More accurately it would not meet the FSF's definition of free software. I would call freely released source code that I could load into the iphone simulator (or with $99 an iphone itself) free software. But whether or not you agree with my usage of the term isn't the point. 'Free software' is a term like 'free country.' It's part of the language and no one entity can dictate it's meaning just because it thinks that is what the term should mean. Let's say I invent a new programming language X and sell a proprietary compiler for it for $99. You could write software in the X programming language and try to distribute it under the GPL, but users could only recompile the source code if they bought my X compiler for $99. Apparently this would be a problem. But it gets worse: Users can only recompile the source code if they buy a computer, which costs a lot more than $99. But doesn't that apply to basically all the software?
Following this logic, how is the GPL license enforced on open-source or free software? Since they gave it away for free, does that mean I can disregard any license they have attached to it? That one just has to come up from time to time.
You can't enforce the GPL. However, the recipient of the software has no right to make copies of the software or to create derivative works unless given permission by the copyright holder, which means following the terms of the GPL. You cannot be sued for breach of GPL, you will be sued for copyright infringement. (That is how it works in the USA. In other countries there are different rules, but the GPL always comes out on top).
Yes, but you're missing the REAL puzzle, which is that even the FIRST switch (with the calculated 1.25x expected return) doesn't gain any information. By symmetry, the expected return on the initial switch MUST be exactly 1.0x, yet the simple math says 1.25x. Where does the math/logic go wrong? One envelope contains a small amount, and one contains a large amount. You either double the small amount, or you half the large amount.
I don't know if Windows is going to collapse, as the article implies. I think they're guaranteed a certain minimum of customers each year, just from either individuals or companies who know it as the familiar choice, that doesn't require much retraining to use. I know people who were used to Windows XP and managed to use a Macintosh running Leopard without any assistance (including figuring out how to use the touchpad with two fingers), but had real problems using Vista. So much that they asked me if I could install Windows on their new laptop instead of Vista.
Marilyn vos Savant explained the problem in Parade magazine, and a whole bunch of math professors wrote in to tell her that she was wrong... turns out it's kind of a bad idea to play "gotcha" with someone who has an IQ of 228. On the contrary, if you follow the link to the Times article, you will find that the Monty Hall problem is stated correctly, while on Mrs. Marilyn's website, the problem is stated incorrectly. Let's play the game this way:
There are three doors. There is a dollar behind one door, and nothing behind the other doors. I know what is where, you don't.
You pick a door. Before you open it, I may or may not open an empty door. In either case, you then have the chance to switch doors.
You open the door you picked originally or the one you switched to. You can keep the money if you find it.
This is not the game in the article, but it matches the description on the MvS website. So you always switch when shown an empty door.
What they didn't tell you was that I only show you an empty door if you picked the door with the money initially. So if I show you an empty door, and you switch, you will lose.
A long time ago, Apple got to keep their name only because they didn't sell records. That seemed fair enough at the time. Now it's not entirely clear who would win should there be a renewed dispute with Apple Records because the computer company has now become the #1 music seller. It would be very interesting to see what would happen if Apple Records began their own iTunes equivalent or licensed their brand to the makers of cheap ipod knockoffs. That would be ironic, but if it never happens it will be because of the credible threat of red ink flowing as a result, created by the lawyers acting as they do, regardless of what seems fair. Last year, Apple Inc. bought all the trademarks that were owned by Apple Corps, owner of Apple Records, for an undisclosed sum. Apple Corps has a license to keep using the name free of charge. I don't think Apple Corps has any right to sell the right to use the name "Apple" to anyone.
I think the bite in the Apple logo has been pointed out to be a play on a computer byte. I can't imagine Apple would do a tribute to Turing's death by linking the company's logo to the cause of death. That would be creepy. Definitely not in 1977. At that time, Turing was known to computer scientists for his achievements, but details of his life (and death) were not widely known until Andrew Hodges' biography which was published in 1983. In 1977, Jobs and Wozniak wouldn't have thought about Alan Turing. (Just a funny detail: The spelling checker in Safari marks Hodges and Wozniak as spelt incorrectly, but apparently knows "Turing" and "Jobs". )
Quite interesting. Five links to images of apples that each are much less similar in shape to the Apple logo than the New York logo. If the designers had taken any of these apples as their initial inspiration (for example the stock photo and stock clipart which are likely cheap to buy), the result would have looked nothing like the Apple logo.
