1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
The Charter recognizes limits on all of the rights that it grants. It also recognizes group rights, which must be balanced with the typical individual rights.
Most relevant, the judiciary has found that "hate speech" is not protected by Section 2. This can be seen as a very real limit on freedom of the press. The US constitution doesn't do this.
However, I believe (and this survey seems to support that belief) that the practical consequences of these limitations are not severe. We recognize that speech can do harm, and somehow we manage, in our free and democratic society, the challenge of balancing the the competing rights that result.
The survey shows that, in practice, we still actually enjoy greater freedom of the press, since, apparently, journalists, researchers, and legal experts reported fewer incidences of "press freedom violations."
I also frankly can't blame him for his dim view of Microsoft. They behaved like the worst kind of gangsters in his courtroom, lying under oath, intimidating witness, and manufacturing evidence, all of it shockingly brazen.
Why weren't any of these shenanigans rewarded with chanrges of Perjury or Contempt? That would seem a more appropriate (and satisfying) consequence.
Shows you his priorities. The whingeing about GNU/Linux is icing on the cake, and is forgotten when the REAL issues come up. Anything you see RMS arguing that people should use GNU/something as a name, you know that there obviously isn't any real problem happening.
With Bitkeeper, the potential for a real problem (or at least a hell of an inconvenience) is right there, and so you see RMS not even thinking of naming conventions because his concern is about something a lot more important.
This analysis is completely flawed. From the GNU/Linux FAQ:
If you mean just the kernel, then "Linux" is the right name for it..
Obviously, RMS is talking about just the kernel.
I don't understand why everyone loves to speculate on RMS's personality and motivations, when they can't even be bothered to read and understand his arguments in the first place.
I'm not a DB guy, but looking at the comments from IBM and Microsoft...
IBM: Open-source databases "don't support as many users, they don't support as much data, and you don't have as many connectivity options...They lack some key functionality and lack the scalability and performance, which keeps them out of the enterprise."
MS: "So far, I still see MySQL and some of the other open-source databases as really niche players...With open-source, you're not going to get a platform that's as reliable or scalable or as secure as what you're going to get with a leading vendor."
...Big Blue's certainly seem more reasonable. They are focusing specifically on the enterprise market without being dismissive of other uses, while Microsoft regards anything that needs less that MS SQL Server provides as niche. Also, there are MS's usual claims about reliability and security, that history hasn't generally supported. In short, IBM seems to recognize that open source databases have their uses, while MS seems to be spreading their usual anti-OSS FUD.
Which is what you would expect: IBM is company that bases large parts of its business on open source and free software, but has an expensive, proprietary product competing with the open source databases -- surely, they're going to try to differentiate their product. MS opposes open source and free software, and never misses an opportunity to say something nasty about it.
Finally, I think it's interesting that Slashdot has actually opted for a less sensationalistic headline than InfoWorld. Slashdot's choice of the word "critique" over "reject" certainly seems more reflective of IBM's statements, at least.
A. All users of the highway are billed. If you choose to travel 407 ETR you are required by law to pay all tolls, fees and interest. The monthly bill is due upon mailing.
My experience would suggest otherwise. I drove the 407 several times with my BC plates in the two months after I moved to Toronto, and was never billed for it. I would have expected them to get my new address from ICBC (The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia), the crown corporation that handles vehicle registration and insurance in that province. I did give ICBC my new address, so that they could send me a statement of my driving record, so apprently the folks at 407 ETR never asked.
After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.
Okay, so they rounded...would you have been much happier if they had said, "effectively the contents of a 128-gigabyte computer hard drive"?
...Software's locked state is also described as its "executable" format. Executable software is commonly sold in stores and available
commercially. Executable software accompanies binary code also known as machine code.
What exactly was the difference again between executable software and binary code?
...The GPL is one of the most uniquely restrictive product agreements in the technology industry. As expected, the controversy of the GPL is rooted in the language of its license.
