Your grandmother is not going to spend a week trying to figure out what to change to get her sound card to work in linux without making scratching noises or how to properly install and configure proprietary codecs that will allow her to play MP3 and WMV files.
Show me an operating system that has enough codecs that you don't have to install any extra ones.
I don't have a Mac so I don't know but does it play wmv files out of the box either? Likewise, I'd assume that Windows generally comes with no Quicktime support out-of-the-box. Somehow that doesn't make Windows unsuitable for the average user. Granted, mp3 may be a little more critical to have than, say, Quicktime, because mp3 is probably one of the first formats you're going to run into, but it's not like you'd never have to install anything on the other systems.
At least for Ubuntu they're building a system where the default media player automagically asks to download and install codecs when it runs into a file that it can't play but which it could if the appropriate plugins were installed. Last time I checked, which was in Herd (alpha release) 5 or so, it didn't work so well, but it's progress, and it may work better in the final release (I haven't tried the beta yet) and it's progress at least. From your response it seems obvious that you didn't even know about that, or that a lot of the codecs are installable very easily in the first place. Yes, you need to know about it to find them, but then, don't you also need to know about Quicktime (and that it plays those troublesome.mov files) in order to find and install it?
I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but correcting misinformation is more important than not feeding then.
Do you feel so special that the simple fact that your connection has been working must mean that it works for everyone and thus nothing is broken?
Problems often come to light in slightly exotic situations, partially because such cases aren't so thoroughly tested, and also because often the design and implementation don't actually cover the entire range of possible situations but rather just a bunch of individial cases. If yours doesn't happen to be one of those, too bad.
That's where good design shows. It's easy to get a few cases working but much harder to build a truely robust system.
Others have replied already, and with probably more interesting arguments than this, but I'll say something from a purely theoretical point of view.
If, by Babbage's engine you refer to the difference engines, they weren't general-purpose computers by definition. They were special-purpose machines built for executing specific algorithms. The mechanical way in which they (in design, not practically) achieved that might well be patentable. After all, I'm sure there are several ways of doing that which aren't mathematically well-defined and discrete in nature. Theoretically, it may make sense to talk about all possible algorithms for solving a specific problem, but is it reasonable to try to define what all possible ways of achieving something with mechanics means?
As for the analytical engine, that wasn't an algorithm but a turing-complete general-purpose computer. The algorithms would reside on punch-cards, so in that engine the hardware and software were separate. The specific way of constructing a general-purpose computer would of course be patentable, but that would mean nothing for the algorithms residing in software.
Indeed, on all general-purpose computers the software, or algorithms, must by definition be separate from the hardware, or practical construction of a turing-complete computer. The algorithms may be implemented in something that resembles the common notion of hardware more than that of software, but they must, by definition, be separate from the computing machine itself. Otherwise the machine wouldn't be general-purpose.
Of course there may be (and are) algorithms also built into the hardware e.g. for things that aren't fundamental to the computational power of the machine but needed for practical efficiency improvements -- things like branch prediction etc. We aren't really discussing that here, though, partially because most people consider that part of the hardware and not the kinds of algorithms whose patentability is usually questioned, and also because even if we think about them as algorithms rather than just parts of the hardware implementation, they fall into the first category with the difference engines.
But then, the question of patentability is probably more interesting from the practical point of view, since the goal of the patent system is practical: to reward and promote innovation and making new inventions public rather than keeping them secret. I believe most people here are convinced that at least the current system doesn't really do that in the software realm.
Does your grandmother routinely install Windows on random hardware and hunt for drivers for the pieces of hardware that aren't supported by the OS out-of-the-box?
That's what I though.
Instead, your grandma would probably just buy a computer that has the OS bundled and pre-installed. She would do so with Windows -- maybe she should also do so in case of Linux? Or in some other way delegate the hardware compatibility issue to someone else who can do it? You know, it so happens that compatibility between hardware and software isn't automatic, with any OS. Someone has to take care of it. If you don't delegate it to someone else (your hardware vendor, the neighbourhood geek or something), you need to take care of it yourself.
Exactly how would it allow Microsoft to "contain" Linux if one or two distros were significantly more popular than others, and what implications would it have on those who want to use other ones?
