I note that this excellent piece was marred by the disturbingly-common double-o misspelling of "lose".
Gang, when you write what is to be a document that influences people, proofread, proofread, proofread. If your own skills aren't up to the task, find another human being to do it -- spell checkers cannot save you from the versatility of English. Ideally, your second set of eyes would belong to a person with demonstrably superior language skills and attention to detail.
Never forget that the audience to which you address your letter will be made up of politicians, whether government or management. Words are their tools of trade and it doesn't take many misspellings to turn what could have been an important and influential letter into yet another rant from a semiliterate crank. Make too many errors in basic language and you might even hurt the cause you support. "Free software? Yes, I keep getting letters from those people claiming 'u r an idiot.' Wastrels, the lot of them."
This isn't meant to be a flame, or a troll, or an attack on the less-than-meticulous. It is an appeal to those who want to get involved (and hurray for you all!) that you must not merely do your best -- you must rise to the expectations of your audience. It all begins with basic communication, the fundamental level at which the words you choose and the skill with which you hang them together are at least as important as the ideas they convey.
You are correct that Dr. Lee was mistreated while in custody and that agents handling his case made mistakes of omission and commission. There is one thing we shouldn't forget, though: by his own admission on national television, the man was guilty of multiple, repeated violations of the Atomic Energy Act and should be spending the rest of his life in jail. He wasn't singled out for his ethnicity and I take great offense at his false claim that "everybody does it".
Was he a spy? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. He damn sure is a criminal, though, and no amount of distaste for the way the government treated him changes that fact.
I don't think Apple should (or should want to) commit much to the improvement of Classic. The sooner people stop using it the sooner they can lay that rickety old stinker of an OS to rest. Yes, it would be nice if Quark (the last of the holdouts) had an X-native version but there's no excuse but their own halfassedness; X has been out long enough that they should either release the new version or admit that they're a third-tier company without the resources to stay nimble and competitive.
Working to make Classic better would be like asking the Linux developers to spend their time making DOSEMU run better.
Re:Interesting tidbit
on
Book on NR-1
·
· Score: 2
"Making a nuclear reactor go supercritial... is a bad thing."
Oh, bullshit. You can't get a reactor from zero power to greater-than-zero power without going supercritical. Sheesh.
The obvious rejoinder is that the binary prefixes sound Stoopit and if you need special qualifiers to distinguish between decimal and binary in the computer world then you've got bigger problems than "what does 'mega' mean?"
I disagree. Everyone who went into this case did so knowing that Judge Jackson's courtroom was only the first. He should have had a cause -- and that cause should have been the best-run trial with the best-written ruling possible, to make the inevitable appeals simpler for the Appellate Court and to minimize the number of events serving as grounds for appeal.
In some cases he did that. His Findings of Fact were so well-written and thorough that the only possible conclusion was that Microsoft had violated the Sherman Act. In other cases, he did not. One of Microsoft's eternal strategies when they're in court is to goad and provoke judges into saying something intemperate -- voila! Instant grounds for appeal when/if they lose.
Jackson is smart enough to know that and should have had sense enough to keep his tongue in check. Plenty of time _after_ the trial to become known as The Judge Who Broke Up Microsoft and possibly get on a short list for an Appellate Court position.
On a related note, I have to wonder what's taking Judge Kollar-Kotelly so long to issue her ruling. The facts are clear, the public comment is long over, and justice delayed remains justice denied.
As I cruise ever deathward, I find something refreshing in the innocence that allows a self-proclaimed individual of 20 to use the phrase "when I was young".
On the off chance that there'll be people reading the comments who didn't read the full text of the bill, it contains the following definition: "A 'digital work' is any literary (except a computer program), sound recording or musical work, or dramatic, motion picture or other audiovisual work, in whole or in part in a digital or other non-analog format."
See that "except a computer program" part?
Not that it matters -- Lofgren introduced the bill far enough before the election to claim she's a backer of your right to watch movies but too close to the end of the legislative session for anything to come of it.
Lessig's a heck of a guy and a darned good fella to have on the side of the angels, but someone ought to let him know that beginning an address or article with any variation on "$DICTIONARY defines $TERM as $DEFINITION" is considered (and rightly so) to be oratorically weak. It's the dishrag introduction.
Go forth, eloquent slashdotters, and purge this offense from your own pulpit-poundings.
You're wrong. Repeatedly wrong. Allow me to explain:
"you cannot sell your copy of iDVD because you did not PURCHASE your copy of iDVD. It came bundled with the computer."
