AFAIK, there isn't anything free in the formal courseware world for the kind of content you are looking for. The market for beginners books, guides, and lessons is staggering -- you'll be pressed to find a good quality beginners coursebook that doesn't cost a pretty penny.
On the other hand, what is the current state of copyright law in Samoa? It may be perfectly legal for you to purchase one copy and then make a bunch of xeroxed handouts for your students as course material.
That assumes that you have access to a cheap photocopy service. Else you might have to turn to the old educational stand-by, the hand-cranked mimeograph machine, which will have the secondary effect of giving you a good buzz if you use it to make enough copies.
Isn't Battery Life the main reason one would pay a premimum for a Pentium-M?
No. Low power consumption, which is primarily what the M has over the regular P4, is good for lots of things:
1) Higher cpu density rack servers 2) Quieter system cooling (less air to move, fans spin slower & quieter) 3) Less elaborate cooling - better for semi-embedded type uses, such as in a car-pc or "tv set-top box" where high-power cooling systems are not feasible because of space constraints.
"We collectively agree that we will not" on the grounds that overall it does more harm than good.
The problem is, of course, who is "we?" Sounds like some sort of union "high counsel" making the decision and not the rank and file. In the long run, CC-licensed productions may be the best thing to happen to the industry, but it sounds like the union management has their head right up there with the MPAA's - deep in their respective asses that is.
Unfortunately, I bet SAG will be just as myopic too.
Are you sure it was really used to record audio? I would think they would want to hear what people say when the car is turned off too. Just running the chip 100% of the time and only recording to disk when there is actual audio would make sense and should be a low enough power draw to avoid draining the car battery if she drives it more than once a week.
Maybe it is some sort of location/gps recorder. The car should not move when turned off, so wiring it to the ignition/accessories circuits makes more sense and the "microphone(s)" were actually gps antennae. Plus, maybe the name on the chip is really "Topo Int" as in short for "topographic intelligence."
I want to know more about how she discovered it. Where was it exactly and what made her decide to look in the first place?
Incorrect - business plans are not from one human to another - they are from one company to another and publicly diseminated.
Get real, companies are groups of people. If the people aren't the ones on the sending and receiving ends of the information then what is? And just who are schematics for? Left that one out because even you couldn't waive your hands fast enough, eh?
First you make a bogus appeal to a higher power by saying, "ask any songwriter" and now you make another one with, "calling a very successful patent and copyright consultant an idiot."
As neither songwriter, nor even a middling IP consultant you need to stop trying to put your false words in their mouths.
If all written material is speech and able to be used freely.
I see, you've lost the argument so you are now trying to change your point. There is nothing that I have said in this entire thread equating "speech" with "able to be used freely," and guess what? Until this red herring post, you hadn't said anything either - see that point I made a few messages back where I said:
he did not say "NOT YOUR speech" he said "NOT speech" period.
Business plans are NOT speech - they are property. They are physical documentation and schematics. Just because they contain words and can be printed or could be considered artistically meritted does NOT mean they are speech
Glad you cleared up your opinion. You are wrong though. Speech is anything meant to communicate ideas and information from one human to another. That's the standard used to define source code as speech while compiled machine code is not. Similarly, schematics and business plans are clearly intended to communicate ideas and information between people. Thus they are speech.
And by the way, even if you pay the poet -- it is still NOT yours! Ask any songwriter.
Glad you cleared that up. But not in the way you think you have. You've just demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of copyright, which reinforces that your other statements on the general topic are also false, or at the very least based on your own guesses rather actual practice and statute. Don't believe me? Go google on the specific phrase I've repeatedly used in this thread, "work for hire." You will find yourself well contradicted by the results.
Actually, if I hire the poet, as in work for hire, the poem is MINE not his. Regardless, the original poster did not make that distinction, he did not say "NOT YOUR speech" he said "NOT speech" period.
Yeah, I'm sure it runs without a hitch too. Good one.
I expect that it is very stable. The main nero application does three things:
1) Basic GUI user interaction 2) Read files 3) Compose ATAPI CDB's and send them to the burner
The first two are dead simple, it isn't like Nero's doing any Direct3D rendering, wine's had that level of functionality for years. The third is as close to talking to the raw hardware as you can get, it probably uses Linux's scsi pass-thru driver, thus by-passing the kernel for 99% of the work.
do you envisage essentially a return to the days when artists were sponsored by wealthy patrons, who then release the music to the public without worrying about even covering their own costs?
