If you turn Windows Search off (which is trivial)...
So, you expect average people to go into Control Panel and enable/disable services? Seems sort of funny that there isn't a "Search" tool to enable/disabling indexing. But, then, this is MS. They're only a marginal step up from Firefox's about:config.
If you hire an employee at your company and he goes and burns down the store next door are you responsible?
You would if he repeatedly talked about burning down the store next door in a non-joking manner, especially if he was the fire-safety marshal of your company and one of the few people with ready access to all the incendiaries. At some point, the CEO is responsible for the actions of employees when he either (a) doesn't pay enough attention to what illegal activities his employees endorse and pursue or (b) does pay attention and silently condones their words and actions by allowing them to continue employment. It's not like Gonzales, for example, was campaigning to change the law on his own time to allow torture. Instead, Gonzales drafted a memo and sent it out to encourage the acts which were, at best, borderline torture. It's funny how the EPA is so reluctant to enforce the idea that carbon dioxide might be a pollutant covered under law while at the same time the Justice Department is perfectly willing to skirt, or even glaringly pass right past, the law. Funny how the "decider" can't seem to decide on whether to follow the law or not; or perhaps he did decide, which of course is the entire problem.
The "Bush is a sociopath" meme is an article of "progressive" faith. Denying it will not be productive when debating a devout "progressive" because it will only inspire rage and violence.
Just a small comment--here instead of farther down, as though I've read more of the discourse between you and spun, I'm more interested in responding to this comment along with what I can take away from your discourse with spun.
What I did with the use of definitions wasn't about an article of "progressive" faith. It was, admittedly, a little bit of me making a snarky comment. But, I think it does apply to some extent. On the one hand, Bush's push to invade Iraq wasn't made with much consideration for the effects on the Iraqis; or more appropriately, there was much consideration of the effect, but there was obtuse assumptions about the effects on Iraqis. Further, the means to gather support for the war involved (cherry picking information that painted the need for war in the best light) a lack of consideration for the intelligence gathering field, rather unrightly damning the perception that *all* intelligence is faulty; of course, the fact that there were many paid informants as the main source of information gives a rightful reason to be dissuaded from considering the intelligence gathering field as fully competent in its job. And the mere fact that Bush would go out of his way to try to convince people that a Iraq invasion was necessary does show some consideration for the effects of his actions.
So, Bush certainly isn't a clinical case of sociopathy. On the other hand, there's very few people who qualify under that end. Most who would march toward fulfilling their own needs without consideration for others would likely be arrested or shot early on in life, stealing from others or from murdering another person. Instead, it's reasonable to see that sociopaths, like most people, would be interested in "gaming" others toward their own ends, even if they reasonable see the results would do damage to those they "use"--and before I get farther into this I will note that most people are in a position of being assumedly rational, so engaging in an activity with a sociopath that would hurt them is either irrational behavior (con games seem a clear example) or a sign that there are limits to what one can rational do while engaged with others to ensure equal or better conditions for oneself (con games seem a clear example). So, I'd say most "socipathy" is merely a matter of degree. To that end, I'd say Bush's behavior seems more in tune with sociopathy than some idea of Christian morality, conservative morality, or progressive morality. Of course, many politicians likely fall into that category; Bush just happens to be rather egregious, public, and visible in his actions.
The only way they could claim ignorance at this point is by making a concerted effort to maintain said ignorance by ignoring any of the multitude of reports out there that contradict them. Going to that much effort to remain ignorant in order to avoid changing your opinion is evil in itself.
A reformulation of CLarks third law by J. Porter Clark: "sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"
From American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary, definition 3: incompetence - "The inability to distinguish right from wrong or to manage one's affairs."
Hmm..that sounds familiar. From Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), sociopath - "a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."; from American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, sociopath - "Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others."
Now, as for malice; from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), malice - "desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness".
So, in short, I rather agree with your definition. Bush much better fits the definition of sociopath, not one with malice. Of course, that's rather disturbing.
Just because you bought something doesn't mean you have unlimited rights to do as you wish to it. Would you consider a book that you bought now exclusively yours, then copy it and redistribute it?
I would if there were no copyright. But, then, that's what makes copyright so magical and unfair, because it violates the principle of unlimited right to something you buy.
What about your house? You own your house so does that give you the right to modify your water, gas and electrical hookups to bypass the meters?
Last I checked, water, gas, and electrical hookups were "owned" by you. If the discussion was one of TiVo "renting" their machine to you, you'd have a much more solid argument on this point.
Your car? Do you have the right to drive your property you bought however you feel like?
Depends. I can drive my car however I feel like it on my own property or on the property of others for whom I agree with (if it weren't the case, the Indy 500 would be illegal). Now, if your point was that on public roads there are restrictions on cars, I'll agree, that most of those restrictions are unfair and unreasonable. The move towards a public road system enshrined under traffic law came about as a result of a push by government to improve economic conditions by guarantee to business and consumers a fluid means of transportation of goods. If the interest were that of personal freedom, the focus would still be one of building roads for pedestrians and not considering them a burden that slows traffic. Was this your point?
Tivo has a right to do what they want to their products. If you buy it and attempt to take it apart, well then that's fine and your right,
Except that such is a DMCA violation and illegal. Oopsie.
but they also have a right to put mechanisms in place to deny you further service if you do.
Well, I'll agree on that point. But then, that's why people want to hack TiVos to use external services and avoid allowing TiVo to butcher the system you spent time and energy on. Of course, something like the GPLv3 is a move to motivate companies like TiVo to either (a) open up their system to the hacks and leave those people be or (b) use other software, thereby decreasing the association of GNU/Linux and ilk with closed systems that are made to be hack-proof. Of course, TiVo can do whatever it pleases, as it can continue to update their GPLv2 software for as long as they please. But, then, the objective of the FSF through the GPL has never been especially direct. If it were, the FSF would be a lobbying firm to enshrine the "four freedoms" into law, instead of trying to motivate people to use software that guarantees the "four freedoms".
"8. Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press. In all criminal prosecutions or indictments for libels, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact. (Amended by vote of the people November 7, 2001.)" (emphasis mine) -- New York State Constitution (http://www.dos.state.ny.us/info/pdfs/cons2004.pdf )
Most states have similar laws in their constitution.
I can't speak for "the majority of French people", but I can speak as an American. As others have stated, Iraq wasn't a threat to the US. The reports that came in about Iraqi missiles firing beyond the allowed range gave Iraq a platform to attack Greece, perhaps. Russia (and Israel) was the only nuclear power at risk from Iraq's "WMDs". And weapon inspectors never seemed to find anything definite.
Now, did Saddam break the rules? Sure, lots of times. A lot of countries break the rules they're given, knowing full well that those who impose the rules aren't interested in war and are willing to negotiate "better" terms. One could say that Saddam gambled with the US and lost. But, then, one has to recognize there's good reason few countries are interested in wars to impose rules; you end up with a situation like Iraq. It's much simpler to work with an existing regime than to march in, destroy the existing regime, and recreate a new regime that has the material means to exercise the rules you want enforced.
So, the real question boils down to is, was there sufficient reason to go through all that effort? Well, the evidence points to no. The US isn't a nanny state (or, at least, shouldn't be), out to protect Israel or to intervene to prevent the Middle East from turning into Armageddon--even if it's "economical" to prevent Armageddon to make sure those oil wells aren't irradiated. Given that Saddam had the means to use WMDs on Israel in the past (Scud missiles (several of which hit Israel) and chemical weapon components furnished for the Iran-Iraq War) and didn't, it's reasonable to guess that there was room to negotiate with Saddam to further push for inspections.
Saddam might have been dangerous, but he had spent many years being political with other nations. And if Israel were attacked with any form of WMD, Saddam knew full well that he'd suffer from Israel at minimal and likely from the US and other countries in a "regime change". But as I said, one could say Saddam took a gamble and lost. Saddam had a good hand. The drum beat to war by the Bush Administration was so clearly fabricated to justify betting it all over what was a containable threat.