All proprietary licenses that I've ever seen place restrictions on how a user may use the software. The GPL contains no such restrictions. The GPL only resticts the way in which he can redistribute a modified version of the software, an activity expressly prohibited by proprietary licenses. Simply put, any claim that the GPL is more restrictive than proprietary licenses is laughably incorrect.
...In 1989, Stallman decided that the open source community should be more organized and
founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF). FSF and Stallman evolved the open source discussion into an advocacy group, promoting the idea that all software should be free.
According to the Open Source Initiative, "the 'open source' label itself came out of a strategy session held on February 3rd 1998," in reaction to "Netscape's accouncements that it planned to give away the source of its browser." The term's purpose was "to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with 'free software' in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape." The attempt to paint the FSF as a radical offshoot of the open source movement is completely without factual basis.
FSF became well known for its position of free software as well as its radical ideas to end patents on inventions.
The FSF has expressed no position on the patenting of inventions, in general, but only on the patenting of software.
Jim Clark, the founder of computer maker Silicon Graphics and expert on UNIX standards, founded Netscape, and set out to compete directly with the public domain product Mosaic.
According the NCSA's Procedures for Licensing NCSA Mosaic, "the software is not public domain, freeware or shareware." But then, we already knew that...
...Mosaic was an open source product and could be downloaded for free by individuals and companies wishing to use the Internet for internal communications. Through a commercial partner, Spyglass, NCSA began widely licensing
Mosaic to computer companies including IBM, DEC, AT&T, and NEC.
If it required a commercial partner to do this licensing, then clearly it wasn't even open source (as the term came to mean, when it was coined five years later), much less in the public domain!
At this point, I get tired of counting. This paper allegedly "details the complex issues surrounding open source," but fails to demonstrate even the most basic understanding of the term itself, competing licensing models, or
the technology involved. It is, quite simply, not worthy of any serious consideration.
I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I don't understand. I don't know what SACD stands for, so I'm not sure what those two prices you're comparing are. It seems you're saying that this album costs 25 pounds, so what is the "CD" price you're comparing to?
By the way, the name of the album discussed in the thread you linked to is "A New Day Has Come," so I'm not sure if you're looking at the correct price. Here in Canada, new releases are often a couple of bucks cheaper than older works ("All The Way" was released in 1999), though I have no idea if that's the case in the UK.
According to the SSSCA, a PC is an interactive digital device, and as such, it must be neutered according to government-created specifications. If an SSSCA-like law is introduced and passed, there will be NO technology available to enable you to exercise your rights.
I think this is Consumer Technology Bill of Rights is an excellent idea.
The speech was made Michael Greene, President and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and the transcript is available here.
Content wise, there was precious little: copying music is evil; 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded each month; download from legal sites so artists get paid (a quarter of a penny per song, apparently).
Last time I checked, all that is required to put an icon on the Windows desktop is to create a single, plain-text file in a specific directory.
You call that modifying MS's software?
I hope YOU are asking Bill for permission every time you use his operating system to make any modifications to any of the files residing on your hardware.
Try using ctrl-t, to open a new tab. It's a lot faster than ctrl-n, and tabbed browsing is one of the nicest extras in the new mozilla builds anyway.
Just out of curiousity, is there any way to make the centre-button-click open the linked document in a new tab, instead of a new window?
For me, tabbed browsing and centre-click to open in new window are two huge UI features in Mozilla (especially compared to IE)...it would be so nice to be able to use them together.
"sharpening her resume as a marketing manager" She is versed in programming,
So SHE *IS* a coder! (Of course, with a name like that, you'll never get a tech job; people will associate you with the other Katz;)
Hardly. The quote was: "she is versed in programming, account management, and customer acquisition and retention; she has led marketing campaigns for direct mail, trade shows, events, advertising, branding and positioning."
