHz MMX with 80 MB RAM. (I found this on a developer mailing list - info is hard to come by, try googling "kde system requirements").
After searching, KDE never really talks about minimum system requirements to run the environment, and I only have machines 1700MHz and up around the house. My overwhelming impression however is that even the newest versions of KDE will run happily on computers between 750MHz and 1GHz, which certainly cannot be said for the newest versions of any commercial OS (OS X or Windows XP or Windows Vista).
Well, this is refreshing. I mean, lets face it, vendors are peddling crippled products for their convenience, not the customers'. Often, people don't even realize what they're buying, so it would be nice to have a notice.
This reminds me of a prediction I made about the iTMS - I think a lot of people are OK with paying $.99 per song *now*, but in a few years when perhaps they've gone through a couple more computers, and the iPod isn't as in-style as it is now, there will be a backlash of customers realizing that they paid for something they cannot easily use on "other" players (the burn-to-CD-and-rerip technique notwithstanding). I can visualize a similar diffculty with these crippled CDs - they will want to play them in a laptop or similar device that won't handle the DRM gracefully, and only then will they discover they paid for something only to find that it doesn't provide the value expected. It makes sense to notify the customer of what they are buying up front, rather than hiding it and hoping they never notice (obviously, some never will).
But, as my sister told me when we discussed this, they will likely chalk it up to "technology has moved on" and view it the same way they view VHS as not playing in DVD players, and simply rebuy the same movie/album, again. I sure hope that doesn't become the mainstream attitude - it will give the record companies and movie studios yet-another-reason to implement DRM any chance they get.
Now, I'm no Dell fanboy, but..
/etc/acpi and rename lid.sh to lid-original.sh and then "ln -s sleep.sh lid.sh" it works perfectly and qiuckly. These are the same tricks I used on my LAC Linux laptop running Arch Linux. Never had to tackle it on my desktop running Gentoo, but I'm sure it would work there too, assuming ACPI and suspend2 were installed.
I'm posting this from a Dell 700m (with some extras, like the extended battery) running Kubuntu Dapper. I did some hand tweaking after install last week and have it "sleeping" (suspend to RAM) perfectly when I close the lid. It will come back to exactly where it was within 5 seconds after reopening the lid.
For those interested, I found that the whole KDE power management was a bit buggy. If instead you simply go to
One other thing - if you do this, NetworkManager is a must. With Dapper including the new KNetworkManager, even after bringing my laptop out of sleep, I'll have wireless access back up in 10-15 seconds with no intervention, including notices in the system tray letting me know when it is coming back up and the status of obtaining a lease.
After doing some tests, it uses about 1% of its battery power per hour in the sleeping state. I have taken flights spanning days only putting the notebook into suspend-to-RAM and made the battery last through the whole thing. This ends up being a pretty rigorous test, since I'm sending it into and puling it out of sleep many times between reboots, sometimes only a few seconds apart.
I don't know if a sleeping laptop counts as a "powered off portable electronic device" to the airlines or not, but I didn't have any problems on my flights. My impression was that a lot of the radio noise generated by laptops came from the hard drive, but I honestly have no idea whether suspend-to-RAM will be noticed by the pilots or not. I always thought they were being overly broad in their requirements for the shutdown of electronic devices. Oh well.
That said, I agree with the underlying sentiment of your post - which basically boils down to "Google is in a position of great power." We all know that, and there are no laws against corporations being in positions of great power. This should not (in and of itself) be a cause for concern, because it is the nature of the market.
In the same vein,the reason Microsoft is such an issue for so many people is assuredly not because they have power. No, if that were the only problem, I would have no concern at all. The problem with Microsoft is that they abuse their power in one sphere to gain an unfair advantage in many other spheres, often stifling innovation (crushing smaller companies) in the process. The examples are numerous - the most obvious is IE's dominance purely due to it's inclusion with Windows.
I do not see this with Google. First off, Google doesn't even have a 50% share of the global searches. So your arguments about it being like Microsoft are premature to say the least. There is no indication that they will ever be a monopoly...it is simply too easy to switch search engines. If Google does something I don't like, switching is as simple as typing "yahoo.com" in the address bar of Firefox I would be very interested to hear any argument from anyone on this site regarding how Google would ever become a monopoly in the search market.