I did indeed purchase my copy of iDVD. For a price of $X I purchased one computer of model Y, a keyboard, a mouse, software, some cables, plastic bags, and a cardboard box. These components are priced collectively and shipped collectively and that doesn't have One Damn Thing to do with my right to break it all to pieces and resell each and every speck should I so choose. Or do you assert that I cannot sell the mouse that comes in the box, either?
"exactly how much would you sell iDVD for? Apple isn't selling it separately as a standalone product, so what price would YOU set for the standalone iDVD?"
I can sell anything that comes in the cardboard box Apple sends me -- or even the cardboard box. I don't quite understand why you're asking what price I'd set, as that's a matter to be agreed between me and the buyer. Do you ask GM how much you can charge for the 1973 Chevy Nova you're looking to get rid of because you don't want it?
"You can see that this gets illegal pretty darn quick. At the very least, the waters are murky."
Nothing is illegal. There is no murk. There is only a company asserting rights it does not possess, and a collection of people stridently demanding that their rights no longer exist.
"Invoking first sale for a piece of software that comes with your hardware is ludicrous."
Nope.
"If I purchase a CD-R with Adaptec Easy CD Creator, but I already have Easy CD Creator or some other software to burn CDs, or I'm running Linux - whatever - I can't turn around and sell Adaptec Easy CD Creator because I never purchased it."
The scenario you lay out is IDENTICAL to my own: you have lawfully come into possession of a piece of software you have no intention of using. You have every legal right to sell that to someone who does want to use it. So long as you do not retain a copy of the software, you have broken no laws.
"there aren't hardly ANY people that are just giving away iDVD because they aren't using it, to people who have other DVD burners. iDVD is available on warez servers and that's it. There's no eBay auctions going on for legit copies of iDVD or anything."
I fail to see exactly how the number of people choosing to exercise or not exercise their right of first sale has any bearing on the existence of that right. Further, I disagree with you about the potential market for unwanted iDVD. Every Mac sold with a SuperDrive comes with iDVD, but a nonzero fraction of people buying these machines are going to go directly to DVD Studio Pro for the power -- just as I laid out in my initial scenario. Heck, maybe I'll even throw in my copy of iMovie because I plan to use Final Cut Pro. At the moment, the market for unwanted iDVD is effectively nonexistent because everyone who owns a machine that can run the program has his own copy. The Enabler program that got Apple so spun up would have permitted people who owned formerly-incompatible machines to use the software, thus creating the very market Apple has successfully quashed, with vocal support from chumps like you.
The fact that you don't see that, that you're actually spending time arguing against your own rights and interests, just blows me away. That you think Apple's desire to ensure a quality user experience has one iota of relevance to what you do with your property leaves me slack-jawed and stupefied.
Let's say I buy a Mac with SuperDrive and it comes with a copy of iDVD on CD-ROM. Let's say further that I want the high horsepower of DVD Studio Pro rather than the adequate-but-underpowered iDVD.
I have every right under the doctrine of first sale to sell my CD-ROM of iDVD to anyone who wants it, just as I have the right to sell that goofy one-button mouse that I'll be replacing with a multibutton wireless model.
"Oh, but that's a violation of the license!" Judge Pregerson put it best in his Softman _v_ Adobe ruling: "The Court understands fully why licensing has many advantages for software publishers. However, this preference does not alter the Court's analysis that the substance of the transaction at issue here is a sale and not a license."
Those of you who argue that it is impossible to get a copy of iDVD without buying a SuperDrive-loaded Mac are incorrect. Buy my copy. Those of you who argue that Apple has the right to control how their product is used once they have sold it are incorrect. Those of you who argue that the restriction placed on iDVD use is in any way covered by the DMCA are incorrect.
None of that changes the fact that the company with more money can and will crush the company with less money -- or that the company with less money will fold instantly if its business model requires staying on good terms with the company with more money, which is the case in this particular instance.
"Decades of continued reverse engineering between manufacturers as they added improvements has maintained compatibility as the architecture has scaled in performance by over 1000X. The affordable computing power made possible by reverse engineering has provided immeasurably huge benefits to the world's economy. "
I'd say that's a staggering economic implication, then! Perhaps not quite in the sense that AdT's writers meant...
One of Microsoft's (apparent) legal strategies in its many courtroom appearances has been to goad and provoke the judge into saying or writing something intemperate which the company can then use as "evidence of bias" for an appeal should they lose. It worked like a charm with Jackson -- Judge KK appears to be aware of that and is holding her tongue.
