Fear not, there are misunderstandings aplenty to share round -- on your part, and in the gpp, and in the sentence you quoted in your ggpp. "Comprise" is a notoriously difficult verb because it can mean either "include" or "be included", pretty much at the whim of the speaker. (Just as a sign of this, I note that the Oxford English Dictionary lists nine primary meanings of the verb, some of which contradict each other, and somewhere between 20 and 25 secondary meanings. Yikes.)
When the gpp said, "When A IS comprised OF B, it means B is within A, whether it is in whole or in part", that does conform to common usage; but the bit about "When A comprises B" can go either way depending on context. (The line you originally quoted, "Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar", does indeed strongly imply that "fructose" contains 50% of all table sugar in the universe. Whatever that could possibly mean, i.e. not much.)
Sorry to butt in, but that was staggeringly informative. I'd say "useful" as well, except that of course it's not legal advice:-) It's probably worth noting, though, that things don't work this way in all countries, as a perusal of the relevant Wikipedia article quickly showed me: it appears that in Commonwealth countries, at least, you can get copyright for "sweat of the brow" work, provided that the work requires any degree of expertise.
Not easily (and especially not if you're thinking of trying to read composers' handwriting). However, a decent edition from the 19th century -- which is when Beethoven wrote most of his better-known stuff -- is essentially indistinguishable from a modern edition except for the colour of the paper. Oh, and perhaps a dozen or so editorial emendations.
Now there's a question... when an editor inserts an "emendation" intended to recover more closely the original as penned by the composer, does that emendation belong to the composer or to the editor? And does the law on this vary in different countries?
The gpp has understood the GPL perfectly: the licence is purely concerned with distribution (or "propagating and conveying" as we must now say). It imposes no restrictions whatsoever on installation or use, and explicitly states that it does not bind end-users in any way.
9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or
run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work
occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission
to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However,
nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or
modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do
not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a
covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
(It may be that a propagator-and-conveyor might want to impose end-user restrictions if they so desire, but that would be pointless: anyone would be able to re-propagate-and-convey without the EULA attached, thereby removing said restrictions.)
You are confusing two distinct ways of making money off music. I hope this is unintentional, but you're making exactly the error they want you to make. In the present day, musicians seek remuneration for their work in four distinct ways:
Distribution of recordings. This way of making money is of course largely governed by Big Corporations. (Out of this list, this method of seeking remuneration is unique in depending on technology invented within the last 165 years.)
Distribution of published printed versions -- the "source", if you will: scores, tablatures, etc. (There is actually some overlap with number 1, so if you want to combine these two items, I can see an argument for doing that, though I won't agree.)
Performance. The person who performs the work is the person who gets the remuneration.
Patronage. (Out of this list, this one is unique in that copyright law has very little to do with this type of remuneration.)
You are trying to confuse numbers 1 and 3 on this list, which is exactly the confusion that the arseholes in this story want. They're not the same thing. If you genuinely think they ought to be treated as the same thing, you are a public menace.
Now, I don't really claim I understand every move of the mafiaa. More often than not, I do not. But I somehow don't get just how this is in any way beneficial for them.
A climate of unreasoning fear is beneficial for them. Fear encourages people to settle rather than countersue.
Well it may be physically impossible but also essential for our survival. Thus int he end we're really screwed.
The writer uses the word "impossible" only once, and it's in the following sentence:
This is not to say that interstellar travel is impossible; quite the contrary.
As for being screwed, the author makes a very good point in observing that, individually, we have no vested interest at all in the survival of the species. Sure, on a scale of centuries, even millennia, it is both human and moral to worry about the circumstances our descendants will live in. But planning for when the sun goes boom? Come on, who'd be willing to confine dozens of generations of their descendants to a metal box for centuries just for that?
Survival of the human race is all very nice and well, but it's much more important to ensure the welfare of my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, let alone the next twenty generations after that, before worrying about descendants a billion generations further down the line.
after taking a look at what it might involve in terms of proving I'm not a terrorist (I have an old-fashioned paper passport) I gave it a miss.
Out of interest, I've been warned by an immigration official in my own country to avoid travelling to the US because of the type of passport I have. That startled me.
And purleease, when I fly long-haul I like to take a big bottle of water to stop me dehydrating.
A effing bottle of HO for chrissake.
Be fair, now, it was the Brits that started the business of prohibiting water on aeroplanes, not the Americans. And it was they that forced it on the rest of the world (as the Americans so often do). Though, not that it matters where the paranoia originated, really. I just miss being able to go on domestic flights in my own country without having to go through any security checks whatsoever, other than the flight staff checking that I have a valid ticket, which was the case just two years ago. Alas, no more.