How long before google has to start opening up the algo for us to see or has to stat giving us the option to use some other search engines results?
Well, how about never? Why should Google open up their algorithm? It doesn't matter, the results are the results. If for some reason people believe that they unfairly favor some sites over others and the results are therefore less valid than Yahoo's, MSN's, Ask's or anyone else's, they'll just switch to some other engine. As for Google offering the option to see other engine's results? They already do: it's called DogPile.
Now, Google is in more markets than just search - as you pointed out, they provide free downloadable software. You characterized it as "unfair" for Google to bundle software and release it free. Umm, why? I assume you're referring to RealPlayer, and my reaction is "So what?" RealPlayer was already available free. They're not forcing anyone to download their software...it's not bundled with some other product their selling, and most of all, each piece is available individually. Besides, when installing their bundle, it gives you the option to only install certain parts of the bundle! I'm really not sure where you were going with that argument.
Google is quickly becoming a search monopoly...
Really? I don't see that. I'd like to see evidence anywhere that this is the case. As I said, almost by definition, there will be no search monopoly because the cost of switching is almost zero to the end user. One search engine may one day dominate in the manner of Microsoft with Windows, but the opportunity to abuse that dominance will be very small. The moment people even have the slightest distaste for either the results of their searches or the business practices of the company, they will simply use a competitor. This is clearly not the case with Windows - many people dislike Windows, but they have so much invested in it that it makes it almost impossible to switch for non-geeks, and annoying even for the technically saavy.
This is yet another step towards government-as-parent. Since when is it the school's job (as a government funded organization) to police students' activities when they are not on school property, and are not engaged in activities related to the school? Further, just because someone writes something in a blog does not mean it is true. Keywords: "Waste of resources".
This is a perversion of what schools should actually be focusing on. Why not focus on teaching students how to perform basic life skills, like manage credit, get a bank account, balance a checkbook, and spot shady deals when trying to buy a car? At least that would fall under "education", not "parenting" (although parents should be teaching their children all that as well).
You're missing the point: RMS doesn't think Sun *owes* any of us anything. This isn't about what they owe us.
It is about thhe media confusing Java with Free/Libre Open Source Software. Which it assuredly is *not*.
That said, the announcemment that they will help Linux distributions carry Java as part of their non-free package repositories is a completely different story than Sun's *intent* to release Java under some kind of open source license.
I say good for the new distribution terms. I'll take a wait-and-see attitude about the open source bit, though. We don't know what kind of license Sun will cook up yet.
Which is to say, Java is typically somewhere between 50%-100% the speed of C. Specifically, this would mean it is typcially NOT as fast as C.
Not sure what you were saying, but this seems to be a _very_ reasonable claim, and perhaps a bit conservative. You can certainly craft some scenarios where Java could be faster, and I expect Java to typically be faster than half the speed of C.
Even in the java benchmark revisited, where the author is out to prove a point that Java is slow, Java performs fairly well (often better than 50% as fast as C using g++), and even sometimes being the fastest or in a dead heat with C (methcall and heapsort). This completely ignores that Java's performance will often be best in more complex applications, when it's own internal optimization can really pay off. Certainly, there are likewise instances where Java can be shown to be much slower than C as well.
Anyway, I can see your point in general, but I think so all the "extravagant claims about Java peroformance posts" to respond to, you picked the wrong one.
If you cannot space the cycles, simply use assertions. They do not cost anything at runtime.
Specifically, under section 1201, subsection c, you will find this text:
The really atrocious thing about the DMCA (IMHO) is that while it allows users to all their fair use defenses that are provided in normal copyright law (including reverse engineering for interoperability, ripping media you purchased legally for personal use, etc.), it outlaws the distribution (and manufacture, which may or not be the creation) of tools which facilitate such actions. We're being fundamentally dishonest with ourselves: we allow people do engage in certain activities, but disallow the distribution of tools that make it feasible for common users.
This, for example, is what makes certain Linux distros have to use offshore (or volunteer run) servers for programs like dvdcsslib, which is used in lots of programs like Xine and Mplayer. It forces distributions like Fedora and Suse to rely on 3rd party servers like livna.org and pacman to host mplayer RPMs.
No one here (that I've seen so far) advocates child pornogrpahy as being OK.