But in simpler terms, when one sees one's Secretary of State jingling a vile of anthrax in front of the UN, to condemn one's enemy for possessing vast quantities of the substance, while one can't manage to track down the sender of many envelopes of anthrax in one's own country, there's a serious lack of credibility that one's intelligence agency(s) is even capable of knowing much of anything when it comes to specific biological weapon production, distribution, etc. When the UN then "calls your bluff" on your knowing that one's enemy possesses vast quantities of biological WMDs, well, that should be the end of it. It's just as silly as going to ask for the blessing of one's parents for a wedding, and then marrying anyways when they refuse to provide it.
France and Russia have nukes (and thus veto power) and were breaking the same laws, and nobody said crap. The lesson we taught the world is that if you have nukes you get to break the rules and no one will say anything, that your voice will actually matter at the table if you have nukes.
Just two small comments. One, the US was in the same boat regarding veto power and "breaking the same laws/rules". It is, after all, the US who went to the UN and used the UN as justification for its actions. I just think it's worth mentioning (not that I'm trying to quell the ill-doings of France and Russia). Two, the formation of the UN was based upon all nuclear powers having permanent veto power. Ie, the lesson was well known since the formation of the UN that all nuclear powers can violate UN rules with nuclear retaliation being the only true remedy. The point of the UN was to (a) allow the nuclear powers to argue with each other without jumping to using nukes first and (b) as a means of steering "the third world" (ie, non-nuclear powers) for "first world" economic interests. Why do you think Pakistan and India obtained nukes? Why do you think so many other countries have work towards possessing nukes?
Well, since I've come this far, I might as well respond to this clear troll.
"Actually, no. That's the thing about the number. It wasn't "easily" pushed to where it is today."
You're right of course, it was magically conjured out of your ass.
Yep, nothing says "conjured out of my ass" like years of collected data.
"But the ratio of the effects of the two isn't well understood"
FYP
Not going much out on a limb here, I'll take "FYP" to mean "From Your Post". Well, let's just look at my post.
But the ratio of the effects of the two wasn't well understood,...
Golly. Misquoting me when the evidence is so clearly available. That's pretty low and stupid. This is why I'm confident you're a troll.
"The numbers that we have today weren't easily reached."
I know, we covered this, you, ass, POOF!, numbers.
Out of the ass of mice and men?
"Would you be happy if instead of claiming it was 100% humans it was 66% humans, so humans still are the dominant factor and could reverse the changes if they so desired? (This isn't rhetorical.)"
No, because that would be just as much of a lie as 100%. There is no number. Your insistence on creating a number where it is well known that such a number cannot be established firmly speaks to your real motivation, the desire to create an aura of credibility where none exists.
You want to be honest? Say "significant" or something similar, like you did earlier. Using a number where anyone with one whit of understanding of the subject knows that said number is fraudulent destroys every shred of credibility you hope to gain.
You're so right that they shouldn't use the word "the". "Overwhelming responsible" is so much more apt.
Maybe I need to get a different thesaurus that "significant" and "overwhelming[ly] responsible" are synonymous.
I mean, the evidence seems to indicate that humans are only on the order of 2/3rds responsible
And that, right there, is EXACTLY what we're all talking about, here.
Really? I never would have guessed. I guess it was stupid of me to make the statement, then, to clarify that there are scientists who point out that nature is at least partially responsible for the warming.
There is NO good evidence that could possibly lead you to a meaningful, rational number like that which isn't just as easily pushed around back the other direction by other findings.
Actually, no. That's the thing about the number. It wasn't "easily" pushed to where it is today. As is pointed out in the article, for a time, it was believed that pollution would offset any rise in temperature that the release of CO2 would cause. But the ratio of the effects of the two wasn't well understood, and it took many years to discover that CO2 indeed has a more prominent effect than was first assumed (basically, a hypothesis was made, taken by some (seemingly mostly media people) to be a theory, and it turned out to be wrong). So, again, no. The numbers that we have today weren't easily reached. And that very well means that a shift in thinking towards any signicant change in the human contribution to global warming will be far from easy. Why? Because the overwhelming evidence is what it is *now*.
The percentage is greater than zero, but language that's constantly used (by the UN, no less), saying that it's 100%, is not just wrong, it's propoganda-style wrong.
Propaganda-style wrong? You mean "The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause."? Well, yea, everything the UN says is propaganda-style, so is it really a surprise that they'd be the same with global warming? Or with the media? (Those are rhetorical questions, btw.) Would you be happy if instead of claiming it was 100% humans it was 66% humans, so humans still are the dominant factor and could reverse the changes if they so desired? (This isn't rhetorical.)
Use of phrases like "due to human activity"... not "due in part to," or "exacerbated by," or "accelerated by..." And you know exactly what I mean, and that I'm right.
You're so right. I mean, the evidence seems to indicate that humans are only on the order of 2/3rds responsible (IIRC) for the warming* of the Earth. You're so right that they shouldn't use the word "the". "Overwhelming responsible" is so much more apt. And thanks to the knowledge that we can have a 2/3rds impact on warming, there's strong evidence that we could potentially stop warming and *further* stop the 1/3rd natural warming, if we were so interested. That was your point, right?
*Clearly this means that if global temperatures go up by 3 degrees, humans caused 2 degrees of that.
...unless use is restricted to signed binaries on locked hardware. All of a sudden there's none of the GPL v3 protection, because there's no copyright, so I can happily take your community built code, improve it, make a billion dollars and/or become famous but not give you squat in return.
Meanwhile in the GPL v3 case, all the manufacturer has to do is to place the software in ROM, no signed binary required. Of course, that's not very probable because whatever losses that would occur from having to throw out ROM chips that were no longer useful would overwhelm whatever gains of control that were made. But then, that's just further proof that "make a billion dollars" is an over characterization on the amount of money that could be made, which strongly hints that most manufacturers would likely stick to not signing binaries and using Flash-like memory. The fact is, the main reason for the GPL v3 is because of the DMCA. Otherwise, people could just figure out the signing mechanism (or some other software hack) and sign their own modified binaries. Since the DMCA is the Digital Millennium *Copyright* Act, abolishing copyright includes abolishing the DMCA.
Or in short, the GPL v3 isn't some sort of panacea to the problem. And yes, there is more effort (as others put it, a DRM arms race) involved if there is no copyright. But, I think you're over-characterizing the situation.
Come back down to reality, here. Whenever there's a school or workplace shooting, everyone always rants about the "warning signs" and "why didn't anyone call the police when they guy was talking about shooting people in the face on the phone the other day?" (emphasis mine)
No. Many times when there's a shooting "of note" (ie, at a new venue, at a venue without a recent shooting, involves especially "innocent" victims, involves more people or bullets than most, etc), there is a large media obsession with many media personalities (journalists, reporters, random "experts", etc) who want to insert their own two cents of "wisdom" into the affair. Several even rant about "warning signs". Others discuss how "why didn't anyone call the police when they guy was talking about shooting people in the face on the phone the other day?". By far, these media personalities are a remote minority of the people and few people are interested in staging protests to have fired every media personality that's overly reactionary.
For example, I'd likely ignore a person talking about the complexities of killing a person with a.22 (or possibly talk to them, if they were nearby), not jumping to any conclusion that my boss need know just on that information; on the other hand, that's probably because I recognize that school/workplace shootings are exceedingly uncommon, having exceedingly low death rates, and are not stoppable even with a dictatorship. Having said all that, I can understand other employees with more insight into the person telling a supervisor. And I can possibly understand a boss firing an employee who seemed "dangerous" (though, in that case, one would likely call the police as well, as being fired does nothing to stop a person from "shooting up the place"). I have a much tougher time understanding being scared of the words in a comic strip or why the police felt the need to contact the author (perhaps it was just easier for them to try to gauge the "character" of the author than to try to access it through the medium). But then, I do think many people (including me) feel that the SOP for police is to ignore what sound like, on their face, ludicrous reports.
Linux will "support gaming" once games are supported for Linux....
... MetroX... AutoCAD... WordPerfect Suite 8... Corel Draw 7...
