I don't think everyone here believes you can't steal music, first off.
Speak for yourself. I do believe you can't steal music.
You could steal the original copies. You could steal a famous painting. But "stealing" music? For instance, what IS music? It's nothing but a mathematical concept involving harmonics and sound.
What are words? You can't "steal" what I said. This isn't like the little mermaid where you could steal someone's voice and leave him/her mute.
Non-physical works CANNOT be stolen. Unless you're talking about a PHYSICAL COPY, you cannot steal it by definition. Copying a work? That's completely different. But if it's a non-destructive process, you're not stealing it. You're just COPYING it.
If you want to use an appropriate term for what Microsoft supposedly did with this GPL code, it's called plagiarism. Sure, it's called "stealing" nowadays, but using this word is oversimplifying.
Microsoft is evil. Always has been. Always will be.
Maybe you're very young, but I seem to recall that Microsoft was at one time held as a sort of liberator from IBM's hegemony. I guess it's all a matter of perspective...
Pirates take software from companies which make money for keeping something secret. GPL violators take PUBLIC software from individials or organizations, then make it secret and earn money for it. What you're using (gpl violations) to prove your point is NOT piracy, it's the COMPLETE OPPOSITE!
If copying bits is never wrong, I suppose you won't mind copying the bits that spell out the url for your bank, your username and password and your credit cards to Slashdot.
If copying bits is never wrong, then company data leaks are no big deal.
If copying bits is never wrong, why don't you make a video of your neighbor masturbating and post it to you tube.
OBJECTION! (Cue Phoenix Wright pic)
You're confusing breach of privacy with software/media piracy. Very different things indeed.
Why? Simple. A game was meant to be enjoyed by people. Movies are made to be watched. Music is meant to be listened.
Private personal information is meant to be KEPT SECRET. And that includes a video of your neighbor masturbating, your hotmail userid/password, or your bank account password.
This is why people who tape things that shouldn't be taped often find themselves in trouble (insert your favorite celebrity sex video). The moment they're taping themselves, they're crossing the realm of "private matters" and moving to the public affairs zone. And that's the problem with your analogy.
Yes, there are bits that are more important that others. But you don't say in which way they're meant to be important, and fail to make the difference.
Just in case, I'll specify it for you:
Movies. Games. Software. They're MEANT TO BE DISTRIBUTED TO THE PUBLIC. Passwords. NIPs. Private matters. Private software source code. They're MEANT TO BE KEPT SECRET.
Understand now? The only thing piracy does with bits is removing the economic factor in bits already meant for public distribution. Failing to tell the difference between the two is equating pirates with black hat hackers.
You guys keep differentiating the scenarios simply by saying that one refers to a physical property. You keep neglecting the existence of intangible property.
EXACTLY. It doesn't exist. Who says it's property? The media cartels, the entertainment companies, the guys who cry "piracy! piracy!". Of course, they sell this idea to governments and schools, who end producing mass-marketed sheep like you who believes everything they see on TV.
Even bad hollywood productions still manage to get a profit. Do you know what profit means? It means that you earn more than you invested. And that of course, is AFTER you pay the salaries / agreed amount of money to the director, the actors, the extras, the special effects people, etc. etc. etc. The guys who invested in games / movies / music / etc. GAINED money.
If someone pirates their album, they should congratulate themselves and say "wow, our production is so good that it's the nth top pirated item!". But no, they cry "ah! thieves! My precious money!"
People who claim to be losing money to piracy are forgetting one very important fact: Until it's in their bank accounts, it's NOT their money.
Do yourself a favor and purchase/download the book "The Pirate's dilemma". Then you'd realize how piracy is an implicit market phenomenon instead of the crime you claim it to be.
Download sites offer the advantage that downloaders cannot be charged with uploading or sharing - this is very convenient versus bittorrent, where you need to share to download.
Also, the download is available 100% of the time. To download via bittorrent you need a seeder online.
Giving this software free to pirates is almost a promotion of piracy - if you get same stuff when you pirate, then there is no downside to do it.
There's an obvious flaw with that thinking. Pirates and crackers often work together. Why do you think many people prefer cracked/pirated versions of software (or DVD's) to the originals?
When Windows product activation punished me for reinstalling Windows, I decided to get a cracked copy with no product activation/genuine advantage shit. It was so much easier.
And it's practically useless to restrict security updates from "pirates". Pirated windows users who really care about security, just pirate a copy of your-favorite-antivirus product.
The people who really are hurt with this are Joe users who for some reason have a pirated Windows on their PCs. They either don't know, or don't care.
