The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet
And we gave deadly gas to Saddam Hussein, what does this have to do with deciding the proper governance of root servers?
Aside from the politics and issues surrounding.xxx, that the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet and the root servers (several of which are outside of the US, albeit under ultimate control of the US)?
I think a lot of people disagree. Aside from the.xxx tld, they have given control of.com to very unscrupulous people who intentionally violated their agreement and broke routing worldwide for profit. They just gave control of.com to that same company for another 7 years with no competitive bidding and no public discourse. They have consistently failed to implement the hundreds of tld recommendations from IANA over the last decade. They are not democratically elected, have no representatives from most of the large players that actually run the internet, and have no transparent processes. The changed their own charter and removed all democratically elected members. They have consistently gouged companies around the world for "yet another" registration as they start yet another.com TLD clone for profit. They have done nothing about cyber-squatters or respecting international trademarks. That is not exactly capable care taking.
As to the root servers, most of them (physical machines) are located, paid for, and maintained by foreign companies and reside outside the U.S.
Why is there no consideration that other governments jockeying for position and control over DNS and the root servers could and probably will actually provide a greater chance for problems, mismanagement, miscommunication, and so on?
Because by distributing responsibility you need a majority of countries to agree before they can really mess things up, as opposed to just the US, which is already messing things up and is likely to do so more in the future.
Why is there this concept floated in every one of these articles that makes it seem as if nations will have no choice but to create their "own" internets, disconnected from the "primary" internet, simply because of DNS? I'd say the stupidity and arrogance of disconnecting from the internet and making your own, whether out of principle or some perceived need to have a new top level domain, trumps any stupidity and arrogance of the internet's original creator and caretaker retaining control...
The root server list is simply an agreed upon standard, decided by the U.S. and incompatible with other standards, more or less by definition. If the whole world agrees to move the standard in one direction, not chosen by the US, and the US disagrees, who is it that is being arrogant and stupid?
To put it another way, if you were the minister of technology in the Iraq, Russia, or Chile would you recommend that your government invest billions in and build a technological infrastructure for all communications within and outside your country upon which your economy is dependent, if you knew a political shift in Washington could completely cripple that architecture? Would you not feel safer if it required a majority of countries to agree to cripple your infrastructure and if you were given the opportunity to have representation when decisions were made?
Would you feel the same way if the U.S. was investing in this architecture, but Poland was the one making all the decisions and running the root list. Would you think it would be fair to pay Poland for a listing so theirs can connect to you on your network with your hardware using their network and their hardware? I'm serious, if Poland were running the root servers would you advocate that they remain in control or would you prefer the U.N. run the root server system?
if.xxx comes to be, then material that now stays buried under the weight of "public decency" will suddenly have a legitimized place to pitch a tent, which will, one suspects, result in generally wider availability of more of it. (E.g., a red-light district puts more prostitutes on view.)
Umm, have you ever tried doing a web search? This town has more brothels in it than it does other businesses combined. You see, porn is legal, unlike prostitution (in most of the U.S.). And it is getting to the point where it's hard to find bagels because for every bagel shop there is a "girls doing nasty things with bagels" shop that you might stumble into. The idea of moving porn all to one TLD would simply be a huge boon for accurate discovery of both porn and everything else and anyone who is arguing against that, is most likely either simple minded or arguing from an ulterior motive.
Yeah, because all the other telecommunications and trade regulated by the U.N. is censored and controlled by China and Iran. Err, oh wait, no it isn't. You place your faith, and the safety of the internet into the hands of an undemocratically appointed body of bureaucrats who answer to U.S. politicians and are buddies with and appointees of a bunch of greedy corporations. These are the guys who just handed over control of the.com domain, without any bidding or any public debate to a bunch of scum bags for the next seven years. These people are making a ton of money selling names, names other people make up. It's like if there was a single phone book listing, run by a company in the U.S. and if you make up a new business you have to buy a listing in it from them or no one will be able to call you, even after you paid for a phone line and installed all the phones yourself. All of this over networks and servers built, paid for , and administered by these foreign companies.
And somehow you think trusting that these people will start to run things appropriately, start real bidding for TLDs, start obeying international trademark laws, start implementing the hundreds of TLDs that IANA has been recommending for a decade, and will stop scrapping projects at the whim of U.S. bureaucrats is a good idea. And you believe, for some reason, things will not get worse and more corrupt. And you believe that a UN committee made up of, you know the countries that built, own, and operate the networks and servers that make up the internet would be less fair and representative and do a worse job. I'm going to have to conclude either you have no idea what you are talking about, or you are one of the most blindly nationalist people I have ever met.
...because you have no clue about what you are talking about?
So seriously, get your own frakking networks and services, you Kato Kaelins. No one's asking you to stay.
They have their own networks, services, and servers. We have been charging them for permission to use them with the root list the U.S. maintains. They have had enough, the question is, what will businesses do when the US does not play ball and companies need to pay the US to register a domain on their server, and the UN to register a domain for the rest of the world? I suspect US specific companies will register there, foreign companies will register with the UN, and global companies will attempt to register both. This will further isolate the US from the rest from the world, which will suck for those of us who live here.
There is a reason why important jobs generally require years of experience...not just an education.
Other countries have been running root servers for many years, they just have been making sure the domains ICANN is running are in synch with the U.S. root server list. Also, most countries have been managing their own country specific TLD servers and allocation of domains for many years. Exactly what other experience, other than implementing a UN agreed upon, rather than US agreed upon root list would you like them to have?