I've seen this on several blogs by now (Slashdot seems a bit slow today), and mostly the usual comments. Lots of people commenting on Apple Records having an Apple logo (not knowing that Apple Inc. paid probably an eight digit sum for all Apple Corps trademarks). But a few graphics artists compared the shapes of the logos - and they are identical. That New York logo has exactly the very distinctive and recognisable shape of the Apple logo. And it seems that the designers also got a bit of inspiration from Apple's headquarters address and put an infinity symbol into their logo.
There are millions of ways to draw an apple shape. There is no reason to copy the shape of Apple's logo.
Or people could just obey the speed limit Or the police could save themselves the effort of installing speed cameras and just add a few cameras to the Tom Tom database. That should slow traffic down. (Except that it doesn't make it safer, because you end up with these bloody idiots slamming their brakes for no apparent reason).
Where I drive, +5 is always acceptable because, guess what? Not everyone is a speeder asshole like you and goes fifteen miles over the speed limit. I'm keeping up with the majority of traffic that drives at or around the speed limit, while you are keeping up with the asshole lawbreakers. Where I drive, there is a speed camera about every mile, and by driving at speed limit + 5 you get through very relaxed, comfortable and safe.
Now I don't mind if someone overtakes at higher speed, as long as it is within reason and in a non-aggressive way. What I can't stand are the idiots that are almost in your back seat when you are overtaking, then speed off and 100 meters further on they hit the brakes and slow down to ten miles below the speed limit because their bloody Tom-Tom tells them about a camera, forcing you to hit the brakes as well (and usually hit them hard, because you don't expect that idiot to brake when there is no traffic at all in front of him).
If London police moved all the speed cameras by 500 metres overnight, they would make an absolute fortune the next day.
So I'll try to adapt your example, even though it doesn't work very well for the point I'm trying to make. *Imagine* I need a license to distribute books, even if I'm giving legal copies away for free:
If I set up a table with a sign that says "free books", and I give books away, then according to this decision, they can still come after me.
If I set up a table with a sign that says "free books" but nobody can prove anyone took a book, then according to this decision, they can probably come after me.
If I set up a table with a bunch of books on it, with no sign, and they can prove someone took some books, then according to this decision, they can still come after me.
If I have a table with a bunch of books, with no "free books" sign, and nobody can prove anyone took a book, then according to this decision, they can't come after me. I had a look at the actual decision, which was linked on theinquirer, and what you say seems to be too pessimistic.
The court decision was about a motion to dismiss. The RIAA has claimed that songs were copied, and that they were "made available". In a motion to dismiss, the judge will assume that everything the plaintiff says is true, so it is assumed at this point that songs were actually copied. The defendant argued that the RIAA hadn't specifically said which songs were copied, but the RIAA said "the files in your shared folder were copied", and that is enough at this stage. However, the "making available" argument didn't fly. "Making available" apparently doesn't infringe on the rights of the copyright holder. Instead, the RIAA has to claim (and later, they have to prove) that "distribution" took place. And "distribution" in the sense of copyright law is offering copies to others for (1) further distribution, (2) public performance or (3) something else I forgot.
So lets say Microsoft offers 100 copies of Microsoft Office to a software dealer who then is supposed to sell them on. That is "distribution" in the sense of the copyright law, even if the offer is not accepted. If Microsoft offers 100 copies to a company to use for their own work, that is not distribution. Basically the RIAA wanted to catch the defendant with a very liberal term of the word "distribution", and the judge said: If you want to claim distribution, then claim what the law says, not what you think it says.
So if you make an offer to a bookstore that they can copy your books to which you don't own the copyrights, and then sell the copies, that is "distribution" even if it is only an offer. If you make an offer to an actor, allowing him to make a copy of the book and then read that copy to an audience in public, that is distribution (public performance involved). If you offer to let me make a copy for my own use, that is not distribution.