Another example here, with more text. Also a very helpful close-up view (in case you can't be bothered opening up an image editor) of text rendered in Safari and in IE 7 (no Firefox screenshots).
Joel's spot-on about the difference in ethos. I'm not sure which I prefer, aesthetics or effortless legibility. Maybe one day I can have a 150-200 dpi monitor and then I won't need to care.
The scientific article does not refer to this behaviour as "altruism"; the discussion there is framed entirely in terms of "competition". It appears to be the Press Esc author, Vidura Panditaratne, who is responsible for the application of the term "altruism". He attributes the term to Susan Dudley, one of the scientists who wrote the article in Biology Letters, but based on the language used in the scientific article I suspect this is a misattribution or misunderstanding.
>There has of course, been no reply.
I'm not surprised, it was a bit juvenile and inflamatory.
"A bit"? I think you understate the case. It was atrociously supercilious and incredibly rude. Hate-mail, pure and simple. I'd bin it immediately. (If I worked at Microsoft I might archive it to use against jcr in a court of law someday, though.)
That is interesting -- I never owned an Apple II, so there's a bunch of stuff I missed out on.
When I think back on the most graphically impressive games of the 70s and 80s, though, increasingly I feel that it's the vector-based ones that were the most stunning (apart from laser disc ones, which are kind of cheating). Does, maybe, MAME come these days with a bloom post-processing effect for vector-based games? That could really revivify games like Star Wars or Tempest. Sorry, getting off-topic, I'll stop now......
You're assuming that the price that the market will accept is independent of whether piracy exists. If the market can obtain your service for free, then the price the market will accept is $0, and so you can't make any money from providing it.
And yet, allofmp3.com makes money. Probably a lot of money. I think that they, and other similar sites, are very good supporting evidence for the hypothesis that the market will bear a cost greater than $0.
All those text-only Infocom games had the best graphics... the graphics in your head.
Even so, it is somewhat notable that the Apple II was among the earlier platforms to have Elite ported to it -- 1985, according to Wikipedia -- which was definitely one of the most graphically impressive games of the 80s (outside arcades, that is), as well as one of the great games of all time (some might even argue it's on a par with Zork, though I wouldn't). Anyway.
If the product was available in a form and at a price people were willing to pay, they would buy it.
But, they used to buy MORE than they do now. And the form in which you usually buy it (say, on a CD) remains available. What's changed is that people are no longer willing to pay what the artists ask for their recordings because they've found an easy way to rip it off, instead.
You're simply reiterating the GP's point. The GP suggested, and you seem to agree, that the perceived value of the services provided by the recording industry is now lower than it once was.
New, almost cost-free, methods of distribution means that one function that distributors have historically made their living out of -- distribution -- has now become valueless. Obviously that's not the only function performed by the recording industry; some of their functions, such as the actual recording bit, do still represent value.
But the GP's point, that many customers regard the prices they are asking for their products as a bad deal -- a point that you have agreed with -- remains. I mean, you're not really going to claim it's a viable business model to keep on charging customers for distribution as the cost of distribution approaches zero, are you?
It would have everything to do with GPLed software if the agreement says anything you distribute or if it says any GPLed or free software that you distribute. And BTW, in case your wondering, I am talking about something not yet invented. I could just be imagining things here. Microsoft might not do anything. The problem is that they can do it.
Ah, I see, I understand now. I'd like to say that's overly paranoid, but... I think we know better:-)
I may be slow, but I don't get your first point. How does my clicking "I agree" to a Windows EULA equate to my becoming "a party to an arrangement with a third party... under which [I] make payment... based on the extent of [my] activity of conveying [a GPL-covered] work"? In other words, while the Microsoft EULA is certainly discriminatory for distribution of the Microsoft software, it has nothing to do with distribution of GPL-ed software, so I don't see why it could or should have any impact on distributors of GPL-ed software.
Your second point, about OEMs, seems solid though. (That may, of course be an outcome precisely intended by those writing GPLv3.)
Yes, it was a mess. But Morrowind is a bit of a mess on my machine too; doesn't stop it from being one of my favourite games of all time:-) -- it takes a lot of love for me to keep on playing a game that crashes every third time I quickload. Anyway, I remember Daggerfall fondly mainly because it was such a huge step forward. Obviously, given the games that have come out since then, I'd rather play BG (1 or 2) any day...
I liked it too -- in many ways I liked it much more than the original --, but still, it's widely remembered as "the game that could have been great", rather than a game that actually was great. Yes, the ending is the main problem, as your sibling poster remarked; knowing that an anticlimax like that was awaiting me has put me off replaying it, I'm afraid.