Why wouldn't these people be in favour of an.xxx domain? Hell, wouldn't it make it easier to block sites at work or home?
You're failing to understand puritanism. These people are not interested in blocking porn so they don't have to see it. They are interested in making porn illegal so you can't see it. Anything that legitimizes porn, or makes it less offensive and less of a problem for the general populace is something they are against. Similarly, puritans are not against gay marriage because they are afraid they might be forced to marry someone of the same sex. They are against it because they are terrified that somewhere, someone might be having butt sex and only by acting like complete jackasses can they advertise to everyone that they, do not want butt sex (I suspect because many of them secretly do and are ashamed of that fact).
"...because with open source you can reduce IT operating costs without any commercial lock-in" That's overreaching, and I say this with complete ambivalence to all operating systems.
Open source means they are not locked into a single vendor for upgrades, customization, support, or even new purchases. The fact that software is open source means that you have access to the code, which further means so do other people acting on your behalf. I'm not sure how this is really reaching. I suppose their are licenses some people would consider open source that don't offer these advantages (shared source and the like) but in general, I'd say he is right on.
And ABC (Disney) is the only TV network willing to sell their TV Shows, Pixar only willing to debut a few (very cool) shorts.
ABC was the only network even notified that Apple was going to start selling TV shows. I'm sure they are now in negotiations with the other networks as every waits to see if these things sell. As for Pixar, all they make are shorts and movies and realistically not that many people want to buy lower quality versions of movies online just yet. The video service is aimed at the instant gratification "I missed an episode" crowd.
use BitTorrent to get the updates for World of Warcraft. I'm not guilty of 'piracy' for that.
If you're not a criminal, terrorist why are you downloading war simulations via a communist "sharing" scheme? Now if you just mention civil rights we can be certain and send the goon squad, pronto.
I'll reserve my judgement for when I find out if the Adobe Creative Suite (preferrably version 2) will run on it.
CS 2 barely runs on Windows as it is. If you can, I'd hold off on CS 2 and stick with CS 1, at least until some of the daily, easily reproducible crashes and huge memory leaks are taken care of.
Widescreen forces me to use more width, when in reality I never need more width, I only ever need more height. Never am I reading a webpage and think, "Damn, if only this computer were a little wider."
Reading your comment makes me immediately think, "must be a Windows user" since Windows is the only OS I know of whose dominant use paradigm is one program at a time, which takes up the whole screen (even if it does not need to). I've had a widescreen laptop about a year now, and I don't think I've ever watched a DVD on it. It is usually plugged into an external monitor with windows from various programs laid out across all the available real-estate on both. Widescreen is great if you want to display multiple terminals, editors windows, web pages, etc. on the screen at the same time. I often work with at least one window viewing reference information, one or more editing something, and one displaying the results of what I'm working on. It is a lot easier to display multiple pages side-by-side when you have a wider screen, hence I'm appreciative of the widescreen. I guess if you only want to use it to display web pages and you never want to view multiple web pages at the same time, well maybe widescreen is not for you.
And still there are many PDF documents out there that can only be read properly with Adobe Acrobat.
Do you have any examples? I never use Adobe PDF reader and I have never run across a PDF that has not read properly using preview.app. In fact the only problems reading PDFs I've ever run across were a problem with some PDFs made using an old version of Adobe PDF writer, when read with one version of PDF reader (an old bug long since fixed) and some people having problems with the alpha channel when using old versions of xpdf (which were fixed by upgrading).
It is fine to say you think Adobe is breaking the spec with their reader/writer combination, but if so I've never seen any evidence that they are doing so intentionally and I've never had a single problem reading any PDF with the clean-room, spec compliant PDF reader I'm using. As far as Adobe "retaining mindshare" there are a whole lot of PDFs out there that are not generated with Adobe writer and there is no easy way for them to embrace/extinguish that market. Unless you have some sort of proof that they are breaking the spec, and doing so intentionally, then all you are doing is speculating and your speculation does not seem corroborated by my own experience.
It's a lot like the people complaining about the smell in New Jersey. Some people say it's OK once you get used to it, the rest complain, but either way everyone and their grandchildren will be long dead by the time it smells any better.
what I wonder is this: if the Original IP belonged to Caldera (and now, through aquisition, DR-DOS inc) aren't they free to do with it -and with derived products as they see fit?
No, they aren't. Here's a simple example. I start an GPL project and put a lot of code into it. The copyright is mine, licensed under the GPL to others. I can do anything, they must abide by the license. Another person contributes some bug fixes and features. Because of the license, they must distribute the whole work under the GPL as well. At this point I cannot do anything I want with this new work, that is an amalgamation of both our efforts. That second person still retains copyright on the portions they wrote. If I want to re-license it or do anything else with it I must either get their permission, or rip out and rewrite all the code that is not mine (and to which I don't have the copyright). To look at it in terms of other intellectual property, If I write a book and distribute it under the GPL and someone writes and additional chapter to flesh out the middle, I don't suddenly gain copyright of the chapter they wrote, even though the new work as a whole is a derivative of my original work.
The Mini had thicker protection, yet Apple still had a policy of replacing screens for those-who-bitch-enough. They ship the Nano with even less protection.
Ahh yes, the old, "they were kind to the feeble minded so they are responsible for everyone being dumb" attack. If a new car from GM has windows that are not as good at standing up to abuse that they should not be subjected to in the first place as their old ones, are they then more guilty when you do something dumb and damage it?