As long as the code is free (and the standards patent-free), the other distros can also use it. If the hardware support is in the (GPL-licensed) kernel, the other distros can benefit from it. Assuming that Microsoft itself isn't in control of what happens in that specific distro, how does that contain anything?
If it doesn't have a rather significant effect on the diversity of distributions (and remember, there are always other free *nix systems), I tend to think it's worth it. Without some kind of consistency Linux will stay where it is: in the niche. Companies such as hardware vendors actually have to support their product and do all kinds of other wacky things to ensure that things work, and generally without too much interaction with the customer after the sale. It's vastly different than one of us geeks installing Linux for a friend and just helping them out whenever they need it. Hardware vendors can't afford to offer a hand to everyone who runs into a problem if they can't be reasonably sure that there won't be many in the first place, and since their customers paid for the systems, the vendors are accountable for making them work.
Think about it: One option is to have only one mainstream option (or two, if you count Macs), and a non-mainstream option which offers diversity but, due to being outside of the mainstream, suffers from somewhat lacking support for certain stuff (e.g. hardware), albeit not at its own fault. Another option is to have one somewhat mainstream option more, and the people who aren't willing to tweak their way through everything (hint: means most people) are better off. The diversity might suffer a little, but as long as the code and standards are (at least mostly) free, what do the users of less popular distros really lose? I'd say certainly not as much as the other group benefits from more choice and competition in the market.
By being really anal about diversity (or many other things) it's rather easy to end up hurting the cause instead of helping it. Taking a radical stance can help sometimes, but certainly not always.
I'd definitely welcome pre-installed Linux systems. It's the only way to ensure that the hardware and software play nice together -- that is, apart from making sure of that yourself, but that's not something that the aforementioned category including most people wants to do.
Apple doesn't have a reputation for good hardware support because of good hardware support in their software (which they probably don't have). The reputation comes from the fact that you can delegate the task of ensuring compatibility to Apple. The same applies to systems with Windows pre-installed.
I'm not suggesting that we have to go to the level of homogeneity that Apple has. It's not preferable and it's not necessary. But having at least some way of ensuring compatibility (other than DIY) would really be a big step forward.
The way I see it, the article doesn't really even claim that exercise would make anyone smarter. What hits me as more interesting is that perhaps it might have some effect on memory decline that comes with age.
From TFA:
Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.
With that said, my experience isn't really even the same as yours. I've seen smart people both among those who exercise and those who don't. I don't think the two are directly correlated.
However, many people who do exercise would seem to be more productive (which I don't automatically equal with being smart). I don't even claim to know what kind of causality there is, though, if any.
The Swedes have always been listening to Finnish traffic going through Sweden. The Finns are probably doing the same thing to Swedish traffic going through Finland.
The point is that a very significant part of all traffic from Finland to the rest of Europe as well as to North America is routed through Sweden. It may be that traffic between Sweden and, say, Russia gets routed through Finland, but the vast majority of international traffic from Finland goes to the west, whereas the same probably can't be said about the communications from Sweden to Russia or so.
I'd also be interested to hear about a single major (and at least partially Swedish) telecom company providing service to a large population in Sweden that houses servers for said services in Finland and routinely routes its traffic through the country as well. On the other hand, it's easy to name at least one such company in Finland. (In fact, it would seem that my ISP's e-mail server, which I don't use, may be located in Sweden, and at least a traceroute shows the packets going through some apparently Swedish routers.)
Nah, they wouldn't do it directly. It'd just be the local copyright holders' associations instead of the *AA and the local copyright law instead of the DMCA. It's possible that the software in question also counts as a circumvention device in the Finnish legislation (although the law itself isn't specific on what counts and what doesn't).
Very true, but I'm not sure I'd want to buy an iPod just so that I could install third-party firmware on it to get support for features that some other players offer out of the box. (It's true, though, that Rockbox has more features than probably the official firmware of any portable player, but still.)
If the part of the price that accounts for the development costs of the original firmware could be directed to the Rockbox developers rather than to Apple (whose firmware I wouldn't be using anyway), it'd be a clear deal.
If I already owned an iPod, I'd be very interested in Rockbox, though, and it's one of the projects that would definitely deserve my support.
I admire the Ogg Vorbis project for creating a free codec that may not be patent-encumbered, but my cars and my iPod don't play ogg files.
