Funnily enough, YOU are missing the even bigger picture.
People don't care about this crime. There is a vast discrepancy between copyright law and the general opinion about it in the entire western world. The reason copyright law looks the way it does is because of the effort of a very small copyright lobby. Their propositions go unopposed because people don't care. 90 years? Fine, whatever.
However, law enforcement without unlimited funds means that you have to prioritize. Every police force does this, ours too. Now, the small copyright lobby demands higher prioritization for the crimes they care about, copyright infringement. But law enforcement prioritization is something that people do care about, strongly. And people don't think the police should spend resources on hunting down filesharers and put them in jail. Not here at least, and if you would ask around in the rest of the western world, I think you'd get the same answer, there are far more important crimes to worry about. Copyright infringement is not an important crime in the people's opinion, and it's definitely not something you would impose trade sanctions for.
Usually when the police over here is covered in media, they are complaining about lack of funds, there are too few policemen, minor crimes go uninvestigated, and the general feeling is that the police doesn't do its job.
And now the police did a large-scale raid, not against drug smugglers, traffickers or other organized crime which people actually care about, but against file-sharers. As a result of a direct order from the minister of justice (who btw is not allowed to do that), and as a result of pressure from a foreign power.
So we have a situation where the police doesn't have manpower to do what people want, but when the US wants to shutdown a legal Swedish site, there's suddenly plenty of resources available. THIS pisses people off enormously. The average Joe couldn't care less about copyright or filesharing or the Pirate Bay, but this blatant misuse of the police is something a lot of people care about.
We're talking basic theft which EVERY country laws for
Uh, no, we're talking about copyright infringement, which is a different crime than theft, and one that only countries that have signed the Bern Convention have laws about, and even then they differ slightly between countries.
I'm really confused why people have been mentioning the Pirate Party here. They have nothing to do with The Pirate Bay other than a shared view on copyright matters.
What's up with the whole "Community Technology Preview" thing? What's wrong with "beta"?
I recently installed an app called (*breathes in*) SQL Server Management Studio Express Community Technology Preview. (*phew*) It even says so on the splash screen, and it's not ashamed of it!
Unfortunately, some of our lovely governments were in favor of the directive, which means that they will be eager to implement it.
On the other hand, I can imagaine all the different network operators being mighty, mighty, MIGHTY pissed, and when governments realize that they will have to cough up the money for this storage since companies will refuse, it might not happen.:-)
But you haveto wonder what deranged people actually WANT this directive?!?
Slight nitpick: The Nazi government killed about 12 million people in the concentration camps. 6 million jews, and 6 million others; communists, homosexuals, deserters, criminals, and other "enemies of the state".
You got it wrong. If you develop GPLed Free Software, you pay no money. If you develop proprietary software (no matter if it is Freeware [i.e. free as in beer] or if you sell it) you have to pay. But if you want to develop Free/Open Source software under a GPL-incompatible OSS license, you're out of luck.
We want specified Free/Libre and Open Source Software ("FLOSS") applications to be able to use specified GPL-licensed MySQL client libraries (the "Program") despite the fact that not all FLOSS licenses are compatible with version 2 of the GNU General Public License (the "GPL").
...followed by a list of OSI- or FSF-approved licenses. They are obviously bending over backwards ensuring the spread of open-source software, so how can you claim otherwise? They put these restrictions in place simply because there were companies selling derived works without paying for it to MySQL. How is that bad?
I have never liked MySql's take on GPL on their site: I am not sure if it is up now, or modified, but their 'reasons you need to buy a license for MySql' included: writing to media, giving to a colleague, copying source.
MySql are trying to have their GPL cake and eat it I think... rather peculiar, and nobody else seems to make note of it...
What are you talking about? What do you mean "have their cake"? MySQL is distributed under GPL. Period. That they wish for everyone to get it under their commercial license doesn't alter the fact that it is distributed under GPL.
Also, you seem to imply that their commercial license somehow is bad, but isn't it better that companies who CANNOT release their software under GPL are allowed to use and redistribute an open source database such as MySQL, than forcing those companies to redistribute a closed source database instead?
Despite all the open source love on this site, few readers seem to actually understand how the GPL or software licensing works. The copyright holder is always free to distribute his software under ANY licenses. I can create a piece of software and release it under GPL *AND* the BSD License *AND* the Apache License *AND* my own commercial license *AND* the Creative Commons License and so on. You, the user, is then free to choose which license you wish to user my software under.
When did you move your email handling from a fat client to webmail? My first move was from Eudora to Outlook, then Outlook (yuk) to Pegasus (don't ask) and then to Hotmail and now Gmail. I don't think I'll move away from Gmail, but you never know.
