- Voice calls doesn't work everywhere. Skype, Google Voice... all incompatible. It's a mess.
There is a standard for voip, SIP. Voip providers give you a pstn number and you can use it to call regular phones and other sip providers without issue.
The real problem was simply everyone ignoring this and making their own stuff that is compatible.
What we need to do is agree on a standard that can do all this: text messages, files transfers, audio calls, video calls, from one to multiple users for each of those.
Transferring files over a voip protocol? eww. And how are you going to justify that when calling a plain old telephone service number? (which all of this integrates with). Again standards for transferring files have existed forever, the main issue is everyone _TRYING_ to lump all of those things together with their own unique mix of non-standard protocols.
Ironically xmpp has all of what you mentioned, but I would never use it for proper telephony, SIP is what all of the real telephone companies use and is the simplest and most effective thing for voip.
I use skype for a bunch of things, not just skype-to-skype, but sending SMS, calling out to "real" phones, and last but not least skype-in. The latter feature means that I cannot get a substitute. So for now I keep using skype, if it disappears from Linux I will have to use it on a VM. It is a killer app, and it is worth all the 8.5 billion that MS paid for it (really much more useful than office).
Aside from sms which I have not tested personally so cannot confirm, asterisk using sip with a proper voip provider (to get the real phone number and be able to call regular phones) can do everything you are looking for. A friend of mine has his server set up as such that when the company number is rang you are presented with a menu for the person you wish to contact (depending on what you want of course) once selected all of the actual phones of the person you want ring, or their computer if signed in too (n95's are a very cheap source of a sip phone btw, but any modern smartphone is generally capable).
Does skype let you set up your own pbx that can forward things to any sip capable device?
I really fail to see the value in skype except for the whole 'granny can download and call people with no effort' sip is far more lovely to deal with for techies and more flexible.
I have no major objection to change, or to things like PulseAudio
Jack handles all the functionality PulseAudio does but also appeases the high-end audio folks by providing a means to do low latency work and connection of different programs to each other in an ice and easy fashion.
The PulseAudio developers reasoning for it's existence was to provide a solution that can scale the latency to up to seconds(!) for things such as video and the like that are pre-determined to save a few fractions of a percent battery on context switching. In doing so the trade-off is it is absolutely useless for anybody who actually cares about their audio subsystem. Now we have all of the professional and some of the non-professional audio applications using jack. And some end-user only things using pulse that have to be wrapped to jack. This is far from ideal.
The ironic thing is the pulseaudio developers own talk on the two is almost a diatribe against it. Most of his main points against jack are moot (it apparently requires powerful hardware.. tell that to my eeepc that is running a whole heap of high cpu requirement services) And that the system is usually static (I plug in new midi devices all the time, no need to restart jack they simply appear). And finally that audio is the only thing going on in jack systems, I use it system wide even for my youtube playback as most others that use jack do.
Basically, all the perceived downsides of jack are moot except the few points of a percent difference in cpu usage, and I for one fail to see why we still continue to inflict this pain that is pulseaudio on the audio community. - end rant.
A common (old) argument against VB was that it was all so abstracted away programmers using it typically really didn't know what on earth they were doing (but it was still useful to those without knowledge of other programming languages). Likewise with the arduino, the comment that it was like vb was not insinuating that it is worthless, only that it is for people who care less about knowing how it really works and simply wish for it to do what it tells it without caring about the details.
Arduino is really the visual basic of the embedded world. But that is not as insulting as it seems on it's face, it is simply a comment on it's level of abstraction.
You think advertising spending alone for illegal drugs is billions? really? think about it.
This is kind of like a pharma doing shady things posting an advertisement in the paper, then the government fining the paper for accepting the advertising when the company shown was dodgy.
Unless google has specific legal obligations as an advertiser, the company that put the ad forward should be held accountable for their actions not google.
baddies putting ads out makes it easier for cops to catch them, so why punish the advertisers?
If you liked 7, you will like 8, except for perhaps the nostalgia factor you would likely have with 7 by now. Every game after that seems more than questionable to most of those that have played 7 or 8 though.