The difference between now and then is that the internet enables thousands, even millions, of people to be patrons and thus releasing it to the public domain is really the only viable way to deliver the end product to the buyers.(*)
For example, instead of just one rich dude forking out $36M to finance a 12-episode fifth season of Star Trek: Enterprise, you can get 3 million people to each fork out $12. OR, maybe only 1 million people pay $12 each while another 1 million who are real die-hard fans pay $24 each because it is worth $2 per episode to them.
We still lack a functional and well-known system for buying entertainment like this, but it is no great leap of logic to see that the internet makes it a viable option. I personally believe that a very lucrative business opportunity exists here - kind of an ebay/paypal/HBO for the commissioning of entertainment. Give it five years or so for the right technology to spread out making such a system accessible to joe-sixpack aol user and his internet-connected tivo-alike.
(*) Not to mention it completely eliminates the problem of "piracy" by redefining it away such that pirates are no longer "stealing" from the creators but would now be facilitating the advertising of the creators' next production.
These are business plans, schematics, insider corporate strategy NOT speech - these items are CAD drawings, supplier contracts... NOT speech....
You realize that in making that assertation, you are hair's breadth away from claiming that source code is NOT speech, right? Do you really understand the implications of not treating source code as speech?
It's called a "joke". The parent is obviously making fun of the "freedom fries" name, and is not really exhibiting francophobia of any kind.
He didn't get the troll moderation for francophobia, he got it for being an America-Hater(tm). He was trolling all the dittoheads who thought "Freedom Fries" was a good name.
I have a couple of small differences with what you said:
The value in a copy of some media is in two things: the cost it took to make it the original, and the cost it took to make the copy of it.
That should really be, "The value in a copy of some media is in two things: the market price to make the original and the market price to make the copy of it."
It is a subtle difference but an important one - value is in the eye of the buyer, not the creater. A movie might cost $50M to make, but if it sucks dodo ass, and only ten people pay the $10 ticket price, then its value is only $100. The reverse is also true, if some genius makes a film for $1000 and 50M people buy tickets for it, then the value is $500M. Which leads to my next point:
True artists (and true scientists for that matter) do things for the love of their craft. The only reason they need to be paid for it is so that they can afford to do their craft.
I like to believe in idealism as much as the next guy on slashdot, but I have no faith in a business model founded on idealism. Cold hard cash is what makes the world go 'round. Fortunately for both of our perspectives - getting paid up front for creation works just as well for the idealist as it does for the greediest, pseudo-artist money-grubber.
"Stars" (defined as having the "star power" to draw a large audience) should have no problem asking for, and getting, very large sums of money in exchange for the creation of new art. Sums VASTLY out of proportion with the actual cost to create that art. As long as they can convince people that their art is "worth it" they should have no problem raking in the dough.
I think the ghostscript guys do something similar - they initially release their product under their own not-quite-Free license and then when they release the next version, the prior version gets relicensed. I presume that each new release is funded either through support contracts or directly paid-for enhancements by their commercial and proprietary customers.
At least I think that's how they do it, I haven't looked at it for a few years.
So, all those people in the CherryOS "stolen source code" article going on about how evil GPL copyright infringement is and how PearPC's authors should pursue legal action against the infringers will now presumably support this
Hell, I'm up for personally raiding CherryOS's offices, who's with me?
Where did I say it was going to be re-released as a closed-source-product?
Well known or not, just about any open source software can not be anonymized simply by stripping the original attribution. All it takes is for one copy of the original code to be in google somewhere and anyone can readily connect the dots.
Because of that, Right of attribution is really a minor issue when it comes to Free software.
I'm guessing you should still get paid for whatever you do however?
I think musicians should get paid just the way I am paid:
I go to work, I write software for my client, he pays me for it and then I don't give a rat's ass what he does with it afterwards.
Musicians should record their music, get a buyer or group of buyers to pay for it, give it to them and then not give a rat's ass what they does with it afterwards.
Actually copyright is what is making the ripoff of PearPC illegal. Without copyright, you would be free to take any source code, modify it, and pretend you wrote it.
In a world dominated by open-source software, rather than closed-source as it is today, such a ripoff would probably be economically unviable. Its very nature of being closed would probably be a very large disincentive for potential buyers.
At least that is my interpretation of where RMS would like the GPL to lead us. I should probably ask him since I haven't seen him spell it out anywhere and your objection is a common one.
