And just let the unvaccinated kids come to school to infect each other (and, possibly, the handful of kids whose immune systems didn't respond to the vaccine)?
No thanks. If you want to take advantage of free education, you can take reasonable measures to keep your kid from infecting his fellow students. Otherwise you can tech him yourself or send him to a pricey private school. (Bonus: that means you can also teach him the Holocaust never happened, the earth is 6000 years old, and 9/11 was an inside job!)
By educating the public about the benefits of vaccination, debunking the anti-vaccination nuts whenever they surface, and requiring vaccinations before entering public school.
Normally, after "in other words", one writes a summary of what he's responding to, literally restating the same point in other words.
What you've done, however, is write "in other words" followed by something completely different from what the parent said. Nice try, but you're doing it wrong.
The parent's point regarding herd immunity was that vaccination works not only for the person who gets vaccinated, but also for other members of the community who don't get vaccinated. If you choose not to vaccinate your child, you're not only making it more likely that he'll get sick, you're also making it more likely that all the other kids who aren't vaccinated will get sick.
Seems like a recommendation system (a la TiVo) would go a long way here. Rate the shows you like, use your spare bandwidth to download shows that people with your taste also enjoy.
Is it such a bad idea, if a parent sees a child exposed to inappropriate media [...] to hit the power switch? What better time to have a discussion with your child? [...] Worst case, your child is pouty about having to go back to their last save point.
You don't even need to hit the power switch: just tell your child to pause it and come have a talk.
There's no five-second rule when it comes to inappropriate media. Once they've seen it, you may as well leave the screen on.
Look into the writings [amazon.com] of the guy they wanted to BE in charge of health care, Tom Daschle. He's made statements "In my book, Critical: What We Can Do About the American Health-Care Crisis, I have proposed a Federal Health Board that would be a foundation from which we could address all three problems. In many ways, the Federal Health Board would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board for the banking industry."
Yeah, I think we've ALL see the great work the Fed has done with banking and all today, eh?
Yeah, actually, we do. Surely you don't think we'd be better off without the Federal Reserve, do you? It was put in place for a reason: the economy swings wildly back and forth if you can't control monetary policy.
It's a mistake to blame our current situation on the Fed, and an even bigger one to ignore the relative stability we've had for decades because of it.
What are these TOUGH decisions they're gonna have to make? Rationing? Well according to this blurb "Perhaps most importantly, the Board would assess the effectiveness and costs of various treatments. He stops short of saying the U.S. should have a U.K.-style, hard-and-fast rule on cost-effectiveness. But he does say the U.S. "won't be able to make a significant dent in health-care spending without getting into the nitty-gritty of which treatments are the most clinically valuable and cost effective." [wsj.com] his plan certainly sounds like the decisions of this board can overrule a local Dr's treatment decisions. We humans,despite looking a great deal alike, are VERY different, and a one size fits all tx regiment kinda scares me.
I"m also not thrilled with a committee deciding [reason.com] if I'm too old to get a particular treatment.
But you are thrilled about an accountant deciding you're too poor to get that same treatment, huh?
Health care is going to be "rationed" by some means no matter what happens. If there are 100 people who want treatment, and only enough resources to provide for half of them, then 50 people are going to lose. Changing the policy only changes which 50 get treated: maybe it'll be the first 50 who show up, or the 50 who can afford to pay the most, or the 50 who can be given the most "medical bang for the buck" according to some set of guidelines.
But of course, no one's suggesting doing away with private payments. The Medicare board isn't going to stop you from paying out of your own pocket for treatments they don't cover.
WHY is the fact that the government wants to take full or partial control of your medical records NOT a cause for concern for you?
Please answer in a complete sentence that doesn't begin with either of these two phrases: 1) "Because President Obama says..." 2) "Well it's not like it's President Bush..."
Because the private sector won't do it on their own.
Ineffective record keeping is a problem. You can already see the benefits if you compare the VA system to private care, for example, since veterans tend to stick with the VA and thus have all their records in one place. The result is fewer problems like harmful drug interactions caused by one doctor not knowing what another has prescribed.
Private firms have little incentive to share records effectively, just like they have little incentive to pay for preventive care: it costs Company A today for a benefit that might come around in ten years, but by that time the patient might have moved to Company B.
In the theater, the movie is projected at 48 fps, showing each frame twice, because 24 is too flickery. This preserves the original running time of the movie.
On an NTSC TV, the movie is shown with "2:3 pulldown", which turns 4 film frames into 5 interlaced TV frames (10 fields) by showing the first frame for 2 fields, the second for 3 fields, and so on. So for movie frames [1] [2] [3] [4], you end up with TV frames [1A 1B] [2A 2B] [2A 3B] [3A 4B] [4A 4B]. This preserves the original running time of the movie(*), but can look a little jerky.
On a PAL TV, the movie is shown with "2:2 pulldown", which turns each film frame into a single TV frame (2 fields). Since PAL is 50 Hz, this means the movie is actually shown at 25 fps, so the running time is shorter than the original (a 120 minute movie ends up being about 115 minutes), but it won't be jerky.