Well, hell -- of course you had to graph them yourself. Frickin' conic sections are dog-simple because they all but draw themselves. All you have to do is look at the equation and pull out intercepts/asymptotes/foci and you're done. Contrary to what an earlier poster wrote, it is the student who has to use a graphing calculator to see an ellipse who will be destined for fryer operations.
If you're out there coding up software or drawing up circuit diagrams or in some other way preparing to release a product on the world, please bear in mind that as of October 23, 2000, the use of the suffix "ster" was officially deprecated as being Fucking Stupid. Please consider changing the planned name of Spreadsheetster or Videoplayerster or Toasterster before it hits the market.
Sure, an environment with only one vendor's OS deployed is easier for the admins to handle. However, if a problem develops, that problem will affect EVERY SINGLE MACHINE you have. Don't lose sight of that in your zeal to minimize the admins' workloads.
Let's see...computer monitors face parts of the library where they can readily be seen by passers-by. You have concerns that your children will see something that you'd prefer they not. (Note that I'm not arguing whether you are "right" or "wrong" -- you're the parent, that's yours to decide.)
So what's a better solution to this dilemma: A nationwide law that threatens to eviscerate funding to libraries which won't implement filtering software that doesn't work anyway, or a suggestion to the library board that the monitors be repositioned both to keep your kids from seeing something you don't want them to AND to protect the privacy of the person sitting at the computer?
I'll take door #2, Monty, and I'm glad this court agreed with me.
I'm probably pissing into the wind here, but would you mind explaining exactly why you found it necessary to spoil a newly-released movie with your sig?
"Intel's case is decidedly different. For one thing, the e-mails are their *employees* e-mail addresses. Its up to the employees to decide whether or not they want to receive them, not Intel."
Slashdot Mirror
I note that this excellent piece was marred by the disturbingly-common double-o misspelling of "lose".
Gang, when you write what is to be a document that influences people, proofread, proofread, proofread. If your own skills aren't up to the task, find another human being to do it -- spell checkers cannot save you from the versatility of English. Ideally, your second set of eyes would belong to a person with demonstrably superior language skills and attention to detail.
Never forget that the audience to which you address your letter will be made up of politicians, whether government or management. Words are their tools of trade and it doesn't take many misspellings to turn what could have been an important and influential letter into yet another rant from a semiliterate crank. Make too many errors in basic language and you might even hurt the cause you support. "Free software? Yes, I keep getting letters from those people claiming 'u r an idiot.' Wastrels, the lot of them."
This isn't meant to be a flame, or a troll, or an attack on the less-than-meticulous. It is an appeal to those who want to get involved (and hurray for you all!) that you must not merely do your best -- you must rise to the expectations of your audience. It all begins with basic communication, the fundamental level at which the words you choose and the skill with which you hang them together are at least as important as the ideas they convey.
You are correct that Dr. Lee was mistreated while in custody and that agents handling his case made mistakes of omission and commission. There is one thing we shouldn't forget, though: by his own admission on national television, the man was guilty of multiple, repeated violations of the Atomic Energy Act and should be spending the rest of his life in jail. He wasn't singled out for his ethnicity and I take great offense at his false claim that "everybody does it".
Was he a spy? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. He damn sure is a criminal, though, and no amount of distaste for the way the government treated him changes that fact.
I don't think Apple should (or should want to) commit much to the improvement of Classic. The sooner people stop using it the sooner they can lay that rickety old stinker of an OS to rest. Yes, it would be nice if Quark (the last of the holdouts) had an X-native version but there's no excuse but their own halfassedness; X has been out long enough that they should either release the new version or admit that they're a third-tier company without the resources to stay nimble and competitive.
Working to make Classic better would be like asking the Linux developers to spend their time making DOSEMU run better.
"Making a nuclear reactor go supercritial ... is a bad thing."
Oh, bullshit. You can't get a reactor from zero power to greater-than-zero power without going supercritical. Sheesh.
"Captain! We're approaching the prompt jump!"
"AIEEE! Abandon ship!"
The obvious rejoinder is that the binary prefixes sound Stoopit and if you need special qualifiers to distinguish between decimal and binary in the computer world then you've got bigger problems than "what does 'mega' mean?"