Golly, you've got a great argument sir. Of course, your argument is directed at *non-games*. As the poster was trying to point out, games sell in the order of a 6 month time span and old games are a crap shoot to get working properly on modern OSs. Or is it not fair that I point out that NTVDM is a shitty game system for DOS games, and I'm left trying to finagle with DOSBox or some other emulator on both Windows and Linux if I'm really interested in "archaic" games? But, yea, preach on brother about how you can use all your old non-games in Windows. That was entirely the subject at hand to discuss and the exact lacking that was being pointed out in Linux.
Be that as it may, AFAIK in most larger stores there's usually a fairly large chunk of the Vista promo display that does have a comparison grid between the different versions.
Well, that sure helps me when I bought a computer 4 months ago that said "Vista Capable" without clarifying that "Vista Capable" meant "capable of booting Vista, with no guarantee of anything else". Again, seeing "Vista Capable" stickers without having seen "Vista Premium Ready" stickers leaves one with the impression that, tada, your hardware can reasonable run *any* version of Vista. Just because Microsoft said it was implied with the existance of *other* stickers doesn't magically change the fact that the "Vista Capable" sticker didn't really clarify a thing. Really, they could have named it "Vista Basic Capable" and it'd be a non-issue.
Both advertised versions were for Vista Home - "Vista Capable" implied "Home Basic" while "Vista Premium Ready" indicated Home Premium. At no point did anything imply that it could run the Ultimate edition or anything other than the two I just listed.
I don't think you understood my point. It wasn't that in this instance they were trying to imply the "Ultimate" version. It's the fact that going so far as to have to reply on *implication* to figure out what version(s) actually work on your system is clearly at least *somewhat* deceptive. Of course, OEMs are just as guilty (probably more so) in not going out of their way to clarify.
I'm not trying to be an apologist for MS here, but just because a consumer didn't take the time to look at any of the widely available information or, you know, ask someone in the store doesn't make it Microsoft's fault that they didn't understand what they were buying.
Part of the reason for the FTC is to avoid advertisers being able to say anything they want under the claim they can't be held responsible "because a consumer didn't take the time to look at any of the widely available information" as a basis to effectively commit fraud. To some extent, what the general population likely knows has to be made into consideration with making advertisements. So, while crackers can dance in advertisements (as people generally know crackers can't dance), software makers can't presume that people know that Aero won't necessarily work in their version of Vista (as programmers are likely aware of a ballpark figure of the sort of computer minimally necessary for such actions, have been readily availed themselves to information as it leaked out; for the general public, Aero (ie, eyecandy) is one of the main selling points of Vista, which is almost certainly known by Microsft).
In sum, while it's not definite (yet) that Microsoft (and OEMs) tried to mislead people, certainly many people were mislead. Maybe MS and OEMs were oblivious to the effect their advertisements focusing on Aero had on people? In any case, there's a reasonable position to let the suit continue forward to find more definite answers.
There was a "Vista Capable" sticker, as well as a "Vista Premium Ready" sticker, where the former indicated that the system would run Vista Home Basic, and the latter indicated that it could run Home Premium (with Aero) and higher.
Um..are you trying to prove or disprove his point? How are people to know that "Vista Capable" means "Vista [Home] Capable"? I guess one has to assume that the stores where one buys a product will have "Vista [Home] Capable" stickers and "Vista Premium Ready", with the stores pushing the latter (as it's more expensive). But that very well falls into the "bait and switch" category precisely because the "Vista Premium Ready", not the "Vista [Home] Capable", was all that was being shown in advertisements.
Personally, I think the naming scheme of Vista (and XP, for that matter) are deceptive enough as it is. It reminds of the situation with USB where USB 1.1 was renamed USB HiSpeed and USB 2.0 was renamed USB FullSpeed. Who in their right mind would presume on just seeing "USB HiSpeed" that they're buying the inferior performance option? In the same way, one would resume that the "Home" version was the version the vast majority was buying for their homes, and hence the common advertisements would be showing what one would receive in buying the "Home" version. Unless it's clearly reiterated that what's really being advertised is the "Professional" or "Ultimate" (or whatever) version, it would hardly be a surprise that people would be confused with an advertisement that fundamentally seems to be showing one thing while trying to sell an inferior product, quite possibly to motivate them to spend more on the former. In any case, I don't think this case is simple to dismiss.
You don't seem to understand how the GPL2 "or, at your option, a later version" clause works. If Linus were to have licensed the kernel under a "GPL2 or, at your option, the yet to be created Linus Public Licenses to be created by Linus Torvalds", then the second Linus started selling copies of Linux under his LPL v1--which allows companies to not distributing source--*anyone* could fork the current code base under the GPL2 *only* and take away Linus' "dictatorship" over the kernel. Would this be a large upset to the kernel community? Of course--just as would be true if Linus decided to take all the "GPL2 or at your option, later version code" and work to form a GPL3 kernel; no matter what the license change or possibly even the *lack* of a license change will motivate forks, as forks of the Linux kernel are happening all the time.
Your position is about as silly as believing that if Microsoft bought out the Mozilla Foundation tomorrow and relicensed all the code under a closed license (assuming they could) that (a) people would continue to support and use Mozilla Firefox and ilk as if nothing had happened and (b) that no one would fork the existing code base and try to lure the disillusioned community to create a mechanism to further decrease the chances of such happening again.
Yes, there's certainly a great bit of room to argue that allowing the FSF to retain control over possible future Linux licensing is bad, but the wording of the license won't magical dissolve the current license on current code. The real beauty of free software isn't the direct effect of so much GPL source being available; it's that so much GPL source being available, and a license that exists to continue that source to be GPL, motivates people to build communities to ever further work the useful and usable into something that will evolve with the needs of developers and users; except in things like very simple appliances, unmodified code stagnates to the point of disuse.
Normal women are just a couple of bad experiences away from a crime spree.
If you force your justice on others, they will enjoy it so much that they will eventually thank you.
(corollary) Those who don't already support you are naive and ignorant, in a sea of superstition.
Death and warrantless suffering are common and unlikely to tear apart one's humanity or respect for humanity. Ditto abuse of power. From the way hero fiction is marketed, you learn that violence is "amoral" and "a refuge of the insane" and that people that do whatever it takes to impose their beliefs on others who invariable have unrealistic goals are "heroes to be admired".
While the arguments on the table are whether Viacom right or is YouTube right, but the real question that will be answered by the outcome of this little court battle is: what will video entertainment look like in the coming decade? If Viacom wins, it will look pretty much like it does today. If YouTube wins, it will look like we all want it to look: Video on demand, anywhere, anytime, any content.
I think YouTube is more than that. For the longest time, it has been claimed that while copyright doesn't ensure any sort of quality, it has in large part been responsible for the large quantity of new creative works of the last few centuries. But YouTube shows just the opposite, with a mass of videos, many of questionable quality, but of such vast quantity because, in the end, popularity is more important to many people than an unlikely stream of money.
And you are right, YouTube winning would certainly be a move to video on demand everywhere, and that is in large part due to it being unlikely that film studios will ever provide anywhere near the capacity to show all the movies the possess. As a simple example, imagine if there really *was* video on demand, providing DVD-quality video. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations hint that DVDs, on average, require on the order of a 4Mbps line to stream properly. In perspective, that means a 1Gbps line could provide for upwards of 256 movies at once. While that might seem like a lot, in reality even *if* there was a huge popularity in certain movies, such a collection would hardly support the demands of a small town. On top of that, to provide movies to many small towns would require either excessively wide bandwidth or many caching servers.
But, it's unlikely that even with heavy encryption and supposedly bullet-proof server software that any movie studio would have an extensive amount of their catalog available to every single person in the US, as the risk of cracking their servers as a means to piracy would be too great. This even ignores the issue of actually setting up enough servers today to begin to provide video on demand to such scale (assuming one server per 5,000 people, there would need to be approx. 60,000 such servers for the US; further, with an average catalog of 1,000 movies, one would need on the on the order of a 4TB drive to hold DVD-quality movies (with lower quality, one might be able to bump it down to 2TB); at $200 per TB, this works out to be a optimistic $24 million just for the storage space; laying down fiber to avoid this storage space would likely be more costly, at the moment).