On a computer monitor, you can play back the movie at its original frame rate and let the video card sort it out, since the speed at which the media player pushes frames to the card is independent of the speed at which the card sends the frame buffer to the monitor. Depending on your monitor's refresh rate, this may or may not introduce jerkiness (as the GP mentioned, 24 divides evenly into 120 but not 60) or tearing (if you don't wait for vsync).
(* Almost. NTSC has a goofy fractional frame rate, so the movie ends up playing at 23.976 fps rather than 24. The time difference only adds up to a few seconds over the length of a 2 hour movie, though.)
As soon as Psystar installs the software on a non-Macintosh computer, they have made an illegal copy of the software (because the license didn't allow it)
That's not true. US copyright law, at 17 USC 117, explicitly allows the owner of a copy of a computer program to make an additional copy as a necessary step in the process of running that program.
In this case, since Psystar has legally purchased a copy of OS X to resell it, the owner is either Psystar, or the end user with Psystar acting on their behalf (which is also allowed under 17 USC 117). You can't really argue that installing the OS isn't a necessary step in running it, so it seems pretty clear that they don't need to comply with the EULA in order to install OS X on a computer.
Since.NET and Visual Studio are Windows-only, how are those reasons for MS to want mono to succeed on Linux, BSD and other libre systems?
Because someone who's never used C# is less likely to buy a copy of VS than someone who has. More people using C# means more opportunity for Microsoft to sell them C#-related products (and otherwise capitalize on the popularity of C#).
Just look at this thread; there are examples of people installing Windows to do.NET development after having used Mono. A more likely scenario is that someone tinkers with Mono as a hobbyist and then eventually gets hired as a.NET developer using MS tools.
Baseless paranoia? STAC, Netscape, the rape of JAVA are baseless?
Yes, actually, in this context they are.
What, do you think Microsoft is going to use those as evidence in a lawsuit against Mono's developers or users? "Your Honor, if you look at Exhibit A, you'll see that we're quite an evil corporation and we've done some very nasty things in the past. Therefore, you must resolve this case in our favor."
That's essentially what you're claiming: that Microsoft will somehow win a patent infringement lawsuit just because they're evil, even though there is no infringement. You might as well claim that Hitler could travel faster than light.
Until I see a legal commitment, I will assume the worst. [...] So you are still probably wrong.
In other words, I was right all along: you don't care about evidence. Nothing will convince you. Your paranoia is irrational, and there's no point in trying to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Good job concluding that I'm "probably wrong" based on nothing but your own paranoid assumptions, though. That's classic.
If somebody punched me in the face every day for a year, and then suddenly wants to be my friend, should I invite them in with open arms, or treat them with the suspicion that their past behavior has warranted?
The flaw in that analogy is that Microsoft isn't being treated here with "the suspicion that their past behavior has warranted". They're being treated with an irrational level of suspicion that defies all logic.
It's as if the guy who punched you in the face every day for a year suddenly left his old couch on the sidewalk for anyone to take. Sure, you're suspicious of him, so go ahead and look under the cushions to make sure it's not full of rusty nails. But if you've looked behind every scrap of fabric, you've run the couch through an X-ray machine and a metal detector, you've tested it for bacteria and viruses, and you still haven't found any plausible threat, it's foolish to warn everyone "Don't touch that couch! It belonged to someone who was an evil bastard, and I just know it's booby-trapped! So what if I can't find the trap, that only proves how sneaky he is!"
Suspicion of Microsoft is neither baseless nor could it be considered even slightly paranoid. Healthy skepticism is a better term.
I agree, healthy skepticism would be better. But what the anti-Mono folks here are displaying goes far beyond healthy skepticism; it's firmly within the realm of paranoia.
When dealing with Microsoft, as with the devil, one has to read the fine print. Very carefully. "Royalty-free" merely means no ongoing payments for a patent license; it says nothing about an initial one-time fee. Such a fee, if large, would be fatal for free software.
I suppose this will put your fears to rest, then? Here's the relevant part:
"But," says Herman, "while RAND sometimes means there could be a financial obligation, [Microsoft] will be offering a conventional non-royalty non-fee RAND license. We've always made that clear to anyone who has asked."
So you are still wrong.
Only in the minds of paranoid individuals who'd rather make up conspiracy theories than look at the evidence in front of them.
Suppose you are right and MS does want mono to be implemented and succeed in Linux, BSD, etc. Why? Out of the goodness of their hearts?!!
To encourage the development of.NET applications. More.NET developers means more sales of Visual Studio products, for one thing, and some of those developers might go on to develop for MS SQL or ASP.NET, or use other.NET-related APIs that actually are restricted to Windows. More.NET applications also means Windows stays relevant; that is, if a Linux developer writes his next app in C# instead of C, that gives Windows users one less reason to switch to Linux.
Or is it a poison pill? Are you really 100% sure? I'm not.
Yes, this sort of baseless paranoia is depressingly common on Slashdot. "There's no logical reason to object... but ZOMG, it's Microsoft! This is no time for logic, we have to panic!"
The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.
No, I'm afraid you're the one who's wrong. And it's a shame, because you could've been right if you had just read a little further. Here's the very next paragraph after the one you quoted:
But Microsoft (and our co-sponsors, Intel and Hewlett-Packard) went further and have agreed that our patents essential to implementing C# and CLI will be available on a "royalty-free and otherwise RAND" basis for this purpose.