Safety is relative. Take fukushima for example. It was designed to withstand earthquakes (just not to that level) and it was designed to withstand tsunamis (up to 5.7m, not the 14m it had)
People are now saying the reactors should have been build for these once off catastrophic events.
Lets think of the twin trade center towers, now, they _could_ have been engineered to withstand two planes crashing into them without an issue (sure you'd likely have 3m of solid concrete on the outside but hey it's _safer_ right?) but nobody blamed the designers of the buildings when they fell right?
Safety has trade-offs, lets say for instance a new reactor was built that could withstand a 15m tsunami just fine and dandy. Fast forward 20 years and a meteor hits near the ocean that creates a 25m wall of water. Oh look, we didn't design it with that in mind. Do you see how this gets ridiculous?
NOTHING is perfectly safe. Only to within certain parameters. We work with what we have. Hell I don't consider coal plants safe because they throw uranium into the air we breathe (better it being in barrels after some of the energy has been harnessed I say). But others seem to be just fine having coal over nuclear.
It all comes down to probability of the parameters being exceeded and what this cost is. If we fully build out nuclear designs and say there was a 0.01% chance in any given year that a reactor would be subject to a natural disaster outside of it's specifications.. I would take that chance. You're more likely to die via lightning strike or getting hit by a car than have it affect you in the slightest. As a bonus you get cleaner air to breathe.
Now a question for YOU good sir: If they are NOT gonna end up TiVoing the thing then why not allow GPL V3?
GPL v3 does more than just stops tivoization, it also has some patent business involved where anyone distributing has to irrevocably issue and licenses needed for patents the distributor may have on it. This would have effects on all those distributing the gpl software and is something the vendors may wish to avoid (for whatever reason, IANAL).
As far as tivoization goes, of course a few vendors are likely to do it, what you're really asking is what are the chances of all the vendors doing it, I'd say not very likely. It costs them nothing to leave them open and can gain them greater market share in the 'geek high-end likes to tinker with shiny things' category (however small that is). As more other vendors tivoize if they do, the more incentive they have to not to gain larger proportion of the geeks, which while they themselves might have a small influence, have a far greater influence on what purchases others make (such as with your cheap chinese tablet business). Extra sales for little to no extra expenditure makes perfect sense to companies.
I've heard of a two programs, some note-taking program of some sort and a search one, both had a massive stinks on slashdot because of it. If it was being sold as being as good as native (and people believing it) there should be a myriad of examples as such.
Thing is, this software IS USEFUL, for many many people. To refuse people to use it before any patent troubles stir for the _possibility_ of it among other things strikes me as very wrong. Because any piece of software could potentially violate patents so why use any of it? Let there be trouble when there is trouble. Stay wary of company's history but until there is issue if gpl licensed software with no present patent suits against it is serving a purpose, let the damn thing be.
People are promoting it as a non-transient platform for Linux software development.
And some silly people treat wine as that just targeting wine makes for instant porting... your point? misguided people will always be around.
If WINE is destroyed, you're not any worse off than if you had never had it to begin with.
and those using winelib for their 'ports' aren't worse off how?
The problem with Mono is that it doesn't work that way. It isn't marketed as a stopgap for programs that don't have a native Linux version.
Every time I've dealt with mono it's always been as more a compatibility layer than anything else, even when being forced to develop.net, very very few people develop OSS on linux specifically for mono on linux, when they do you typically hear a big stink about it. To most it has always been about just plain making everything work on linux.
Mono serves a useful purpose, is open source and is yet to have any patent issues. To get rid of it just because some people can abuse it goes entirely against the principles of free software to begin with.
Do you have the same opinion with wine? should we make life harder for those distributing wine so that people cannot try to run windows programs as a compatibility layer so easily?
Same with mono, many universities teach c# these days in their courses, and if it were not for mono I would have had to actually used windows for once.
Something of value WILL be lost, the ability to continue using your linux system in the face of being forced to use.net stuff.