I think it will be very hard to claim and prove distribution.
The RIAA's undoubtably going to argue that the defendant's P2P software made the file available and that that constitutes the offer of distribution. That is exactly the argument that has been used by bandwidth thieves to justify their misdeeds ("the router made it available! That was an offer of bandwidth!") and has failed miserably. There is legal precedence; people have been convicted because that argument failed. It will fail in exactly the same way for the RIAA.
I believe that Judge Karas would require the plaintiffs to prove that an "offer" actually took place.... which of course it never did. So yes it sets the bar higher than the RIAA's ridiculous "making available" theory. Some people seem to think that the Kazaa software (or other software) can make an offer on my behalf. For the example, the RIAA probably thinks so. If that is what they think, they should ask the Kazaa software to appear as witness in court, stating its name, residence, date of birth (I guess a witness would have to do that in a US court, right), and then they can ask the software about it. If someone or something cannot legally appear in court as a witness, then that someone or something cannot make any valid offers to anyone.
If you're not technically savvy, what the hell are you doing downloading a Linux distribution? Are you saying Linux is only suitable for people who are "technically savvy"?
I find it perhaps ironic that this is what you're saying, when I was arguing very similarly in another thread- unsecured WAPs, where I argued that the software's authorization was not necessarily the person's authorization. Some people can think logically; they will _either_ conclude that a machine can give authorization, _or_ they will conclude that only a person can do so, and then they will stick to it. If the outcome is sometimes desirable and sometimes undesirable, that is just tough. Others change their thinking in order to support the conclusion that they want to arrive at.
Ah! So if I consider my 8-bit 20" monitor as being one giant pixel (with 1680*1050*3 sub-pixels), then it is capable of displaying 1,351,224,000 colors. We could advertise monitors as being capable of displaying "billions" of colors. Neat! Your maths is way off. If you have an 8 bit display, then you have 1680*1050*255+1 different possible values of red, green and blue each, which can produce (1680*1050*255+1)^3 different values, which is about 9.1 * 10^25 or 91 million billion billion colours.
Bad thing apple's website lists the imac displays as showing "millions of colors" which is an outright lie. 16.2 million colours is what everyone advertises for six bit + dithering, compared to 16.7 million for 8 bit.
Strange enough, the UK Dell webpage (I cannot access the US one easily) advertises every single laptop screen, from the cheapest to the most expensive, as 16.7 million colours. Not 16.2 million, not "millions", but 16.7 millions. There are three possibilities: Dell UK sells all its laptops with 8 bit screens. Or Dell is lying. Or someone made a mistake.
Which windows pc or laptop, exactly, advertises "millions of colors" but provides only 6-bit panels? Which one doesn't? You can check for yourself. If a display is advertised as 16.7 million colours, then either it is eight bit, or it is six bit and the company is misleading you, or it is six bit and whoever wrote the advertisement is an idiot (that happens). If a display is advertised as 16.2 million colours, then either it is six bit + dithering, or it is eight bit and whoever wrote the advertisement is a _real_ idiot. Now go and check the advertisements and tell us how many 16.7 million colours you find.
Sure those 18 bit displays have great response times for gamers, but they don't have true color, and that is something that does affect the way images show. claiming that a 18-bit display shows 16.2 millions colors 'because of dithering' is something that the courts may well have to decide if it's defrauding the individuals who really need 24-bit colors or not. On an eight bit display, each pixel is made of three sub pixels, each with one of 256 possible values. These displays only have 766 different colours (3 x 256 = 768, but that counts the colour black three times, so there are only 766 colours). The 16.7 million colours are just created by dithering.
Eh? How does that work?