I think it's pretty clear from context that "versed in" means that she is able to insert enough related buzzwords into her speech to convince other technically ignorant marketroids and PHB's that she has some clue as to what it is she's trying to sell.
The QA person seems technical, and the unspecified Nortel employee MIGHT have been technical, but that's it.
Yesterday, I heard some American politician (a Congressman, I believe) huffing and puffing about about the Wheat Board, and how our lack of anti-trust legislation allows this organization to operate as a cartel, unfairly undercutting American wheat producers. Of course, he wanted to impose countervailing duties.
I'm planning to write our government to point out that, in spite of America's superior anti-trust legislation, Microsoft has been operating as a monopoly for years, that this settlement doesn't look like it will do anything to change that, and that this situation is clearly harmful to Canadian software companies.
Actually, apt will tell you everything it is going to do, before it does it. If anything it's going to do is more than you asked for (e.g. adding or upgrading an extra package to satisfy a dependency or removing one to satisfy a conflict), it will ask you for confirmation before it starts.
It leaves behind all the packages it downloads, until you tell it to get rid of them (all of them, or only those that aren't currently installed), so, if need be, you can go back to previous versions.
There's a difference between automating tedious tasks and hiding them. But, hey, if you wanna playing the "rpm -i"/find dependencies/download dependencies/reapeat game, be my guest. Just don't pretend that it's an informed decision, okay?
You are suggesting that we actively encourage users of standard-hostile Microsoft products to keep using those products, and, more importantly, that we encourage Microsoft to keep building them that way.
You think that Free Software and Open Source developers should spend their precious time reverse-engineering Microsoft formats and bastardizing their own projects to work with them?
No thanks.
Personally, I would rather use my development time on something more useful, and I suspect that many others feel the same way.
Office formats are, unfortunately, very common -- it's arguably essential that Office alternatives provide support form them. But, I have no interest in assisting other Microsoft formats to achieve that status, especially not when there exist real standard alternatives.
So, seriously, is anyone else actually still boycotting DVD?
I do remember that there was much noise made, not so long ago, about boycotting -- not just DVD, in fact, but all products of the MPAA. I never went that far, but I haven't yet felt the urge to pay money for the priviledge of surrendering my freedom.
This morning, I heard on the radio that DVD players outsold VCRs for the first time this Christmas (in Canada). The masses don't even understand the fair use and free speech ramifications, and now it seems like those who do understand just don't care anymore.
Are these just different voices I'm hearing, or have people abondoned the boycott? If you have, why?
Is it the fact that CSS was actually broken, and DeCSS widely distributed, in spite of the MPAA's efforts? The fact that this has enabled DVD playback on Linux? Do you feel that you are still protesting by accessing your DVDs in violation of the DMCA (whether for fair use purposes or copyright infringement)? Have you decided to embrace DVD to discourage its replacement by a new, more effectively protected medium? Or perhaps you have just decided that, in light of the mass adoption of the technology, resistance is futile?
I'm really curious to hear what people are thinking about this these days.
At the same time as the government started charging that fee, they explicitly made it legal for you to make copies of copyrighted works, for your own use, whether the original belongs to you or to someone else.
Any word if Universal is planning to do this in Canada? It would seem even more of an outrage, since we are currently paying for the priviledge to make for-personal-use copies of their offerings.
Who would have thought that the greatest user-interface innovation of the 21st century might have come from Microsoft's first crack at an operating system, 20 years prior?
Yup, that's right. In MS DOS 1.0, there was no hierarchical file system. For users of that fine system, it was not "possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate." Things were simple. Life was good.
And then, along came the 10 MB hard disk support. Some clever person realized that if you attempt to store 10 MB worth of files in a flat structure, you'll very quickly lose track of what is there.
And now, 20 years later, a standard PC's storage is typically on the order of 50 GB. And we're supposed to make our lives easier by returning to flat file systems? I'm supposed to put an icon representing each of my files on one desktop, or even several desktops, and be able to (a) fit them all in that visual space and (b) ever find anything at all?