The point was that the user did not modify the windshield or the wipers. Hard to draw a parallel (but since you tried...) between a car windshield and a Nano, you don't normally put a car in your pocket.
I don't expose the screens of my electronic devices to hard, metal objects and agitation. I also don't throw rocks at my windshield or drive through barbed wire fences. Anyone who does either is an idiot and probably thinks pistols are for scratching their genitals with. If these morons win their suit It is a victory for greedy idiots everywhere.
But, is anyone saying that they didn't include the original copyright info?
I read a different article than this on on this case. It implied that they changed the copyright info, which is worse yet as it is plagiarism. It stated that they were not including a copy of the license or offering a way to get the source (both of which violate the license).
For what I do I've never had the "need" to have source code, but there have been times I enjoyed learning how someone made an app.
You've never come across software that does not have a feature you want or need to accomplish your task? Maybe as a home user you don't have as many needs as some of us, and almost certainly not as many as businesses and large institutions. One important point of open source is it guarantees that changes can be made, if necessary and that they can be made by multiple people/groups. If the author of closed source software dies, or his company goes out of business, you can be really screwed. No matter how much money you put into buying a system, it may be completely impossible to fix a bug or add a feature. Even assuming the person of company supplying your software stays in business if you want/need a feature or bug fix they can charge whatever they want and your only option is to dump the software entirely or pay up. That is one reason why some people/companies/organizations need open source. It provides security and competitive bidding on future work.
All that said, how does it become an ethical issue for you? The way I look at it is that it's "nice" and even "helpful" to see the source, but if someone took the time to write an application it should up to them to share it. I don't know if I can say that they need to or should. Kind of like an inventor sharing his patent. I know legally they have a choice...
If someone patents a device, lets say a machine to generate limitless energy, they have to disclose the details of how it works in order to get the protections of that patent. In this way, the knowledge is preserved for all mankind. If, on the other hand, someone copyrights a program they gain the benefits of copyright but it is entirely possible the inner workings of that program will be lost forever. Worse yet, devices that rely upon that software and information encoded by that software may be lost along with it. Take a look at video games, how many classic games can no longer be played on any current hardware or software? Or take a look at closed formats like.doc. I have files from as little as six years ago that cannot be opened by any currently available software. Those files contain possibly valuable information, but it is likely lost for good. If that information is supposed to be owned by the public (government files) I'd say that is unethical. Yet another way open source is an ethical issue, is where transparency is important. Without open code it is impossible to verify the operation of software. No blackbox testing can be comprehensive enough to determine every possible contingency. Voting software, software used by the government and criminal justice system, and software critical to maintaining the health and safety of people needs to have the source code available for review. For voting, DNA testing, or controlling the floodgates at a major dam, open source software is an ethical necessity.
They are trying to charge $45 for what would otherwise be free. But why would this be illegal? If they have not modified any of the software, how would this even violate the licenses?
You're confusing "free as in beer" with "free as in freedom." The online utilities they are copying and trying to sell are "free as in freedom" and they cost only a small service, that is if you redistribute them you have to include the original copyright info, license, and offer to provide a copy of the source. That is the "price" of GPL software. If you don't pay that price you have no right to copy the software for any purpose. It is just the same as any other license, whether I require you to pay me $5, sing me a song, or massage my feet in exchange for the right to copy something I own the copyright to. If you don't pay the price you don't get to copy the software. They copied the the software and are selling those copies, which is all fine, but they have to pay the price or what they are doing is nothing more than commercial copyright infringement.
Would you feel comfortable writing a PDF reader in the USA?
Hmm, in addition to the Adobe reader, there are Preview.app (Apple), Foxit, Xpdf, ghostview, eXPert, Ansyr, PDF+, risc-PDF, Net-It Reader, PSP PDF Reader, and probably a lot more that I don't know about. There are PDF writing systems for Windows (MS is building a writer into Word for the next version), OS X (built into the OS, for all applications), and for Xwindows (open source used by most Linux, BSD, etc.) How many of those do you think were made in the USA?
There are still patents, copyrighted interfaces, trademarks, DRM issues
To address you points in order, there are no patents encumbering PDF that anyone knows of, while you can copyright an interface, who cares, that does not stop anyone from writing their own interface and reader software is all pretty similar, "Adobe PDF" is trademarked, but PDF itself is as open as XML for trademark issues, and DRM issues are complete non-issues so long as there is no breaking of encryption, so presumably so long as your system does not intentionally break encryption without the key, you are fine. The nothing stops you from copying when the "do not copy" bit is set and in fact several software packages freely available do just that.
Comparing PDF to.doc is just stupid. One is a closed, undocumented format that is partially reverse engineered and the other is an open, published standard championed as such by the company that invented it. DOC has one official writer and two readers on only 2 platforms and it cost money on all but one. It has some partial read/writers on various OS's. PDF has closed and open source readers and writers free and commercial on pretty much every platform you can think of including handhelds and game consoles. I suspect the only reason PDF gets such a bad reputation is because most users use Windows combined with Adobe reader, which combine to make an experience akin to stabbing yourself in the head with a fork. Just because some software for a format sucks, however, does not mean the format itself sucks. It works wonderfully on a lot of OS's with a lot of good software.
I disagree with you for two reasons. First, If one person can instantly access the information and the other needs to wait days for a hard copy, then that second person is at an unnecessary disadvantage. This means companies doing business with the government by say, getting bid information, will be at a disadvantage if they don't pay money to particular corporation, this is unfair.