If you lose just one bit of colour information, you go from 16.7 to 8.4 million colours. I think they must just be rounding or writing it down poorly. I think you were not here last year or so, when exactly the same claim was made against Apple monitors (and again, only against Apple monitors, strangely enough not against any other identical monitors):
Each subpixel can display one of 64 values, lets say from 0 to 63. However, each subpixel also can change its value over time. During four consecutive clocks, the sub pixel can have two different values. For example, to produce the values 31 1/4, 31 1/2 and 31 3/4, change the value in a pattern 32-31-31-31, 32-32-31-31, or 32-32-32-31. That way, you achieve 253 different values from 0 to 63 in quarter steps. 16.2 million = 253 * 253 * 253.
What the fuck is up with the voting procedures in the EU?! People vote No, and the vote gets recorded as a Yes? There aren't even enough people to make that switch difficult to detect! How does that kind of crap even happen? Are all the vote counters in all those EU countries just plain corrupt or what?! It appears that everyone was discussing things, then everyone went for a coffee break except for one Microsoft employee, one employee of a Microsoft partner, and one person dead set against accepting OOXML, and the Microsoft guy decided that was exactly the right time to do the voting. So the won 2:1, while the persons on coffee break would have voted 2:15 _against_ OOXML.
If OOXML is certified, we're put in a lose/lose situation. Either we accept it, and OOXML becomes a "standard", even though it really isn't -- or we continue to write letters and refuse to accept it as a "standard", which implies we can't trust ISO -- which means we're just about out of standards organizations to trust. And a world without official standards is a world of defacto standards, which means Microsoft will win every future battle. I would suggest accepting it as a Standard and taking it at face value.
Imagine a government then saying: "We want to aquire on office suite that will be everywhere in government. Two conditions to be met: Full compliance with an ISO Standard of your choice, either OOXML or ODF. And correct handling of leap years, especially for the year 1900. And we won't just trust your claims, we will check for compliance with these two conditions."
This would be absolutely fair, and it would exclude Microsoft Office unless they make it ODF compatible. It would actually exclude anyone trying to be OOXML compatible, because you can't be compliant with OOXML and get leap years right at the same time.
So? If one's kid is downloading music illegally at home, in "complete violation" of the family's policy, does that protect the parents from the various industry groups that might press lawsuits? The question here is who or what is a legal entity. A family is not a legal entity, but each family member is its own, separate legal entity, and a company like Sony is its own separate legal entity. Just like you are responsible for any action of any of your body parts, so is Sony responsible for the actions of each of its employees.
OUCH! Even stupeder than taht! Read on, an employee contacted the software company for tech support! How would that be stupid? As an employee myself, who is not working in the purchasing department, I cannot possibly have knowledge whether each piece of software that I am using is properly licensed, but I work under the assumption that all the software is licensed properly. Accordingly, I would feel free to contact someone's tech support if needed. Anyway, having fewer licenses than needed can be explained by negligence; having no license at all means something seriously dodgy is going on.
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You can't enforce the GPL. However, the recipient of the software has no right to make copies of the software or to create derivative works unless given permission by the copyright holder, which means following the terms of the GPL. You cannot be sued for breach of GPL, you will be sued for copyright infringement. (That is how it works in the USA. In other countries there are different rules, but the GPL always comes out on top).
There are three doors. There is a dollar behind one door, and nothing behind the other doors. I know what is where, you don't.
You pick a door. Before you open it, I may or may not open an empty door. In either case, you then have the chance to switch doors.
You open the door you picked originally or the one you switched to. You can keep the money if you find it.
This is not the game in the article, but it matches the description on the MvS website. So you always switch when shown an empty door.
What they didn't tell you was that I only show you an empty door if you picked the door with the money initially. So if I show you an empty door, and you switch, you will lose.
Quite interesting. Five links to images of apples that each are much less similar in shape to the Apple logo than the New York logo. If the designers had taken any of these apples as their initial inspiration (for example the stock photo and stock clipart which are likely cheap to buy), the result would have looked nothing like the Apple logo.
I've seen this on several blogs by now (Slashdot seems a bit slow today), and mostly the usual comments. Lots of people commenting on Apple Records having an Apple logo (not knowing that Apple Inc. paid probably an eight digit sum for all Apple Corps trademarks). But a few graphics artists compared the shapes of the logos - and they are identical. That New York logo has exactly the very distinctive and recognisable shape of the Apple logo. And it seems that the designers also got a bit of inspiration from Apple's headquarters address and put an infinity symbol into their logo.