VA Linux Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: LNUX) announced at its annual meeting today that shareholders voted to change the Company's name to "VA Software Corporation."
Are they planning on changing their ticker symbol or do they enjoy the contradiction of it all?
Slashdot Mirror
Ever hear of Section 1? ;)
The Charter recognizes limits on all of the rights that it grants. It also recognizes group rights, which must be balanced with the typical individual rights.
Most relevant, the judiciary has found that "hate speech" is not protected by Section 2. This can be seen as a very real limit on freedom of the press. The US constitution doesn't do this.
However, I believe (and this survey seems to support that belief) that the practical consequences of these limitations are not severe. We recognize that speech can do harm, and somehow we manage, in our free and democratic society, the challenge of balancing the the competing rights that result.
The survey shows that, in practice, we still actually enjoy greater freedom of the press, since, apparently, journalists, researchers, and legal experts reported fewer incidences of "press freedom violations."
I also frankly can't blame him for his dim view of Microsoft. They behaved like the worst kind of gangsters in his courtroom, lying under oath, intimidating witness, and manufacturing evidence, all of it shockingly brazen.
Why weren't any of these shenanigans rewarded with chanrges of Perjury or Contempt? That would seem a more appropriate (and satisfying) consequence.
Shows you his priorities. The whingeing about GNU/Linux is icing on the cake, and is forgotten when the REAL issues come up. Anything you see RMS arguing that people should use GNU/something as a name, you know that there obviously isn't any real problem happening.
With Bitkeeper, the potential for a real problem (or at least a hell of an inconvenience) is right there, and so you see RMS not even thinking of naming conventions because his concern is about something a lot more important.
This analysis is completely flawed. From the GNU/Linux FAQ:
Obviously, RMS is talking about just the kernel.
I don't understand why everyone loves to speculate on RMS's personality and motivations, when they can't even be bothered to read and understand his arguments in the first place.
I'm not a DB guy, but looking at the comments from IBM and Microsoft...
...Big Blue's certainly seem more reasonable. They are focusing specifically on the enterprise market without being dismissive of other uses, while Microsoft regards anything that needs less that MS SQL Server provides as niche. Also, there are MS's usual claims about reliability and security, that history hasn't generally supported. In short, IBM seems to recognize that open source databases have their uses, while MS seems to be spreading their usual anti-OSS FUD.
Which is what you would expect: IBM is company that bases large parts of its business on open source and free software, but has an expensive, proprietary product competing with the open source databases -- surely, they're going to try to differentiate their product. MS opposes open source and free software, and never misses an opportunity to say something nasty about it.
Finally, I think it's interesting that Slashdot has actually opted for a less sensationalistic headline than InfoWorld. Slashdot's choice of the word "critique" over "reject" certainly seems more reflective of IBM's statements, at least.
LSB requires compliant distributions to provide, not use, rpm, and Debian does.
According to their FAQ...
My experience would suggest otherwise. I drove the 407 several times with my BC plates in the two months after I moved to Toronto, and was never billed for it. I would have expected them to get my new address from ICBC (The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia), the crown corporation that handles vehicle registration and insurance in that province. I did give ICBC my new address, so that they could send me a statement of my driving record, so apprently the folks at 407 ETR never asked.
Maybe that was the idea.
Isn't a headline supposed to make you want to read the article?
After six years of work the Zurich-based researchers say they can fit 1 terabit of data -- effectively the contents of a 100-gigabyte computer hard drive -- on a postage stamp-size piece of plastic.
Okay, so they rounded...would you have been much happier if they had said, "effectively the contents of a 128-gigabyte computer hard drive"?
What exactly was the difference again between executable software and binary code?
All proprietary licenses that I've ever seen place restrictions on how a user may use the software. The GPL contains no such restrictions. The GPL only resticts the way in which he can redistribute a modified version of the software, an activity expressly prohibited by proprietary licenses. Simply put, any claim that the GPL is more restrictive than proprietary licenses is laughably incorrect.