The problem was they used a defective solder on the GPUs
Wait a second, last I checked all nvidia made were gpu chips and on occasion reference boards just to test things worked.
Wouldn't this be the card manufactureres fault? not the gpu manufacturer? Imagine an atmel avr chip being used in some embedded design, and then it is discovered the solder connections to the board and dodgy and flake out after a bit, how would this be atmel's fault? they only supplied the chips, the embedded device designer (or in this case video card pcb vendor, not nvidia) is the one responsible.
The thing I was trying to point out is, a lot of people with valid concerns get lumped in with the nutters just because of their stance. If you heard someone was against GMO what do you think your automatic assumption for the reasons of this would be?
Sure there are lots of misguided individuals that might actually believe the ridiculous reasons, but the fact there are people who have legitimate concerns that get lumped with them increases this number significantly.
The crops themselves might not be, but have you heard of any of the shit monsanto has pulled? They are in my books as the number one evil company at present.
People remain convinced that high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than cane sugar.
A far greater issue than that is how the market has been distorted by the government paying farmers to grow corn that is not needed. If it were not for these subsidies sugar would be far cheaper and this whole thing would not be an issue. Having been brought up on sugar where sugar is normally used, my first tasting of high fructose corn syrup in food/drink left very bad tastes in my mouth, while this is subjective it does not surprise me that some people in the US import their coke just because it is that much better.
People should be concerned about a single corporation having control over large portions of the worlds food supply and bullying farmers to get with the program or be destroyed when rogue seeds find their way into the crop. People should also be concerned when artificial subsidies replace typical food stocks with something far more processed and less tested in large amounts.
The same conclusions can be reached from differing perspectives, your first two examples weren't terribly good ones.
Plenty of people think Bush claimed there were WMD in Iraq when he knew there were none.
If you are invading a country (well in this case, several) you should have some pretty DAMN good evidence of some strong wrong-doing towards you to be able to do so in good conscience. Even then it becomes questionable very easily. People should always question their heads of state when they go to 'war' (it was never declared) on hearsay without all supporting evidence being shown. I would be far more concerned if they didn't and just cheered on valiantly (which many did).
Why believe something that there cannot _ever_ be supporting evidence for? Having very strong belief in something where there is no supporting evidence is evidence that that person is lacking critical thought, why should we trust the thought process of someone who cannot demonstrate critical thought?
Scientific method requires critical thought among other things (such as reason and logic) if one even shows critical thought with many things but not one particular topic, is that not a flaw? Now no-one is perfect, but people cannot improve without having their flaws pointed out so that they can actively work upon them.
When a judge is removed because they aren't hearing the things they want to hear and replace it with one that is all fire and brimstone, that triggers some warnings in my head, so it should yours
The US wanted him gone, no matter the legality. Once they had him they then fed him to the wolves so to speak, but when the initial wolves weren't being as nasty as expected, gave a different set that gave the desired outcome.
Bush and his policies made thousands die as well, so should he be given a trial specifically by the people who have had family members die because of his crimes? No, the aim is to get as impartial as possible people to judge it.
I like it how the invasion and ensuing aftermath have caused far more deaths than he did in the preceding decades though. As nasty as he was he was ruthless enough to keep some semblance of order. By all means assist revolutionaries in causing regime change, but to openly attack with military force over 'weapons of mass destruction' that do not exist was just a farce. The US wanted him out, and didn't care what they messed up in the process.
Killing heads of state for no reason relevant to your own country is like stirring a bees nest, as we can see from how well the adventures in the middle east have fared.
Who in his "right" mind in 1976 could have thought that "personal" computers that came prebuilt and output to a TV set instead to 7 segment LED display in hex code could have an use for common people, aside Jobs?
Steve wozniak.
Steve jobs has always been a business man, not an engineer, the engineers are the ones who make the nice gadgets, the businessmen do marketing, make requests of the engineers like marketing do, and take care of finances.
And let's face it: the EFF has constantly sided with pirates on issue after issue. I suspect this is the EFF's way of helping pirates by frustrating any enforcement of copyright.