If you admire the project and its achievements, why did you buy a player that won't play but a couple of more or less non-free formats? This isn't a troll, it's a honest question.
I can see it that it may be very difficult to find a car audio system that will play vorbis (or anything even remotely modern), and that many people actually have quite old systems in their cars that they aren't willing to replace yet. However, there's a variety of portable players available, and I'm sure the average Slashdotter is knowledgeable enough to understand that the iPod isn't the only thing there is. Many other players probably have enough features, at least compared to the iPod. I don't know about audio quality -- I've been led to believe that the iPod is actually quite decent at that, for a portable player -- but I find it hard to believe that it's impossible to find a player that both supports the features you need (including file and audio format support) and provides decent quality.
If the true reason is that you just don't care, hell, say so. It's not like anyone -- even a zealot like me -- will come and attack you over it. But I don't understand why people who claim to care still never make their choices based on that.
Your hate-filled eyes see MS as the only target of this suit. But it's not; it's merely the first (and perhaps the largest).
That may be true but has little to do with the legality of Microsoft's action. See, just because Fraunhofer owns some patents regarding the technology used in MP3, that doesn't mean nobody else does. There isn't a single patent that covers "everything MP3", nor do all the patents have to be owned by a single organization.
I don't know the specifics of the case that Microsoft lost, and I don't really even know who else than Fraunhofer owns patents that touch MP3 or other similar lossy audio compression methods. But just because Fraunhofer does, that doesn't mean nobody else does, and if Microsoft's implementation also happens to infringe on a patent owned by someone else, of course Microsoft would have to pay them as well.
That has no direct impact on manufacturers of MP3 players. The sentences you cite only pertain to content distribution. That means things like online music stores and sites that offer audio streams, such as internet radio. A patent license is required for distributing content in the MP3 format but, according to the Wikipedia article, one is not required for content distributed in AAC format.
The third sentence in the Wikipedia article, right after the ones you cite, is "However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs."
AAC is also patent-encumbered, so it won't save you from patent licensing.
If companies were to move from mp3 to another format to save on licensing costs, they'd better switch over to Ogg/Vorbis (etc.) or something else instead.
Sorry, here's a hi-fi version of the post with paragraphs and stuff.
I see your point, but, to continue in the way you put it, not everybody cares whether the environment is 95% or 99% perfect for them. Achieving 100% perfect, even if it were possible, would be way too costly in terms of time and effort to be worth it.
Even 99% perfect is that for a lot of people. I understand that if you sit 8+ hours a day in front of an editor writing code and often repeating pretty much the same mantra (in terms of tools they use for processing the code, not in the code itself), you may want to have it behave exactly the way you want. Geeks (who actually understand that the way things work aren't set in stone and usually could, at least in theory, be changed) in general are probably more sensitive in this way than most others, so editors and code are quite appropriate as an example even if there are also other people who spend most of their time using a single application or interface.
The last few percent tend to be the most expensive, regardless of the matter in question. I'm generally a control freak and used to want to be able to tweak everything they way I wanted it to work. Then I got tired of spending extra time just to get the last few percent done. I settled with the 95% that Gnome gives me.
Like my friend once put it: "Computer scientists always have to optimize everything to save five seconds, even if the optimization process itself takes your entire life." That's not to say that it's entirely a bad thing but it reveals the point that sometimes going all the way to the end doesn't give enough benefit to justify the cost.
Right now, people who find Gnome 95% perfect are suffering, because it won't let them fix the last 5% and get their dream environment. I see your point, but, to continue in the way you put it, not everybody cares whether the environment is 95% or 99% perfect for them.
Achieving 100% perfect, even if it were possible, would be way too costly in terms of time and effort to be worth it. Even 99% perfect is that for a lot of people. I understand that if you sit 8+ hours a day in front of an editor writing code and often repeating pretty much the same mantra (in terms of tools they use for processing the code, not in the code itself), you may want to have it behave exactly the way you want. Geeks (who actually understand that the way things work aren't set in stone and usually could, at least in theory, be changed) in general are probably more sensitive in this way than most others, so editors and code are quite appropriate as an example even if there are also other people who spend most of their time using a single application or interface.