According to the Open Source Initiative, "the 'open source' label itself came out of a strategy session held on February 3rd 1998," in reaction to "Netscape's accouncements that it planned to give away the source of its browser." The term's purpose was "to dump the confrontational attitude that has been associated with 'free software' in the past and sell the idea strictly on the same pragmatic, business-case grounds that motivated Netscape." The attempt to paint the FSF as a radical offshoot of the open source movement is completely without factual basis.
The FSF has expressed no position on the patenting of inventions, in general, but only on the patenting of software.
According the NCSA's Procedures for Licensing NCSA Mosaic, "the software is not public domain, freeware or shareware." But then, we already knew that...
If it required a commercial partner to do this licensing, then clearly it wasn't even open source (as the term came to mean, when it was coined five years later), much less in the public domain!
At this point, I get tired of counting. This paper allegedly "details the complex issues surrounding open source," but fails to demonstrate even the most basic understanding of the term itself, competing licensing models, or the technology involved. It is, quite simply, not worthy of any serious consideration.
I don't know if I'm alone in this, but I don't understand. I don't know what SACD stands for, so I'm not sure what those two prices you're comparing are. It seems you're saying that this album costs 25 pounds, so what is the "CD" price you're comparing to?
By the way, the name of the album discussed in the thread you linked to is "A New Day Has Come," so I'm not sure if you're looking at the correct price. Here in Canada, new releases are often a couple of bucks cheaper than older works ("All The Way" was released in 1999), though I have no idea if that's the case in the UK.
Clarification would be appreciated.
Ballmer: I love this justice system! Yeah! Judges, judges, judges!
Start paying attention.
According to the SSSCA, a PC is an interactive digital device, and as such, it must be neutered according to government-created specifications. If an SSSCA-like law is introduced and passed, there will be NO technology available to enable you to exercise your rights.
I think this is Consumer Technology Bill of Rights is an excellent idea.
The speech was made Michael Greene, President and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and the transcript is available here.
Content wise, there was precious little: copying music is evil; 3.6 billion songs are illegally downloaded each month; download from legal sites so artists get paid (a quarter of a penny per song, apparently).
I think I'd be perfect. I'm in my mid-twenties, but I can easily pass for 16.
I can't sing; I can't dance. I definately can't write songs or play any instruments. Hell, I can barely dress myself.
Where do I sign up?
Last time I checked, all that is required to put an icon on the Windows desktop is to create a single, plain-text file in a specific directory.
You call that modifying MS's software?
I hope YOU are asking Bill for permission every time you use his operating system to make any modifications to any of the files residing on your hardware.
Try using ctrl-t, to open a new tab. It's a lot faster than ctrl-n, and tabbed browsing is one of the nicest extras in the new mozilla builds anyway.
Just out of curiousity, is there any way to make the centre-button-click open the linked document in a new tab, instead of a new window?
For me, tabbed browsing and centre-click to open in new window are two huge UI features in Mozilla (especially compared to IE)...it would be so nice to be able to use them together.
"sharpening her resume as a marketing manager" ;)
She is versed in programming,
So SHE *IS* a coder! (Of course, with a name like that, you'll never get a tech job; people will associate you with the other Katz
Hardly. The quote was: "she is versed in programming, account management, and customer acquisition and retention; she has led marketing campaigns for direct mail, trade shows, events, advertising, branding and positioning."
I think it's pretty clear from context that "versed in" means that she is able to insert enough related buzzwords into her speech to convince other technically ignorant marketroids and PHB's that she has some clue as to what it is she's trying to sell.
The QA person seems technical, and the unspecified Nortel employee MIGHT have been technical, but that's it.