Second, file formats and protocols are not only about obtaining information, but also submitting information. It is a two-way communication, and if that communication is biased in favor of people who buy particular software from a particular company, that is undue favoritism by the government. There is no reason for the government to wait until there is a large problem to try to solve this sort of thing. It is very appropriate to specify up-front the formats and protocols that will be used for communication and take bids from vendors willing to supply the necessary gear, provided those formats have no barriers to prevent a given company from bidding. It is wholly appropriate to say, "we want editors and readers for the OpenOffice format, since MS, Novell, or anyone else can write such a system and that system is defined. It is inappropriate to say, we want editors and readers for format X, as defined by how product Y writes it, even though no one is allowed to see exactly what that secret format is, which is the state of affairs in most places right now.
Rubbing keys on a car windshield is not normal wear and tear, nor is taking a bullet through the crotch of your Levi's.
Ahh, then your argument is that it is normal and reasonable to expect the screen on a piece of electronics to hold up to being rubbed against keys and change. That is to say, that is a normal use. Well, my GPS does not hold up to it, nor does my telephone. That is why I'm not dumb enough to store either in my pocket with my keys and change unless it has a cover on it. I guess we just disagree about what constitutes normal use, don't we?
If your windshield became scratched by your windshield wipers, as factory installed, then yes, it is defective (or the wipers are).
Apple installed keys and change in your pocket, weird.
Dimitri Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada for writing software while in Russia which decoded e-books which were a form of Adobe PDFs.
Right, because he broke the trivial encryption on encrypted PDFs. He could just as easily be arrested for breaking encryption on text files. That does not make either PDF or TXT closed formats. Both are open, published, and have multiple implementations of readers and writers..DOC, on the other hand, is not only closed, but also ever changing and intentionally obscured. Yup Adobe are a bunch of asshats and should be slapped around, but that has nothing to do with the PDF format which they created and in no way makes PDFs less open.
No, because those scratches don't represent irreversible damage to a core function...
So if I rub keys and change against the windshield and obscure the view they owe me money?
...and it's not due to a known defect in the product... the case of the Nano, there is a defect that the manufacturer knew about, that affects a core function, that they chose to ignore and not disclose.
GM knows rubbing keys on the windshield will scratch it., that is just as much a defect as the iPod has. Hell, Levi knows bullets will go right through the crotch of their jeans, impairing their ability to keep my junk covered. Is that another defect?
Hypothetically: What if MS pulls it off and puts out the best OS that the Linux guys have ever seen. Let's say it's the Longhorn Server, WinFS, Monad, and everything MS has been touting works... Will the Linux guys at that point stop bashing MS? Will you consider using the MS OS?
You're attempting to formulate a "what if" scenario, but as often happens you've oversimplified things on such a scale that it is meaningless. Linux admins do consider using MS products now, and deploy them occasionally where appropriate. As for "what if MS put out a better OS" well, I guess that depends upon what you mean by a better OS. The case for Linux vs. MS is both technological and business. Suppose the next version of Windows is technologically on par with, or better than, Linux as a server. It will still suffer from not being free of cost, not being customizable by the end user, locking the user into a single supplier for a critical component of a system, and putting customers in the position of having to deal with a company renowned for putting it's customers out of business using unfair tactics. No smart businessman wants any of those things. Even so, in some cases it makes sense to put up with those problems, and that is what smart administrators do.
For example, If I run a smaller business and need specialty software only available commercially on Windows and I don't have the resources and contacts necessary to build a open solution on an open platform, then it makes a whole lot of business sense to buy a Windows machine, at least for that one component. If, on the other hand, I'm working for IBM or a company with similar resources, there is rarely any compelling reason to go with MS for anything, since the resources are available to get a better long-term ROI and TOC by using open source solutions. Why lock oneself into paying a competitor every year, with no competitive bidding, when for a slightly higher initial investment a free alternative, with free development, and some free support can be created, that also places IBM in the position of being a market leader in that particular niche and ties into the bread and butter services business.
A good analogy might be, you invent a new desert pastry and it needs a fruit filling. You can use oranges, which you can get from any number of vendors, or grow yourself or you can use MSFruit which is patented and you can only buy from one supplier. Even supposing MS gains the edge in harvesting and processing technologies, does it make sense to sign a contract to use them as your sole supplier and agree to never alter your recipe or does it make sense to invest in better harvesting and processing technologies and keep using oranges so that you can take competitive bids and experiment with new recipes?
Of course, as you said, this is all theoretical. MS is so far behind other solutions in so many areas that they have not even tried to address that it is unlikely MS will catch up any time soon. The fact that they keep introducing anti-features designed to benefit MS as a company and cost customers extra money somewhat counters other advances they make. They pay a lot of attention to bullet points and making things "good enough" while not really achieving that for a good portion of users. They have a few nice features that I'd say are better and more usable than anyone else, but at the same time they are really really behind in other areas and falling further behind all the time. Don't call me when they have pipes and scripting that work without writing any code and from the GUI. Don't call me when they allow programs to offer services to other programs. Don't call me when they fix the disaster they call managing programs. Don't call me when they no longer expose network services by default. Don't call me when they move to open APIs. Don't call me when they open and document their formats and support other open formats. Don't call me when they have workable non-admin accounts. Don't call me when they make the UI responsive during heavy multit
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The US, and the massive US military-industrial complex many despise, was essentially solely responsible for creating the internet
And we gave deadly gas to Saddam Hussein, what does this have to do with deciding the proper governance of root servers?