The last few percent tend to be the most expensive, regardless of the matter in question. I'm generally a control freak and used to want to be able to tweak everything they way I wanted it to work. Then I got tired of spending extra time just to get the last few percent done. I settled with the 95% that Gnome gives me.
Like my friend once put it: "Computer scientists always have to optimize everything to save five seconds, even if the optimization process itself takes your entire life." That's not to say that it's entirely a bad thing but it reveals the point that sometimes going all the way to the end doesn't give enough benefit to justify the cost.
The only thing Vorbis has over AAC is that it's not patent encumbered, and if you live in a jurisdiction where algorithmic patents are not valid (such as the EU, for now at least) then it doesn't even have this advantage.
This isn't even entirely true. So far the EU has not ruled over the patentability of algoritms, so currently the matter is in the hands of the member countries, at least as far as patentability through local patent offices and enforceability go.
IANAL and IANG (I am not German) but if my memory serves software patents have been granted for example in Germany. I don't know if that pertains to algorithms per se. Here in Finland it seems that software patents are at least somewhat valid (AFAIK some have been granted by the patent office but I don't suppose their validity has been tested in court), even though the legislation would seem to either deny patentability of algorithms or not say anything about it.
Not to mention that even if the patents aren't valid in the EU, they still hinder competition in the global market, and I believe competition in the market would benefit us all in the long run.
Again, IANAL so there may be mistakes and misunderstandings in my knowledge of software patentability in the EU. I also even see your point, but while interesting, it may not be correct in all parts.
My first impression was also that the article was completely clueless. When I read it again, though, I realised that it was, at least to some extent, because I had tried to read it from my point of view of a technically literate person while it had actually been written for someone who wouldn't understand the technical side even if it were (superficially) included. As a result, a non-technical person may be better able to understand the points the article -- although that still requires them to pay attention -- but, on the other hand, some adapting and possibly reading between the lines was needed for me to understand what the point was.
Direct quote from the article:
All computer hardware, such as monitors and sound cards, will have to obey Microsoft's rules for encrypting content in order for consumers to use Vista to play 'premium' content, such as Blu-Ray and HD DVD disks. (emphasis mine)
That is actually at least partially true because, if I've understood correctly, all (kernel-space?) drivers are required to be signed, or you won't be able to play HD "content".
This, however, is a possibly questionable statement (from TFA):
All computer hardware, such as monitors and sound cards, will have to obey Microsoft's rules for encrypting content in order for consumers to use Vista to play 'premium' content. My initial impression was that the article was claiming that MS forces all hardware manufacturers to actively encrypt something or to implement DRM in everything. When I read it more closely, I came to think that it might mean passive obeying instead: that is, not writing drivers or making hardware that bypasses the DRM. That, considering the more or less forced driver signing, is probably true. However, the article could be clearer about it. Now it feels a bit like propaganda that gives a wrong impression without really lying.
I haven't followed the Vista driver-signing issues closely enough to know but at least at one point I got the impression that the 64-bit version of Vista would require all drivers to be signed in any case. That may not be true, but if it is, the point is even more important.
Anyone who knows a thing or two about computers knows that HTTP servers typically log IP addresses and other information that isn't directly personally identifiable. However, since the average user may not know that yum uses HTTP, or that HTTP servers typically log IP addresses, or that there is such a thing as HTTP, you may have a point.
I don't know if yum informs the user about the logging in any way, but it might be a good idea to do so, if only to be completely clear legally. There's quite clearly nothing ethically wrong about logging that information -- not according to any ethics understandable by me anyway -- so I don't think there'd be much reason to make noise about the matter because of any ethical constraints.
And no, I don't suppose it has an EULA. It may give an informational message (I wouldn't know since I don't use Red Hat or Fedora), but free software doesn't tend to have EULAs.
Personally, I'd have nothing against MS logging, compiling and even publishing some non-personally identifiable statistical data about the use of Windows Update. It's quite clear that the first part is being done anyway, and probably the second one as well. If there's a privacy problem with Windows Update, it isn't IP addresses and statistics, but the fact that, as far as I understand, you can't actually know for certain what information is being sent. You obviously can't see the source code, and the traffic is encrypted (probably for a good reason particularly because it does deal with other data than just statistics).