With YouTube, Google isn't as worried about piracy. This is precisely because the majority of the content is *intended* to be distributed for free. So, not surprisingly, Google actually *wants* people to distribute content for them. Google is likely more interested, in the long term, of motivating ISPs to join them in distributing content, which ISPs will probably be motivated to do in their own right to save bandwidth costs. Non-redistributable content is precisely what YouTube doesn't want, as it provides more of a headache to them (via DMCA takedown notices and threats of lawsuits, and how that will dissuade ISPs from doing their own caching) than a help. Is it truly surprising that in the end copyright will do exactly counter to what its intent is?
I think, in part, you're confusing patents and copyright (for example, your discussion of MP3s), and I think, in part, you're trying to extrapolate the GPL as if it were copyright law.
So, let's step back a bit and try to untangle exactly what's going on. When you use a codec, you're using a piece of software. The codec itself is protected under copyright and possibly under patents. In any event, the actions the codec carries out are not in themselves creative. By this, I mean, the transformations are deterministic with an intended output; creativity could be said to be non-deterministic (ie, originality) with an intended output. Copyright only extends to works that are the result of a creative process. To that end, nothing a codec does could itself be copyrighted; if it could be, the codec itself would be the copyright owner, not the writer of the codec; of course, such a codec would seemingly fill the requirements of a partial AI, so I think the concerns of copyright would not exactly be high on the list of discussion.
Having said all that, we get into the issue of something like the MP3 codec. The concern with it, as related to the GPL, has more to do with the GPL having provisions about patents. Patents, as you likely know, apply to a process, not a specific implementation. This, of course, can be a huge issue with something like the GPL because a large point of the GPL is to allow for the redistribution of GPLed code. If only some people were allowed to legally redistribute the code, by paying patent royalties, then the "network" of involvement to improve GPLed code would be a lot less webbed and a lot more hierarchical (or, it'd be a lot more illegal). Because of this, the GPL requires that all distributed code that implements a patent include royalty-free redistribution covering that patent. Because the MP3 code is patented and there is no royalty-free redistribution allowed (no matter what is said about trying to include an exception for open source), gpled mp3 codecs are illegal, if for no other reason than the distributor of the gpled code is granting others a privilege he doesn't have.
Having said all that, there's nothing illegal about the mp3 format or inherently legal about mp3s themselves. But given the fact that you can't include an mp3 encoder or decoder with a totally GPL software distribution, MP3s have been frowned upon in the free/open software world. On top of that, of course, is the excessive piracy of music (and note, this is further proof that codecs don't change copyright; if they did, the codec maker would be the one suing over all the CD->MP3ed music, not the RIAA and its members) in MP3 format, as it was the first to make it readily possible to share music (commercial and otherwise) over the internet that has basically made MP3 synonymous with pirated music. The last thing many in the free software world want is to have the appearance that the GPL is all about "getting free (as in beer) stuff", even if it's through illegal means.
PS - Things like the gcc include an exception about the GPL not applying as a result of using gcc to compile a program precisely to avoid confusion over the issue; this is somewhat humorous as there are many places were a transformation application of one sort or another will copy small fragments of itself into the destination application, which you seem to recognize. The one overriding principle to always remember is that copyright applies first. The GPL is subordinate to the rules of copyright. So is every other, proprietary license. Now, if you wanted something with more fuzzy lines, one could discuss the linking of libraries. But, that's a whole other discussion.
The fact is he's given more money to philanthropic endeavours than any other person. Ever.
Ever heard of inflation?
I saw this guy the other day give $20 to a homeless person. I went over to him and said "Hey you fuck, you earn over $50k a year and I just saw you give ONLY $20 to that hungry guy? You tight asshole!". Then I punched him in the face and took his wallet. Because we need less assholes like that.
Perhaps you should try to understand what was said. The issue is that while a person with $40+ billion gives away $1 billion, they're still left with $39+ billion. The person with $50k who gives away $20 is left with $50k minus $20. Now, would you rather have $39+ billion or $50k minus $20? Which person has less?
It's almost always good to give to charity, whatever the amount. But at least at this time, Bill hasn't given substantially of himself. Even if his plan to give away all his money before he dies holds true, he'll have lived 20+ years in a million dollar house. So, it's hard to act like whatever he does is something substantial. Hell, how much money goes into charities and research from the US government (ie, taxpayers)?
Going by your stats Bill Gates has given to charity around 50% of the money he's EARNED. What proportion of the money YOU have EARNED have you given to charity?
Some people believe that everything is relative. If that were the case, Bill would have to pay $800,000 for a candy bar that a person who made $50,000 would only have to pay $1. Perhaps talking about proportions isn't exactly an exactly fair metric given it doesn't apply everywhere.
Ironic would be someone who pirates windows freaking out because somebody violated the GPL. Which happens all the time here.
Ironic would be someone who steals candy from the liquor store who freaks out because somebody else is selling stolen candy quite blatanty in front of the cops. No, wait; that's not irony. That's jealousy.
Btw, what evidence do you have that piracy of Windows is a common occurance here? Far as I understood it, most people got a copy of Windows with whatever PC they bought, short of buying a barebones system. I'd imagine *most* people have a legal copy of Windows. Now, the fact that they might be advocating, viacriously, that others should pirate Windows to "stick it to the man" is something else.
PS - And this isn't to say that piracy is theft. It's just to point out that it's more an act of jealousy, since if you're willing to pirate windows, why wouldn't you just pirate the GPL-violating software? Of course if you *do* follow the law, then it makes perfect sense that you'd be miffed that others, Windows piraters and GPL violators alike, aren't and you're suffering. Not that people are always rational about such things and follow such logic.
The PS3's $600 vs Wii's $250 *is* intimdating. Personally, neither the X-Box 360 nor PS3 interest me, and that in large part has to do with neither system having much selling point above the Wii except the HDTV that I probably won't buy for at *least* a couple years. And again, the fact that both the X-Box 360 and PS3 have BC issues is certainly a strong reason to not want to buy them.
Btw, a short skim through your journal and I'd like to make a small comment. It sounds like you're fundamentally arguing that the PS3 can somehow be a superset of the X-Box 360 and Wii based upon the X-Box 360 having HDTV capacity (well, you don't say it, but that's pretty well a given) and the Wii having motion sensing technology. The fundamental flaw I seen in your argument is that you, again, assume that the PS3 is "golden". While there are HD games being made for the PS3, the X-Box 360 already has a pretty large lead in that field. The lack of PS2 BC compounds the disadvantage of being more expensive than a X-Box 360 (and yes, people might not consider the X-Box Live costs just like they aren't considering the HD DVD that, AFAIK, isn't even available nor any announcements of a game that demands it).
At the same time, trying to upport Wii games to the PS3 has many disadvantages. Asside from the handful of games that make gimmicky use of the Wiimote, most others take advantage of the Wiimote's shape to allow for things like swinging and steering which would feel unnatural on the PS3's controller. Add to that that simply porting the games to the PS3 would probably make most PS3 owners pissed off, as who wants to buy a game that doesn't take advantage of all that HD you paid for? So, upporting to take advantage of the higher resolution meants optimizing for the PS3. Given how complex the PS3 is and how slow compilers have been shown to automatically optimize for parallelism (look at the Itanium for an example), I wouldn't expect for developers to jump at the chance to port to the PS3 unless the PS3 already has a decent market share.
One final point is the PS3's exclusive titles. Without the PS3 having exclusive titles, the cost of the PS3 will motivate some to buy a Wii+X-Box 360, given the sum price being near the cost of the PS3. So, any advantage of being a superset of the two could very quickly vanish for those who want to play both types (motion sensing and HD) of games. And the only way to gain exclusive titles is to either effectively buy out development houses or to have such overwhelming market share (possibly even for a specific genere or game series) that it's seen as advantageous to develop for just one console. As you point out, it's too soon to tell if that will materialize in a fashion that the PS3, Wii, or X-Box 360 will be "king". But the evidence so far is that the PS3 is trying to be a lot to everyone (even if SIXAXIS seems tacted on), doing at least some of it badly (and even going so far as to claim that BC isn't "important"), and the cost is something that's keeping PS3s on the shelves (with signs of ignoring reality).