Your view of the EFF is rather twisted, they espouse freedom to do as you wish electronically without copyright infringement or the like, why should everyone else suffer because the pirates find these freedoms useful at times?
I can in all honesty say I have never pirated a single piece of software (helps I mainly use OSS of course) and yet I strongly agree with most of what the EFF say with many topics.
I have at times kept a separate access point dedicated for the purpose open for people to gain access to the internet (limited by QoS so it stays sane) passers by are free to use it as they wish. If others did the same then when I am visiting their area I could use their wifi as well. How is this a bad thing. Wifi is far more convenient than mobile internet access when available. So long as you keep security controls in place in case malicious people try to connect I see no harm in providing a useful service to your fellow man which costs you nothing.
These 'rules' do not apply to grants to university professor types. The idea behind those is to pay smart people to build smart things.
Sounds like work for hire to me in that instance, which in the case of the government funding it would mean it is public domain.
The smart people patent them and thus teach the world how to do the same in exchange for a temporary monopoly.
So the government pay them to invent something neat with a grant, and THEN still have to pay for it through patent royalties because they don't own it?, someone is getting screwed and it sure isn't the professors.
Because it's double charging. The artists who own their own copyright don't get paid at all except for royalties from their cds/itunes/etc and live gigs. If they get money from a record company up front typically all of their work belongs to the record company, then no royalties.
Getting paid by the government to come up with things and then charging them/the public for said things is double dipping, and just wrong. Either invent things in your own time for free and charge people for copyright/patents or accept a steady flow of income from the government/uni and accept they are not yours. (although in the uni case, you can argue you are getting paid to teach students, and that any inventions you come up with are separate and not part of the contract at least, but research positions are a bit different)
Slashdot Mirror
mod parent up, similar experience.
- Voice calls doesn't work everywhere. Skype, Google Voice... all incompatible. It's a mess.
There is a standard for voip, SIP. Voip providers give you a pstn number and you can use it to call regular phones and other sip providers without issue.
The real problem was simply everyone ignoring this and making their own stuff that is compatible.
What we need to do is agree on a standard that can do all this: text messages, files transfers, audio calls, video calls, from one to multiple users for each of those.
Transferring files over a voip protocol? eww. And how are you going to justify that when calling a plain old telephone service number? (which all of this integrates with). Again standards for transferring files have existed forever, the main issue is everyone _TRYING_ to lump all of those things together with their own unique mix of non-standard protocols.
Ironically xmpp has all of what you mentioned, but I would never use it for proper telephony, SIP is what all of the real telephone companies use and is the simplest and most effective thing for voip.
I use skype for a bunch of things, not just skype-to-skype, but sending SMS, calling out to "real" phones, and last but not least skype-in. The latter feature means that I cannot get a substitute. So for now I keep using skype, if it disappears from Linux I will have to use it on a VM. It is a killer app, and it is worth all the 8.5 billion that MS paid for it (really much more useful than office).
Aside from sms which I have not tested personally so cannot confirm, asterisk using sip with a proper voip provider (to get the real phone number and be able to call regular phones) can do everything you are looking for. A friend of mine has his server set up as such that when the company number is rang you are presented with a menu for the person you wish to contact (depending on what you want of course) once selected all of the actual phones of the person you want ring, or their computer if signed in too (n95's are a very cheap source of a sip phone btw, but any modern smartphone is generally capable).
Does skype let you set up your own pbx that can forward things to any sip capable device?
I really fail to see the value in skype except for the whole 'granny can download and call people with no effort' sip is far more lovely to deal with for techies and more flexible.
I have no major objection to change, or to things like PulseAudio
Jack handles all the functionality PulseAudio does but also appeases the high-end audio folks by providing a means to do low latency work and connection of different programs to each other in an ice and easy fashion.
The PulseAudio developers reasoning for it's existence was to provide a solution that can scale the latency to up to seconds(!) for things such as video and the like that are pre-determined to save a few fractions of a percent battery on context switching. In doing so the trade-off is it is absolutely useless for anybody who actually cares about their audio subsystem. Now we have all of the professional and some of the non-professional audio applications using jack. And some end-user only things using pulse that have to be wrapped to jack. This is far from ideal.