Kind of. The media don't want NZers to think of that as being even an option, though. Take the article in the New Zealand Herald, which probably has the highest circulation of any newspaper in the country: "Pupils suffer in schools computer row". The idea that any alternative at all to MS Office isn't even mentioned until the seventeenth paragraph. Someone (naming no names), I think, wants this to be seen as just a great big OMFG THINK OF THE CHILDREN panic.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that there's quite a bit of pressure towards FLOSS in NZ government departments. And what's more, I have a sneaking suspicion that the ministers themselves are the source of much of it.
Slashdot Mirror
... here it is.
Fear not, there are misunderstandings aplenty to share round -- on your part, and in the gpp, and in the sentence you quoted in your ggpp. "Comprise" is a notoriously difficult verb because it can mean either "include" or "be included", pretty much at the whim of the speaker. (Just as a sign of this, I note that the Oxford English Dictionary lists nine primary meanings of the verb, some of which contradict each other, and somewhere between 20 and 25 secondary meanings. Yikes.)
When the gpp said, "When A IS comprised OF B, it means B is within A, whether it is in whole or in part", that does conform to common usage; but the bit about "When A comprises B" can go either way depending on context. (The line you originally quoted, "Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar", does indeed strongly imply that "fructose" contains 50% of all table sugar in the universe. Whatever that could possibly mean, i.e. not much.)
Personally I try to avoid this verb ...
Sorry to butt in, but that was staggeringly informative. I'd say "useful" as well, except that of course it's not legal advice :-) It's probably worth noting, though, that things don't work this way in all countries, as a perusal of the relevant Wikipedia article quickly showed me: it appears that in Commonwealth countries, at least, you can get copyright for "sweat of the brow" work, provided that the work requires any degree of expertise.
Not easily (and especially not if you're thinking of trying to read composers' handwriting). However, a decent edition from the 19th century -- which is when Beethoven wrote most of his better-known stuff -- is essentially indistinguishable from a modern edition except for the colour of the paper. Oh, and perhaps a dozen or so editorial emendations.
Now there's a question ... when an editor inserts an "emendation" intended to recover more closely the original as penned by the composer, does that emendation belong to the composer or to the editor? And does the law on this vary in different countries?
Be careful! Even if you're seeing predictable phase arrays, you still might end up with a resonance cascade scenario.
The gpp has understood the GPL perfectly: the licence is purely concerned with distribution (or "propagating and conveying" as we must now say). It imposes no restrictions whatsoever on installation or use, and explicitly states that it does not bind end-users in any way.
9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies.
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
(It may be that a propagator-and-conveyor might want to impose end-user restrictions if they so desire, but that would be pointless: anyone would be able to re-propagate-and-convey without the EULA attached, thereby removing said restrictions.)
You are confusing two distinct ways of making money off music. I hope this is unintentional, but you're making exactly the error they want you to make. In the present day, musicians seek remuneration for their work in four distinct ways:
You are trying to confuse numbers 1 and 3 on this list, which is exactly the confusion that the arseholes in this story want. They're not the same thing. If you genuinely think they ought to be treated as the same thing, you are a public menace.
A climate of unreasoning fear is beneficial for them. Fear encourages people to settle rather than countersue.
The writer uses the word "impossible" only once, and it's in the following sentence:
This is not to say that interstellar travel is impossible; quite the contrary.As for being screwed, the author makes a very good point in observing that, individually, we have no vested interest at all in the survival of the species. Sure, on a scale of centuries, even millennia, it is both human and moral to worry about the circumstances our descendants will live in. But planning for when the sun goes boom? Come on, who'd be willing to confine dozens of generations of their descendants to a metal box for centuries just for that?
Survival of the human race is all very nice and well, but it's much more important to ensure the welfare of my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, let alone the next twenty generations after that, before worrying about descendants a billion generations further down the line.
Out of interest, I've been warned by an immigration official in my own country to avoid travelling to the US because of the type of passport I have. That startled me.
And purleease, when I fly long-haul I like to take a big bottle of water to stop me dehydrating. A effing bottle of HO for chrissake.Be fair, now, it was the Brits that started the business of prohibiting water on aeroplanes, not the Americans. And it was they that forced it on the rest of the world (as the Americans so often do). Though, not that it matters where the paranoia originated, really. I just miss being able to go on domestic flights in my own country without having to go through any security checks whatsoever, other than the flight staff checking that I have a valid ticket, which was the case just two years ago. Alas, no more.
Another example here, with more text. Also a very helpful close-up view (in case you can't be bothered opening up an image editor) of text rendered in Safari and in IE 7 (no Firefox screenshots).