For what it is worth, you are specifically talking about the "right of attribution" which is a part of copyright law, but is mostly seperate from the stuff that the copyright cartel abuses. But there is a question of derived works, at what point does a derived work become original enough that the right of attribution to the original creator becomes silly? Just something to think about.
You might consider releasing your own creations under a creative commons license that preserves the right attribution.
In these cases copyright is a GOOD thing for me, because otherwise I would have been deprived of many of their writings, and that would be a BAD thing.
You are assuming that copyright is the only way "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
Before the invention of the printing press, the primary method of compensating artists was via comission and patronage. This business model worked well enough because the reach of distribution of the artist's creation was roughly equivalent to the geographic range of buyers willing to pay up front - roughly the same town or city.
The press allowed the reach of distribution to far exceed the range of people willing to pay up front - with printed copies numbering in the thousands it was feasible to sell copies to people in different countries, even on different continents. But
getting payment up front from people in other cities, much less on other continents was technically infeasible. Thus copyright served the purpose of enabling the artist to take a risk and produce his creation ahead of time, with the hope of making up his costs and maybe a profit via sales afterwards.
Today, with the internet and modern financial systems like credit cards, paypal, electronic check drafts, etc the reach of distribution once again equals the range of people potentially willing to pay up front - both are essentially anyone on the net.
So, a modern form of comission is once again a viable business model for the artist. He no longer must take the gamble of creating and then hoping for enough sales to cover his costs and maybe make a profit. Instead, he can offer the product of his labor on commission - people from all over the world can pay into an escrow account for the artist. Once the account's balance reaches his asking price, the artist can release his creation to the public domain. The buyers get the results and the artist is guaranteed a profit - no more risking his livelihood to the fickle taste of society.
All with no need for any sort of copyright law at all.
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK, there isn't anything free in the formal courseware world for the kind of content you are looking for. The market for beginners books, guides, and lessons is staggering -- you'll be pressed to find a good quality beginners coursebook that doesn't cost a pretty penny.
On the other hand, what is the current state of copyright law in Samoa?
It may be perfectly legal for you to purchase one copy and then make a bunch of xeroxed handouts for your students as course material.
That assumes that you have access to a cheap photocopy service. Else you might have to turn to the old educational stand-by, the hand-cranked mimeograph machine, which will have the secondary effect of giving you a good buzz if you use it to make enough copies.
Isn't Battery Life the main reason one would pay a premimum for a Pentium-M?
No. Low power consumption, which is primarily what the M has over the regular P4, is good for lots of things:
1) Higher cpu density rack servers
2) Quieter system cooling (less air to move, fans spin slower & quieter)
3) Less elaborate cooling - better for semi-embedded type uses, such as in a car-pc or "tv set-top box" where high-power cooling systems are not feasible because of space constraints.
"We collectively agree that we will not" on the grounds that overall it does more harm than good.
The problem is, of course, who is "we?" Sounds like some sort of union "high counsel" making the decision and not the rank and file. In the long run, CC-licensed productions may be the best thing to happen to the industry, but it sounds like the union management has their head right up there with the MPAA's - deep in their respective asses that is.
Unfortunately, I bet SAG will be just as myopic too.
Are you sure it was really used to record audio? I would think they would want to hear what people say when the car is turned off too. Just running the chip 100% of the time and only recording to disk when there is actual audio would make sense and should be a low enough power draw to avoid draining the car battery if she drives it more than once a week.
Maybe it is some sort of location/gps recorder. The car should not move when turned off, so wiring it to the ignition/accessories circuits makes more sense and the "microphone(s)" were actually gps antennae. Plus, maybe the name on the chip is really "Topo Int" as in short for "topographic intelligence."
I want to know more about how she discovered it. Where was it exactly and what made her decide to look in the first place?
Incorrect - business plans are not from one human to another - they are from one company to another and publicly diseminated.
Get real, companies are groups of people. If the people aren't the ones on the sending and receiving ends of the information then what is? And just who are schematics for? Left that one out because even you couldn't waive your hands fast enough, eh?
First you make a bogus appeal to a higher power by saying, "ask any songwriter" and now you make another one with, "calling a very successful patent and copyright consultant an idiot."
As neither songwriter, nor even a middling IP consultant you need to stop trying to put your false words in their mouths.
If all written material is speech and able to be used freely.
