Student: You know, sir, it'd be a lot more cost-effective to switch some of these desktops to Linux rather than going for the extremely expensive XP upgrade (with purchase of new computers) that you're planning. And using Firefox would mean less virus-bashing.
Teacher: Linux? Firefox? I don't remember them mentioning those in my MCSE classes...
(not a word-for-word transcription, but conveys the general overtones of the conversation)
I'm intrigued - what would be a plausible scenario where distribution (as opposed to redistribution or partial distribution) was "fair use"? Or was your statement theoretical?
I'm genuinely interested here cos I don't think I've ever come across such a scenario.
Which kind of IP are we talking about here? The grandparent made a suggestion which I'd have thought would be quite effective in producing a codebase with no copyright issues.
I fully understand that patents are another problem entirely, but I didn't think software patents existed at the time MS was contributing to OS/2 (my history is a little shaky - I'm assuming that the partnership was broken off after MS's backstabbing)
At the moment, I really wouldn't trust government to produce legislation of that form. What's the betting that the proposed 'standard' would a) most closely resemble the behaviour of Microsoft Windows and b) incidentally require the use of concepts that, oh so regrettably, MS owns patents on?
As we've seen in the software patents travesty, the current rulers of Europe will tend to take the lead from individuals such as Mr William "Bill" Gates Esquire. I really don't think it would be a good idea to let said individual and the company he represents find more ways to prevent opposition.
I don't think that it's acceptable to have governments legislating on the issue - that smacks a bit too much of governmental micromanagement, which never ends well (for example, would lynx be banned for not doing css?)
However, it would be both acceptable and a damn good idea for governmental institutions to put their money where their mouth is and stop buying products that break standards in a blatant attempt to lock in consumers. This would hopefully do enough damage to certain monopoly interests that it would achieve the same result.
Would it be possible to set up a script that would, after a specified interval of time, change the logos and skins to something more firefoxey?
If so, add that in and ring up your client just before it goes into action. Tell them that IEx is rebranding itself - it's now called Firefox - but not to worry, the main difference is that it looks prettier. Given that they've presumably already got the hang of the workings of Firefox, this shouldn't be too much of a struggle for them to accept.
I'm reminded of all the tribal magic etc. that held that knowing someone's true name gave you power over them. Of course, that's terribly primitive; these days it's SSNs and CCNs that the black magicians are after.
If smart kids get advanced (and this is considered a normal thing) then they get to hang around with the big kids whilst their peers get stuck hanging with the little kids. Should help to associate academic achievement with adulthood.
I add the caveat about normality cos if it's just one kid being moved up they're gonna feel somewhat out of place.
They're pissed off at having to pay ripoff prices to the people (such as Microsoft and Real) whose audio codecs they use, and they're sure as hell not keen to start paying licensing fees for video codecs as well.
Additionally, they think they can get better performance out of Dirac than is being got out of current codecs, which will save them bandwidth.
The hole and wreckage at the pentagon were clearly not from a 757
On what basis are you judging this? Could you give us some examples of things that seemed askew?
no other building in history have ever collapsed by fire
That's definitely not true. Did you mean "no skyscraper" or something like that? Mostly large buildings tend to a) be pretty scrupulous in their fire prevention systems and b) not have large amounts of burning aviation fuel squirted into them during a massive high-speed impact.
Some of the evasive manuveurs performed with the planes would be hard for skilled pilots, let alone guys who had just learned and were reportadly "hopeless" by their trainers.
Apologies for cluelessness, but what evasive manoeuvres were necessary? All I remember is planes being flown into buildings, which takes comparatively little skill. Like I say, this is probably just me not remembering it all terribly well.
I'm saying if Al Quida did it, they had alot of help...but most likely they're just patsies.
So who do you think organised it? If it was some other group of terrorists then I guess it's a case of "a rose by any other name"... It doesn't really fit the style of another world government, given that it was fairly irrelevant as far as relationships between large nations go. And if I thought the US government had the acumen to pull something like that off without any word reaching the press, I'd be a lot less worried about their position at the top of the dominant country of the day.
That sucks for those who contract it, but it's a good thing for the human race as a whole as these varieties are unlikely to survive very well - they'll kill all their hosts too quickly.
The grandparent said The problem with that is that open DRM is an oxymoron. If it's open it can be bypassed. You said Not necessarily. You haven't justified that assertion. In particular, your comment that Yes you can, but you shouldn't refutes your claim.
It's not going to prevent people from doing bad stuff, but it will be a non-trivial reminder.
