From what I read of the article it sounded like the concern *was* that "insert tape, push record" evidence was being acquired from NSA/CIA/etc and used in FBI investigations and (later) in court.
Still, I'm bothered by the ongoing trend I see here. We have cross-pollenation of surveilance info amongst the three-letter-agencies, we have things like Carnivore and Magic Lantern, and we've seen the FBI use its power irresponsibly in the cases of the Branch Davidians and others.
While I don't necessarily agree with the ideas of those sorts of people that find themselves under government scrutiny (cults (define cult please...), militia groups, etc), I think we've seen plenty enough evidence that certain government agencies, particularly under the Clinton administration, were running out of control. (I am libertarian, so this is not good old fashioned Republican-beats-up-on-Democrat).
The other thing that bothers me is that we know there is a secret court reviewing this sort of stuff...what is going on that we don't know about and may not be subject to review (besides IRS audits)?
OK so we got a story on Slate. Slashdot says this all the time. Big Woop.
Let me know when it shows up in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or some of Jack Valenti's ti^Hrade mags.
The issue really isn't about "someone else just joined our bandwagon." It's about who just joined your bandwagon, and if the who doesn't include the folks making, marketing, and distributing the music, then it really doesn't make a whole hill of beans worth of difference, does it?
I'd actually be surprised if they were entitled to a chunk of change beyond someone's $0.02. Think about it. The GPL is all about encouraging code sharing, not making a profit off someone's business plan that happens to involve reselling your code. Cases in point? Red Hat. IBM. Dell. All legit, all involved in the sale of GPL'd code. None forking huge handfuls of cash to Linus, Alan, or Joe programmer (with the obvious exception of Red Hat and Alan, but that's a job).
I rather suspect this is a matter of principle and fairness. If Sigma was handing the modified code back to XVID I suspect they'd be happily merging it back into their tree and we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'll see how things pan out, but I for one hope that Sigma gets sued into compliance.
I gave the v1_1_comparison.pdf a cursory look (that awful smuddgy grey font in xpdf was killing my eyes) and there are certainly large amounts of code that look similar, and the code tree listings look similar. There are places where names have been changed and byte offsets are a tad difference, but that's no big deal. It looks like the Sigma code has removed a few lines here and there (for performance?) from the XVID code and added some very lengthy routines.
My question is, why can't XVID enforce the GPL by taking the code they've decompiled, diff it, and keep what they want?
sounds like a bad.NET commercial....rather in the vein of the Asian mother who keeps telling her daughter to go to bed while the daughter is tagging vehicles on an assembly line oversees with her name (forget whose commercial it was, but it illustrates the point). Nothing like one degree of separation between the black hats and your business...
After years of consumers voting with their wallets for good ol' analog TV because they're plenty satisfied with the current quality and not satisfied with the extra cost of a digital TV, the Feds now seem quite bent on forcing them to buy digital. I don't get the motivation here. What do the Feds get from forcing mass change to HDTV?
I've seen the commercials on TV touting HDTV, but I (not alone among TV consumers) am quite happy with the one I have. Is HDTV going to make watching NBC news somehow more exhilerating? I doubt it. Are they trying to shore up a sagging HDTV market? Is there a market for something that few people are adopting?
I remain unconvinced that this idea is in anyone's interest, and would love to see some concrete arguments in favor of it.
and except for the ET's that were inserted into a brief clip of Episode I, Spielberg has nothing at all to do with Star Wars.... and those were inserted by George Lucas as a tribute to Spielberg. Lucas, who (maybe you forgot) created the Star Wars universe and associated movies from which have spun numerous books/imitations/comics/art/role-playing and computer games/etc.
You need to goo back and take Star Wars 097 to refresh yourself on its creation, origins, and philosophy.
He said he's the de facto team lead. That doesn't necessarily mean he's got any more managerial role than you do...indeed, he might very well be 'in charge' only because he's been around longer....
Maybe it's me but it sounds like a motivation and competence issue....then again, maybe that's just how he made it sound. I figure I sure am glad I'm not in his position, but more information on the group dynamics would be helpful if he really wants a solution...