There are millions of ways to draw an apple shape. There is no reason to copy the shape of Apple's logo.
Now I don't mind if someone overtakes at higher speed, as long as it is within reason and in a non-aggressive way. What I can't stand are the idiots that are almost in your back seat when you are overtaking, then speed off and 100 meters further on they hit the brakes and slow down to ten miles below the speed limit because their bloody Tom-Tom tells them about a camera, forcing you to hit the brakes as well (and usually hit them hard, because you don't expect that idiot to brake when there is no traffic at all in front of him).
If London police moved all the speed cameras by 500 metres overnight, they would make an absolute fortune the next day.
If I set up a table with a sign that says "free books", and I give books away, then according to this decision, they can still come after me.
If I set up a table with a sign that says "free books" but nobody can prove anyone took a book, then according to this decision, they can probably come after me.
If I set up a table with a bunch of books on it, with no sign, and they can prove someone took some books, then according to this decision, they can still come after me.
If I have a table with a bunch of books, with no "free books" sign, and nobody can prove anyone took a book, then according to this decision, they can't come after me.
I had a look at the actual decision, which was linked on theinquirer, and what you say seems to be too pessimistic.
The court decision was about a motion to dismiss. The RIAA has claimed that songs were copied, and that they were "made available". In a motion to dismiss, the judge will assume that everything the plaintiff says is true, so it is assumed at this point that songs were actually copied. The defendant argued that the RIAA hadn't specifically said which songs were copied, but the RIAA said "the files in your shared folder were copied", and that is enough at this stage. However, the "making available" argument didn't fly. "Making available" apparently doesn't infringe on the rights of the copyright holder. Instead, the RIAA has to claim (and later, they have to prove) that "distribution" took place. And "distribution" in the sense of copyright law is offering copies to others for (1) further distribution, (2) public performance or (3) something else I forgot.
So lets say Microsoft offers 100 copies of Microsoft Office to a software dealer who then is supposed to sell them on. That is "distribution" in the sense of the copyright law, even if the offer is not accepted. If Microsoft offers 100 copies to a company to use for their own work, that is not distribution. Basically the RIAA wanted to catch the defendant with a very liberal term of the word "distribution", and the judge said: If you want to claim distribution, then claim what the law says, not what you think it says.
So if you make an offer to a bookstore that they can copy your books to which you don't own the copyrights, and then sell the copies, that is "distribution" even if it is only an offer. If you make an offer to an actor, allowing him to make a copy of the book and then read that copy to an audience in public, that is distribution (public performance involved). If you offer to let me make a copy for my own use, that is not distribution.
I think it will be very hard to claim and prove distribution.
Strange enough, the UK Dell webpage (I cannot access the US one easily) advertises every single laptop screen, from the cheapest to the most expensive, as 16.7 million colours. Not 16.2 million, not "millions", but 16.7 millions. There are three possibilities: Dell UK sells all its laptops with 8 bit screens. Or Dell is lying. Or someone made a mistake.
Each subpixel can display one of 64 values, lets say from 0 to 63. However, each subpixel also can change its value over time. During four consecutive clocks, the sub pixel can have two different values. For example, to produce the values 31 1/4, 31 1/2 and 31 3/4, change the value in a pattern 32-31-31-31, 32-32-31-31, or 32-32-32-31. That way, you achieve 253 different values from 0 to 63 in quarter steps. 16.2 million = 253 * 253 * 253.
Imagine a government then saying: "We want to aquire on office suite that will be everywhere in government. Two conditions to be met: Full compliance with an ISO Standard of your choice, either OOXML or ODF. And correct handling of leap years, especially for the year 1900. And we won't just trust your claims, we will check for compliance with these two conditions."
This would be absolutely fair, and it would exclude Microsoft Office unless they make it ODF compatible. It would actually exclude anyone trying to be OOXML compatible, because you can't be compliant with OOXML and get leap years right at the same time.