It'll be a non-trivial reminder for the people who rip the music to a non-DRMed format, yes, but they mostly already know what they're doing. Everyone else who gets it illegally will not find that their user experience has changed. In fact, the only people that your suggested scheme will inconvenience are the legitimate users, who will find it impossible to play music they have paid for without the latest model of player and an internet connection. The same issue applies to all DRM schemes I've come across.
Remember in the long run it is the administrative costs that will outweigh the hardware/software costs. And for that, Windows has a much lower administrative cost.
Actually, the BBC article specifically states that the school IT administrators now have enough time on their hands that they can help out in local primary schools as well (if I'm reading the article correctly). It's hard to see how that tallies with the higher administrative cost you mention.
Please, kill yourself. We need one less fat filthy communist linux hippie.
I haven't been getting much exercise lately, sure, but I'm nowhere near overweight. I shower every day. Politically, I'm pretty mainstream (Lib Dem, which won't mean anything unless you're British). I do indeed use Linux, which works fine apart from the lack of drivers and games that arises from MS illegally controlling the OS market. I'm certainly not a hippie; my hair's too short for that.
I'd advise that your name-calling would be more effective if it had a greater level of accuracy than one loaded word in five.
If any entity, from a police department to a mall cleaning crew, has a radio system then the public isn't free to just use it
Depends what you mean by "use it". If the device in question was operating on an open frequency, I can't imagine that sending signals to the device, or receiving signals back from it, would be illegal.
Even ham radio repeaters can be "closed" and then if people access them without permission it's intentional interference and can result in fines.
Not being a ham radio operator, I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "closed" in this case. Would it still be illegal to access if there was absolutely no way of knowing that the repeater in question was closed?
For me, the fact that Windows, and only Windows, is compatible with all your games and utility software *is* the horror story, since they attained that position by using every dirty trick in the book and then some.
I don't really want to give money to a company like that, in the same way that I try to avoid buying from companies that use sweatshop labour or chop down rainforests. Remember, every version of Windows that you buy is helping to prop up what is currently the most antisocial company in the computer business.
In the UK at least, it's completely legal to ferment your own beer. Strangely, pubs still do a roaring trade in this drink. This is mostly cos homegrown/homemade stuff tends to taste like piss.
Actually that's a really good idea. And frankly the whole idea of in-your-face advertising is a bit lame - whether or not people have heard of your product before, springing a flash popup on them is not going to result in endearment.
What criteria would you suggest for ethical advertising? Nothing visually intrusive (popups, popunders, floaters). Nothing otherwise intrusive (annoying music). Nothing that suggests you're trying to track me without my express permission (cookies and weird flash code). Preferably nothing that takes up half the sodding page cos that's just irritating.
On a less technical level, I'm not sure what constitutes ethical advertising. I can think of two approaches - honesty ("Yes our products break occasionally, but it's very occasional and we're standing by ready to fix 'em") and reward ("Come read our fine set of coding tutorials. Feel free to ignore the bits where we gush about our products.")
Any thoughts? I certainly think the marketing world has yet to fully adapt to online culture.
No they don't. Unfortunately, their site still asks you for them, but it's completely irrelevant (this has been brought up). As far as I know, the cookies are completely unused.
My general feeling is that the only ethical marketing is that where you're given a good reason to give mindshare to the advertiser. NN is doing fairly well in this respect.
There is such a thing as good marketing. This occurs when a marketer recognises that, if they want something, they need to give something back. I've been involved with Nortel Networks' geek recruitment program, and they count as nice - they realise that to gain mindshare they need to provide technical resources and be as open as commercially possible.
It's the same sort of mindset that led to the Orange and New Mini cinema ads.
This is a bunch of systems researchers at a Microsoft-funded facility who've been fiddling with new methods. Kudos to them. Actually, if this is the facility I've heard about (I study in the area) they've got a significant portion of their computers on Linux, and don't tell Bill I told you that.
Maybe they should. I think the "online" is mostly added in this situation because it makes it sound catchier. "Your rights" sounds lame, "rights" alone sounds obscure; "your rights online" sounds both understandable and interesting.
What's in a name? That which we call a YRO discussion by any other name would be as incomprehensible to us Brits.
I believe the guy's point is that it's much healthier in the long run to get rid of each part of the PATRIOT act based on the fact that it's crap rather than the fact that it's part of the PATRIOT act. The former sets a precedent for the next time something like this comes up; the latter means that the government just has to change the name to the THINKOFTHECHILDREN act and reapply.
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Student: You know, sir, it'd be a lot more cost-effective to switch some of these desktops to Linux rather than going for the extremely expensive XP upgrade (with purchase of new computers) that you're planning. And using Firefox would mean less virus-bashing.