Ajax unplugs you because you get the immediate, targeted response from the server that wasn't available before. So refreshing a whole page when I only need to see a small widget change is really what Ajax fixes.
Oh, you mean the kind of responsiveness and bandwidth conserving that every IMAP-capable email application can deliver? The kind of application that you don't need to download from a webpage every time you want to use it, but instead is installed locally? The kind that runs natively on your machine, instead of living in a webbrowser?
I trust that the virtual machine in which my code executes (be it Java or.Net or anything else like it) will take care of all of that for me, so I can concentrate on solving the actual problems, instead of optimizing for different kinds of hardware.
"But when I look at the software industry today, we've been getting a lot of innovation from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Adobe, the list goes on...of software manufacturers that have built very great, vibrant innovative technologies in a world of patents that allow them to protect what they've built, to monetize it in some ways, and then to be innovative and to do more with it."
How funny that he mentions only the really big software companies since it is only they that can invest in cross-licensing schemes and defend their patents?
"We're always looking for new things that can allow you to do things uniquely different today. For example, this new feature tool we have would allow me to tunnel directly using HTTP into my corporate Exchange server without having to go through the whole VPN (virtual private network) process, bypassing the need to use a smart card."
...always looking for new and unique ways to create security holes. WTF is this guy on?
The first comment to the article really sums up the reflex response to new GUI ideas by the slashdot community: "Use keyboard, much faster, moving hand to mouse is a distraction".
*sigh*
If you already move your files and folders the way you like it, please continue doing so, and don't bother using this method if it ever makes it into a real world window manager. Noone will force you, so you won't have to spew out the "It's new! It's bad! It's graphical!" comments as if that would stop GUI innovations, good or bad. Stop being so fricking conservative, it's the exact opposite of innovation and progress, which is what brought us into the computer age in the first place, and I quite like it here.
One insider says that even if Cingular and Verizon, the two largest wireless players, won't sell the Motorola-Apple phone, smaller rivals, such as T-Mobile, may peddle it to gain ground on the industry leaders.
The US cell phone market really confuses me, why couldn't you go to a store and buy the phone without the blessing/subscription plan/lock-in of a carrier, and then just pop your current SIM-card into the new phone? Why do you have to buy your phones through a carrier?
Are there no stores which just sell phones without subscription plans?
Can't you move your SIM-card to any phone you want?
One insider says that even if Cingular and Verizon, the two largest wireless players, won't sell the Motorola-Apple phone, smaller rivals, such as T-Mobile, may peddle it to gain ground on the industry leaders.
The US cell phone market really confuses me, why couldn't you go to a store and buy the phone without the blessing/subscription plan/lock-in of a carrier, and then just pop your current SIM-card into the new phone? Why do you have to buy your phones through a carrier?
Are there no stores which just sell phones without subscription plans?
Can't you move your SIM-card to any phone you want?
Every time a directive is passed, it means that all member nations have to implement it into their respective national law. This process is naturally a step backwards for national sovereignity.
However, this time a directive was overturned, which means that all member nations are free to keep or change their respective patent laws as they wish.
How is this a step back for national sovereignity? Please explain.
I admit that I don't know which fiber network any of the various broadband companies use, but I think some of them have their own fiber networks instead of using the ones from the previously government owned national telco.
The biggest cause for the low prices is actually fierce competition among broadband providers since 1999. Back then you could get 10/10Mbit for $40/month if you lived in a few lucky cities, and since then all the other competitors have had to match that price.
Back in 2002 I paid $30/month for the same speed, and that was provided by the biggest competitor of the national telco, so I'm *pretty sure* none of that fiber was paid for by taxes in any way.:-) (However, it was a special deal that was only available to student apartments, but still...)
Now I pay $50 for 8/1, because I could only get ADSL. If I had lived closer to the nearest phone station, I could have gotten 24/10 for the same price using VDSL. Stupid copper wire quality.:-(
Anyway, the tax-funded fibre networks you are thinking of usually exist in small and remote cities where the city council decided that a local fibre network would make the city more attractive to people and businesses. I don't know if it's working, but it's apparently very nice if you live there.:-)
...and the 26 color-coded keys for the letters of the English alphabet are all nice and green and such, but how would you internationalize the product? The Swedish alphabet has 29 letters, where would you fit those three extra keys? I know there are other alphabets that have something inbetween or more. How would you make those?
I, for one, do not welcome our new narrowminded keyboard overlords.
No, it reminds me of the slashdot effect; when too many people want access to a limited network/server resource.
It's not uncommon, it's not sinister, there's no hidden agenda, they're not twiddling their thumbs doing nothing, they only underestimated the demand for their service and are now scrambling to meet that demand. Nothing to see here, wait it out, move along.
