I've been fairly moderate about DRM in the past, until I purchased the rootkit-encumbered new Foo Fighters album. I placed it in my CD-ROM drive to encode some MP3's for my portable player, and I noticed a licensing agreement popped up. I hate those "software enhancements" on movie DVD's and audio CD's, and I did what I have always told my girlfriend to do when the InterActual ones come up: I closed the window without accepting the licensing agreement.
The software was still installed on my computer. The dirtiest thing about all this, in my opinion, is that the "A" in EULA (Agreement) is nothing of the sort. If I had agreed to the EULA and got the rootkit with the garbled audio and everything else, I would say caveat emptor until the laws are changed or lawsuits create a deterrent. Even if the contract is 200 pages long, we should probably be reading them. Or, we should demand a law like what the credit card companies have that requires a standardized matrix that summarizes how we're going to get cheated, monitored, and butt-raped.
They could have done this legally (we can talk about the ethics another day), but they chose to circumvent their own legal measures: the "yes" and "no" that is supposed to make all this work. Now, I'm glad to see that this will give the world a reason to say caveat venditor.
The "6 Degree of Freedom" statement is much more important to me than "3D". When you have a 6 DOF controller, you are able to execute every possible motion in 3-space. The 6 DOF controller I used (in a research project associated with the space program) used a sliding controller in the left hand that you could push inward and outward (Z translation), as well as sliding up, down, left, and right (X and Y translation). In the right hand was a conventional joystick, which allowed you to rotate around each axis (pitch, yaw, roll).
The 6 DOF "3D" controller comes from the ability to translate AND rotate around each axis (3 * 2). I can tell you from experience that the brain really has to stretch to use this complex of operation, especially when your command frame (the origin of all of this motion) is moving along with the thing you are controlling. However, once your brain maps the motions, it is an incredible way to operate a precision machine. You can always tell an advanced user by their use of multiple axes at the same time, which leads to more efficient operation (like translating in X and Y at the same time while executing a roll).
After making a second consecutive right turn, Clippy appears. "It seems like you're turning. Would you like help about this topic?" You say no.
AutoFormat kicks in, causing your car to automatically turn right at every intersection. You manage to get rid of that, but now every time you try to turn left the steering wheel is AutoCorrect'ed to the right.
You finally just let the car drive you wherever while you listen to MSN radio. You don't get where you wanted to go, but at least you didn't crash.
It's been very interesting, being fairly new to using free software, to watch these kinds of conflicts developing among free software advocates. My father tends to ask, "How are they making their money?" when I show him some impressive piece of free (beer and speech) Linux software I have installed and configured. He still is surprised when I tell him it's basically volunteers, or at best a group of programmers who wouldn't mind if a company paid them to support the software.
Any idealistic movement must deal with this kind of common-sense reality. The same thing happens every Sunday when a family of Christians, who would probably not be too happy to see a son or daughter required to work on Sunday, goes out to eat at a restaurant. However, this family might realize that the people working on Sunday probably don't care themselves, and they might be happy to get the extra hours.
The same thing goes for closed source, commercial software. It will be here forever, just like World Book will still be selling encyclopedias after Wikipedia trebles in size and quality.
So, my message to free software idealists who hate the idea of closed source: deal with it, use it when you have to, replace it when you can. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean you have to abolish it (isn't that the point of freedom and tolerance anyway?). The benefit of not being perceived a fanatic is much greater than the benefit of advocating sweeping, impractical reforms.
In the meantime, I'm rooting for that reverse engineering project...
I have to wonder when MS is going to release a Service Pack for MSNBC. It's bad enough standalone over the television, and we all know how badly things with MS in the name perform once you hook them up to the Internet.
Making overly-complicated pages did not start with the popularization of broadband. Think back to when frames were popular. I can't imagine how some of the framesets I saw eight years ago would render on a cellular phone screen. Many web designers are more artists than programmers, and this means that sacrifices of code readability and simplicity will always be made for the sake of the next big thing in style. Increased bandwidth only makes this problem worse by adding embedded objects and image-heavy sites.
In a public relations sense, this seems like the RIAA lawsuits all over again. When will companies realize that asserting legal rights doesn't necessarily require antagonizing current and potential user bases?
As I'm sure many others have, I actually found out about Wikipedia by doing general searches on Google. Pretty soon after that, I started phrasing searches like "wikipedia [search query]" just to get the encyclopedia results on top.