I disagree. Everyone who went into this case did so knowing that Judge Jackson's courtroom was only the first. He should have had a cause -- and that cause should have been the best-run trial with the best-written ruling possible, to make the inevitable appeals simpler for the Appellate Court and to minimize the number of events serving as grounds for appeal.
In some cases he did that. His Findings of Fact were so well-written and thorough that the only possible conclusion was that Microsoft had violated the Sherman Act. In other cases, he did not. One of Microsoft's eternal strategies when they're in court is to goad and provoke judges into saying something intemperate -- voila! Instant grounds for appeal when/if they lose.
Jackson is smart enough to know that and should have had sense enough to keep his tongue in check. Plenty of time _after_ the trial to become known as The Judge Who Broke Up Microsoft and possibly get on a short list for an Appellate Court position.
On a related note, I have to wonder what's taking Judge Kollar-Kotelly so long to issue her ruling. The facts are clear, the public comment is long over, and justice delayed remains justice denied.
As I cruise ever deathward, I find something refreshing in the innocence that allows a self-proclaimed individual of 20 to use the phrase "when I was young".
On the off chance that there'll be people reading the comments who didn't read the full text of the bill, it contains the following definition: "A 'digital work' is any literary (except a computer program), sound recording or musical work, or dramatic, motion picture or other audiovisual work, in whole or in part in a digital or other non-analog format."
See that "except a computer program" part?
Not that it matters -- Lofgren introduced the bill far enough before the election to claim she's a backer of your right to watch movies but too close to the end of the legislative session for anything to come of it.
Lessig's a heck of a guy and a darned good fella to have on the side of the angels, but someone ought to let him know that beginning an address or article with any variation on "$DICTIONARY defines $TERM as $DEFINITION" is considered (and rightly so) to be oratorically weak. It's the dishrag introduction.
Go forth, eloquent slashdotters, and purge this offense from your own pulpit-poundings.
Why don't they name their groupware project Kollaborate? Makes more sense to me and stays with the krazy konvention of names.
"What is an autoerotic wing, anyway?"
There is a reason that what these people do is (laughably) called "public service".
"remember, your letter won't affect change if it isn't read."
Nor will it effect change.
You're wrong. Repeatedly wrong. Allow me to explain:
"you cannot sell your copy of iDVD because you did not PURCHASE your copy of iDVD. It came bundled with the computer."
I did indeed purchase my copy of iDVD. For a price of $X I purchased one computer of model Y, a keyboard, a mouse, software, some cables, plastic bags, and a cardboard box. These components are priced collectively and shipped collectively and that doesn't have One Damn Thing to do with my right to break it all to pieces and resell each and every speck should I so choose. Or do you assert that I cannot sell the mouse that comes in the box, either?
"exactly how much would you sell iDVD for? Apple isn't selling it separately as a standalone product, so what price would YOU set for the standalone iDVD?"
I can sell anything that comes in the cardboard box Apple sends me -- or even the cardboard box. I don't quite understand why you're asking what price I'd set, as that's a matter to be agreed between me and the buyer. Do you ask GM how much you can charge for the 1973 Chevy Nova you're looking to get rid of because you don't want it?
"You can see that this gets illegal pretty darn quick. At the very least, the waters are murky."
Nothing is illegal. There is no murk. There is only a company asserting rights it does not possess, and a collection of people stridently demanding that their rights no longer exist.
"Invoking first sale for a piece of software that comes with your hardware is ludicrous."
Nope.
"If I purchase a CD-R with Adaptec Easy CD Creator, but I already have Easy CD Creator or some other software to burn CDs, or I'm running Linux - whatever - I can't turn around and sell Adaptec Easy CD Creator because I never purchased it."
The scenario you lay out is IDENTICAL to my own: you have lawfully come into possession of a piece of software you have no intention of using. You have every legal right to sell that to someone who does want to use it. So long as you do not retain a copy of the software, you have broken no laws.
"there aren't hardly ANY people that are just giving away iDVD because they aren't using it, to people who have other DVD burners. iDVD is available on warez servers and that's it. There's no eBay auctions going on for legit copies of iDVD or anything."
I fail to see exactly how the number of people choosing to exercise or not exercise their right of first sale has any bearing on the existence of that right. Further, I disagree with you about the potential market for unwanted iDVD. Every Mac sold with a SuperDrive comes with iDVD, but a nonzero fraction of people buying these machines are going to go directly to DVD Studio Pro for the power -- just as I laid out in my initial scenario. Heck, maybe I'll even throw in my copy of iMovie because I plan to use Final Cut Pro. At the moment, the market for unwanted iDVD is effectively nonexistent because everyone who owns a machine that can run the program has his own copy. The Enabler program that got Apple so spun up would have permitted people who owned formerly-incompatible machines to use the software, thus creating the very market Apple has successfully quashed, with vocal support from chumps like you.