Microsoft dominates ECMA and practically owns it, as show in the unbelievably corrupt ISO OOXML case. So what proof do you have that ECMA has forced MS to give up its patent claims with respect to C# ?
Here you go. But somehow I doubt that this or any other evidence will change your belief in the conspiracy theory.
It's not just that MS might come after you. It's that Mono, being an OSS implementation of.NET, would appear to be uniquely vulnerable to being crushed by MS if the beast deems it to be too great a threat, in a way that Java isn't as an independent technology.
C# and the CLR are ECMA standards, and as part of the standardization process, MS gave up the ability to make any patent claims. The idea that Microsoft might somehow be able to torpedo Mono is pure fantasy.
Hell, there's not even much reason to think Microsoft would want to torpedo Mono. They wouldn't have submitted their standard to ECMA if they didn't want it to be implemented.
Of course, all the logic and explicit legal agreements in the world won't change the minds of the folks here who are dead-set on this conspiracy theory.
Liberals expand the Government every single chance they get and then are the first ones to whine when they turn around and discover that their civil liberties (except gun ownership of course, cuz those are dangerous) are being eroded.
You say that as if there's a relation between the two events, as if the erosion of civil liberties is somehow a natural consequence of expanding the role of government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health care for children and retirees, for example, has nothing to do with warrantless wiretapping.
Just remember that a Government big enough to give you everything that you need is big enough to take away everything that you have.
"Big enough"? What does that even mean? There's no minimum size requirement for a government to oppress people, if that's what it's determined to do. Eliminating the social programs you don't like would have absolutely no effect on the government's ability to "take away everything that you have".
The police officer is providing a service and working a job. Lumping him in with the single mom who gets back my money from the EITC is disingenuous. She didn't work a job or provide any service to get that money.
Oh, but she does: she raises that child. That provides a benefit to you, since children with a decent upbringing are less likely to grow up into criminals... not to mention the benefit that it provides to the child.
Somebody decided to take it away from me at gunpoint (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) and give it to her. You might not have a problem with that but I have a fundamental disagreement with the whole concept.
It's interesting that you don't have a fundamental disagreement with the concept of taking your money away from you at gunpoint and giving it to a police officer, just because he's "working a job". Do you really think issuing speeding tickets and arresting harmless potheads is a better use of your money, and mine, than raising children to be productive?
Again, mentioning crime is irrelevant. Fighting crime is one job that even die-hard libertarians acknowledge is a proper role for Government, so I really don't see why you keep bringing it up.
I keep bringing it up because fighting crime isn't just about putting more cops on the street. It's also about addressing the causes that generate crime, like poverty and lack of education. Or do you think the "proper role for government" is simply to wait for crimes to occur and then clean up after them?
And far as health care goes, if we were to get Government out of the way I'd wager that you would watch prices drop like a stone. Ever notice how spending on health care keeps going up yet life expectancies don't? Ever consider the possibility that just throwing more money at our problems isn't the best way to address them?
That's funny, because countries with more government involvement actually spend less on health care. One of the best ways to lower health care prices would be to move to a single-payer system, because the tangled web of insurance companies causes all sorts of inefficiency.
We were attacked. It's the job of the Federal Government to disrupt the network that attacked us so they can't do so again in the future and to arrest/kill those who were responsible. Interesting that you can quote the commerce and welfare clauses to justify your nanny state but can't remember this one: The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion.
Instead my hard earned dollars are taken from me to fund programs that have no benefit to me and questionable benefit to the community as a whole.
Well, you might be surprised at how many of those programs benefit you indirectly. I don't have kids in school, and I don't use the vast majority of roads in town, but I still benefit from their existence.
But that's beside the point, because government programs aren't meant to give you back exactly as much as you put in. The private sector can do that. Government programs are there to accomplish what the private sector fails to accomplish.
Wealth redistribution from both ends of the scale (be it for the benefit of the working single mom or Lockheed Martin) also comes to mind as something that I have a fundamental problem with.
Then you have a fundamental problem with the existence of a government, because all government spending is "wealth redistribution". It's still about taking a dollar from you and giving it to someone else, whether that person is a single mom or a police officer. In both cases, you're not guaranteed to get a dollar's worth of benefit, but you can expect to receive some amount of indirect benefit.
I would start by cutting Government down to the size actually envisioned by the Constitution and seeing how much funding that would require.
Let's say you did that, and productivity dropped so much -- due to, let's say, increased crime and illness -- that you were still paying 2/5 of your (lower) income in taxes. Would you be happy paying 40% of your income in that case?
(Of course, the Constitution is open-ended enough that there's no "size actually envisioned" by it anyway. How much do you need to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States", exactly? How much to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States"?)
Given that entitlement programs represent the largest part of the Federal (and most States for that matter) budget I'm willing to guess we could cut that tax burden down to size.
Interesting that you skipped over military spending. We spend more on the Department of Defense and the "Global War on Terror" than we do on Social Security (and that's not even counting Iraq and Afghanistan, which aren't part of the budget).