Aside from the politics and issues surrounding .xxx, that the US has proven itself to be a capable caretaker of the internet and the root servers (several of which are outside of the US, albeit under ultimate control of the US)?
I think a lot of people disagree. Aside from the .xxx tld, they have given control of .com to very unscrupulous people who intentionally violated their agreement and broke routing worldwide for profit. They just gave control of .com to that same company for another 7 years with no competitive bidding and no public discourse. They have consistently failed to implement the hundreds of tld recommendations from IANA over the last decade. They are not democratically elected, have no representatives from most of the large players that actually run the internet, and have no transparent processes. The changed their own charter and removed all democratically elected members. They have consistently gouged companies around the world for "yet another" registration as they start yet another .com TLD clone for profit. They have done nothing about cyber-squatters or respecting international trademarks. That is not exactly capable care taking.
As to the root servers, most of them (physical machines) are located, paid for, and maintained by foreign companies and reside outside the U.S.
Why is there no consideration that other governments jockeying for position and control over DNS and the root servers could and probably will actually provide a greater chance for problems, mismanagement, miscommunication, and so on?
Because by distributing responsibility you need a majority of countries to agree before they can really mess things up, as opposed to just the US, which is already messing things up and is likely to do so more in the future.
Why is there this concept floated in every one of these articles that makes it seem as if nations will have no choice but to create their "own" internets, disconnected from the "primary" internet, simply because of DNS? I'd say the stupidity and arrogance of disconnecting from the internet and making your own, whether out of principle or some perceived need to have a new top level domain, trumps any stupidity and arrogance of the internet's original creator and caretaker retaining control...
The root server list is simply an agreed upon standard, decided by the U.S. and incompatible with other standards, more or less by definition. If the whole world agrees to move the standard in one direction, not chosen by the US, and the US disagrees, who is it that is being arrogant and stupid?
To put it another way, if you were the minister of technology in the Iraq, Russia, or Chile would you recommend that your government invest billions in and build a technological infrastructure for all communications within and outside your country upon which your economy is dependent, if you knew a political shift in Washington could completely cripple that architecture? Would you not feel safer if it required a majority of countries to agree to cripple your infrastructure and if you were given the opportunity to have representation when decisions were made?
Would you feel the same way if the U.S. was investing in this architecture, but Poland was the one making all the decisions and running the root list. Would you think it would be fair to pay Poland for a listing so theirs can connect to you on your network with your hardware using their network and their hardware? I'm serious, if Poland were running the root servers would you advocate that they remain in control or would you prefer the U.N. run the root server system?
What logic. Thanks for making such a well thought out and reasoned argument instead of just reacting emotionally and making a jackass of yourself.
if .xxx comes to be, then material that now stays buried under the weight of "public decency" will suddenly have a legitimized place to pitch a tent, which will, one suspects, result in generally wider availability of more of it. (E.g., a red-light district puts more prostitutes on view.)
Umm, have you ever tried doing a web search? This town has more brothels in it than it does other businesses combined. You see, porn is legal, unlike prostitution (in most of the U.S.). And it is getting to the point where it's hard to find bagels because for every bagel shop there is a "girls doing nasty things with bagels" shop that you might stumble into. The idea of moving porn all to one TLD would simply be a huge boon for accurate discovery of both porn and everything else and anyone who is arguing against that, is most likely either simple minded or arguing from an ulterior motive.
Yeah, because all the other telecommunications and trade regulated by the U.N. is censored and controlled by China and Iran. Err, oh wait, no it isn't. You place your faith, and the safety of the internet into the hands of an undemocratically appointed body of bureaucrats who answer to U.S. politicians and are buddies with and appointees of a bunch of greedy corporations. These are the guys who just handed over control of the .com domain, without any bidding or any public debate to a bunch of scum bags for the next seven years. These people are making a ton of money selling names, names other people make up. It's like if there was a single phone book listing, run by a company in the U.S. and if you make up a new business you have to buy a listing in it from them or no one will be able to call you, even after you paid for a phone line and installed all the phones yourself. All of this over networks and servers built, paid for , and administered by these foreign companies.
And somehow you think trusting that these people will start to run things appropriately, start real bidding for TLDs, start obeying international trademark laws, start implementing the hundreds of TLDs that IANA has been recommending for a decade, and will stop scrapping projects at the whim of U.S. bureaucrats is a good idea. And you believe, for some reason, things will not get worse and more corrupt. And you believe that a UN committee made up of, you know the countries that built, own, and operate the networks and servers that make up the internet would be less fair and representative and do a worse job. I'm going to have to conclude either you have no idea what you are talking about, or you are one of the most blindly nationalist people I have ever met.
I liken the situation as such.
...because you have no clue about what you are talking about?
So seriously, get your own frakking networks and services, you Kato Kaelins. No one's asking you to stay.
They have their own networks, services, and servers. We have been charging them for permission to use them with the root list the U.S. maintains. They have had enough, the question is, what will businesses do when the US does not play ball and companies need to pay the US to register a domain on their server, and the UN to register a domain for the rest of the world? I suspect US specific companies will register there, foreign companies will register with the UN, and global companies will attempt to register both. This will further isolate the US from the rest from the world, which will suck for those of us who live here.
There is a reason why important jobs generally require years of experience...not just an education.