I'm going to say this is a big deal in the short run, but not a big deal in the long run. In two years the library will be large enough for the PS3 that few people will be using their PS2 games that much. Right now, however, the library is much smaller and so PS2 games definitely substitute for that lack of games.
The problem is, you're assuming that Sony is effectively "golden". By that, I mean you're assuming that the PS3 is inherently going to have a strong library in two years. However, console sales have a lot to do with just how willing developers are to target a system (why bother making a PS3-exclusive game if PS2 + X-Box 360 + Wii make up 85% of the market?). The fact that the PS3 doesn't have excellent PS2 BC means that people are actually buying PS2 in addition to (or possibly even *instead of* PS3s, given the cost). Such can potentially have a very negative effect on the long term future of the PS3.
Really, for all the money one puts into buying a PS3, one would expect it to have at least as high BC as the X-Box 360; the fact that in time it might reach a high BC level like the X-Box 360 doesn't help much, given the X-Box 360 had a head start which rather negates how badly their BC was at the start. It's rather funny, in fact, that the more money you spend, the lower BC you have with the past generation. I'm rather surprised that Sony doesn't seem to care as much about the PS3's BC given that the PS2's BC (along with, obviously, the ability to play DVDs) is almost certainly the reason that the PS2 was king of the last generation of consoles. But then, Sony can't seem to even acknowledge that they're not even selling all their PS3s.
So it's got to be option number 3. The only other thing Microsoft can do then is to warn the user what's happening to their computer, provide as much useful information as possible (in as much a user-friendly manner as possible) and then let the user decide.
Which is pretty much what is happening here. And still people complain.
Ah.. So close and yet so far. There's many things wrong with your argument. First and foremost, your three options are clearly wrong. You're argument lies on the assumption that programs and program-like data are the units of control that users should have permissions over and that it is those possibly malicious programs that are the intrinsic factors that make users safe or unsafe. Yet one could easily argue that having a user run as Administrator while not running malicious software can still be dangerous because even non-malicious software has been known to have bugs in them.
And that's a core problem. UAC isn't at all a useful warning to users. As has been pointed out, cutting & pasting in IE7 falls into the same UAC that covers moving files around. The reason for this stems from the fact that Windows itself is very incapable of differentiating what a user commands to be done and what a program, ran under a user's credentials, commands to be done. Instead of fixing that problem, MS has instituted a wrapper around nearly everything and slapped a new interface, UAC, which *can* determine if a user issued the command or not. To that end, the user remains in control. But as UAC is left to the whim of programs to intiate such actions at will, UAC becomes as useless at guarding against malware as car alarms are at warning the car owner that their car is about to be stolen--malicious youths can trivially set the car alarm off to the point that even car alarm owners tend to ignore the car alarm.
Personally, I am inclined to mock and belittle the car alarm. It sounds like UAC is following down that same path. Just because the intentions for UAC are nobile doesn't mean it's improper to belittle the implementation.
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So, you expect average people to go into Control Panel and enable/disable services? Seems sort of funny that there isn't a "Search" tool to enable/disabling indexing. But, then, this is MS. They're only a marginal step up from Firefox's about:config.
You would if he repeatedly talked about burning down the store next door in a non-joking manner, especially if he was the fire-safety marshal of your company and one of the few people with ready access to all the incendiaries. At some point, the CEO is responsible for the actions of employees when he either (a) doesn't pay enough attention to what illegal activities his employees endorse and pursue or (b) does pay attention and silently condones their words and actions by allowing them to continue employment. It's not like Gonzales, for example, was campaigning to change the law on his own time to allow torture. Instead, Gonzales drafted a memo and sent it out to encourage the acts which were, at best, borderline torture. It's funny how the EPA is so reluctant to enforce the idea that carbon dioxide might be a pollutant covered under law while at the same time the Justice Department is perfectly willing to skirt, or even glaringly pass right past, the law. Funny how the "decider" can't seem to decide on whether to follow the law or not; or perhaps he did decide, which of course is the entire problem.
Just a small comment--here instead of farther down, as though I've read more of the discourse between you and spun, I'm more interested in responding to this comment along with what I can take away from your discourse with spun.
What I did with the use of definitions wasn't about an article of "progressive" faith. It was, admittedly, a little bit of me making a snarky comment. But, I think it does apply to some extent. On the one hand, Bush's push to invade Iraq wasn't made with much consideration for the effects on the Iraqis; or more appropriately, there was much consideration of the effect, but there was obtuse assumptions about the effects on Iraqis. Further, the means to gather support for the war involved (cherry picking information that painted the need for war in the best light) a lack of consideration for the intelligence gathering field, rather unrightly damning the perception that *all* intelligence is faulty; of course, the fact that there were many paid informants as the main source of information gives a rightful reason to be dissuaded from considering the intelligence gathering field as fully competent in its job. And the mere fact that Bush would go out of his way to try to convince people that a Iraq invasion was necessary does show some consideration for the effects of his actions.
So, Bush certainly isn't a clinical case of sociopathy. On the other hand, there's very few people who qualify under that end. Most who would march toward fulfilling their own needs without consideration for others would likely be arrested or shot early on in life, stealing from others or from murdering another person. Instead, it's reasonable to see that sociopaths, like most people, would be interested in "gaming" others toward their own ends, even if they reasonable see the results would do damage to those they "use"--and before I get farther into this I will note that most people are in a position of being assumedly rational, so engaging in an activity with a sociopath that would hurt them is either irrational behavior (con games seem a clear example) or a sign that there are limits to what one can rational do while engaged with others to ensure equal or better conditions for oneself (con games seem a clear example). So, I'd say most "socipathy" is merely a matter of degree. To that end, I'd say Bush's behavior seems more in tune with sociopathy than some idea of Christian morality, conservative morality, or progressive morality. Of course, many politicians likely fall into that category; Bush just happens to be rather egregious, public, and visible in his actions.
From American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary, definition 3: incompetence - "The inability to distinguish right from wrong or to manage one's affairs."
Hmm..that sounds familiar. From Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), sociopath - "a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."; from American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition, sociopath - "Someone whose social behavior is extremely abnormal. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others."
Now, as for malice; from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), malice - "desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness".
So, in short, I rather agree with your definition. Bush much better fits the definition of sociopath, not one with malice. Of course, that's rather disturbing.
I would if there were no copyright. But, then, that's what makes copyright so magical and unfair, because it violates the principle of unlimited right to something you buy.
Last I checked, water, gas, and electrical hookups were "owned" by you. If the discussion was one of TiVo "renting" their machine to you, you'd have a much more solid argument on this point.
Depends. I can drive my car however I feel like it on my own property or on the property of others for whom I agree with (if it weren't the case, the Indy 500 would be illegal). Now, if your point was that on public roads there are restrictions on cars, I'll agree, that most of those restrictions are unfair and unreasonable. The move towards a public road system enshrined under traffic law came about as a result of a push by government to improve economic conditions by guarantee to business and consumers a fluid means of transportation of goods. If the interest were that of personal freedom, the focus would still be one of building roads for pedestrians and not considering them a burden that slows traffic. Was this your point?
Except that such is a DMCA violation and illegal. Oopsie.
Well, I'll agree on that point. But then, that's why people want to hack TiVos to use external services and avoid allowing TiVo to butcher the system you spent time and energy on. Of course, something like the GPLv3 is a move to motivate companies like TiVo to either (a) open up their system to the hacks and leave those people be or (b) use other software, thereby decreasing the association of GNU/Linux and ilk with closed systems that are made to be hack-proof. Of course, TiVo can do whatever it pleases, as it can continue to update their GPLv2 software for as long as they please. But, then, the objective of the FSF through the GPL has never been especially direct. If it were, the FSF would be a lobbying firm to enshrine the "four freedoms" into law, instead of trying to motivate people to use software that guarantees the "four freedoms".
"8. Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press. In all criminal prosecutions or indictments for libels, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact. (Amended by vote of the people November 7, 2001.)" (emphasis mine) -- New York State Constitution (http://www.dos.state.ny.us/info/pdfs/cons2004.pdf )
Most states have similar laws in their constitution.