The fact that you don't see that, that you're actually spending time arguing against your own rights and interests, just blows me away. That you think Apple's desire to ensure a quality user experience has one iota of relevance to what you do with your property leaves me slack-jawed and stupefied.
Let's say I buy a Mac with SuperDrive and it comes with a copy of iDVD on CD-ROM. Let's say further that I want the high horsepower of DVD Studio Pro rather than the adequate-but-underpowered iDVD.
I have every right under the doctrine of first sale to sell my CD-ROM of iDVD to anyone who wants it, just as I have the right to sell that goofy one-button mouse that I'll be replacing with a multibutton wireless model.
"Oh, but that's a violation of the license!" Judge Pregerson put it best in his Softman _v_ Adobe ruling: "The Court understands fully why licensing has many advantages for software publishers. However, this preference does not alter the Court's analysis that the substance of the transaction at issue here is a sale and not a license."
Those of you who argue that it is impossible to get a copy of iDVD without buying a SuperDrive-loaded Mac are incorrect. Buy my copy. Those of you who argue that Apple has the right to control how their product is used once they have sold it are incorrect. Those of you who argue that the restriction placed on iDVD use is in any way covered by the DMCA are incorrect.
None of that changes the fact that the company with more money can and will crush the company with less money -- or that the company with less money will fold instantly if its business model requires staying on good terms with the company with more money, which is the case in this particular instance.
It's all a stinking, festering shitpile.
As with all pure science efforts, the benefit comes from learning something. Knowledge isn't just a means to an end, but is an end in and of itself.
Not everything worth doing can be monetized.
"Dude, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. "
It saddens me to see our cultural heritage being lost. Get thee to a video store near you and rent "National Lampoon's Animal House."
"Reverse engineering...has staggering economic implications."
"Decades of continued reverse engineering between manufacturers as they added improvements has maintained compatibility as the architecture has scaled in performance by over 1000X. The affordable computing power made possible by reverse engineering has provided immeasurably huge benefits to the world's economy. "
I'd say that's a staggering economic implication, then! Perhaps not quite in the sense that AdT's writers meant...
One of Microsoft's (apparent) legal strategies in its many courtroom appearances has been to goad and provoke the judge into saying or writing something intemperate which the company can then use as "evidence of bias" for an appeal should they lose. It worked like a charm with Jackson -- Judge KK appears to be aware of that and is holding her tongue.
Well, hell -- of course you had to graph them yourself. Frickin' conic sections are dog-simple because they all but draw themselves. All you have to do is look at the equation and pull out intercepts/asymptotes/foci and you're done. Contrary to what an earlier poster wrote, it is the student who has to use a graphing calculator to see an ellipse who will be destined for fryer operations.
If you're out there coding up software or drawing up circuit diagrams or in some other way preparing to release a product on the world, please bear in mind that as of October 23, 2000, the use of the suffix "ster" was officially deprecated as being Fucking Stupid. Please consider changing the planned name of Spreadsheetster or Videoplayerster or Toasterster before it hits the market.
Thank you, that is all.
Sure, an environment with only one vendor's OS deployed is easier for the admins to handle. However, if a problem develops, that problem will affect EVERY SINGLE MACHINE you have. Don't lose sight of that in your zeal to minimize the admins' workloads.
Let's see...computer monitors face parts of the library where they can readily be seen by passers-by. You have concerns that your children will see something that you'd prefer they not. (Note that I'm not arguing whether you are "right" or "wrong" -- you're the parent, that's yours to decide.)
So what's a better solution to this dilemma: A nationwide law that threatens to eviscerate funding to libraries which won't implement filtering software that doesn't work anyway, or a suggestion to the library board that the monitors be repositioned both to keep your kids from seeing something you don't want them to AND to protect the privacy of the person sitting at the computer?
I'll take door #2, Monty, and I'm glad this court agreed with me.
I'm probably pissing into the wind here, but would you mind explaining exactly why you found it necessary to spoil a newly-released movie with your sig?
"Intel's case is decidedly different. For one thing, the e-mails are their *employees* e-mail addresses. Its up to the employees to decide whether or not they want to receive them, not Intel."
Actually, you could not be more wrong.