That said, it would be nice if their uptime status was more accurate, and if they reimburse the lost days to all their paying customers, but bitching and whining and wearing tinfoil hats won't help in the least. Patience is a virtue.
(Now I just hope that these problems won't appear on the EU-servers. The beta-servers I'm playing on seems to work ok so far.:-) )
Have you learned nothing of how FOSS is changing the software industry? In the future, you will not be able to sell software, instead you have to sell a service.
A WoW server is a service, and that's where the money is. Why charge $50 once for every customer, when you can charge $15 for every month for every customer?
Many MMORPGs don't require you to buy the game in a store, they just require you to subscribe to their service. They might lose money on people who play only one month compared to selling the game, but many more play for longer periods, and that's equal to nice, steady profits for years and years.
Lineage and Lineage II completely dwarves the other MMORPGs, but on the other hand they don't seem to be very popular outside Asia. I think WoW will be very successful, but I *highly* doubt they will capture the #1 spot.
Slashdot Mirror
Funnily enough, YOU are missing the even bigger picture.
People don't care about this crime. There is a vast discrepancy between copyright law and the general opinion about it in the entire western world. The reason copyright law looks the way it does is because of the effort of a very small copyright lobby. Their propositions go unopposed because people don't care. 90 years? Fine, whatever.
However, law enforcement without unlimited funds means that you have to prioritize. Every police force does this, ours too. Now, the small copyright lobby demands higher prioritization for the crimes they care about, copyright infringement. But law enforcement prioritization is something that people do care about, strongly. And people don't think the police should spend resources on hunting down filesharers and put them in jail. Not here at least, and if you would ask around in the rest of the western world, I think you'd get the same answer, there are far more important crimes to worry about. Copyright infringement is not an important crime in the people's opinion, and it's definitely not something you would impose trade sanctions for.
Usually when the police over here is covered in media, they are complaining about lack of funds, there are too few policemen, minor crimes go uninvestigated, and the general feeling is that the police doesn't do its job.
And now the police did a large-scale raid, not against drug smugglers, traffickers or other organized crime which people actually care about, but against file-sharers. As a result of a direct order from the minister of justice (who btw is not allowed to do that), and as a result of pressure from a foreign power.
So we have a situation where the police doesn't have manpower to do what people want, but when the US wants to shutdown a legal Swedish site, there's suddenly plenty of resources available. THIS pisses people off enormously. The average Joe couldn't care less about copyright or filesharing or the Pirate Bay, but this blatant misuse of the police is something a lot of people care about.
What's up with the whole "Community Technology Preview" thing? What's wrong with "beta"?
I recently installed an app called (*breathes in*) SQL Server Management Studio Express Community Technology Preview. (*phew*) It even says so on the splash screen, and it's not ashamed of it!
I'm pretty sure my city (Stockholm) started switching all traffic lights to the LED version 10 years ago, and completed the switch in about 2 years.
Unfortunately, some of our lovely governments were in favor of the directive, which means that they will be eager to implement it. On the other hand, I can imagaine all the different network operators being mighty, mighty, MIGHTY pissed, and when governments realize that they will have to cough up the money for this storage since companies will refuse, it might not happen. :-)
But you haveto wonder what deranged people actually WANT this directive?!?
Slight nitpick: The Nazi government killed about 12 million people in the concentration camps. 6 million jews, and 6 million others; communists, homosexuals, deserters, criminals, and other "enemies of the state".
http://www.mysql.com/company/legal/licensing/comme rcial-license.html
I suggest you read their license guidelines again, because what you talk about just isn't there anymore, if it ever was.
Also, you seem to imply that their commercial license somehow is bad, but isn't it better that companies who CANNOT release their software under GPL are allowed to use and redistribute an open source database such as MySQL, than forcing those companies to redistribute a closed source database instead?
Despite all the open source love on this site, few readers seem to actually understand how the GPL or software licensing works. The copyright holder is always free to distribute his software under ANY licenses. I can create a piece of software and release it under GPL *AND* the BSD License *AND* the Apache License *AND* my own commercial license *AND* the Creative Commons License and so on. You, the user, is then free to choose which license you wish to user my software under.
Oh, you mean the kind of responsiveness and bandwidth conserving that every IMAP-capable email application can deliver? The kind of application that you don't need to download from a webpage every time you want to use it, but instead is installed locally? The kind that runs natively on your machine, instead of living in a webbrowser?
The emperor is naked.
I trust that the virtual machine in which my code executes (be it Java or .Net or anything else like it) will take care of all of that for me, so I can concentrate on solving the actual problems, instead of optimizing for different kinds of hardware.
If only that was true.
How funny that he mentions only the really big software companies since it is only they that can invest in cross-licensing schemes and defend their patents?