I can't speak for "the majority of French people", but I can speak as an American. As others have stated, Iraq wasn't a threat to the US. The reports that came in about Iraqi missiles firing beyond the allowed range gave Iraq a platform to attack Greece, perhaps. Russia (and Israel) was the only nuclear power at risk from Iraq's "WMDs". And weapon inspectors never seemed to find anything definite.
Now, did Saddam break the rules? Sure, lots of times. A lot of countries break the rules they're given, knowing full well that those who impose the rules aren't interested in war and are willing to negotiate "better" terms. One could say that Saddam gambled with the US and lost. But, then, one has to recognize there's good reason few countries are interested in wars to impose rules; you end up with a situation like Iraq. It's much simpler to work with an existing regime than to march in, destroy the existing regime, and recreate a new regime that has the material means to exercise the rules you want enforced.
So, the real question boils down to is, was there sufficient reason to go through all that effort? Well, the evidence points to no. The US isn't a nanny state (or, at least, shouldn't be), out to protect Israel or to intervene to prevent the Middle East from turning into Armageddon--even if it's "economical" to prevent Armageddon to make sure those oil wells aren't irradiated. Given that Saddam had the means to use WMDs on Israel in the past (Scud missiles (several of which hit Israel) and chemical weapon components furnished for the Iran-Iraq War) and didn't, it's reasonable to guess that there was room to negotiate with Saddam to further push for inspections.
Saddam might have been dangerous, but he had spent many years being political with other nations. And if Israel were attacked with any form of WMD, Saddam knew full well that he'd suffer from Israel at minimal and likely from the US and other countries in a "regime change". But as I said, one could say Saddam took a gamble and lost. Saddam had a good hand. The drum beat to war by the Bush Administration was so clearly fabricated to justify betting it all over what was a containable threat.
But in simpler terms, when one sees one's Secretary of State jingling a vile of anthrax in front of the UN, to condemn one's enemy for possessing vast quantities of the substance, while one can't manage to track down the sender of many envelopes of anthrax in one's own country, there's a serious lack of credibility that one's intelligence agency(s) is even capable of knowing much of anything when it comes to specific biological weapon production, distribution, etc. When the UN then "calls your bluff" on your knowing that one's enemy possesses vast quantities of biological WMDs, well, that should be the end of it. It's just as silly as going to ask for the blessing of one's parents for a wedding, and then marrying anyways when they refuse to provide it.
I hope that wasn't too much rambling.
Just two small comments. One, the US was in the same boat regarding veto power and "breaking the same laws/rules". It is, after all, the US who went to the UN and used the UN as justification for its actions. I just think it's worth mentioning (not that I'm trying to quell the ill-doings of France and Russia). Two, the formation of the UN was based upon all nuclear powers having permanent veto power. Ie, the lesson was well known since the formation of the UN that all nuclear powers can violate UN rules with nuclear retaliation being the only true remedy. The point of the UN was to (a) allow the nuclear powers to argue with each other without jumping to using nukes first and (b) as a means of steering "the third world" (ie, non-nuclear powers) for "first world" economic interests. Why do you think Pakistan and India obtained nukes? Why do you think so many other countries have work towards possessing nukes?
Well, since I've come this far, I might as well respond to this clear troll.
Yep, nothing says "conjured out of my ass" like years of collected data.
Not going much out on a limb here, I'll take "FYP" to mean "From Your Post". Well, let's just look at my post.
Golly. Misquoting me when the evidence is so clearly available. That's pretty low and stupid. This is why I'm confident you're a troll.
Out of the ass of mice and men?
Maybe I need to get a different thesaurus that "significant" and "overwhelming[ly] responsible" are synonymous.
Really? I never would have guessed. I guess it was stupid of me to make the statement, then, to clarify that there are scientists who point out that nature is at least partially responsible for the warming.
Actually, no. That's the thing about the number. It wasn't "easily" pushed to where it is today. As is pointed out in the article, for a time, it was believed that pollution would offset any rise in temperature that the release of CO2 would cause. But the ratio of the effects of the two wasn't well understood, and it took many years to discover that CO2 indeed has a more prominent effect than was first assumed (basically, a hypothesis was made, taken by some (seemingly mostly media people) to be a theory, and it turned out to be wrong). So, again, no. The numbers that we have today weren't easily reached. And that very well means that a shift in thinking towards any signicant change in the human contribution to global warming will be far from easy. Why? Because the overwhelming evidence is what it is *now*.
Propaganda-style wrong? You mean "The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause."? Well, yea, everything the UN says is propaganda-style, so is it really a surprise that they'd be the same with global warming? Or with the media? (Those are rhetorical questions, btw.) Would you be happy if instead of claiming it was 100% humans it was 66% humans, so humans still are the dominant factor and could reverse the changes if they so desired? (This isn't rhetorical.)
You're so right. I mean, the evidence seems to indicate that humans are only on the order of 2/3rds responsible (IIRC) for the warming* of the Earth. You're so right that they shouldn't use the word "the". "Overwhelming responsible" is so much more apt. And thanks to the knowledge that we can have a 2/3rds impact on warming, there's strong evidence that we could potentially stop warming and *further* stop the 1/3rd natural warming, if we were so interested. That was your point, right?
*Clearly this means that if global temperatures go up by 3 degrees, humans caused 2 degrees of that.
Meanwhile in the GPL v3 case, all the manufacturer has to do is to place the software in ROM, no signed binary required. Of course, that's not very probable because whatever losses that would occur from having to throw out ROM chips that were no longer useful would overwhelm whatever gains of control that were made. But then, that's just further proof that "make a billion dollars" is an over characterization on the amount of money that could be made, which strongly hints that most manufacturers would likely stick to not signing binaries and using Flash-like memory. The fact is, the main reason for the GPL v3 is because of the DMCA. Otherwise, people could just figure out the signing mechanism (or some other software hack) and sign their own modified binaries. Since the DMCA is the Digital Millennium *Copyright* Act, abolishing copyright includes abolishing the DMCA.
Or in short, the GPL v3 isn't some sort of panacea to the problem. And yes, there is more effort (as others put it, a DRM arms race) involved if there is no copyright. But, I think you're over-characterizing the situation.
No. Many times when there's a shooting "of note" (ie, at a new venue, at a venue without a recent shooting, involves especially "innocent" victims, involves more people or bullets than most, etc), there is a large media obsession with many media personalities (journalists, reporters, random "experts", etc) who want to insert their own two cents of "wisdom" into the affair. Several even rant about "warning signs". Others discuss how "why didn't anyone call the police when they guy was talking about shooting people in the face on the phone the other day?". By far, these media personalities are a remote minority of the people and few people are interested in staging protests to have fired every media personality that's overly reactionary.
For example, I'd likely ignore a person talking about the complexities of killing a person with a .22 (or possibly talk to them, if they were nearby), not jumping to any conclusion that my boss need know just on that information; on the other hand, that's probably because I recognize that school/workplace shootings are exceedingly uncommon, having exceedingly low death rates, and are not stoppable even with a dictatorship. Having said all that, I can understand other employees with more insight into the person telling a supervisor. And I can possibly understand a boss firing an employee who seemed "dangerous" (though, in that case, one would likely call the police as well, as being fired does nothing to stop a person from "shooting up the place"). I have a much tougher time understanding being scared of the words in a comic strip or why the police felt the need to contact the author (perhaps it was just easier for them to try to gauge the "character" of the author than to try to access it through the medium). But then, I do think many people (including me) feel that the SOP for police is to ignore what sound like, on their face, ludicrous reports.
Golly, you've got a great argument sir. Of course, your argument is directed at *non-games*. As the poster was trying to point out, games sell in the order of a 6 month time span and old games are a crap shoot to get working properly on modern OSs. Or is it not fair that I point out that NTVDM is a shitty game system for DOS games, and I'm left trying to finagle with DOSBox or some other emulator on both Windows and Linux if I'm really interested in "archaic" games? But, yea, preach on brother about how you can use all your old non-games in Windows. That was entirely the subject at hand to discuss and the exact lacking that was being pointed out in Linux.