Teacher: Linux? Firefox? I don't remember them mentioning those in my MCSE classes...
(not a word-for-word transcription, but conveys the general overtones of the conversation)
I'm intrigued - what would be a plausible scenario where distribution (as opposed to redistribution or partial distribution) was "fair use"? Or was your statement theoretical?
I'm genuinely interested here cos I don't think I've ever come across such a scenario.
Which kind of IP are we talking about here? The grandparent made a suggestion which I'd have thought would be quite effective in producing a codebase with no copyright issues.
I fully understand that patents are another problem entirely, but I didn't think software patents existed at the time MS was contributing to OS/2 (my history is a little shaky - I'm assuming that the partnership was broken off after MS's backstabbing)
Phony tough guys like the rest of the American fringe right wing.
Dude, I think he was kidding. Actually, the grandparent was damn good, he had me going right up to the Gitmo reference.
At the moment, I really wouldn't trust government to produce legislation of that form. What's the betting that the proposed 'standard' would a) most closely resemble the behaviour of Microsoft Windows and b) incidentally require the use of concepts that, oh so regrettably, MS owns patents on?
As we've seen in the software patents travesty, the current rulers of Europe will tend to take the lead from individuals such as Mr William "Bill" Gates Esquire. I really don't think it would be a good idea to let said individual and the company he represents find more ways to prevent opposition.
I don't think that it's acceptable to have governments legislating on the issue - that smacks a bit too much of governmental micromanagement, which never ends well (for example, would lynx be banned for not doing css?)
However, it would be both acceptable and a damn good idea for governmental institutions to put their money where their mouth is and stop buying products that break standards in a blatant attempt to lock in consumers. This would hopefully do enough damage to certain monopoly interests that it would achieve the same result.
Would it be possible to set up a script that would, after a specified interval of time, change the logos and skins to something more firefoxey?
If so, add that in and ring up your client just before it goes into action. Tell them that IEx is rebranding itself - it's now called Firefox - but not to worry, the main difference is that it looks prettier. Given that they've presumably already got the hang of the workings of Firefox, this shouldn't be too much of a struggle for them to accept.
I'm reminded of all the tribal magic etc. that held that knowing someone's true name gave you power over them. Of course, that's terribly primitive; these days it's SSNs and CCNs that the black magicians are after.
If smart kids get advanced (and this is considered a normal thing) then they get to hang around with the big kids whilst their peers get stuck hanging with the little kids. Should help to associate academic achievement with adulthood.
I add the caveat about normality cos if it's just one kid being moved up they're gonna feel somewhat out of place.
They're pissed off at having to pay ripoff prices to the people (such as Microsoft and Real) whose audio codecs they use, and they're sure as hell not keen to start paying licensing fees for video codecs as well.
Additionally, they think they can get better performance out of Dirac than is being got out of current codecs, which will save them bandwidth.
The hole and wreckage at the pentagon were clearly not from a 757
On what basis are you judging this? Could you give us some examples of things that seemed askew?
no other building in history have ever collapsed by fire
That's definitely not true. Did you mean "no skyscraper" or something like that? Mostly large buildings tend to a) be pretty scrupulous in their fire prevention systems and b) not have large amounts of burning aviation fuel squirted into them during a massive high-speed impact.
Some of the evasive manuveurs performed with the planes would be hard for skilled pilots, let alone guys who had just learned and were reportadly "hopeless" by their trainers.
Apologies for cluelessness, but what evasive manoeuvres were necessary? All I remember is planes being flown into buildings, which takes comparatively little skill. Like I say, this is probably just me not remembering it all terribly well.
I'm saying if Al Quida did it, they had alot of help...but most likely they're just patsies.
So who do you think organised it? If it was some other group of terrorists then I guess it's a case of "a rose by any other name"... It doesn't really fit the style of another world government, given that it was fairly irrelevant as far as relationships between large nations go. And if I thought the US government had the acumen to pull something like that off without any word reaching the press, I'd be a lot less worried about their position at the top of the dominant country of the day.
That sucks for those who contract it, but it's a good thing for the human race as a whole as these varieties are unlikely to survive very well - they'll kill all their hosts too quickly.
:(
Gotta love mathematics
The grandparent said The problem with that is that open DRM is an oxymoron. If it's open it can be bypassed. You said Not necessarily. You haven't justified that assertion. In particular, your comment that Yes you can, but you shouldn't refutes your claim.
It's not going to prevent people from doing bad stuff, but it will be a non-trivial reminder.