So again I'll ask: WTF is wrong with that picture? 2/5'ths of the fruits of my labor are being taken from me.
What's wrong with that picture is that you're only accounting for one side of the equation. You track your tax payments to the penny, but you ignore the benefits you're getting by living in a country funded by those taxes.
If there were no taxes, and thus no government services, no courts or prisons, no highways, no public schools or libraries, etc., do you really think you'd be earning as much as you do now?
Since you favor a flat tax, presumably you have some idea in mind of the "right" tax rate. And presumably it's greater than 0% but less than 40%. So, what is it, and what makes it the "right" rate?
But the person who's offering it for free obviously does not have any legal distribution rights, so you're guilty of receiving stolen goods.
False. There was actually a Supreme Court case about this, Dowling v. United States (1985), in which it was found that unauthorized copies are not "stolen goods".
And yet, I have this feeling that illegally obtaining a work you have no right to, is conveniently not a part of this magical "morality" you refer to.
Once again, you seem to have trouble grasping the difference between morality and legality. Such a shame.
Obtaining a copy of the work is, indeed, moral, even if it isn't legal. It's moral because you leave the author with everything he had before; he's never deprived of his property, money, or even time.
You really need to break out of that fantasy world.
My job is a fantasy world, huh? Somehow I think the coffee would taste better if that were true.
If people today are willing to make a choice which could lead to fines or jail, I'm sure people in your fantasy world would have no problems hanging out for a few months while other people pay for the development of games you're too cheap to.
Yes, I'm sure many of them would wait. But so what? The developer is still getting paid his asking price for the work he does, and that's what matters, right?
Or could it be that you really don't care about the developer getting paid? Maybe you're just upset that people might be able to enjoy something without paying for it. That's the same Puritan attitude that says all pleasure is evil unless you've had to toil to get it.
Funny, I don't really see what you've lost physically by me trespassing? Because as YOU'VE established, nobody cares about anything except loss of physical property.
Land is physical property. If you're standing on my land, I can't put anything else there; your presence deprives me of some of the uses of my property (whether or not I actually want to use it that way at the moment).
Then you would have never had a job, because reality doesn't work like that.
Once again, reality does work like that for everyone else. In every other service job, people negotiate an hourly rate or a flat rate before they do the work. What makes you think authors and developers are so special that they need their own set of rules?
Even in your magical fantasy world, works can - and I guarantee you, will - be ruined by criminals. Only since you've decriminalised IP theft, there's nothing that can be done about it.
Please, do explain. I can't wait to hear how you think "IP theft" would be a problem in a system where developers are paid directly for the work they do, and therefore they've already been paid by the time there's any "IP" to copy. This ought to be good.
And as you've so often implied, there's no moral difference between someone losing value naturally, and having it taken from them intentionally by force.
Since you seem to think devaluing a product is the same as stealing it, where's all your outrage toward reviewers? You still keep dodging that issue, don't you? According to your flawed logic, Roger Ebert has "stolen" more value than any pirate could possibly imagine, so why shouldn't he be in jail?
So? What's your physical loss? What's your loss of utility?
Like I said, the car smells bad. That's a loss of utility: I get less enjoyment from driving a car that smells bad. Not sure why you're having such a hard time with this.
No, you only have an obligation to pay if you CHOOSE to benefit from the work.
Well, I guess that's what it comes down to, isn't it? You think we're obligated to pay for everything we use (which makes me wonder why you aren't a Slashdot subscrib
What Steam does different is that it not only restricts your rights, but it also provides a very useful service. Patching PC games was and still is a huge annoyance [...]
It's not only the patches, it's also about being able to play your games from anywhere. Never worry about losing the install media, or bringing it to a friend's house - once the game is in your account, you can download it again at any time, onto any computer. With games supporting Steam Cloud, you'll even have the same settings and saved games from home.
And then there's the Steam Community. Friends list, game invites, statistics, chatting and web browsing from inside any game (Steam or not)... it's basically Xbox Live for the PC, for free, and without so many 12-year-olds swearing in your ear.
I'm no DRM fanboy, that's for sure - but are you seriously trying to compare sharing a copy of a game with loaning a book or DVD to a friend? In the first case, you now have TWO copies of said game (which is copyright infringement) and now you BOTH can enjoy the game AT THE SAME TIME. In your second and third cases, your friend can enjoy the content or you can, but not both (unless you both watch it together). I mean seriously... duh.
Step back for a moment, and look at how those items are used. Most people don't read books over and over, so borrowing a copy from a friend (or the library) could easily satisfy the average person's desire to read that book. Once you've borrowed it and read it once, you'll never need to pay for it.
That's how it's similar to copying games. People use games differently, so to satisfy your desire to play that game, you need a copy that you can keep using for a long time. But, since we're told that the point of all these restrictions is to ensure that the developer gets paid, that difference doesn't matter -- authors lose potential revenue when books are borrowed, just like game developers lose potential revenue when games are copied.
Slashdot Mirror
That is what you do, leave it at that.
And just let the unvaccinated kids come to school to infect each other (and, possibly, the handful of kids whose immune systems didn't respond to the vaccine)?