Other countries have been running root servers for many years, they just have been making sure the domains ICANN is running are in synch with the U.S. root server list. Also, most countries have been managing their own country specific TLD servers and allocation of domains for many years. Exactly what other experience, other than implementing a UN agreed upon, rather than US agreed upon root list would you like them to have?
Why wouldn't these people be in favour of an .xxx domain? Hell, wouldn't it make it easier to block sites at work or home?
You're failing to understand puritanism. These people are not interested in blocking porn so they don't have to see it. They are interested in making porn illegal so you can't see it. Anything that legitimizes porn, or makes it less offensive and less of a problem for the general populace is something they are against. Similarly, puritans are not against gay marriage because they are afraid they might be forced to marry someone of the same sex. They are against it because they are terrified that somewhere, someone might be having butt sex and only by acting like complete jackasses can they advertise to everyone that they, do not want butt sex (I suspect because many of them secretly do and are ashamed of that fact).
"...because with open source you can reduce IT operating costs without any commercial lock-in" That's overreaching, and I say this with complete ambivalence to all operating systems.
Open source means they are not locked into a single vendor for upgrades, customization, support, or even new purchases. The fact that software is open source means that you have access to the code, which further means so do other people acting on your behalf. I'm not sure how this is really reaching. I suppose their are licenses some people would consider open source that don't offer these advantages (shared source and the like) but in general, I'd say he is right on.
And ABC (Disney) is the only TV network willing to sell their TV Shows, Pixar only willing to debut a few (very cool) shorts.
ABC was the only network even notified that Apple was going to start selling TV shows. I'm sure they are now in negotiations with the other networks as every waits to see if these things sell. As for Pixar, all they make are shorts and movies and realistically not that many people want to buy lower quality versions of movies online just yet. The video service is aimed at the instant gratification "I missed an episode" crowd.
use BitTorrent to get the updates for World of Warcraft. I'm not guilty of 'piracy' for that.
If you're not a criminal, terrorist why are you downloading war simulations via a communist "sharing" scheme? Now if you just mention civil rights we can be certain and send the goon squad, pronto.
I'll reserve my judgement for when I find out if the Adobe Creative Suite (preferrably version 2) will run on it.
CS 2 barely runs on Windows as it is. If you can, I'd hold off on CS 2 and stick with CS 1, at least until some of the daily, easily reproducible crashes and huge memory leaks are taken care of.
Widescreen forces me to use more width, when in reality I never need more width, I only ever need more height. Never am I reading a webpage and think, "Damn, if only this computer were a little wider."
Reading your comment makes me immediately think, "must be a Windows user" since Windows is the only OS I know of whose dominant use paradigm is one program at a time, which takes up the whole screen (even if it does not need to). I've had a widescreen laptop about a year now, and I don't think I've ever watched a DVD on it. It is usually plugged into an external monitor with windows from various programs laid out across all the available real-estate on both. Widescreen is great if you want to display multiple terminals, editors windows, web pages, etc. on the screen at the same time. I often work with at least one window viewing reference information, one or more editing something, and one displaying the results of what I'm working on. It is a lot easier to display multiple pages side-by-side when you have a wider screen, hence I'm appreciative of the widescreen. I guess if you only want to use it to display web pages and you never want to view multiple web pages at the same time, well maybe widescreen is not for you.
And still there are many PDF documents out there that can only be read properly with Adobe Acrobat.
Do you have any examples? I never use Adobe PDF reader and I have never run across a PDF that has not read properly using preview.app. In fact the only problems reading PDFs I've ever run across were a problem with some PDFs made using an old version of Adobe PDF writer, when read with one version of PDF reader (an old bug long since fixed) and some people having problems with the alpha channel when using old versions of xpdf (which were fixed by upgrading).
It is fine to say you think Adobe is breaking the spec with their reader/writer combination, but if so I've never seen any evidence that they are doing so intentionally and I've never had a single problem reading any PDF with the clean-room, spec compliant PDF reader I'm using. As far as Adobe "retaining mindshare" there are a whole lot of PDFs out there that are not generated with Adobe writer and there is no easy way for them to embrace/extinguish that market. Unless you have some sort of proof that they are breaking the spec, and doing so intentionally, then all you are doing is speculating and your speculation does not seem corroborated by my own experience.
It's a lot like the people complaining about the smell in New Jersey. Some people say it's OK once you get used to it, the rest complain, but either way everyone and their grandchildren will be long dead by the time it smells any better.
what I wonder is this: if the Original IP belonged to Caldera (and now, through aquisition, DR-DOS inc) aren't they free to do with it -and with derived products as they see fit?
No, they aren't. Here's a simple example. I start an GPL project and put a lot of code into it. The copyright is mine, licensed under the GPL to others. I can do anything, they must abide by the license. Another person contributes some bug fixes and features. Because of the license, they must distribute the whole work under the GPL as well. At this point I cannot do anything I want with this new work, that is an amalgamation of both our efforts. That second person still retains copyright on the portions they wrote. If I want to re-license it or do anything else with it I must either get their permission, or rip out and rewrite all the code that is not mine (and to which I don't have the copyright). To look at it in terms of other intellectual property, If I write a book and distribute it under the GPL and someone writes and additional chapter to flesh out the middle, I don't suddenly gain copyright of the chapter they wrote, even though the new work as a whole is a derivative of my original work.
The Mini had thicker protection, yet Apple still had a policy of replacing screens for those-who-bitch-enough. They ship the Nano with even less protection.