But, what most readers (including myself) do believe is that we should only treat criminals like criminals, not ordinary citizens who haven't broken the law. Part of being treated like a criminal is being watched at all times, having your telephone conversations tapped, and having all your activity on the internet watched. I believe in punishing the criminals as much as you do, but not at the expense of ordinary citizens' freedoms.
Does that philsophy make it harder to prosecute and track down criminals? You bet. But that is what I'm paying the police to do: their job. And they have to do their job without infringing on citizens' rights, including privacy.
The fact that is hyperbole means that it *is* an excellent summation. GP was right - often hyperbole (and other non-literal descriptions like analogy) is the best way to sum up a situation because it takes the bare essence of a tactic (or situation) and brings it to light. Then, you can focus on the reasoning used in the argument without muddling your thinking about purly emotional response to the subject the reasoning is being used to promote.
In other words, isolating the reasoning from the argument often makes analysis of it more objective. And, in that way, it makes for an excellent summation of just how invalid that reasoning may be.
Disagreed.
What Digg is accused of doing is deleting entire stories along with comments.
What everyone here is talking about is moderation (either how a comment was moderated, or whether they were allowed to moderate). Moderation (in either form) != censorship. Moderation is a tool to make the comments section tractable for casual readers - making the "good" comments readily available, and keeping trolls, flamebait, etc. off to the side. If you want to read all the trash, go ahead, set your threshold at -1. In other words, the comments are not censored, just assigned on score upon which individual users can filter them according to their needs.
Unless I'm very mistaken, I don't think there have been *any* cases on Slashdot of entire stories disappearing along with all their comments. That actually would be censorship of the ideas people expressed, and, as I read the article in question, appears to be the approach Digg takes to stories. To Kevin's credit, he indicates that the system is going to be changed to a more Slashdot-like approach soon. The stories will be "buried", but not deleted, much as modded down comments are here.
Never, in the entire history of radio, has there been a situation where you were somehow prevented from listening only to a program and not the adverts that came with it. People grew up on the broadcast technology knowing that they could flip stations on a whim, usually to avoid the adverts. Radios come with preset buttons to make switching just that much easier.
Similarly with television. TVs have presets now, as well as "last channel" and picture-in-picture functions to allow you to flip quickly back to the program you were watching before the adverts started. TiVo and MythTV both allow (each in their way) commercial skipping.
What is my point? My point is that for 70 (or longer) years, as long as broadcast media has been around, people have found (perfectly legal) ways to avoid advertisements. So, as a result, people have come to expect that they will continue to be able to avoid advertisements. This is a reasonable expectation.
If we really want to be honest with ourselves, we have to recognize that advertising is as old as broadcast media, and was the original way to fund that media. The advertisers knew that their advertisements wouldn't reach all the viewers, and knew that even fewer would buy the product. The networks charged for advertising accordingly. This in no way means it is theft to skip commercials - it merely means that if you do, you are in the percentage of the audience that those adverts do not reach.
What about when everyone skips commercials? Well, then it is time to come up with a new business model. Face it: technology created the broadcast advertising business model, and technology will destroy it. The industry has to evolve to survive through those changes.
Oh, and with respect to your comment:
Free/opensource software falls victim to the same tripe -- people pretend that they stand by the ideologies but really just want stuff for free -- and use the ideology as a guise to pirate non-free software like photoshop or Windows.
That may be, but a lot of us actually stand by the ideologies and, amazingly, aren't pirating Windows and Photoshop. Heck, some of us actually donate real money to the organizations that support that free software. Who are you to judge?
You, sir, are my hero. I couldn't have summed up my discontent and frustration with the whole industry any more precisely or concisely.
Well, if they were actually interested in discussing the issues at hand, rather than politics, we'd simply leave out Republicans and Democrats altogether and talk about how the bill was voted down, and the implications of that.
Instead, we get a bunch of comments talking about Republicans vs. Democrats and arguing over liberal bias in the media, which frankly isn't nearly as interesting to me as if we had just talked about what the internet is going to look like as a result of the bill be voted down.
This is a tech site, and while political discussion has its place, this wasn't placed in that section (it was placed in IT) and it would be nice to discuss content, rather than politics.