I'm pretty sure this security decision is just a PR-facade to tell MSFT shareholders that they're not promoting piracy.
Pretend I know nothing about Pollster (which happens to be true). Why should I care whether they've faked results? By that, I mean: do they research options of favorite flavors of cotton candy, or public support for health care reform, or the best style of car, or...? In other words, do they do stuff that actually matters?
I would argue that goto is great when used correctly---for jumping to a cleanup routine at the end of a complex function that you jump to when anything goes fatally wrong.
This is where the duct tape programmer fails: Design Patterns. What you just described is called RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization - look it up in wikipedia), and it SIMPLIFIES programming while also saving you coding and debugging time.
Clean up code should go in the destructors, so they can be called when an exception is thrown. Oh, I guess duct tape programmers are masters at writing exception-safe code, right?...right?
If a determinate record is being edited, you set the "lockedby" field in the record, and a "lockexpire" field (say, 30 mins). This is set when the user starts editing the page. This could be done in the same table, or in a specific table for locking purposes. This specific table would have the following fields: table, recordnumber,user,expires
When the user finishes, the data is written and the locks are removed.
If another user tries to edit a record, the software checks if that record is being "locked" by another user, and posts an error message.
To solve the problem of users trying to access the same record at the same time, you simply insert the "locking" queries inside a transaction. Ta-da!
There's a more important matter in here. This isn't about unauthorized material reproduction, but unauthorized material reproduction with the INTENT of making a profit.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think everyone here believes you can't steal music, first off.
Speak for yourself. I do believe you can't steal music.
You could steal the original copies. You could steal a famous painting. But "stealing" music? For instance, what IS music? It's nothing but a mathematical concept involving harmonics and sound.
What are words? You can't "steal" what I said. This isn't like the little mermaid where you could steal someone's voice and leave him/her mute.
Non-physical works CANNOT be stolen. Unless you're talking about a PHYSICAL COPY, you cannot steal it by definition. Copying a work? That's completely different. But if it's a non-destructive process, you're not stealing it. You're just COPYING it.
If you want to use an appropriate term for what Microsoft supposedly did with this GPL code, it's called plagiarism. Sure, it's called "stealing" nowadays, but using this word is oversimplifying.
Microsoft is evil. Always has been. Always will be.
Maybe you're very young, but I seem to recall that Microsoft was at one time held as a sort of liberator from IBM's hegemony. I guess it's all a matter of perspective...
Bill Gates' open letter to hobbyists. Any questions?
Dungeons and Dragons meetings.
Nice try, but you're using a counterexample.
Pirates take software from companies which make money for keeping something secret. GPL violators take PUBLIC software from individials or organizations, then make it secret and earn money for it. What you're using (gpl violations) to prove your point is NOT piracy, it's the COMPLETE OPPOSITE!
Congratulations on your perfect analogy. Welcome to my friends list.
If copying bits is never wrong, I suppose you won't mind copying the bits that spell out the url for your bank, your username and password and your credit cards to Slashdot.
If copying bits is never wrong, then company data leaks are no big deal.
If copying bits is never wrong, why don't you make a video of your neighbor masturbating and post it to you tube.
OBJECTION! (Cue Phoenix Wright pic)
You're confusing breach of privacy with software/media piracy. Very different things indeed.
Why? Simple. A game was meant to be enjoyed by people. Movies are made to be watched. Music is meant to be listened.
Private personal information is meant to be KEPT SECRET. And that includes a video of your neighbor masturbating, your hotmail userid/password, or your bank account password.
This is why people who tape things that shouldn't be taped often find themselves in trouble (insert your favorite celebrity sex video). The moment they're taping themselves, they're crossing the realm of "private matters" and moving to the public affairs zone. And that's the problem with your analogy.
Yes, there are bits that are more important that others. But you don't say in which way they're meant to be important, and fail to make the difference.
Just in case, I'll specify it for you:
Movies. Games. Software. They're MEANT TO BE DISTRIBUTED TO THE PUBLIC.
Passwords. NIPs. Private matters. Private software source code. They're MEANT TO BE KEPT SECRET.
Understand now? The only thing piracy does with bits is removing the economic factor in bits already meant for public distribution. Failing to tell the difference between the two is equating pirates with black hat hackers.
You guys keep differentiating the scenarios simply by saying that one refers to a physical property. You keep neglecting the existence of intangible property.
EXACTLY. It doesn't exist. Who says it's property? The media cartels, the entertainment companies, the guys who cry "piracy! piracy!". Of course, they sell this idea to governments and schools, who end producing mass-marketed sheep like you who believes everything they see on TV.