Mod parent up, Quoted for truth, etc.
The first comment to the article really sums up the reflex response to new GUI ideas by the slashdot community: "Use keyboard, much faster, moving hand to mouse is a distraction".
*sigh*
If you already move your files and folders the way you like it, please continue doing so, and don't bother using this method if it ever makes it into a real world window manager. Noone will force you, so you won't have to spew out the "It's new! It's bad! It's graphical!" comments as if that would stop GUI innovations, good or bad. Stop being so fricking conservative, it's the exact opposite of innovation and progress, which is what brought us into the computer age in the first place, and I quite like it here.
One insider says that even if Cingular and Verizon, the two largest wireless players, won't sell the Motorola-Apple phone, smaller rivals, such as T-Mobile, may peddle it to gain ground on the industry leaders.
The US cell phone market really confuses me, why couldn't you go to a store and buy the phone without the blessing/subscription plan/lock-in of a carrier, and then just pop your current SIM-card into the new phone? Why do you have to buy your phones through a carrier?
Are there no stores which just sell phones without subscription plans?
Can't you move your SIM-card to any phone you want?
One insider says that even if Cingular and Verizon, the two largest wireless players, won't sell the Motorola-Apple phone, smaller rivals, such as T-Mobile, may peddle it to gain ground on the industry leaders. The US cell phone market really confuses me, why couldn't you go to a store and buy the phone without the blessing/subscription plan/lock-in of a carrier, and then just pop your current SIM-card into the new phone? Why do you have to buy your phones through a carrier? Are there no stores which just sell phones without subscription plans? Can't you move your SIM-card to any phone you want?
Huh?
Every time a directive is passed, it means that all member nations have to implement it into their respective national law. This process is naturally a step backwards for national sovereignity.
However, this time a directive was overturned, which means that all member nations are free to keep or change their respective patent laws as they wish.
How is this a step back for national sovereignity? Please explain.
I admit that I don't know which fiber network any of the various broadband companies use, but I think some of them have their own fiber networks instead of using the ones from the previously government owned national telco.
:-) (However, it was a special deal that was only available to student apartments, but still...)
:-(
:-)
The biggest cause for the low prices is actually fierce competition among broadband providers since 1999. Back then you could get 10/10Mbit for $40/month if you lived in a few lucky cities, and since then all the other competitors have had to match that price.
Back in 2002 I paid $30/month for the same speed, and that was provided by the biggest competitor of the national telco, so I'm *pretty sure* none of that fiber was paid for by taxes in any way.
Now I pay $50 for 8/1, because I could only get ADSL. If I had lived closer to the nearest phone station, I could have gotten 24/10 for the same price using VDSL. Stupid copper wire quality.
Anyway, the tax-funded fibre networks you are thinking of usually exist in small and remote cities where the city council decided that a local fibre network would make the city more attractive to people and businesses. I don't know if it's working, but it's apparently very nice if you live there.
...and the 26 color-coded keys for the letters of the English alphabet are all nice and green and such, but how would you internationalize the product? The Swedish alphabet has 29 letters, where would you fit those three extra keys? I know there are other alphabets that have something inbetween or more. How would you make those?
I, for one, do not welcome our new narrowminded keyboard overlords.
No, it reminds me of the slashdot effect; when too many people want access to a limited network/server resource.
:-) )
It's not uncommon, it's not sinister, there's no hidden agenda, they're not twiddling their thumbs doing nothing, they only underestimated the demand for their service and are now scrambling to meet that demand. Nothing to see here, wait it out, move along.
That said, it would be nice if their uptime status was more accurate, and if they reimburse the lost days to all their paying customers, but bitching and whining and wearing tinfoil hats won't help in the least. Patience is a virtue.
(Now I just hope that these problems won't appear on the EU-servers. The beta-servers I'm playing on seems to work ok so far.
Have you learned nothing of how FOSS is changing the software industry? In the future, you will not be able to sell software, instead you have to sell a service.
A WoW server is a service, and that's where the money is. Why charge $50 once for every customer, when you can charge $15 for every month for every customer?
Many MMORPGs don't require you to buy the game in a store, they just require you to subscribe to their service. They might lose money on people who play only one month compared to selling the game, but many more play for longer periods, and that's equal to nice, steady profits for years and years.
A MEP of the party I vote for signed the motion, so I wrote her a nice thank-you letter.
If you find "your" MEP on the list of signatories, please do the same to let them know that a lot of people actually care about this.
3 million Koreans say: KEKEKEKE! Lineage!
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html/
Lineage and Lineage II completely dwarves the other MMORPGs, but on the other hand they don't seem to be very popular outside Asia. I think WoW will be very successful, but I *highly* doubt they will capture the #1 spot.