Why don't we just make sure the competent folks get/keep their jobs instead of worrying about someone's country of origin? Heaven knows there are enough incompentent American programmers who are still employed....
That's covered under the.jpg patent claims being pressed against everyone now....you know, the one that Sony coughed up 15 mil for even though the patent expires in 2004...
I've decided that the US patent office has decided to scrap its founding principles in favor of the pinata approach: The pinata breaks, the goodies fall, and the first person to claim the most goodies wins. Doesn't matter if someone else has similar goodes, or even if there was a fight over the goodies. The person with the goodies wins.
Same thing with patents today. Doesn't matter if there's prior art or if you stole it from a competitor or if you acquired it after the fact. Patent it, then threaten everyone you know with a lawsuit for infringement.
At least the government has legal restrictions on what it can/can't do...Modern corporations lack both legal and moral restraint. It doesn't help either that USPTO will give a patent for anything it doesn't understand.
.NET (as you should know from all those cute tv commercials like the one with the man and woman buying a car) is when there is 1 degree of separation between you customers and your business...
*yawn* lousy marketdroids...
Like I tell people...with all of Microsoft's security issues the last thing they need to be introducing is 1 degree of separation between their systems...."when hackers can take over your entire network in minutes, that's one degree of separation. that's business with.NET."
Slashdot Mirror
From what I read of the article it sounded like the concern *was* that "insert tape, push record" evidence was being acquired from NSA/CIA/etc and used in FBI investigations and (later) in court.
Still, I'm bothered by the ongoing trend I see here. We have cross-pollenation of surveilance info amongst the three-letter-agencies, we have things like Carnivore and Magic Lantern, and we've seen the FBI use its power irresponsibly in the cases of the Branch Davidians and others.
While I don't necessarily agree with the ideas of those sorts of people that find themselves under government scrutiny (cults (define cult please...), militia groups, etc), I think we've seen plenty enough evidence that certain government agencies, particularly under the Clinton administration, were running out of control. (I am libertarian, so this is not good old fashioned Republican-beats-up-on-Democrat).
The other thing that bothers me is that we know there is a secret court reviewing this sort of stuff...what is going on that we don't know about and may not be subject to review (besides IRS audits)?
Ummmm...
/ == 'slash'
.sig a bit off?
\ == 'backslash'
now that we have that part straight, isn't your
OK so we got a story on Slate. Slashdot says this all the time. Big Woop.
Let me know when it shows up in Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, or some of Jack Valenti's ti^Hrade mags.
The issue really isn't about "someone else just joined our bandwagon." It's about who just joined your bandwagon, and if the who doesn't include the folks making, marketing, and distributing the music, then it really doesn't make a whole hill of beans worth of difference, does it?
I'd actually be surprised if they were entitled to a chunk of change beyond someone's $0.02. Think about it. The GPL is all about encouraging code sharing, not making a profit off someone's business plan that happens to involve reselling your code. Cases in point? Red Hat. IBM. Dell. All legit, all involved in the sale of GPL'd code. None forking huge handfuls of cash to Linus, Alan, or Joe programmer (with the obvious exception of Red Hat and Alan, but that's a job).
I rather suspect this is a matter of principle and fairness. If Sigma was handing the modified code back to XVID I suspect they'd be happily merging it back into their tree and we wouldn't be having this discussion. We'll see how things pan out, but I for one hope that Sigma gets sued into compliance.
You forgot the C-r hotkey...man I love that one ;)
I gave the v1_1_comparison.pdf a cursory look (that awful smuddgy grey font in xpdf was killing my eyes) and there are certainly large amounts of code that look similar, and the code tree listings look similar. There are places where names have been changed and byte offsets are a tad difference, but that's no big deal. It looks like the Sigma code has removed a few lines here and there (for performance?) from the XVID code and added some very lengthy routines.