P.S. Yeah, I know that some of yout think of the politics as the content, but I think it doesn't make for as cool of a discussion as the high tech stuff does. =)
I have the same problem with this I have with most all blanket rules and/or policies.
I usually agree with the intent (get students to pay attention in class and focus on learning, not web browsing). But the technique is horrible. This kind of thing comes from the mentality that "yet another law will fix it." In this case, the law only applies in the classroom, but it is still a law.
Did the professor start a lecture one day in class and say:
"I've noticed a number of you are using laptops during the class. I like the idea that you are enhancing your learning experience and perhaps taking notes on your laptops, but I would appreciate it if you would keep their use to a minimum during the lecture to avoid distracting other students. If you feel that you must take notes on a laptop for the entire lecture, please make use of the back three rows in the lecture hall to avoid disturbing the other students."
Often, we can solve problems by simply *communicating* with people, rather than implementing some blanket policy that bans laptops. A simple request from the professor goes quite some way, and she could even suggest that if people feel strongly they come see her during office hours to discuss it.
The teacher/student relationship is one of give and take, and both should be willing to communicate to work out a arrangement that benefits the other and themselves. The simple act of talking about a topic is underrated, I think, often in favor of laws, rules and policy.
Because as soon as you start shutting people up because you don't like what they say is the moment someone else can shut you up because they don't like what you say. This is an issue regarding the free exchange of ideas, even if those ideas are things you don't want to hear (especially if those ideas are things you don't want to hear!)
Now, there are certainly examples where you can "incite" others to do harm in ways that are not protected by free speech (a lynch mob comes to mind). In that case, it is not just the speech, but also the circumstances that make the action illegal. On the Internet, we should be extremely wary of ever claiming that certain speech is illegal because usually the circumstances that would make it illegal (as with a lynch mob) simply do not exist. In particular:
But, as is it with yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, the lynch mob is the edge case. Unless you wish to repeat history where certain groups are oppressed because of their beliefs (and the oppression comes in the form of making it illegal for them to express those beliefs), we should fight tooth and nail to keep Free Speech pure.
Further, I think we agree that causing harm to people is not beneficial to society. In that case, let us make it illegal to cause the harm, rather than speak about causing the harm. I find that we like to muddle the issue by tracing back too far in what we would like to think the causality was. There are people that want to outlaw Doom because the kids who slaughtered other students at Columbine played the game. We would love to go out and find that the vehement racist who killed people of the race he despised did so because he read some website that "incited his hatred", when in fact we should probably just make the killing of the people illegal, and allow they guy who wrote the website to speak his mind.
I find it disconcerting that you went out of your way to address the substance of what GP was saying:
That is all totally irrelevant. If you truly had faith that his ideas were so absurd, then surly you wouldn't feel so threatened by them, would you? Let him speak as he sees fit - I am a better person for hearing his thoughts and knowing that there are people out there that feel the way he feels. If we feel somehow so threatened by someone's speech on the Internet that we feel he or she should not be able to express themselves, we should question our own motives before going after the person expressing ideas we don't agree with.Open exchange of ideas is what makes the United States (I realize this occurred in Canada) different than many other countries (China and North Korea come to mind). It is our most valuable asset, and it's logical extension lies in the democratic system itself, where everyone (is supposed to) have a voice if they so desire. We need to remember these ideals and constantly work towards them, recognizing that we may never get there.
Thinking less of someone because they choose to promote something they like by reinforcing that it is popular seems a bit odd. But I won't think less of you for it. =)
Seriously though, the number is far from meaningless. First of all, though many people download multiple times, there are many people that are users who don't ever download. The big examples I like to cite are people who use Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and other prominant Linux distributions that use a package management system. Obviously, there are also the corporate intranet cases where one person downloads and mirrors it locally to 50 others. So yes, the number is inaccurate in both directions (doesn't count large groups, other groups counted twice). But that simply doesn't equate with it being "meaningless". For example, Dillo can't claim to have 150 million downloads...Firefox is more popular than Dillo.
My last point regards the article: this guy is trolling, plain and simple. He starts off with:
and then wraps up with this:
So, ummm, which is it? I realize he says "becomes" in the second quote, but honestly, you either think it changed the way we browse or you think it is over-hyped and has no value. It isn't going to go from one to the other because I promote Firefox by advertising that it has been downloaded 150,000,000 times.