The ironic thing is the pulseaudio developers own talk on the two is almost a diatribe against it. Most of his main points against jack are moot (it apparently requires powerful hardware.. tell that to my eeepc that is running a whole heap of high cpu requirement services) And that the system is usually static (I plug in new midi devices all the time, no need to restart jack they simply appear). And finally that audio is the only thing going on in jack systems, I use it system wide even for my youtube playback as most others that use jack do.
Basically, all the perceived downsides of jack are moot except the few points of a percent difference in cpu usage, and I for one fail to see why we still continue to inflict this pain that is pulseaudio on the audio community. - end rant.
A common (old) argument against VB was that it was all so abstracted away programmers using it typically really didn't know what on earth they were doing (but it was still useful to those without knowledge of other programming languages). Likewise with the arduino, the comment that it was like vb was not insinuating that it is worthless, only that it is for people who care less about knowing how it really works and simply wish for it to do what it tells it without caring about the details.
Arduino is really the visual basic of the embedded world. But that is not as insulting as it seems on it's face, it is simply a comment on it's level of abstraction.
You think advertising spending alone for illegal drugs is billions? really? think about it.
This is kind of like a pharma doing shady things posting an advertisement in the paper, then the government fining the paper for accepting the advertising when the company shown was dodgy.
Unless google has specific legal obligations as an advertiser, the company that put the ad forward should be held accountable for their actions not google.
baddies putting ads out makes it easier for cops to catch them, so why punish the advertisers?
8 looked so retarded I didn't even try it.
If you liked 7, you will like 8, except for perhaps the nostalgia factor you would likely have with 7 by now. Every game after that seems more than questionable to most of those that have played 7 or 8 though.
Safety is relative. Take fukushima for example. It was designed to withstand earthquakes (just not to that level) and it was designed to withstand tsunamis (up to 5.7m, not the 14m it had)
People are now saying the reactors should have been build for these once off catastrophic events.
Lets think of the twin trade center towers, now, they _could_ have been engineered to withstand two planes crashing into them without an issue (sure you'd likely have 3m of solid concrete on the outside but hey it's _safer_ right?) but nobody blamed the designers of the buildings when they fell right?
Safety has trade-offs, lets say for instance a new reactor was built that could withstand a 15m tsunami just fine and dandy. Fast forward 20 years and a meteor hits near the ocean that creates a 25m wall of water. Oh look, we didn't design it with that in mind. Do you see how this gets ridiculous?
NOTHING is perfectly safe. Only to within certain parameters. We work with what we have. Hell I don't consider coal plants safe because they throw uranium into the air we breathe (better it being in barrels after some of the energy has been harnessed I say). But others seem to be just fine having coal over nuclear.
It all comes down to probability of the parameters being exceeded and what this cost is. If we fully build out nuclear designs and say there was a 0.01% chance in any given year that a reactor would be subject to a natural disaster outside of it's specifications.. I would take that chance. You're more likely to die via lightning strike or getting hit by a car than have it affect you in the slightest. As a bonus you get cleaner air to breathe.
Now a question for YOU good sir: If they are NOT gonna end up TiVoing the thing then why not allow GPL V3?
GPL v3 does more than just stops tivoization, it also has some patent business involved where anyone distributing has to irrevocably issue and licenses needed for patents the distributor may have on it. This would have effects on all those distributing the gpl software and is something the vendors may wish to avoid (for whatever reason, IANAL).
As far as tivoization goes, of course a few vendors are likely to do it, what you're really asking is what are the chances of all the vendors doing it, I'd say not very likely. It costs them nothing to leave them open and can gain them greater market share in the 'geek high-end likes to tinker with shiny things' category (however small that is). As more other vendors tivoize if they do, the more incentive they have to not to gain larger proportion of the geeks, which while they themselves might have a small influence, have a far greater influence on what purchases others make (such as with your cheap chinese tablet business). Extra sales for little to no extra expenditure makes perfect sense to companies.