It'll be a non-trivial reminder for the people who rip the music to a non-DRMed format, yes, but they mostly already know what they're doing. Everyone else who gets it illegally will not find that their user experience has changed. In fact, the only people that your suggested scheme will inconvenience are the legitimate users, who will find it impossible to play music they have paid for without the latest model of player and an internet connection. The same issue applies to all DRM schemes I've come across.
Remember in the long run it is the administrative costs that will outweigh the hardware/software costs. And for that, Windows has a much lower administrative cost.
Actually, the BBC article specifically states that the school IT administrators now have enough time on their hands that they can help out in local primary schools as well (if I'm reading the article correctly). It's hard to see how that tallies with the higher administrative cost you mention.
Please, kill yourself. We need one less fat filthy communist linux hippie.
I haven't been getting much exercise lately, sure, but I'm nowhere near overweight. I shower every day. Politically, I'm pretty mainstream (Lib Dem, which won't mean anything unless you're British). I do indeed use Linux, which works fine apart from the lack of drivers and games that arises from MS illegally controlling the OS market. I'm certainly not a hippie; my hair's too short for that.
I'd advise that your name-calling would be more effective if it had a greater level of accuracy than one loaded word in five.
Do you live in the US and pay taxes?
No. Is that relevant?
If any entity, from a police department to a mall cleaning crew, has a radio system then the public isn't free to just use it
Depends what you mean by "use it". If the device in question was operating on an open frequency, I can't imagine that sending signals to the device, or receiving signals back from it, would be illegal.
Even ham radio repeaters can be "closed" and then if people access them without permission it's intentional interference and can result in fines.
Not being a ham radio operator, I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "closed" in this case. Would it still be illegal to access if there was absolutely no way of knowing that the repeater in question was closed?
For me, the fact that Windows, and only Windows, is compatible with all your games and utility software *is* the horror story, since they attained that position by using every dirty trick in the book and then some.
I don't really want to give money to a company like that, in the same way that I try to avoid buying from companies that use sweatshop labour or chop down rainforests. Remember, every version of Windows that you buy is helping to prop up what is currently the most antisocial company in the computer business.
The same way they do for tobacco?
In the UK at least, it's completely legal to ferment your own beer. Strangely, pubs still do a roaring trade in this drink. This is mostly cos homegrown/homemade stuff tends to taste like piss.
Actually that's a really good idea. And frankly the whole idea of in-your-face advertising is a bit lame - whether or not people have heard of your product before, springing a flash popup on them is not going to result in endearment.
What criteria would you suggest for ethical advertising? Nothing visually intrusive (popups, popunders, floaters). Nothing otherwise intrusive (annoying music). Nothing that suggests you're trying to track me without my express permission (cookies and weird flash code). Preferably nothing that takes up half the sodding page cos that's just irritating.
On a less technical level, I'm not sure what constitutes ethical advertising. I can think of two approaches - honesty ("Yes our products break occasionally, but it's very occasional and we're standing by ready to fix 'em") and reward ("Come read our fine set of coding tutorials. Feel free to ignore the bits where we gush about our products.")
Any thoughts? I certainly think the marketing world has yet to fully adapt to online culture.
No they don't. Unfortunately, their site still asks you for them, but it's completely irrelevant (this has been brought up). As far as I know, the cookies are completely unused.
My general feeling is that the only ethical marketing is that where you're given a good reason to give mindshare to the advertiser. NN is doing fairly well in this respect.
There is such a thing as good marketing. This occurs when a marketer recognises that, if they want something, they need to give something back. I've been involved with Nortel Networks' geek recruitment program, and they count as nice - they realise that to gain mindshare they need to provide technical resources and be as open as commercially possible.
It's the same sort of mindset that led to the Orange and New Mini cinema ads.
This is a bunch of systems researchers at a Microsoft-funded facility who've been fiddling with new methods. Kudos to them. Actually, if this is the facility I've heard about (I study in the area) they've got a significant portion of their computers on Linux, and don't tell Bill I told you that.
Maybe they should. I think the "online" is mostly added in this situation because it makes it sound catchier. "Your rights" sounds lame, "rights" alone sounds obscure; "your rights online" sounds both understandable and interesting.
What's in a name? That which we call a YRO discussion by any other name would be as incomprehensible to us Brits.
I believe the guy's point is that it's much healthier in the long run to get rid of each part of the PATRIOT act based on the fact that it's crap rather than the fact that it's part of the PATRIOT act. The former sets a precedent for the next time something like this comes up; the latter means that the government just has to change the name to the THINKOFTHECHILDREN act and reapply.