Anyway, kind of surprised this made Slashdot front page, but hey, it wouldn't be the first time I wanted to mod an entire article (-1, Troll).
I am a professional software developer and I have a fair level of mastery of the English language. You are correct that the apostrophes were misused in my post, but I do not always do the checks I probably should since I was about to watch Battlestar with my wife but I wanted to get the post out before we started.
That said, it simply doesn't matter. Scores of "Insightful" usually refer to content, not delivery, as you should know. The fact that there are minor errors in my use of apostrophes to convey pronouns' possessiveness is immaterial.
On topic, my point regarding software being left to its own devices was simply an effort to say, albeit in shorthand, that Skype would actually have to *add* code to their client to *prevent* it from working with a particular type of CPU. Oddly, you don't see very many projects on sourceforge that aren't compatible with Intel or AMD CPUs because the developers didn't have time to add support. Rather, a normal program written in C, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, Fortran, Haskell, Scheme, or any other well known language (even VB!) would work equally well in the vast majority of cases on both AMD and Intel processors without developers having to add support specifically.
"Software does what its creator tells it to do. It doesn't go around deciding by itself that it should work with AMD and then get coerced by evil coders to do something else."
Actually, it is funny you say this, because this is exactly what is happening here. All the software I've ever written works equally well on both AMD and Intel without any special action on my part. However, to make my software NOT work on AMD, I would have to make it do something extra, i.e. check for the presence of an AMD CPU and disable certain features. If you believe this is NOT the case with Skype, please explain why older versions of Skype are not crippled on AMD CPUs, and why a "crack" has surfaced that unlocks the new version of Skype to work equally well on both brands of processor.
This is really a form of product tying, which was made illegal by the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), but only if a non-trivial amount of business is affected by the tying. This last requirement will likely be the reason the suit isn't successful, but that certainly dosn't mean that the behavior isn't borderline, at best.
Again, this isn't a compatibility issue, as you said, "Why should Skype have to write software to work on AMD?" The real question is "Why should Skype be allowed to artificially exclude AMD users in exchange for money from AMD's competitor?"
I wouldn't describe myself as a blind RMS follower (who would?), though I do agree with him.
I see where you're coming from with respect to the GPL (many people express the idea you mentioned by saying the GPL is "viral"). I understand this, and don't think the GPL is always appropriate.
However, if the developer's goal is to ensure that his or her software will always be available to the public in a human readable form (i.e. source code), then the GPL is what you're looking for. This can be useful in several scenarios:
1) You release MythTV (or the Linux kernel). Someone else modifies it, puts in spyware, and re-releases it with a modicum of new features to entice people to download, saying things like "Based on MythTV!" or "Based on Linux!". You now have a problem, since a product that is largely your code is now on the market, but it's users cannot verify that it isn't doing "evil" things.
2) You establish a community of companies that are providing competing products. They decide on certain core functionality that has become a commodity, but other features are the differentiators in the market. They choose to GPL the commodity code, reserving their seperate "feature rich" code internally. This forces changes made to the commodity code to be released back into the community pool by the members of the group. If they do not, then there are actual possible legal ramifications. With other licenses (MIT, BSD) this would not be the case.
3) You wish your program to have a chance for growth even in your absence. With GPL'd code, projects' maintainers can come and go, but the project is free for any motivated person to pick up and work with. This is useful for the project, since it ensures that even dead projects can be resurrected if they are deemed useful, but it is also useful for younger developers, since it provides them with vast bodies of source code to learn from. Other licenses may offer source code, but none guarantee it in the absence of the code's original author the way the GPL does.
This last is a difficult point for me to express, but I'm essentially trying to say that if the original author goes bankrupt (for example) and stops maintaining the code, there could occur a case where all surviving developers of that code simply don't wish to have their code be seen by others (these would be the authors of "derivative works"). In this case, the source would effectively be lost to the community.
All that said, I think there is a place for both MIT/BSD licenses as well as the GPL (as well as, (gasp), proprietary software, on occasion!) I recognize RMS as the zealot he is, but I also believe in a lot of what he believes. Mostly, I believe that the owners of the computers (the users of the code!) should have the option to control their computers and modify the code that runs on them if they choose. This option is only ever made available through a license like the GPL.