No thanks. If you want to take advantage of free education, you can take reasonable measures to keep your kid from infecting his fellow students. Otherwise you can tech him yourself or send him to a pricey private school. (Bonus: that means you can also teach him the Holocaust never happened, the earth is 6000 years old, and 9/11 was an inside job!)
By educating the public about the benefits of vaccination, debunking the anti-vaccination nuts whenever they surface, and requiring vaccinations before entering public school.
Normally, after "in other words", one writes a summary of what he's responding to, literally restating the same point in other words.
What you've done, however, is write "in other words" followed by something completely different from what the parent said. Nice try, but you're doing it wrong.
The parent's point regarding herd immunity was that vaccination works not only for the person who gets vaccinated, but also for other members of the community who don't get vaccinated. If you choose not to vaccinate your child, you're not only making it more likely that he'll get sick, you're also making it more likely that all the other kids who aren't vaccinated will get sick.
Seems like a recommendation system (a la TiVo) would go a long way here. Rate the shows you like, use your spare bandwidth to download shows that people with your taste also enjoy.
Is it such a bad idea, if a parent sees a child exposed to inappropriate media [...] to hit the power switch? What better time to have a discussion with your child? [...] Worst case, your child is pouty about having to go back to their last save point.
You don't even need to hit the power switch: just tell your child to pause it and come have a talk.
There's no five-second rule when it comes to inappropriate media. Once they've seen it, you may as well leave the screen on.
Look into the writings [amazon.com] of the guy they wanted to BE in charge of health care, Tom Daschle. He's made statements "In my book, Critical: What We Can Do About the American Health-Care Crisis, I have proposed a Federal Health Board that would be a foundation from which we could address all three problems. In many ways, the Federal Health Board would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board for the banking industry."
Yeah, I think we've ALL see the great work the Fed has done with banking and all today, eh?
Yeah, actually, we do. Surely you don't think we'd be better off without the Federal Reserve, do you? It was put in place for a reason: the economy swings wildly back and forth if you can't control monetary policy.
It's a mistake to blame our current situation on the Fed, and an even bigger one to ignore the relative stability we've had for decades because of it.
What are these TOUGH decisions they're gonna have to make? Rationing? Well according to this blurb "Perhaps most importantly, the Board would assess the effectiveness and costs of various treatments. He stops short of saying the U.S. should have a U.K.-style, hard-and-fast rule on cost-effectiveness. But he does say the U.S. "won't be able to make a significant dent in health-care spending without getting into the nitty-gritty of which treatments are the most clinically valuable and cost effective." [wsj.com] his plan certainly sounds like the decisions of this board can overrule a local Dr's treatment decisions. We humans,despite looking a great deal alike, are VERY different, and a one size fits all tx regiment kinda scares me.
I"m also not thrilled with a committee deciding [reason.com] if I'm too old to get a particular treatment.
But you are thrilled about an accountant deciding you're too poor to get that same treatment, huh?
Health care is going to be "rationed" by some means no matter what happens. If there are 100 people who want treatment, and only enough resources to provide for half of them, then 50 people are going to lose. Changing the policy only changes which 50 get treated: maybe it'll be the first 50 who show up, or the 50 who can afford to pay the most, or the 50 who can be given the most "medical bang for the buck" according to some set of guidelines.
But of course, no one's suggesting doing away with private payments. The Medicare board isn't going to stop you from paying out of your own pocket for treatments they don't cover.
WHY is the fact that the government wants to take full or partial control of your medical records NOT a cause for concern for you?
Please answer in a complete sentence that doesn't begin with either of these two phrases:
1) "Because President Obama says..."
2) "Well it's not like it's President Bush..."
Because the private sector won't do it on their own.
Ineffective record keeping is a problem. You can already see the benefits if you compare the VA system to private care, for example, since veterans tend to stick with the VA and thus have all their records in one place. The result is fewer problems like harmful drug interactions caused by one doctor not knowing what another has prescribed.
Private firms have little incentive to share records effectively, just like they have little incentive to pay for preventive care: it costs Company A today for a benefit that might come around in ten years, but by that time the patient might have moved to Company B.
OK, the movie is originally shot at 24 fps.
In the theater, the movie is projected at 48 fps, showing each frame twice, because 24 is too flickery. This preserves the original running time of the movie.
On an NTSC TV, the movie is shown with "2:3 pulldown", which turns 4 film frames into 5 interlaced TV frames (10 fields) by showing the first frame for 2 fields, the second for 3 fields, and so on. So for movie frames [1] [2] [3] [4], you end up with TV frames [1A 1B] [2A 2B] [2A 3B] [3A 4B] [4A 4B]. This preserves the original running time of the movie(*), but can look a little jerky.
On a PAL TV, the movie is shown with "2:2 pulldown", which turns each film frame into a single TV frame (2 fields). Since PAL is 50 Hz, this means the movie is actually shown at 25 fps, so the running time is shorter than the original (a 120 minute movie ends up being about 115 minutes), but it won't be jerky.
On a computer monitor, you can play back the movie at its original frame rate and let the video card sort it out, since the speed at which the media player pushes frames to the card is independent of the speed at which the card sends the frame buffer to the monitor. Depending on your monitor's refresh rate, this may or may not introduce jerkiness (as the GP mentioned, 24 divides evenly into 120 but not 60) or tearing (if you don't wait for vsync).