Ahh yes, the old, "they were kind to the feeble minded so they are responsible for everyone being dumb" attack. If a new car from GM has windows that are not as good at standing up to abuse that they should not be subjected to in the first place as their old ones, are they then more guilty when you do something dumb and damage it?
The point was that the user did not modify the windshield or the wipers. Hard to draw a parallel (but since you tried...) between a car windshield and a Nano, you don't normally put a car in your pocket.
I don't expose the screens of my electronic devices to hard, metal objects and agitation. I also don't throw rocks at my windshield or drive through barbed wire fences. Anyone who does either is an idiot and probably thinks pistols are for scratching their genitals with. If these morons win their suit It is a victory for greedy idiots everywhere.
But, is anyone saying that they didn't include the original copyright info?
I read a different article than this on on this case. It implied that they changed the copyright info, which is worse yet as it is plagiarism. It stated that they were not including a copy of the license or offering a way to get the source (both of which violate the license).
For what I do I've never had the "need" to have source code, but there have been times I enjoyed learning how someone made an app.
You've never come across software that does not have a feature you want or need to accomplish your task? Maybe as a home user you don't have as many needs as some of us, and almost certainly not as many as businesses and large institutions. One important point of open source is it guarantees that changes can be made, if necessary and that they can be made by multiple people/groups. If the author of closed source software dies, or his company goes out of business, you can be really screwed. No matter how much money you put into buying a system, it may be completely impossible to fix a bug or add a feature. Even assuming the person of company supplying your software stays in business if you want/need a feature or bug fix they can charge whatever they want and your only option is to dump the software entirely or pay up. That is one reason why some people/companies/organizations need open source. It provides security and competitive bidding on future work.
All that said, how does it become an ethical issue for you? The way I look at it is that it's "nice" and even "helpful" to see the source, but if someone took the time to write an application it should up to them to share it. I don't know if I can say that they need to or should. Kind of like an inventor sharing his patent. I know legally they have a choice...
If someone patents a device, lets say a machine to generate limitless energy, they have to disclose the details of how it works in order to get the protections of that patent. In this way, the knowledge is preserved for all mankind. If, on the other hand, someone copyrights a program they gain the benefits of copyright but it is entirely possible the inner workings of that program will be lost forever. Worse yet, devices that rely upon that software and information encoded by that software may be lost along with it. Take a look at video games, how many classic games can no longer be played on any current hardware or software? Or take a look at closed formats like .doc. I have files from as little as six years ago that cannot be opened by any currently available software. Those files contain possibly valuable information, but it is likely lost for good. If that information is supposed to be owned by the public (government files) I'd say that is unethical. Yet another way open source is an ethical issue, is where transparency is important. Without open code it is impossible to verify the operation of software. No blackbox testing can be comprehensive enough to determine every possible contingency. Voting software, software used by the government and criminal justice system, and software critical to maintaining the health and safety of people needs to have the source code available for review. For voting, DNA testing, or controlling the floodgates at a major dam, open source software is an ethical necessity.
Hopefully these ideas are helpful to you.
They are trying to charge $45 for what would otherwise be free. But why would this be illegal? If they have not modified any of the software, how would this even violate the licenses?
You're confusing "free as in beer" with "free as in freedom." The online utilities they are copying and trying to sell are "free as in freedom" and they cost only a small service, that is if you redistribute them you have to include the original copyright info, license, and offer to provide a copy of the source. That is the "price" of GPL software. If you don't pay that price you have no right to copy the software for any purpose. It is just the same as any other license, whether I require you to pay me $5, sing me a song, or massage my feet in exchange for the right to copy something I own the copyright to. If you don't pay the price you don't get to copy the software. They copied the the software and are selling those copies, which is all fine, but they have to pay the price or what they are doing is nothing more than commercial copyright infringement.
Would you feel comfortable writing a PDF reader in the USA?
Hmm, in addition to the Adobe reader, there are Preview.app (Apple), Foxit, Xpdf, ghostview, eXPert, Ansyr, PDF+, risc-PDF, Net-It Reader, PSP PDF Reader, and probably a lot more that I don't know about. There are PDF writing systems for Windows (MS is building a writer into Word for the next version), OS X (built into the OS, for all applications), and for Xwindows (open source used by most Linux, BSD, etc.) How many of those do you think were made in the USA?
There are still patents, copyrighted interfaces, trademarks, DRM issues
To address you points in order, there are no patents encumbering PDF that anyone knows of, while you can copyright an interface, who cares, that does not stop anyone from writing their own interface and reader software is all pretty similar, "Adobe PDF" is trademarked, but PDF itself is as open as XML for trademark issues, and DRM issues are complete non-issues so long as there is no breaking of encryption, so presumably so long as your system does not intentionally break encryption without the key, you are fine. The nothing stops you from copying when the "do not copy" bit is set and in fact several software packages freely available do just that.
Comparing PDF to .doc is just stupid. One is a closed, undocumented format that is partially reverse engineered and the other is an open, published standard championed as such by the company that invented it. DOC has one official writer and two readers on only 2 platforms and it cost money on all but one. It has some partial read/writers on various OS's. PDF has closed and open source readers and writers free and commercial on pretty much every platform you can think of including handhelds and game consoles. I suspect the only reason PDF gets such a bad reputation is because most users use Windows combined with Adobe reader, which combine to make an experience akin to stabbing yourself in the head with a fork. Just because some software for a format sucks, however, does not mean the format itself sucks. It works wonderfully on a lot of OS's with a lot of good software.