Even bad hollywood productions still manage to get a profit. Do you know what profit means? It means that you earn more than you invested. And that of course, is AFTER you pay the salaries / agreed amount of money to the director, the actors, the extras, the special effects people, etc. etc. etc. The guys who invested in games / movies / music / etc. GAINED money.
If someone pirates their album, they should congratulate themselves and say "wow, our production is so good that it's the nth top pirated item!". But no, they cry "ah! thieves! My precious money!"
People who claim to be losing money to piracy are forgetting one very important fact: Until it's in their bank accounts, it's NOT their money.
Do yourself a favor and purchase/download the book "The Pirate's dilemma". Then you'd realize how piracy is an implicit market phenomenon instead of the crime you claim it to be.
Download sites offer the advantage that downloaders cannot be charged with uploading or sharing - this is very convenient versus bittorrent, where you need to share to download.
Also, the download is available 100% of the time. To download via bittorrent you need a seeder online.
What if Windows said uh-oh you have Linux installed on another partition, disabling Windows...
Oh, YES PLEASE!
That's a new record for a Microsoft product. Lesser of two evils? Okay, occasionally. But a lesser of three!? There's hope for them yet!
Why am I suddenly reminded of the game "Eternal Darkness"?
Giving this software free to pirates is almost a promotion of piracy - if you get same stuff when you pirate, then there is no downside to do it.
There's an obvious flaw with that thinking. Pirates and crackers often work together. Why do you think many people prefer cracked/pirated versions of software (or DVD's) to the originals?
When Windows product activation punished me for reinstalling Windows, I decided to get a cracked copy with no product activation/genuine advantage shit. It was so much easier.
And it's practically useless to restrict security updates from "pirates". Pirated windows users who really care about security, just pirate a copy of your-favorite-antivirus product.
The people who really are hurt with this are Joe users who for some reason have a pirated Windows on their PCs. They either don't know, or don't care.
I'm pretty sure this security decision is just a PR-facade to tell MSFT shareholders that they're not promoting piracy.
Pretend I know nothing about Pollster (which happens to be true). Why should I care whether they've faked results? By that, I mean: do they research options of favorite flavors of cotton candy, or public support for health care reform, or the best style of car, or...? In other words, do they do stuff that actually matters?
Faked polls = astroturfing.
Need I say more?
Correction: What I meant to say was: "What you just described can be done with RAII".
I would argue that goto is great when used correctly---for jumping to a cleanup routine at the end of a complex function that you jump to when anything goes fatally wrong.
This is where the duct tape programmer fails: Design Patterns. What you just described is called RAII (Resource Acquisition Is Initialization - look it up in wikipedia), and it SIMPLIFIES programming while also saving you coding and debugging time.
Clean up code should go in the destructors, so they can be called when an exception is thrown. Oh, I guess duct tape programmers are masters at writing exception-safe code, right? ...right?
If a determinate record is being edited, you set the "lockedby" field in the record, and a "lockexpire" field (say, 30 mins). This is set when the user starts editing the page. This could be done in the same table, or in a specific table for locking purposes. This specific table would have the following fields:
table, recordnumber,user,expires
When the user finishes, the data is written and the locks are removed.
If another user tries to edit a record, the software checks if that record is being "locked" by another user, and posts an error message.
To solve the problem of users trying to access the same record at the same time, you simply insert the "locking" queries inside a transaction. Ta-da!
News: Vulnerability in google chrome
News: Vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox
News: Some part of Internet explorer is safe!
See? :)
Sure. To a consumer, Linux = hacker security risk. Because it's true.
Au contraire, my friend. Linux = hacker / security tool. It all depends on how well you play your cards.
It's going to generate waste heat, anyway. The key is that it's not producing CO2, which adds greenhouse effect to the heat produced.
Salt water is nasty, evil shit.
You should've seen it when it was filled with primordial soup a thousand million years ago, and then came the primitive lifeforms, eeew!
What about linking to anonymous.coward.worships.satan.com?
The problem is when we encounter a jerk who's always wrong. And it's usually the owner of the company >.<
There's a more important matter in here. This isn't about unauthorized material reproduction, but unauthorized material reproduction with the INTENT of making a profit.
Sony's screwed.
Sounds more like "how to hire a self important misanthrope" to me.
Where do I sign? :D
Screw the asteroids! Just give me a fricking red button.
- Dr. Evil
Don't worry, the time travelers will give us the technology JUST IN TIME.