How did Google become well known? Word of mouth, and the slow realization that it was working better than anything else. I have a feeling Wikipedia will follow that trend.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been fairly moderate about DRM in the past, until I purchased the rootkit-encumbered new Foo Fighters album. I placed it in my CD-ROM drive to encode some MP3's for my portable player, and I noticed a licensing agreement popped up. I hate those "software enhancements" on movie DVD's and audio CD's, and I did what I have always told my girlfriend to do when the InterActual ones come up: I closed the window without accepting the licensing agreement.
The software was still installed on my computer. The dirtiest thing about all this, in my opinion, is that the "A" in EULA (Agreement) is nothing of the sort. If I had agreed to the EULA and got the rootkit with the garbled audio and everything else, I would say caveat emptor until the laws are changed or lawsuits create a deterrent. Even if the contract is 200 pages long, we should probably be reading them. Or, we should demand a law like what the credit card companies have that requires a standardized matrix that summarizes how we're going to get cheated, monitored, and butt-raped.
They could have done this legally (we can talk about the ethics another day), but they chose to circumvent their own legal measures: the "yes" and "no" that is supposed to make all this work. Now, I'm glad to see that this will give the world a reason to say caveat venditor.
It might be even more interesting to take a look at this link, but hey, information reliability is for losers, huh?
The "6 Degree of Freedom" statement is much more important to me than "3D". When you have a 6 DOF controller, you are able to execute every possible motion in 3-space. The 6 DOF controller I used (in a research project associated with the space program) used a sliding controller in the left hand that you could push inward and outward (Z translation), as well as sliding up, down, left, and right (X and Y translation). In the right hand was a conventional joystick, which allowed you to rotate around each axis (pitch, yaw, roll).
The 6 DOF "3D" controller comes from the ability to translate AND rotate around each axis (3 * 2). I can tell you from experience that the brain really has to stretch to use this complex of operation, especially when your command frame (the origin of all of this motion) is moving along with the thing you are controlling. However, once your brain maps the motions, it is an incredible way to operate a precision machine. You can always tell an advanced user by their use of multiple axes at the same time, which leads to more efficient operation (like translating in X and Y at the same time while executing a roll).
After making a second consecutive right turn, Clippy appears. "It seems like you're turning. Would you like help about this topic?" You say no.
AutoFormat kicks in, causing your car to automatically turn right at every intersection. You manage to get rid of that, but now every time you try to turn left the steering wheel is AutoCorrect'ed to the right.
You finally just let the car drive you wherever while you listen to MSN radio. You don't get where you wanted to go, but at least you didn't crash.
Why not use the Lesser GPL (LGPL) for fonts? Wouldn't that solve the problem?
It's been very interesting, being fairly new to using free software, to watch these kinds of conflicts developing among free software advocates. My father tends to ask, "How are they making their money?" when I show him some impressive piece of free (beer and speech) Linux software I have installed and configured. He still is surprised when I tell him it's basically volunteers, or at best a group of programmers who wouldn't mind if a company paid them to support the software.
Any idealistic movement must deal with this kind of common-sense reality. The same thing happens every Sunday when a family of Christians, who would probably not be too happy to see a son or daughter required to work on Sunday, goes out to eat at a restaurant. However, this family might realize that the people working on Sunday probably don't care themselves, and they might be happy to get the extra hours.
The same thing goes for closed source, commercial software. It will be here forever, just like World Book will still be selling encyclopedias after Wikipedia trebles in size and quality.
So, my message to free software idealists who hate the idea of closed source: deal with it, use it when you have to, replace it when you can. Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean you have to abolish it (isn't that the point of freedom and tolerance anyway?). The benefit of not being perceived a fanatic is much greater than the benefit of advocating sweeping, impractical reforms.
In the meantime, I'm rooting for that reverse engineering project...
I have to wonder when MS is going to release a Service Pack for MSNBC. It's bad enough standalone over the television, and we all know how badly things with MS in the name perform once you hook them up to the Internet.
How well would Metafor handle English like "nouns phrases become objects"?
Making overly-complicated pages did not start with the popularization of broadband. Think back to when frames were popular. I can't imagine how some of the framesets I saw eight years ago would render on a cellular phone screen. Many web designers are more artists than programmers, and this means that sacrifices of code readability and simplicity will always be made for the sake of the next big thing in style. Increased bandwidth only makes this problem worse by adding embedded objects and image-heavy sites.
In a public relations sense, this seems like the RIAA lawsuits all over again. When will companies realize that asserting legal rights doesn't necessarily require antagonizing current and potential user bases?
As I'm sure many others have, I actually found out about Wikipedia by doing general searches on Google. Pretty soon after that, I started phrasing searches like "wikipedia [search query]" just to get the encyclopedia results on top.
How did Google become well known? Word of mouth, and the slow realization that it was working better than anything else. I have a feeling Wikipedia will follow that trend.