I see, you've lost the argument so you are now trying to change your point. There is nothing that I have said in this entire thread equating "speech" with "able to be used freely," and guess what? Until this red herring post, you hadn't said anything either - see that point I made a few messages back where I said:
he did not say "NOT YOUR speech" he said "NOT speech" period.
Business plans are NOT speech - they are property. They are physical documentation and schematics. Just because they contain words and can be printed or could be considered artistically meritted does NOT mean they are speech
Glad you cleared up your opinion. You are wrong though. Speech is anything meant to communicate ideas and information from one human to another. That's the standard used to define source code as speech while compiled machine code is not. Similarly, schematics and business plans are clearly intended to communicate ideas and information between people. Thus they are speech.
And by the way, even if you pay the poet -- it is still NOT yours! Ask any songwriter.
Glad you cleared that up. But not in the way you think you have. You've just demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of copyright, which reinforces that your other statements on the general topic are also false, or at the very least based on your own guesses rather actual practice and statute. Don't believe me? Go google on the specific phrase I've repeatedly used in this thread, "work for hire." You will find yourself well contradicted by the results.
the Department of Justice is having trouble finding abuses of the USA PATRIOT Act.
The DoJ investigates abuse by the DoJ and finds none.
Sounds like everything is doubleplus good!
Actually, if I hire the poet, as in work for hire, the poem is MINE not his. Regardless, the original poster did not make that distinction, he did not say "NOT YOUR speech" he said "NOT speech" period.
It's even fast enough for HDTV.
Wow, it can do a whole 19.5mbps!
Well, knock me over with a feather!
I never thought I would see that kind of speeds in my home network!
Yeah, I'm sure it runs without a hitch too. Good one.
I expect that it is very stable.
The main nero application does three things:
1) Basic GUI user interaction
2) Read files
3) Compose ATAPI CDB's and send them to the burner
The first two are dead simple, it isn't like Nero's doing any Direct3D rendering, wine's had that level of functionality for years. The third is as close to talking to the raw hardware as you can get, it probably uses Linux's scsi pass-thru driver, thus by-passing the kernel for 99% of the work.
It was reported a while ago that recent versions of Nero run on Linux using recent versions of WINE.
HERE
Baloney. Work for hire does not make the results non-speech. If I hire a poet to write me a poem, that poem is still speech.
do you envisage essentially a return to the days when artists were sponsored by wealthy patrons, who then release the music to the public without worrying about even covering their own costs?
The difference between now and then is that the internet enables thousands, even millions, of people to be patrons and thus releasing it to the public domain is really the only viable way to deliver the end product to the buyers.(*)
For example, instead of just one rich dude forking out $36M to finance a 12-episode fifth season of Star Trek: Enterprise, you can get 3 million people to each fork out $12. OR, maybe only 1 million people pay $12 each while another 1 million who are real die-hard fans pay $24 each because it is worth $2 per episode to them.
We still lack a functional and well-known system for buying entertainment like this, but it is no great leap of logic to see that the internet makes it a viable option. I personally believe that a very lucrative business opportunity exists here - kind of an ebay/paypal/HBO for the commissioning of entertainment. Give it five years or so for the right technology to spread out making such a system accessible to joe-sixpack aol user and his internet-connected tivo-alike.
(*) Not to mention it completely eliminates the problem of "piracy" by redefining it away such that pirates are no longer "stealing" from the creators but would now be facilitating the advertising of the creators' next production.
But here's the question: How are the buyers going to see a return on their investment?
When people buy a movie ticket, a dvd or a music cd, they do not expect to see a "return on their investment" - why would this be any different?
These are business plans, schematics, insider corporate strategy NOT speech - these items are CAD drawings, supplier contracts ... NOT speech ....
You realize that in making that assertation, you are hair's breadth away from claiming that source code is NOT speech, right? Do you really understand the implications of not treating source code as speech?
It's called a "joke". The parent is obviously making fun of the "freedom fries" name, and is not really exhibiting francophobia of any kind.
He didn't get the troll moderation for francophobia, he got it for being an America-Hater(tm).
He was trolling all the dittoheads who thought "Freedom Fries" was a good name.
I have a couple of small differences with what you said:
The value in a copy of some media is in two things: the cost it took to make it the original, and the cost it took to make the copy of it.
That should really be, "The value in a copy of some media is in two things: the market price to make the original and the market price to make the copy of it."