Yesterday, I heard some American politician (a Congressman, I believe) huffing and puffing about about the Wheat Board, and how our lack of anti-trust legislation allows this organization to operate as a cartel, unfairly undercutting American wheat producers. Of course, he wanted to impose countervailing duties.
I'm planning to write our government to point out that, in spite of America's superior anti-trust legislation, Microsoft has been operating as a monopoly for years, that this settlement doesn't look like it will do anything to change that, and that this situation is clearly harmful to Canadian software companies.
Countervailing duties are the only solution.
Actually, apt will tell you everything it is going to do, before it does it. If anything it's going to do is more than you asked for (e.g. adding or upgrading an extra package to satisfy a dependency or removing one to satisfy a conflict), it will ask you for confirmation before it starts.
It leaves behind all the packages it downloads, until you tell it to get rid of them (all of them, or only those that aren't currently installed), so, if need be, you can go back to previous versions.
There's a difference between automating tedious tasks and hiding them. But, hey, if you wanna playing the "rpm -i"/find dependencies/download dependencies/reapeat game, be my guest. Just don't pretend that it's an informed decision, okay?
You are suggesting that we actively encourage users of standard-hostile Microsoft products to keep using those products, and, more importantly, that we encourage Microsoft to keep building them that way.
You think that Free Software and Open Source developers should spend their precious time reverse-engineering Microsoft formats and bastardizing their own projects to work with them?
No thanks.
Personally, I would rather use my development time on something more useful, and I suspect that many others feel the same way.
Office formats are, unfortunately, very common -- it's arguably essential that Office alternatives provide support form them. But, I have no interest in assisting other Microsoft formats to achieve that status, especially not when there exist real standard alternatives.
So, seriously, is anyone else actually still boycotting DVD?
I do remember that there was much noise made, not so long ago, about boycotting -- not just DVD, in fact, but all products of the MPAA. I never went that far, but I haven't yet felt the urge to pay money for the priviledge of surrendering my freedom.
This morning, I heard on the radio that DVD players outsold VCRs for the first time this Christmas (in Canada). The masses don't even understand the fair use and free speech ramifications, and now it seems like those who do understand just don't care anymore.
Are these just different voices I'm hearing, or have people abondoned the boycott? If you have, why?
Is it the fact that CSS was actually broken, and DeCSS widely distributed, in spite of the MPAA's efforts? The fact that this has enabled DVD playback on Linux? Do you feel that you are still protesting by accessing your DVDs in violation of the DMCA (whether for fair use purposes or copyright infringement)? Have you decided to embrace DVD to discourage its replacement by a new, more effectively protected medium? Or perhaps you have just decided that, in light of the mass adoption of the technology, resistance is futile?
I'm really curious to hear what people are thinking about this these days.
You figure correctly.
At the same time as the government started charging that fee, they explicitly made it legal for you to make copies of copyrighted works, for your own use, whether the original belongs to you or to someone else.
Any word if Universal is planning to do this in Canada? It would seem even more of an outrage, since we are currently paying for the priviledge to make for-personal-use copies of their offerings.
You missed the really scary quote from that article:
Need we say more?
Everything old is new again!
Who would have thought that the greatest user-interface innovation of the 21st century might have come from Microsoft's first crack at an operating system, 20 years prior?
Yup, that's right. In MS DOS 1.0, there was no hierarchical file system. For users of that fine system, it was not "possible to build labyrinths of internal directories that eventually become too deep to navigate." Things were simple. Life was good.
And then, along came the 10 MB hard disk support. Some clever person realized that if you attempt to store 10 MB worth of files in a flat structure, you'll very quickly lose track of what is there.
And now, 20 years later, a standard PC's storage is typically on the order of 50 GB. And we're supposed to make our lives easier by returning to flat file systems? I'm supposed to put an icon representing each of my files on one desktop, or even several desktops, and be able to (a) fit them all in that visual space and (b) ever find anything at all?
Right.
From the press release:
Are they planning on changing their ticker symbol or do they enjoy the contradiction of it all?