Well, that sure helps me when I bought a computer 4 months ago that said "Vista Capable" without clarifying that "Vista Capable" meant "capable of booting Vista, with no guarantee of anything else". Again, seeing "Vista Capable" stickers without having seen "Vista Premium Ready" stickers leaves one with the impression that, tada, your hardware can reasonable run *any* version of Vista. Just because Microsoft said it was implied with the existance of *other* stickers doesn't magically change the fact that the "Vista Capable" sticker didn't really clarify a thing. Really, they could have named it "Vista Basic Capable" and it'd be a non-issue.
I don't think you understood my point. It wasn't that in this instance they were trying to imply the "Ultimate" version. It's the fact that going so far as to have to reply on *implication* to figure out what version(s) actually work on your system is clearly at least *somewhat* deceptive. Of course, OEMs are just as guilty (probably more so) in not going out of their way to clarify.
Part of the reason for the FTC is to avoid advertisers being able to say anything they want under the claim they can't be held responsible "because a consumer didn't take the time to look at any of the widely available information" as a basis to effectively commit fraud. To some extent, what the general population likely knows has to be made into consideration with making advertisements. So, while crackers can dance in advertisements (as people generally know crackers can't dance), software makers can't presume that people know that Aero won't necessarily work in their version of Vista (as programmers are likely aware of a ballpark figure of the sort of computer minimally necessary for such actions, have been readily availed themselves to information as it leaked out; for the general public, Aero (ie, eyecandy) is one of the main selling points of Vista, which is almost certainly known by Microsft).
In sum, while it's not definite (yet) that Microsoft (and OEMs) tried to mislead people, certainly many people were mislead. Maybe MS and OEMs were oblivious to the effect their advertisements focusing on Aero had on people? In any case, there's a reasonable position to let the suit continue forward to find more definite answers.
Um..are you trying to prove or disprove his point? How are people to know that "Vista Capable" means "Vista [Home] Capable"? I guess one has to assume that the stores where one buys a product will have "Vista [Home] Capable" stickers and "Vista Premium Ready", with the stores pushing the latter (as it's more expensive). But that very well falls into the "bait and switch" category precisely because the "Vista Premium Ready", not the "Vista [Home] Capable", was all that was being shown in advertisements.
Personally, I think the naming scheme of Vista (and XP, for that matter) are deceptive enough as it is. It reminds of the situation with USB where USB 1.1 was renamed USB HiSpeed and USB 2.0 was renamed USB FullSpeed. Who in their right mind would presume on just seeing "USB HiSpeed" that they're buying the inferior performance option? In the same way, one would resume that the "Home" version was the version the vast majority was buying for their homes, and hence the common advertisements would be showing what one would receive in buying the "Home" version. Unless it's clearly reiterated that what's really being advertised is the "Professional" or "Ultimate" (or whatever) version, it would hardly be a surprise that people would be confused with an advertisement that fundamentally seems to be showing one thing while trying to sell an inferior product, quite possibly to motivate them to spend more on the former. In any case, I don't think this case is simple to dismiss.
You don't seem to understand how the GPL2 "or, at your option, a later version" clause works. If Linus were to have licensed the kernel under a "GPL2 or, at your option, the yet to be created Linus Public Licenses to be created by Linus Torvalds", then the second Linus started selling copies of Linux under his LPL v1--which allows companies to not distributing source--*anyone* could fork the current code base under the GPL2 *only* and take away Linus' "dictatorship" over the kernel. Would this be a large upset to the kernel community? Of course--just as would be true if Linus decided to take all the "GPL2 or at your option, later version code" and work to form a GPL3 kernel; no matter what the license change or possibly even the *lack* of a license change will motivate forks, as forks of the Linux kernel are happening all the time.
Your position is about as silly as believing that if Microsoft bought out the Mozilla Foundation tomorrow and relicensed all the code under a closed license (assuming they could) that (a) people would continue to support and use Mozilla Firefox and ilk as if nothing had happened and (b) that no one would fork the existing code base and try to lure the disillusioned community to create a mechanism to further decrease the chances of such happening again.
Yes, there's certainly a great bit of room to argue that allowing the FSF to retain control over possible future Linux licensing is bad, but the wording of the license won't magical dissolve the current license on current code. The real beauty of free software isn't the direct effect of so much GPL source being available; it's that so much GPL source being available, and a license that exists to continue that source to be GPL, motivates people to build communities to ever further work the useful and usable into something that will evolve with the needs of developers and users; except in things like very simple appliances, unmodified code stagnates to the point of disuse.
I think YouTube is more than that. For the longest time, it has been claimed that while copyright doesn't ensure any sort of quality, it has in large part been responsible for the large quantity of new creative works of the last few centuries. But YouTube shows just the opposite, with a mass of videos, many of questionable quality, but of such vast quantity because, in the end, popularity is more important to many people than an unlikely stream of money.
And you are right, YouTube winning would certainly be a move to video on demand everywhere, and that is in large part due to it being unlikely that film studios will ever provide anywhere near the capacity to show all the movies the possess. As a simple example, imagine if there really *was* video on demand, providing DVD-quality video. Some back-of-the-envelope calculations hint that DVDs, on average, require on the order of a 4Mbps line to stream properly. In perspective, that means a 1Gbps line could provide for upwards of 256 movies at once. While that might seem like a lot, in reality even *if* there was a huge popularity in certain movies, such a collection would hardly support the demands of a small town. On top of that, to provide movies to many small towns would require either excessively wide bandwidth or many caching servers.
But, it's unlikely that even with heavy encryption and supposedly bullet-proof server software that any movie studio would have an extensive amount of their catalog available to every single person in the US, as the risk of cracking their servers as a means to piracy would be too great. This even ignores the issue of actually setting up enough servers today to begin to provide video on demand to such scale (assuming one server per 5,000 people, there would need to be approx. 60,000 such servers for the US; further, with an average catalog of 1,000 movies, one would need on the on the order of a 4TB drive to hold DVD-quality movies (with lower quality, one might be able to bump it down to 2TB); at $200 per TB, this works out to be a optimistic $24 million just for the storage space; laying down fiber to avoid this storage space would likely be more costly, at the moment).
With YouTube, Google isn't as worried about piracy. This is precisely because the majority of the content is *intended* to be distributed for free. So, not surprisingly, Google actually *wants* people to distribute content for them. Google is likely more interested, in the long term, of motivating ISPs to join them in distributing content, which ISPs will probably be motivated to do in their own right to save bandwidth costs. Non-redistributable content is precisely what YouTube doesn't want, as it provides more of a headache to them (via DMCA takedown notices and threats of lawsuits, and how that will dissuade ISPs from doing their own caching) than a help. Is it truly surprising that in the end copyright will do exactly counter to what its intent is?
I think, in part, you're confusing patents and copyright (for example, your discussion of MP3s), and I think, in part, you're trying to extrapolate the GPL as if it were copyright law.
So, let's step back a bit and try to untangle exactly what's going on. When you use a codec, you're using a piece of software. The codec itself is protected under copyright and possibly under patents. In any event, the actions the codec carries out are not in themselves creative. By this, I mean, the transformations are deterministic with an intended output; creativity could be said to be non-deterministic (ie, originality) with an intended output. Copyright only extends to works that are the result of a creative process. To that end, nothing a codec does could itself be copyrighted; if it could be, the codec itself would be the copyright owner, not the writer of the codec; of course, such a codec would seemingly fill the requirements of a partial AI, so I think the concerns of copyright would not exactly be high on the list of discussion.
Having said all that, we get into the issue of something like the MP3 codec. The concern with it, as related to the GPL, has more to do with the GPL having provisions about patents. Patents, as you likely know, apply to a process, not a specific implementation. This, of course, can be a huge issue with something like the GPL because a large point of the GPL is to allow for the redistribution of GPLed code. If only some people were allowed to legally redistribute the code, by paying patent royalties, then the "network" of involvement to improve GPLed code would be a lot less webbed and a lot more hierarchical (or, it'd be a lot more illegal). Because of this, the GPL requires that all distributed code that implements a patent include royalty-free redistribution covering that patent. Because the MP3 code is patented and there is no royalty-free redistribution allowed (no matter what is said about trying to include an exception for open source), gpled mp3 codecs are illegal, if for no other reason than the distributor of the gpled code is granting others a privilege he doesn't have.