At least with yum it's possible to check what is sent by using the source, or trusting that someone else does that and notices if there's something fishy about it.
No-one seems to have commented on the fact that if NDA requirements are met the drivers cannot be open source. This doesn't mean fewer binary blobs, it means more. I'm far from being an expert but I've got the impression that for example the open source 3D accelerating drivers for ATI's R200 series were written under an NDA.
It really depends on the NDA. The specs can reveal things that aren't immediately apparent from the code, and the NDA may be written to protect those parts. While some companies would probably require NDAs that would effectively prevent an open source driver from being written, it doesn't automatically have to be so.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, obviously it should be the Holy Krail. Someone might mistake it for a Gnome thing if it begun with a G.
Imagine a Slashdot where being moderated "funny" doesn't help karma.
Oh, wait, that's how it is already.
I'm not him, but I don't know of any computer vendors that would sell laptops or desktops with Linux preinstalled where I'm located.
It's quite possible that it wasn't a feasible option for the original poster either.
Your grandmother is not going to spend a week trying to figure out what to change to get her sound card to work in linux without making scratching noises or how to properly install and configure proprietary codecs that will allow her to play MP3 and WMV files.
Show me an operating system that has enough codecs that you don't have to install any extra ones.
I don't have a Mac so I don't know but does it play wmv files out of the box either? Likewise, I'd assume that Windows generally comes with no Quicktime support out-of-the-box. Somehow that doesn't make Windows unsuitable for the average user. Granted, mp3 may be a little more critical to have than, say, Quicktime, because mp3 is probably one of the first formats you're going to run into, but it's not like you'd never have to install anything on the other systems.
At least for Ubuntu they're building a system where the default media player automagically asks to download and install codecs when it runs into a file that it can't play but which it could if the appropriate plugins were installed. Last time I checked, which was in Herd (alpha release) 5 or so, it didn't work so well, but it's progress, and it may work better in the final release (I haven't tried the beta yet) and it's progress at least. From your response it seems obvious that you didn't even know about that, or that a lot of the codecs are installable very easily in the first place. Yes, you need to know about it to find them, but then, don't you also need to know about Quicktime (and that it plays those troublesome .mov files) in order to find and install it?
I know, I know, I shouldn't feed the trolls, but correcting misinformation is more important than not feeding then.
Do you feel so special that the simple fact that your connection has been working must mean that it works for everyone and thus nothing is broken?
Problems often come to light in slightly exotic situations, partially because such cases aren't so thoroughly tested, and also because often the design and implementation don't actually cover the entire range of possible situations but rather just a bunch of individial cases. If yours doesn't happen to be one of those, too bad.
That's where good design shows. It's easy to get a few cases working but much harder to build a truely robust system.
I am a man. (copyright Gary Dunn, all rights reserved).
I could claim it, but no court would uphold my claim.
True, I believe that claim is something you have to prove in some other way.
Others have replied already, and with probably more interesting arguments than this, but I'll say something from a purely theoretical point of view.
If, by Babbage's engine you refer to the difference engines, they weren't general-purpose computers by definition. They were special-purpose machines built for executing specific algorithms. The mechanical way in which they (in design, not practically) achieved that might well be patentable. After all, I'm sure there are several ways of doing that which aren't mathematically well-defined and discrete in nature. Theoretically, it may make sense to talk about all possible algorithms for solving a specific problem, but is it reasonable to try to define what all possible ways of achieving something with mechanics means?
As for the analytical engine, that wasn't an algorithm but a turing-complete general-purpose computer. The algorithms would reside on punch-cards, so in that engine the hardware and software were separate. The specific way of constructing a general-purpose computer would of course be patentable, but that would mean nothing for the algorithms residing in software.
Indeed, on all general-purpose computers the software, or algorithms, must by definition be separate from the hardware, or practical construction of a turing-complete computer. The algorithms may be implemented in something that resembles the common notion of hardware more than that of software, but they must, by definition, be separate from the computing machine itself. Otherwise the machine wouldn't be general-purpose.
Of course there may be (and are) algorithms also built into the hardware e.g. for things that aren't fundamental to the computational power of the machine but needed for practical efficiency improvements -- things like branch prediction etc. We aren't really discussing that here, though, partially because most people consider that part of the hardware and not the kinds of algorithms whose patentability is usually questioned, and also because even if we think about them as algorithms rather than just parts of the hardware implementation, they fall into the first category with the difference engines.