Above post was me, forgot to sign in
I've heard of a two programs, some note-taking program of some sort and a search one, both had a massive stinks on slashdot because of it. If it was being sold as being as good as native (and people believing it) there should be a myriad of examples as such.
Thing is, this software IS USEFUL, for many many people. To refuse people to use it before any patent troubles stir for the _possibility_ of it among other things strikes me as very wrong. Because any piece of software could potentially violate patents so why use any of it? Let there be trouble when there is trouble. Stay wary of company's history but until there is issue if gpl licensed software with no present patent suits against it is serving a purpose, let the damn thing be.
People are promoting it as a non-transient platform for Linux software development.
And some silly people treat wine as that just targeting wine makes for instant porting... your point? misguided people will always be around.
If WINE is destroyed, you're not any worse off than if you had never had it to begin with.
and those using winelib for their 'ports' aren't worse off how?
The problem with Mono is that it doesn't work that way. It isn't marketed as a stopgap for programs that don't have a native Linux version.
Every time I've dealt with mono it's always been as more a compatibility layer than anything else, even when being forced to develop .net, very very few people develop OSS on linux specifically for mono on linux, when they do you typically hear a big stink about it. To most it has always been about just plain making everything work on linux.
Mono serves a useful purpose, is open source and is yet to have any patent issues. To get rid of it just because some people can abuse it goes entirely against the principles of free software to begin with.
Do you have the same opinion with wine? should we make life harder for those distributing wine so that people cannot try to run windows programs as a compatibility layer so easily?
Same with mono, many universities teach c# these days in their courses, and if it were not for mono I would have had to actually used windows for once.
Something of value WILL be lost, the ability to continue using your linux system in the face of being forced to use .net stuff.
The problem was they used a defective solder on the GPUs
Wait a second, last I checked all nvidia made were gpu chips and on occasion reference boards just to test things worked.
Wouldn't this be the card manufactureres fault? not the gpu manufacturer? Imagine an atmel avr chip being used in some embedded design, and then it is discovered the solder connections to the board and dodgy and flake out after a bit, how would this be atmel's fault? they only supplied the chips, the embedded device designer (or in this case video card pcb vendor, not nvidia) is the one responsible.
The thing I was trying to point out is, a lot of people with valid concerns get lumped in with the nutters just because of their stance. If you heard someone was against GMO what do you think your automatic assumption for the reasons of this would be?
Sure there are lots of misguided individuals that might actually believe the ridiculous reasons, but the fact there are people who have legitimate concerns that get lumped with them increases this number significantly.
People remain convinced that GMO is harmful.
The crops themselves might not be, but have you heard of any of the shit monsanto has pulled? They are in my books as the number one evil company at present.
People remain convinced that high fructose corn syrup is more harmful than cane sugar.
A far greater issue than that is how the market has been distorted by the government paying farmers to grow corn that is not needed. If it were not for these subsidies sugar would be far cheaper and this whole thing would not be an issue. Having been brought up on sugar where sugar is normally used, my first tasting of high fructose corn syrup in food/drink left very bad tastes in my mouth, while this is subjective it does not surprise me that some people in the US import their coke just because it is that much better.
People should be concerned about a single corporation having control over large portions of the worlds food supply and bullying farmers to get with the program or be destroyed when rogue seeds find their way into the crop. People should also be concerned when artificial subsidies replace typical food stocks with something far more processed and less tested in large amounts.
The same conclusions can be reached from differing perspectives, your first two examples weren't terribly good ones.
Plenty of people think Bush claimed there were WMD in Iraq when he knew there were none.
If you are invading a country (well in this case, several) you should have some pretty DAMN good evidence of some strong wrong-doing towards you to be able to do so in good conscience. Even then it becomes questionable very easily. People should always question their heads of state when they go to 'war' (it was never declared) on hearsay without all supporting evidence being shown. I would be far more concerned if they didn't and just cheered on valiantly (which many did).