I disagree with you for two reasons. First, If one person can instantly access the information and the other needs to wait days for a hard copy, then that second person is at an unnecessary disadvantage. This means companies doing business with the government by say, getting bid information, will be at a disadvantage if they don't pay money to particular corporation, this is unfair.
Second, file formats and protocols are not only about obtaining information, but also submitting information. It is a two-way communication, and if that communication is biased in favor of people who buy particular software from a particular company, that is undue favoritism by the government. There is no reason for the government to wait until there is a large problem to try to solve this sort of thing. It is very appropriate to specify up-front the formats and protocols that will be used for communication and take bids from vendors willing to supply the necessary gear, provided those formats have no barriers to prevent a given company from bidding. It is wholly appropriate to say, "we want editors and readers for the OpenOffice format, since MS, Novell, or anyone else can write such a system and that system is defined. It is inappropriate to say, we want editors and readers for format X, as defined by how product Y writes it, even though no one is allowed to see exactly what that secret format is, which is the state of affairs in most places right now.
Rubbing keys on a car windshield is not normal wear and tear, nor is taking a bullet through the crotch of your Levi's.
Ahh, then your argument is that it is normal and reasonable to expect the screen on a piece of electronics to hold up to being rubbed against keys and change. That is to say, that is a normal use. Well, my GPS does not hold up to it, nor does my telephone. That is why I'm not dumb enough to store either in my pocket with my keys and change unless it has a cover on it. I guess we just disagree about what constitutes normal use, don't we?
If your windshield became scratched by your windshield wipers, as factory installed, then yes, it is defective (or the wipers are).
Apple installed keys and change in your pocket, weird.
Dimitri Sklyarov was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada for writing software while in Russia which decoded e-books which were a form of Adobe PDFs.
Right, because he broke the trivial encryption on encrypted PDFs. He could just as easily be arrested for breaking encryption on text files. That does not make either PDF or TXT closed formats. Both are open, published, and have multiple implementations of readers and writers. .DOC, on the other hand, is not only closed, but also ever changing and intentionally obscured. Yup Adobe are a bunch of asshats and should be slapped around, but that has nothing to do with the PDF format which they created and in no way makes PDFs less open.
No, because those scratches don't represent irreversible damage to a core function...
So if I rub keys and change against the windshield and obscure the view they owe me money?
GM knows rubbing keys on the windshield will scratch it., that is just as much a defect as the iPod has. Hell, Levi knows bullets will go right through the crotch of their jeans, impairing their ability to keep my junk covered. Is that another defect?
Hypothetically: What if MS pulls it off and puts out the best OS that the Linux guys have ever seen. Let's say it's the Longhorn Server, WinFS, Monad, and everything MS has been touting works... Will the Linux guys at that point stop bashing MS? Will you consider using the MS OS?
You're attempting to formulate a "what if" scenario, but as often happens you've oversimplified things on such a scale that it is meaningless. Linux admins do consider using MS products now, and deploy them occasionally where appropriate. As for "what if MS put out a better OS" well, I guess that depends upon what you mean by a better OS. The case for Linux vs. MS is both technological and business. Suppose the next version of Windows is technologically on par with, or better than, Linux as a server. It will still suffer from not being free of cost, not being customizable by the end user, locking the user into a single supplier for a critical component of a system, and putting customers in the position of having to deal with a company renowned for putting it's customers out of business using unfair tactics. No smart businessman wants any of those things. Even so, in some cases it makes sense to put up with those problems, and that is what smart administrators do.
For example, If I run a smaller business and need specialty software only available commercially on Windows and I don't have the resources and contacts necessary to build a open solution on an open platform, then it makes a whole lot of business sense to buy a Windows machine, at least for that one component. If, on the other hand, I'm working for IBM or a company with similar resources, there is rarely any compelling reason to go with MS for anything, since the resources are available to get a better long-term ROI and TOC by using open source solutions. Why lock oneself into paying a competitor every year, with no competitive bidding, when for a slightly higher initial investment a free alternative, with free development, and some free support can be created, that also places IBM in the position of being a market leader in that particular niche and ties into the bread and butter services business.
A good analogy might be, you invent a new desert pastry and it needs a fruit filling. You can use oranges, which you can get from any number of vendors, or grow yourself or you can use MSFruit which is patented and you can only buy from one supplier. Even supposing MS gains the edge in harvesting and processing technologies, does it make sense to sign a contract to use them as your sole supplier and agree to never alter your recipe or does it make sense to invest in better harvesting and processing technologies and keep using oranges so that you can take competitive bids and experiment with new recipes?
Of course, as you said, this is all theoretical. MS is so far behind other solutions in so many areas that they have not even tried to address that it is unlikely MS will catch up any time soon. The fact that they keep introducing anti-features designed to benefit MS as a company and cost customers extra money somewhat counters other advances they make. They pay a lot of attention to bullet points and making things "good enough" while not really achieving that for a good portion of users. They have a few nice features that I'd say are better and more usable than anyone else, but at the same time they are really really behind in other areas and falling further behind all the time. Don't call me when they have pipes and scripting that work without writing any code and from the GUI. Don't call me when they allow programs to offer services to other programs. Don't call me when they fix the disaster they call managing programs. Don't call me when they no longer expose network services by default. Don't call me when they move to open APIs. Don't call me when they open and document their formats and support other open formats. Don't call me when they have workable non-admin accounts. Don't call me when they make the UI responsive during heavy multit