But then, the question of patentability is probably more interesting from the practical point of view, since the goal of the patent system is practical: to reward and promote innovation and making new inventions public rather than keeping them secret. I believe most people here are convinced that at least the current system doesn't really do that in the software realm.
OMG, it's so simple, my grandmother could do it!
Does your grandmother routinely install Windows on random hardware and hunt for drivers for the pieces of hardware that aren't supported by the OS out-of-the-box?
That's what I though.
Instead, your grandma would probably just buy a computer that has the OS bundled and pre-installed. She would do so with Windows -- maybe she should also do so in case of Linux? Or in some other way delegate the hardware compatibility issue to someone else who can do it? You know, it so happens that compatibility between hardware and software isn't automatic, with any OS. Someone has to take care of it. If you don't delegate it to someone else (your hardware vendor, the neighbourhood geek or something), you need to take care of it yourself.
It's just a fact of life.
Exactly how would it allow Microsoft to "contain" Linux if one or two distros were significantly more popular than others, and what implications would it have on those who want to use other ones?
As long as the code is free (and the standards patent-free), the other distros can also use it. If the hardware support is in the (GPL-licensed) kernel, the other distros can benefit from it. Assuming that Microsoft itself isn't in control of what happens in that specific distro, how does that contain anything?
If it doesn't have a rather significant effect on the diversity of distributions (and remember, there are always other free *nix systems), I tend to think it's worth it. Without some kind of consistency Linux will stay where it is: in the niche. Companies such as hardware vendors actually have to support their product and do all kinds of other wacky things to ensure that things work, and generally without too much interaction with the customer after the sale. It's vastly different than one of us geeks installing Linux for a friend and just helping them out whenever they need it. Hardware vendors can't afford to offer a hand to everyone who runs into a problem if they can't be reasonably sure that there won't be many in the first place, and since their customers paid for the systems, the vendors are accountable for making them work.
Think about it: One option is to have only one mainstream option (or two, if you count Macs), and a non-mainstream option which offers diversity but, due to being outside of the mainstream, suffers from somewhat lacking support for certain stuff (e.g. hardware), albeit not at its own fault. Another option is to have one somewhat mainstream option more, and the people who aren't willing to tweak their way through everything (hint: means most people) are better off. The diversity might suffer a little, but as long as the code and standards are (at least mostly) free, what do the users of less popular distros really lose? I'd say certainly not as much as the other group benefits from more choice and competition in the market.
By being really anal about diversity (or many other things) it's rather easy to end up hurting the cause instead of helping it. Taking a radical stance can help sometimes, but certainly not always.
I'd definitely welcome pre-installed Linux systems. It's the only way to ensure that the hardware and software play nice together -- that is, apart from making sure of that yourself, but that's not something that the aforementioned category including most people wants to do.
Apple doesn't have a reputation for good hardware support because of good hardware support in their software (which they probably don't have). The reputation comes from the fact that you can delegate the task of ensuring compatibility to Apple. The same applies to systems with Windows pre-installed.
I'm not suggesting that we have to go to the level of homogeneity that Apple has. It's not preferable and it's not necessary. But having at least some way of ensuring compatibility (other than DIY) would really be a big step forward.
The way I see it, the article doesn't really even claim that exercise would make anyone smarter. What hits me as more interesting is that perhaps it might have some effect on memory decline that comes with age.
From TFA:
Tests on mice showed they grew new brain cells in a brain region called the dentate gyrus, a part of the hippocampus that is known to be affected in the age-related memory decline that begins around age 30 for most humans.With that said, my experience isn't really even the same as yours. I've seen smart people both among those who exercise and those who don't. I don't think the two are directly correlated.
However, many people who do exercise would seem to be more productive (which I don't automatically equal with being smart). I don't even claim to know what kind of causality there is, though, if any.
The point is that a very significant part of all traffic from Finland to the rest of Europe as well as to North America is routed through Sweden. It may be that traffic between Sweden and, say, Russia gets routed through Finland, but the vast majority of international traffic from Finland goes to the west, whereas the same probably can't be said about the communications from Sweden to Russia or so.