Why believe something that there cannot _ever_ be supporting evidence for? Having very strong belief in something where there is no supporting evidence is evidence that that person is lacking critical thought, why should we trust the thought process of someone who cannot demonstrate critical thought?
Scientific method requires critical thought among other things (such as reason and logic) if one even shows critical thought with many things but not one particular topic, is that not a flaw? Now no-one is perfect, but people cannot improve without having their flaws pointed out so that they can actively work upon them.
you cannot fight real bullets with lawyers not matter how many lawyers you have.
I for one would like to test this with swathes of lawyers, and see if it has positive benefit to the economy after all the lawsuits stop, lol
When a judge is removed because they aren't hearing the things they want to hear and replace it with one that is all fire and brimstone, that triggers some warnings in my head, so it should yours
The US wanted him gone, no matter the legality. Once they had him they then fed him to the wolves so to speak, but when the initial wolves weren't being as nasty as expected, gave a different set that gave the desired outcome.
Bush and his policies made thousands die as well, so should he be given a trial specifically by the people who have had family members die because of his crimes? No, the aim is to get as impartial as possible people to judge it.
I like it how the invasion and ensuing aftermath have caused far more deaths than he did in the preceding decades though. As nasty as he was he was ruthless enough to keep some semblance of order. By all means assist revolutionaries in causing regime change, but to openly attack with military force over 'weapons of mass destruction' that do not exist was just a farce. The US wanted him out, and didn't care what they messed up in the process.
Killing heads of state for no reason relevant to your own country is like stirring a bees nest, as we can see from how well the adventures in the middle east have fared.
If they did put him on trial, it would wind up like suddam hussains farce, end result would be the same, his death.
Who in his "right" mind in 1976 could have thought that "personal" computers that came prebuilt and output to a TV set instead to 7 segment LED display in hex code could have an use for common people, aside Jobs?
Steve wozniak.
Steve jobs has always been a business man, not an engineer, the engineers are the ones who make the nice gadgets, the businessmen do marketing, make requests of the engineers like marketing do, and take care of finances.
abot rounds on tanks already work in a similar way:
check our the steyr AMR, it has been done before in rifle form. semi-auto too.
And let's face it: the EFF has constantly sided with pirates on issue after issue. I suspect this is the EFF's way of helping pirates by frustrating any enforcement of copyright.
Your view of the EFF is rather twisted, they espouse freedom to do as you wish electronically without copyright infringement or the like, why should everyone else suffer because the pirates find these freedoms useful at times?
I can in all honesty say I have never pirated a single piece of software (helps I mainly use OSS of course) and yet I strongly agree with most of what the EFF say with many topics.
I have at times kept a separate access point dedicated for the purpose open for people to gain access to the internet (limited by QoS so it stays sane) passers by are free to use it as they wish. If others did the same then when I am visiting their area I could use their wifi as well. How is this a bad thing. Wifi is far more convenient than mobile internet access when available. So long as you keep security controls in place in case malicious people try to connect I see no harm in providing a useful service to your fellow man which costs you nothing.
These 'rules' do not apply to grants to university professor types. The idea behind those is to pay smart people to build smart things.
Sounds like work for hire to me in that instance, which in the case of the government funding it would mean it is public domain.
The smart people patent them and thus teach the world how to do the same in exchange for a temporary monopoly.
So the government pay them to invent something neat with a grant, and THEN still have to pay for it through patent royalties because they don't own it?, someone is getting screwed and it sure isn't the professors.
Because it's double charging. The artists who own their own copyright don't get paid at all except for royalties from their cds/itunes/etc and live gigs. If they get money from a record company up front typically all of their work belongs to the record company, then no royalties.
Getting paid by the government to come up with things and then charging them/the public for said things is double dipping, and just wrong. Either invent things in your own time for free and charge people for copyright/patents or accept a steady flow of income from the government/uni and accept they are not yours. (although in the uni case, you can argue you are getting paid to teach students, and that any inventions you come up with are separate and not part of the contract at least, but research positions are a bit different)