It is a subtle difference but an important one - value is in the eye of the buyer, not the creater. A movie might cost $50M to make, but if it sucks dodo ass, and only ten people pay the $10 ticket price, then its value is only $100. The reverse is also true, if some genius makes a film for $1000 and 50M people buy tickets for it, then the value is $500M. Which leads to my next point:
True artists (and true scientists for that matter) do things for the love of their craft. The only reason they need to be paid for it is so that they can afford to do their craft.
I like to believe in idealism as much as the next guy on slashdot, but I have no faith in a business model founded on idealism. Cold hard cash is what makes the world go 'round. Fortunately for both of our perspectives - getting paid up front for creation works just as well for the idealist as it does for the greediest, pseudo-artist money-grubber.
"Stars" (defined as having the "star power" to draw a large audience) should have no problem asking for, and getting, very large sums of money in exchange for the creation of new art. Sums VASTLY out of proportion with the actual cost to create that art. As long as they can convince people that their art is "worth it" they should have no problem raking in the dough.
I think the ghostscript guys do something similar - they initially release their product under their own not-quite-Free license and then when they release the next version, the prior version gets relicensed. I presume that each new release is funded either through support contracts or directly paid-for enhancements by their commercial and proprietary customers.
At least I think that's how they do it, I haven't looked at it for a few years.
So, all those people in the CherryOS "stolen source code" article going on about how evil GPL copyright infringement is and how PearPC's authors should pursue legal action against the infringers will now presumably support this
Hell, I'm up for personally raiding CherryOS's offices, who's with me?
Where did I say it was going to be re-released as a closed-source-product?
Well known or not, just about any open source software can not be anonymized simply by stripping the original attribution. All it takes is for one copy of the original code to be in google somewhere and anyone can readily connect the dots.
Because of that, Right of attribution is really a minor issue when it comes to Free software.
I'm guessing you should still get paid for whatever you do however?
I think musicians should get paid just the way I am paid:
I go to work, I write software for my client, he pays me for it and then I don't give a rat's ass what he does with it afterwards.
Musicians should record their music, get a buyer or group of buyers to pay for it, give it to them and then not give a rat's ass what they does with it afterwards.
I say to you that the RIAA is to the American music afficinado and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.
Actually copyright is what is making the ripoff of PearPC illegal. Without copyright, you would be free to take any source code, modify it, and pretend you wrote it.
In a world dominated by open-source software, rather than closed-source as it is today, such a ripoff would probably be economically unviable. Its very nature of being closed would probably be a very large disincentive for potential buyers.
At least that is my interpretation of where RMS would like the GPL to lead us. I should probably ask him since I haven't seen him spell it out anywhere and your objection is a common one.
For what it is worth, you are specifically talking about the "right of attribution" which is a part of copyright law, but is mostly seperate from the stuff that the copyright cartel abuses. But there is a question of derived works, at what point does a derived work become original enough that the right of attribution to the original creator becomes silly? Just something to think about.
You might consider releasing your own creations under a creative commons license that preserves the right attribution.
In these cases copyright is a GOOD thing for me, because otherwise I would have been deprived of many of their writings, and that would be a BAD thing.
You are assuming that copyright is the only way "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."
Before the invention of the printing press, the primary method of compensating artists was via comission and patronage. This business model worked well enough because the reach of distribution of the artist's creation was roughly equivalent to the geographic range of buyers willing to pay up front - roughly the same town or city.
The press allowed the reach of distribution to far exceed the range of people willing to pay up front - with printed copies numbering in the thousands it was feasible to sell copies to people in different countries, even on different continents. But
getting payment up front from people in other cities, much less on other continents was technically infeasible. Thus copyright served the purpose of enabling the artist to take a risk and produce his creation ahead of time, with the hope of making up his costs and maybe a profit via sales afterwards.
Today, with the internet and modern financial systems like credit cards, paypal, electronic check drafts, etc the reach of distribution once again equals the range of people potentially willing to pay up front - both are essentially anyone on the net.
So, a modern form of comission is once again a viable business model for the artist. He no longer must take the gamble of creating and then hoping for enough sales to cover his costs and maybe make a profit. Instead, he can offer the product of his labor on commission - people from all over the world can pay into an escrow account for the artist. Once the account's balance reaches his asking price, the artist can release his creation to the public domain. The buyers get the results and the artist is guaranteed a profit - no more risking his livelihood to the fickle taste of society.
All with no need for any sort of copyright law at all.