I'd also be interested to hear about a single major (and at least partially Swedish) telecom company providing service to a large population in Sweden that houses servers for said services in Finland and routinely routes its traffic through the country as well. On the other hand, it's easy to name at least one such company in Finland. (In fact, it would seem that my ISP's e-mail server, which I don't use, may be located in Sweden, and at least a traceroute shows the packets going through some apparently Swedish routers.)
Nah, they wouldn't do it directly. It'd just be the local copyright holders' associations instead of the *AA and the local copyright law instead of the DMCA. It's possible that the software in question also counts as a circumvention device in the Finnish legislation (although the law itself isn't specific on what counts and what doesn't).
Very true, but I'm not sure I'd want to buy an iPod just so that I could install third-party firmware on it to get support for features that some other players offer out of the box. (It's true, though, that Rockbox has more features than probably the official firmware of any portable player, but still.)
If the part of the price that accounts for the development costs of the original firmware could be directed to the Rockbox developers rather than to Apple (whose firmware I wouldn't be using anyway), it'd be a clear deal.
If I already owned an iPod, I'd be very interested in Rockbox, though, and it's one of the projects that would definitely deserve my support.
If you admire the project and its achievements, why did you buy a player that won't play but a couple of more or less non-free formats? This isn't a troll, it's a honest question.
I can see it that it may be very difficult to find a car audio system that will play vorbis (or anything even remotely modern), and that many people actually have quite old systems in their cars that they aren't willing to replace yet. However, there's a variety of portable players available, and I'm sure the average Slashdotter is knowledgeable enough to understand that the iPod isn't the only thing there is. Many other players probably have enough features, at least compared to the iPod. I don't know about audio quality -- I've been led to believe that the iPod is actually quite decent at that, for a portable player -- but I find it hard to believe that it's impossible to find a player that both supports the features you need (including file and audio format support) and provides decent quality.
If the true reason is that you just don't care, hell, say so. It's not like anyone -- even a zealot like me -- will come and attack you over it. But I don't understand why people who claim to care still never make their choices based on that.
There's also at least one web server running Minix on a 286. Granted, the site is there mostly to brag about the setup itself.
No, I won't link it. Wait, actually it seems I can... looks like it's also being (temporarily) run on a more modern mirror.
That may be true but has little to do with the legality of Microsoft's action. See, just because Fraunhofer owns some patents regarding the technology used in MP3, that doesn't mean nobody else does. There isn't a single patent that covers "everything MP3", nor do all the patents have to be owned by a single organization.
I don't know the specifics of the case that Microsoft lost, and I don't really even know who else than Fraunhofer owns patents that touch MP3 or other similar lossy audio compression methods. But just because Fraunhofer does, that doesn't mean nobody else does, and if Microsoft's implementation also happens to infringe on a patent owned by someone else, of course Microsoft would have to pay them as well.
Ah, the beauty of ubiquitous patents.
That has no direct impact on manufacturers of MP3 players. The sentences you cite only pertain to content distribution. That means things like online music stores and sites that offer audio streams, such as internet radio. A patent license is required for distributing content in the MP3 format but, according to the Wikipedia article, one is not required for content distributed in AAC format.
The third sentence in the Wikipedia article, right after the ones you cite, is "However, a patent license is required for all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs."
AAC is also patent-encumbered, so it won't save you from patent licensing.
If companies were to move from mp3 to another format to save on licensing costs, they'd better switch over to Ogg/Vorbis (etc.) or something else instead.
Sorry, here's a hi-fi version of the post with paragraphs and stuff.
I see your point, but, to continue in the way you put it, not everybody cares whether the environment is 95% or 99% perfect for them. Achieving 100% perfect, even if it were possible, would be way too costly in terms of time and effort to be worth it.
Even 99% perfect is that for a lot of people. I understand that if you sit 8+ hours a day in front of an editor writing code and often repeating pretty much the same mantra (in terms of tools they use for processing the code, not in the code itself), you may want to have it behave exactly the way you want. Geeks (who actually understand that the way things work aren't set in stone and usually could, at least in theory, be changed) in general are probably more sensitive in this way than most others, so editors and code are quite appropriate as an example even if there are also other people who spend most of their time using a single application or interface.