(* Almost. NTSC has a goofy fractional frame rate, so the movie ends up playing at 23.976 fps rather than 24. The time difference only adds up to a few seconds over the length of a 2 hour movie, though.)
As soon as Psystar installs the software on a non-Macintosh computer, they have made an illegal copy of the software (because the license didn't allow it)
That's not true. US copyright law, at 17 USC 117, explicitly allows the owner of a copy of a computer program to make an additional copy as a necessary step in the process of running that program.
In this case, since Psystar has legally purchased a copy of OS X to resell it, the owner is either Psystar, or the end user with Psystar acting on their behalf (which is also allowed under 17 USC 117). You can't really argue that installing the OS isn't a necessary step in running it, so it seems pretty clear that they don't need to comply with the EULA in order to install OS X on a computer.
There's much more to MS.NET than C# and the CLR, and they're extensively covered by MS patents.
Then don't use the other parts. Skip WinForms and use Gtk#, for example.
Since .NET and Visual Studio are Windows-only, how are those reasons for MS to want mono to succeed on Linux, BSD and other libre systems?
Because someone who's never used C# is less likely to buy a copy of VS than someone who has. More people using C# means more opportunity for Microsoft to sell them C#-related products (and otherwise capitalize on the popularity of C#).
Just look at this thread; there are examples of people installing Windows to do .NET development after having used Mono. A more likely scenario is that someone tinkers with Mono as a hobbyist and then eventually gets hired as a .NET developer using MS tools.
Baseless paranoia? STAC, Netscape, the rape of JAVA are baseless?
Yes, actually, in this context they are.
What, do you think Microsoft is going to use those as evidence in a lawsuit against Mono's developers or users? "Your Honor, if you look at Exhibit A, you'll see that we're quite an evil corporation and we've done some very nasty things in the past. Therefore, you must resolve this case in our favor."
That's essentially what you're claiming: that Microsoft will somehow win a patent infringement lawsuit just because they're evil, even though there is no infringement. You might as well claim that Hitler could travel faster than light.
Until I see a legal commitment, I will assume the worst. [...] So you are still probably wrong.
In other words, I was right all along: you don't care about evidence. Nothing will convince you. Your paranoia is irrational, and there's no point in trying to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
Good job concluding that I'm "probably wrong" based on nothing but your own paranoid assumptions, though. That's classic.
If somebody punched me in the face every day for a year, and then suddenly wants to be my friend, should I invite them in with open arms, or treat them with the suspicion that their past behavior has warranted?
The flaw in that analogy is that Microsoft isn't being treated here with "the suspicion that their past behavior has warranted". They're being treated with an irrational level of suspicion that defies all logic.
It's as if the guy who punched you in the face every day for a year suddenly left his old couch on the sidewalk for anyone to take. Sure, you're suspicious of him, so go ahead and look under the cushions to make sure it's not full of rusty nails. But if you've looked behind every scrap of fabric, you've run the couch through an X-ray machine and a metal detector, you've tested it for bacteria and viruses, and you still haven't found any plausible threat, it's foolish to warn everyone "Don't touch that couch! It belonged to someone who was an evil bastard, and I just know it's booby-trapped! So what if I can't find the trap, that only proves how sneaky he is!"
Suspicion of Microsoft is neither baseless nor could it be considered even slightly paranoid. Healthy skepticism is a better term.
I agree, healthy skepticism would be better. But what the anti-Mono folks here are displaying goes far beyond healthy skepticism; it's firmly within the realm of paranoia.
When dealing with Microsoft, as with the devil, one has to read the fine print. Very carefully. "Royalty-free" merely means no ongoing payments for a patent license; it says nothing about an initial one-time fee. Such a fee, if large, would be fatal for free software.
I suppose this will put your fears to rest, then? Here's the relevant part:
So you are still wrong.
Only in the minds of paranoid individuals who'd rather make up conspiracy theories than look at the evidence in front of them.
Suppose you are right and MS does want mono to be implemented and succeed in Linux, BSD, etc. Why? Out of the goodness of their hearts?!!
To encourage the development of .NET applications. More .NET developers means more sales of Visual Studio products, for one thing, and some of those developers might go on to develop for MS SQL or ASP.NET, or use other .NET-related APIs that actually are restricted to Windows. More .NET applications also means Windows stays relevant; that is, if a Linux developer writes his next app in C# instead of C, that gives Windows users one less reason to switch to Linux.
Or is it a poison pill? Are you really 100% sure? I'm not.
Yes, this sort of baseless paranoia is depressingly common on Slashdot. "There's no logical reason to object... but ZOMG, it's Microsoft! This is no time for logic, we have to panic!"
The only requirement with respect to patents is that they be available under "reasonable and nondiscriminitory" terms -- which basically means that Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for patent licences, as long as it's the same fee for everyone. So MS can still threaten to sue for patent violations. And any fee of significant size is of course fatal for free software. So you are wrong.