My question is, why can't XVID enforce the GPL by taking the code they've decompiled, diff it, and keep what they want?
heh....I got a dual P/// 750....you wanna write the code, I'd be glad to run it....'sides seti and d.net are lame now anyway
...a whole new meaning to "chilling with your homies"
seriously though...if they never figure out a way to bring someone back (and I'm betting they won't...) what do you do with all those bodies...?
sounds like a bad .NET commercial....rather in the vein of the Asian mother who keeps telling her daughter to go to bed while the daughter is tagging vehicles on an assembly line oversees with her name (forget whose commercial it was, but it illustrates the point). Nothing like one degree of separation between the black hats and your business...
After years of consumers voting with their wallets for good ol' analog TV because they're plenty satisfied with the current quality and not satisfied with the extra cost of a digital TV, the Feds now seem quite bent on forcing them to buy digital. I don't get the motivation here. What do the Feds get from forcing mass change to HDTV?
I've seen the commercials on TV touting HDTV, but I (not alone among TV consumers) am quite happy with the one I have. Is HDTV going to make watching NBC news somehow more exhilerating? I doubt it. Are they trying to shore up a sagging HDTV market? Is there a market for something that few people are adopting?
I remain unconvinced that this idea is in anyone's interest, and would love to see some concrete arguments in favor of it.
and except for the ET's that were inserted into a brief clip of Episode I, Spielberg has nothing at all to do with Star Wars.... and those were inserted by George Lucas as a tribute to Spielberg. Lucas, who (maybe you forgot) created the Star Wars universe and associated movies from which have spun numerous books/imitations/comics/art/role-playing and computer games/etc.
You need to goo back and take Star Wars 097 to refresh yourself on its creation, origins, and philosophy.
If it weren't for the CGI ref I'd think you were talking about Austin Powers....
I've been posting at +2 most of the thread...no idea how they decide to mod tho....
Where in Raleigh-Durham? I live in northeast Raleigh and work downtown.....been in the area a couple years....maybe I haven't been observant.
:}
Feel free to drop me a message next time you see a special...
I AM in the USA and I don't know where to get free CD-Rs, so count me into the "enquiring minds" category on this one....
Maybe I'm the only one left, but I find my floppy drive real handy for booting the computer still; particularly for installing operating systems...
This is particularly true since I still have to boot off a floppy to install Linux (something about autoboot and my scsi CD-ROM)...
I guess that would give a whole new meaning to the term "going postal" wouldn't it...
He said he's the de facto team lead. That doesn't necessarily mean he's got any more managerial role than you do...indeed, he might very well be 'in charge' only because he's been around longer....
Maybe it's me but it sounds like a motivation and competence issue....then again, maybe that's just how he made it sound. I figure I sure am glad I'm not in his position, but more information on the group dynamics would be helpful if he really wants a solution...
Why don't we just make sure the competent folks get/keep their jobs instead of worrying about someone's country of origin? Heaven knows there are enough incompentent American programmers who are still employed....
That's covered under the .jpg patent claims being pressed against everyone now....you know, the one that Sony coughed up 15 mil for even though the patent expires in 2004...
Just goes to show that some people will sell their souls for a paltry price.
now that's interesting....I didn't realize that MS used filenames for devices too....
I've decided that the US patent office has decided to scrap its founding principles in favor of the pinata approach: The pinata breaks, the goodies fall, and the first person to claim the most goodies wins. Doesn't matter if someone else has similar goodes, or even if there was a fight over the goodies. The person with the goodies wins.
Same thing with patents today. Doesn't matter if there's prior art or if you stole it from a competitor or if you acquired it after the fact. Patent it, then threaten everyone you know with a lawsuit for infringement.
At least the government has legal restrictions on what it can/can't do...Modern corporations lack both legal and moral restraint. It doesn't help either that USPTO will give a patent for anything it doesn't understand.
.NET (as you should know from all those cute tv commercials like the one with the man and woman buying a car) is when there is 1 degree of separation between you customers and your business...
.NET."
*yawn* lousy marketdroids...
Like I tell people...with all of Microsoft's security issues the last thing they need to be introducing is 1 degree of separation between their systems...."when hackers can take over your entire network in minutes, that's one degree of separation. that's business with
(not having tried this but...) why doesn't it work? some kind of inherent system issue?