Joel's spot-on about the difference in ethos. I'm not sure which I prefer, aesthetics or effortless legibility. Maybe one day I can have a 150-200 dpi monitor and then I won't need to care.
The scientific article does not refer to this behaviour as "altruism"; the discussion there is framed entirely in terms of "competition". It appears to be the Press Esc author, Vidura Panditaratne, who is responsible for the application of the term "altruism". He attributes the term to Susan Dudley, one of the scientists who wrote the article in Biology Letters, but based on the language used in the scientific article I suspect this is a misattribution or misunderstanding.
No, I take that back, it only looked better because I was suffering from double-vision at the time. None of the settings look tolerable now. Ick.
Ctrl-, — Appearance — Font smoothing. I find text to be clearest on "Strong".
I'm not surprised, it was a bit juvenile and inflamatory.
"A bit"? I think you understate the case. It was atrociously supercilious and incredibly rude. Hate-mail, pure and simple. I'd bin it immediately. (If I worked at Microsoft I might archive it to use against jcr in a court of law someday, though.)
That is interesting -- I never owned an Apple II, so there's a bunch of stuff I missed out on.
When I think back on the most graphically impressive games of the 70s and 80s, though, increasingly I feel that it's the vector-based ones that were the most stunning (apart from laser disc ones, which are kind of cheating). Does, maybe, MAME come these days with a bloom post-processing effect for vector-based games? That could really revivify games like Star Wars or Tempest. Sorry, getting off-topic, I'll stop now ......
And yet, allofmp3.com makes money. Probably a lot of money. I think that they, and other similar sites, are very good supporting evidence for the hypothesis that the market will bear a cost greater than $0.
Even so, it is somewhat notable that the Apple II was among the earlier platforms to have Elite ported to it -- 1985, according to Wikipedia -- which was definitely one of the most graphically impressive games of the 80s (outside arcades, that is), as well as one of the great games of all time (some might even argue it's on a par with Zork, though I wouldn't). Anyway.
But, they used to buy MORE than they do now. And the form in which you usually buy it (say, on a CD) remains available. What's changed is that people are no longer willing to pay what the artists ask for their recordings because they've found an easy way to rip it off, instead.
You're simply reiterating the GP's point. The GP suggested, and you seem to agree, that the perceived value of the services provided by the recording industry is now lower than it once was.
New, almost cost-free, methods of distribution means that one function that distributors have historically made their living out of -- distribution -- has now become valueless. Obviously that's not the only function performed by the recording industry; some of their functions, such as the actual recording bit, do still represent value.
But the GP's point, that many customers regard the prices they are asking for their products as a bad deal -- a point that you have agreed with -- remains. I mean, you're not really going to claim it's a viable business model to keep on charging customers for distribution as the cost of distribution approaches zero, are you?
Ah, I see, I understand now. I'd like to say that's overly paranoid, but ... I think we know better :-)
I may be slow, but I don't get your first point. How does my clicking "I agree" to a Windows EULA equate to my becoming "a party to an arrangement with a third party ... under which [I] make payment ... based on the extent of [my] activity of conveying [a GPL-covered] work"? In other words, while the Microsoft EULA is certainly discriminatory for distribution of the Microsoft software, it has nothing to do with distribution of GPL-ed software, so I don't see why it could or should have any impact on distributors of GPL-ed software.
Your second point, about OEMs, seems solid though. (That may, of course be an outcome precisely intended by those writing GPLv3.)
I live in New Zealand. ALL of my money is thrown northward ...
Yes, it was a mess. But Morrowind is a bit of a mess on my machine too; doesn't stop it from being one of my favourite games of all time :-) -- it takes a lot of love for me to keep on playing a game that crashes every third time I quickload. Anyway, I remember Daggerfall fondly mainly because it was such a huge step forward. Obviously, given the games that have come out since then, I'd rather play BG (1 or 2) any day ...
I liked it too -- in many ways I liked it much more than the original --, but still, it's widely remembered as "the game that could have been great", rather than a game that actually was great. Yes, the ending is the main problem, as your sibling poster remarked; knowing that an anticlimax like that was awaiting me has put me off replaying it, I'm afraid.
Kind of. The media don't want NZers to think of that as being even an option, though. Take the article in the New Zealand Herald, which probably has the highest circulation of any newspaper in the country: "Pupils suffer in schools computer row". The idea that any alternative at all to MS Office isn't even mentioned until the seventeenth paragraph. Someone (naming no names), I think, wants this to be seen as just a great big OMFG THINK OF THE CHILDREN panic.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that there's quite a bit of pressure towards FLOSS in NZ government departments. And what's more, I have a sneaking suspicion that the ministers themselves are the source of much of it.