No, I'm afraid you're the one who's wrong. And it's a shame, because you could've been right if you had just read a little further. Here's the very next paragraph after the one you quoted:
Microsoft dominates ECMA and practically owns it, as show in the unbelievably corrupt ISO OOXML case. So what proof do you have that ECMA has forced MS to give up its patent claims with respect to C# ?
Here you go. But somehow I doubt that this or any other evidence will change your belief in the conspiracy theory.
It's not just that MS might come after you. It's that Mono, being an OSS implementation of .NET, would appear to be uniquely vulnerable to being crushed by MS if the beast deems it to be too great a threat, in a way that Java isn't as an independent technology.
C# and the CLR are ECMA standards, and as part of the standardization process, MS gave up the ability to make any patent claims. The idea that Microsoft might somehow be able to torpedo Mono is pure fantasy.
Hell, there's not even much reason to think Microsoft would want to torpedo Mono. They wouldn't have submitted their standard to ECMA if they didn't want it to be implemented.
Of course, all the logic and explicit legal agreements in the world won't change the minds of the folks here who are dead-set on this conspiracy theory.
Liberals expand the Government every single chance they get and then are the first ones to whine when they turn around and discover that their civil liberties (except gun ownership of course, cuz those are dangerous) are being eroded.
You say that as if there's a relation between the two events, as if the erosion of civil liberties is somehow a natural consequence of expanding the role of government. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health care for children and retirees, for example, has nothing to do with warrantless wiretapping.
Just remember that a Government big enough to give you everything that you need is big enough to take away everything that you have.
"Big enough"? What does that even mean? There's no minimum size requirement for a government to oppress people, if that's what it's determined to do. Eliminating the social programs you don't like would have absolutely no effect on the government's ability to "take away everything that you have".
The police officer is providing a service and working a job. Lumping him in with the single mom who gets back my money from the EITC is disingenuous. She didn't work a job or provide any service to get that money.
Oh, but she does: she raises that child. That provides a benefit to you, since children with a decent upbringing are less likely to grow up into criminals... not to mention the benefit that it provides to the child.
Somebody decided to take it away from me at gunpoint (what happens if you don't pay your taxes?) and give it to her. You might not have a problem with that but I have a fundamental disagreement with the whole concept.
It's interesting that you don't have a fundamental disagreement with the concept of taking your money away from you at gunpoint and giving it to a police officer, just because he's "working a job". Do you really think issuing speeding tickets and arresting harmless potheads is a better use of your money, and mine, than raising children to be productive?
Again, mentioning crime is irrelevant. Fighting crime is one job that even die-hard libertarians acknowledge is a proper role for Government, so I really don't see why you keep bringing it up.
I keep bringing it up because fighting crime isn't just about putting more cops on the street. It's also about addressing the causes that generate crime, like poverty and lack of education. Or do you think the "proper role for government" is simply to wait for crimes to occur and then clean up after them?
And far as health care goes, if we were to get Government out of the way I'd wager that you would watch prices drop like a stone. Ever notice how spending on health care keeps going up yet life expectancies don't? Ever consider the possibility that just throwing more money at our problems isn't the best way to address them?
That's funny, because countries with more government involvement actually spend less on health care. One of the best ways to lower health care prices would be to move to a single-payer system, because the tangled web of insurance companies causes all sorts of inefficiency.
Again, you fail [federalbudget.com].
You misspelled succeed. $484.1 billion + $145.2 billion > $608 billion.
We were attacked. It's the job of the Federal Government to disrupt the network that attacked us so they can't do so again in the future and to arrest/kill those who were responsible. Interesting that you can quote the commerce and welfare clauses to justify your nanny state but can't remember this one: The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion.
If you think the military excapades of the pa
Instead my hard earned dollars are taken from me to fund programs that have no benefit to me and questionable benefit to the community as a whole.
Well, you might be surprised at how many of those programs benefit you indirectly. I don't have kids in school, and I don't use the vast majority of roads in town, but I still benefit from their existence.
But that's beside the point, because government programs aren't meant to give you back exactly as much as you put in. The private sector can do that. Government programs are there to accomplish what the private sector fails to accomplish.
Wealth redistribution from both ends of the scale (be it for the benefit of the working single mom or Lockheed Martin) also comes to mind as something that I have a fundamental problem with.
Then you have a fundamental problem with the existence of a government, because all government spending is "wealth redistribution". It's still about taking a dollar from you and giving it to someone else, whether that person is a single mom or a police officer. In both cases, you're not guaranteed to get a dollar's worth of benefit, but you can expect to receive some amount of indirect benefit.
I would start by cutting Government down to the size actually envisioned by the Constitution and seeing how much funding that would require.
Let's say you did that, and productivity dropped so much -- due to, let's say, increased crime and illness -- that you were still paying 2/5 of your (lower) income in taxes. Would you be happy paying 40% of your income in that case?
(Of course, the Constitution is open-ended enough that there's no "size actually envisioned" by it anyway. How much do you need to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States", exactly? How much to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States"?)
Given that entitlement programs represent the largest part of the Federal (and most States for that matter) budget I'm willing to guess we could cut that tax burden down to size.
Interesting that you skipped over military spending. We spend more on the Department of Defense and the "Global War on Terror" than we do on Social Security (and that's not even counting Iraq and Afghanistan, which aren't part of the budget).