Having said all that, there's nothing illegal about the mp3 format or inherently legal about mp3s themselves. But given the fact that you can't include an mp3 encoder or decoder with a totally GPL software distribution, MP3s have been frowned upon in the free/open software world. On top of that, of course, is the excessive piracy of music (and note, this is further proof that codecs don't change copyright; if they did, the codec maker would be the one suing over all the CD->MP3ed music, not the RIAA and its members) in MP3 format, as it was the first to make it readily possible to share music (commercial and otherwise) over the internet that has basically made MP3 synonymous with pirated music. The last thing many in the free software world want is to have the appearance that the GPL is all about "getting free (as in beer) stuff", even if it's through illegal means.
PS - Things like the gcc include an exception about the GPL not applying as a result of using gcc to compile a program precisely to avoid confusion over the issue; this is somewhat humorous as there are many places were a transformation application of one sort or another will copy small fragments of itself into the destination application, which you seem to recognize. The one overriding principle to always remember is that copyright applies first. The GPL is subordinate to the rules of copyright. So is every other, proprietary license. Now, if you wanted something with more fuzzy lines, one could discuss the linking of libraries. But, that's a whole other discussion.
Ever heard of inflation?
Perhaps you should try to understand what was said. The issue is that while a person with $40+ billion gives away $1 billion, they're still left with $39+ billion. The person with $50k who gives away $20 is left with $50k minus $20. Now, would you rather have $39+ billion or $50k minus $20? Which person has less?
It's almost always good to give to charity, whatever the amount. But at least at this time, Bill hasn't given substantially of himself. Even if his plan to give away all his money before he dies holds true, he'll have lived 20+ years in a million dollar house. So, it's hard to act like whatever he does is something substantial. Hell, how much money goes into charities and research from the US government (ie, taxpayers)?
Some people believe that everything is relative. If that were the case, Bill would have to pay $800,000 for a candy bar that a person who made $50,000 would only have to pay $1. Perhaps talking about proportions isn't exactly an exactly fair metric given it doesn't apply everywhere.
Ironic would be someone who steals candy from the liquor store who freaks out because somebody else is selling stolen candy quite blatanty in front of the cops. No, wait; that's not irony. That's jealousy.
Btw, what evidence do you have that piracy of Windows is a common occurance here? Far as I understood it, most people got a copy of Windows with whatever PC they bought, short of buying a barebones system. I'd imagine *most* people have a legal copy of Windows. Now, the fact that they might be advocating, viacriously, that others should pirate Windows to "stick it to the man" is something else.
PS - And this isn't to say that piracy is theft. It's just to point out that it's more an act of jealousy, since if you're willing to pirate windows, why wouldn't you just pirate the GPL-violating software? Of course if you *do* follow the law, then it makes perfect sense that you'd be miffed that others, Windows piraters and GPL violators alike, aren't and you're suffering. Not that people are always rational about such things and follow such logic.
The PS3's $600 vs Wii's $250 *is* intimdating. Personally, neither the X-Box 360 nor PS3 interest me, and that in large part has to do with neither system having much selling point above the Wii except the HDTV that I probably won't buy for at *least* a couple years. And again, the fact that both the X-Box 360 and PS3 have BC issues is certainly a strong reason to not want to buy them.
Btw, a short skim through your journal and I'd like to make a small comment. It sounds like you're fundamentally arguing that the PS3 can somehow be a superset of the X-Box 360 and Wii based upon the X-Box 360 having HDTV capacity (well, you don't say it, but that's pretty well a given) and the Wii having motion sensing technology. The fundamental flaw I seen in your argument is that you, again, assume that the PS3 is "golden". While there are HD games being made for the PS3, the X-Box 360 already has a pretty large lead in that field. The lack of PS2 BC compounds the disadvantage of being more expensive than a X-Box 360 (and yes, people might not consider the X-Box Live costs just like they aren't considering the HD DVD that, AFAIK, isn't even available nor any announcements of a game that demands it).
At the same time, trying to upport Wii games to the PS3 has many disadvantages. Asside from the handful of games that make gimmicky use of the Wiimote, most others take advantage of the Wiimote's shape to allow for things like swinging and steering which would feel unnatural on the PS3's controller. Add to that that simply porting the games to the PS3 would probably make most PS3 owners pissed off, as who wants to buy a game that doesn't take advantage of all that HD you paid for? So, upporting to take advantage of the higher resolution meants optimizing for the PS3. Given how complex the PS3 is and how slow compilers have been shown to automatically optimize for parallelism (look at the Itanium for an example), I wouldn't expect for developers to jump at the chance to port to the PS3 unless the PS3 already has a decent market share.
One final point is the PS3's exclusive titles. Without the PS3 having exclusive titles, the cost of the PS3 will motivate some to buy a Wii+X-Box 360, given the sum price being near the cost of the PS3. So, any advantage of being a superset of the two could very quickly vanish for those who want to play both types (motion sensing and HD) of games. And the only way to gain exclusive titles is to either effectively buy out development houses or to have such overwhelming market share (possibly even for a specific genere or game series) that it's seen as advantageous to develop for just one console. As you point out, it's too soon to tell if that will materialize in a fashion that the PS3, Wii, or X-Box 360 will be "king". But the evidence so far is that the PS3 is trying to be a lot to everyone (even if SIXAXIS seems tacted on), doing at least some of it badly (and even going so far as to claim that BC isn't "important"), and the cost is something that's keeping PS3s on the shelves (with signs of ignoring reality).
The problem is, you're assuming that Sony is effectively "golden". By that, I mean you're assuming that the PS3 is inherently going to have a strong library in two years. However, console sales have a lot to do with just how willing developers are to target a system (why bother making a PS3-exclusive game if PS2 + X-Box 360 + Wii make up 85% of the market?). The fact that the PS3 doesn't have excellent PS2 BC means that people are actually buying PS2 in addition to (or possibly even *instead of* PS3s, given the cost). Such can potentially have a very negative effect on the long term future of the PS3.
Really, for all the money one puts into buying a PS3, one would expect it to have at least as high BC as the X-Box 360; the fact that in time it might reach a high BC level like the X-Box 360 doesn't help much, given the X-Box 360 had a head start which rather negates how badly their BC was at the start. It's rather funny, in fact, that the more money you spend, the lower BC you have with the past generation. I'm rather surprised that Sony doesn't seem to care as much about the PS3's BC given that the PS2's BC (along with, obviously, the ability to play DVDs) is almost certainly the reason that the PS2 was king of the last generation of consoles. But then, Sony can't seem to even acknowledge that they're not even selling all their PS3s.
Ah.. So close and yet so far. There's many things wrong with your argument. First and foremost, your three options are clearly wrong. You're argument lies on the assumption that programs and program-like data are the units of control that users should have permissions over and that it is those possibly malicious programs that are the intrinsic factors that make users safe or unsafe. Yet one could easily argue that having a user run as Administrator while not running malicious software can still be dangerous because even non-malicious software has been known to have bugs in them.
And that's a core problem. UAC isn't at all a useful warning to users. As has been pointed out, cutting & pasting in IE7 falls into the same UAC that covers moving files around. The reason for this stems from the fact that Windows itself is very incapable of differentiating what a user commands to be done and what a program, ran under a user's credentials, commands to be done. Instead of fixing that problem, MS has instituted a wrapper around nearly everything and slapped a new interface, UAC, which *can* determine if a user issued the command or not. To that end, the user remains in control. But as UAC is left to the whim of programs to intiate such actions at will, UAC becomes as useless at guarding against malware as car alarms are at warning the car owner that their car is about to be stolen--malicious youths can trivially set the car alarm off to the point that even car alarm owners tend to ignore the car alarm.
Personally, I am inclined to mock and belittle the car alarm. It sounds like UAC is following down that same path. Just because the intentions for UAC are nobile doesn't mean it's improper to belittle the implementation.