The last few percent tend to be the most expensive, regardless of the matter in question. I'm generally a control freak and used to want to be able to tweak everything they way I wanted it to work. Then I got tired of spending extra time just to get the last few percent done. I settled with the 95% that Gnome gives me.
Like my friend once put it: "Computer scientists always have to optimize everything to save five seconds, even if the optimization process itself takes your entire life." That's not to say that it's entirely a bad thing but it reveals the point that sometimes going all the way to the end doesn't give enough benefit to justify the cost.
This isn't even entirely true. So far the EU has not ruled over the patentability of algoritms, so currently the matter is in the hands of the member countries, at least as far as patentability through local patent offices and enforceability go.
IANAL and IANG (I am not German) but if my memory serves software patents have been granted for example in Germany. I don't know if that pertains to algorithms per se. Here in Finland it seems that software patents are at least somewhat valid (AFAIK some have been granted by the patent office but I don't suppose their validity has been tested in court), even though the legislation would seem to either deny patentability of algorithms or not say anything about it.
Not to mention that even if the patents aren't valid in the EU, they still hinder competition in the global market, and I believe competition in the market would benefit us all in the long run.
Again, IANAL so there may be mistakes and misunderstandings in my knowledge of software patentability in the EU. I also even see your point, but while interesting, it may not be correct in all parts.
My first impression was also that the article was completely clueless. When I read it again, though, I realised that it was, at least to some extent, because I had tried to read it from my point of view of a technically literate person while it had actually been written for someone who wouldn't understand the technical side even if it were (superficially) included. As a result, a non-technical person may be better able to understand the points the article -- although that still requires them to pay attention -- but, on the other hand, some adapting and possibly reading between the lines was needed for me to understand what the point was.
Direct quote from the article:
All computer hardware, such as monitors and sound cards, will have to obey Microsoft's rules for encrypting content in order for consumers to use Vista to play 'premium' content, such as Blu-Ray and HD DVD disks. (emphasis mine)That is actually at least partially true because, if I've understood correctly, all (kernel-space?) drivers are required to be signed, or you won't be able to play HD "content".
All computer hardware, such as monitors and sound cards, will have to obey Microsoft's rules for encrypting content in order for consumers to use Vista to play 'premium' content. My initial impression was that the article was claiming that MS forces all hardware manufacturers to actively encrypt something or to implement DRM in everything. When I read it more closely, I came to think that it might mean passive obeying instead: that is, not writing drivers or making hardware that bypasses the DRM. That, considering the more or less forced driver signing, is probably true. However, the article could be clearer about it. Now it feels a bit like propaganda that gives a wrong impression without really lying.This, however, is a possibly questionable statement (from TFA):
I haven't followed the Vista driver-signing issues closely enough to know but at least at one point I got the impression that the 64-bit version of Vista would require all drivers to be signed in any case. That may not be true, but if it is, the point is even more important.
Many large and significant ones do, actually. It's hidden in their privacy policy, but they do.
Anyone who knows a thing or two about computers knows that HTTP servers typically log IP addresses and other information that isn't directly personally identifiable. However, since the average user may not know that yum uses HTTP, or that HTTP servers typically log IP addresses, or that there is such a thing as HTTP, you may have a point.
I don't know if yum informs the user about the logging in any way, but it might be a good idea to do so, if only to be completely clear legally. There's quite clearly nothing ethically wrong about logging that information -- not according to any ethics understandable by me anyway -- so I don't think there'd be much reason to make noise about the matter because of any ethical constraints.
And no, I don't suppose it has an EULA. It may give an informational message (I wouldn't know since I don't use Red Hat or Fedora), but free software doesn't tend to have EULAs.
Personally, I'd have nothing against MS logging, compiling and even publishing some non-personally identifiable statistical data about the use of Windows Update. It's quite clear that the first part is being done anyway, and probably the second one as well. If there's a privacy problem with Windows Update, it isn't IP addresses and statistics, but the fact that, as far as I understand, you can't actually know for certain what information is being sent. You obviously can't see the source code, and the traffic is encrypted (probably for a good reason particularly because it does deal with other data than just statistics).
At least with yum it's possible to check what is sent by using the source, or trusting that someone else does that and notices if there's something fishy about it.