So again I'll ask: WTF is wrong with that picture? 2/5'ths of the fruits of my labor are being taken from me.
What's wrong with that picture is that you're only accounting for one side of the equation. You track your tax payments to the penny, but you ignore the benefits you're getting by living in a country funded by those taxes.
If there were no taxes, and thus no government services, no courts or prisons, no highways, no public schools or libraries, etc., do you really think you'd be earning as much as you do now?
Since you favor a flat tax, presumably you have some idea in mind of the "right" tax rate. And presumably it's greater than 0% but less than 40%. So, what is it, and what makes it the "right" rate?
Sorry, but it's a little difficult to take you seriously after this little blunder
In other words, you're tired of losing the debate and you'd like to cut your losses but still save face. Fair enough. Ciao!
But the person who's offering it for free obviously does not have any legal distribution rights, so you're guilty of receiving stolen goods.
False. There was actually a Supreme Court case about this, Dowling v. United States (1985), in which it was found that unauthorized copies are not "stolen goods".
And yet, I have this feeling that illegally obtaining a work you have no right to, is conveniently not a part of this magical "morality" you refer to.
Once again, you seem to have trouble grasping the difference between morality and legality. Such a shame.
Obtaining a copy of the work is, indeed, moral, even if it isn't legal. It's moral because you leave the author with everything he had before; he's never deprived of his property, money, or even time.
You really need to break out of that fantasy world.
My job is a fantasy world, huh? Somehow I think the coffee would taste better if that were true.
If people today are willing to make a choice which could lead to fines or jail, I'm sure people in your fantasy world would have no problems hanging out for a few months while other people pay for the development of games you're too cheap to.
Yes, I'm sure many of them would wait. But so what? The developer is still getting paid his asking price for the work he does, and that's what matters, right?
Or could it be that you really don't care about the developer getting paid? Maybe you're just upset that people might be able to enjoy something without paying for it. That's the same Puritan attitude that says all pleasure is evil unless you've had to toil to get it.
Funny, I don't really see what you've lost physically by me trespassing? Because as YOU'VE established, nobody cares about anything except loss of physical property.
Land is physical property. If you're standing on my land, I can't put anything else there; your presence deprives me of some of the uses of my property (whether or not I actually want to use it that way at the moment).
Then you would have never had a job, because reality doesn't work like that.
Once again, reality does work like that for everyone else. In every other service job, people negotiate an hourly rate or a flat rate before they do the work. What makes you think authors and developers are so special that they need their own set of rules?
Even in your magical fantasy world, works can - and I guarantee you, will - be ruined by criminals. Only since you've decriminalised IP theft, there's nothing that can be done about it.
Please, do explain. I can't wait to hear how you think "IP theft" would be a problem in a system where developers are paid directly for the work they do, and therefore they've already been paid by the time there's any "IP" to copy. This ought to be good.
And as you've so often implied, there's no moral difference between someone losing value naturally, and having it taken from them intentionally by force.
Since you seem to think devaluing a product is the same as stealing it, where's all your outrage toward reviewers? You still keep dodging that issue, don't you? According to your flawed logic, Roger Ebert has "stolen" more value than any pirate could possibly imagine, so why shouldn't he be in jail?
So? What's your physical loss? What's your loss of utility?
Like I said, the car smells bad. That's a loss of utility: I get less enjoyment from driving a car that smells bad. Not sure why you're having such a hard time with this.
No, you only have an obligation to pay if you CHOOSE to benefit from the work.
Well, I guess that's what it comes down to, isn't it? You think we're obligated to pay for everything we use (which makes me wonder why you aren't a Slashdot subscrib
What Steam does different is that it not only restricts your rights, but it also provides a very useful service. Patching PC games was and still is a huge annoyance [...]
It's not only the patches, it's also about being able to play your games from anywhere. Never worry about losing the install media, or bringing it to a friend's house - once the game is in your account, you can download it again at any time, onto any computer. With games supporting Steam Cloud, you'll even have the same settings and saved games from home.
And then there's the Steam Community. Friends list, game invites, statistics, chatting and web browsing from inside any game (Steam or not)... it's basically Xbox Live for the PC, for free, and without so many 12-year-olds swearing in your ear.
I'm no DRM fanboy, that's for sure - but are you seriously trying to compare sharing a copy of a game with loaning a book or DVD to a friend? In the first case, you now have TWO copies of said game (which is copyright infringement) and now you BOTH can enjoy the game AT THE SAME TIME. In your second and third cases, your friend can enjoy the content or you can, but not both (unless you both watch it together). I mean seriously... duh.
Step back for a moment, and look at how those items are used. Most people don't read books over and over, so borrowing a copy from a friend (or the library) could easily satisfy the average person's desire to read that book. Once you've borrowed it and read it once, you'll never need to pay for it.
That's how it's similar to copying games. People use games differently, so to satisfy your desire to play that game, you need a copy that you can keep using for a long time. But, since we're told that the point of all these restrictions is to ensure that the developer gets paid, that difference doesn't matter -- authors lose potential revenue when books are borrowed, just like game developers lose potential revenue when games are copied.