Yes but with the way TIVO and other DVR/DVR-like services are heading how long will you be able to enjoy the luxury of fast forwarding through commercials? It seems to me that this will get shot down sooner or later for all but the most niche programs. They already have the broadcast flag to abuse and slowly but surely as revenue on the DVR business model slips they will quietly remove the ability to skip the commercials. At least Google's being up front about it.
When speaking against a law, offering any hope of changing bad laws, is illegal then people don't have much choice do they?
In a free society, where people have a means (even though it seems hopelessly overwhelming sometimes) to speak their minds and thus change unjust laws, I tend to agree with you. But if the fundamental method of evaluating a law and deciding after implantation that it was not such a good idea after all is illegal I say let the info arms race continue!
"In the good ol' days that would have been unthinkable..."
I totally agree. But didn't Sun stop shipping a compiler with it's OS back in 90? From what I've read it had a significant (positive) impact on the distribution of gcc. MS isn't the first company to realize that shipping an OS and then charging for developer tools is just another way to make more money.
OK I hate grammar/spelling Nazis and I *did* note you said "In the Netherlands..." but a post on correct use of language that fails to use the plural of youngster correctly and uses a phrase like "more easy" instead of easier does not deserve to be moderated insightful. There are definitely times when using proper language, to the point of being obsessive about it, are important. A post about proper language is one of these times.
Citing violations of their sovereign law is hardly being a "shitty customer". This is not the same as walking into a 7/11 with no shoes and telling the guy behind the counter to go f* himself. Whether you agree with their laws or not if you want to do business there you have to obey them.
But as I said in another post they are free to pull out if they wish. I don't think they will but they are perfectly free to do so. Last time I checked shooting youself in the foot was not against the law.
Why not indeed. if they want to pull out then, so be it, they are free to do so. But, I really think that they won't. They a) will not want to give up this market and b) don't want to send a message to the rest of the world that it can happen to them at anytime thus spurring F/OSS adoption to new heights.
The part of this that bothers me I guess is that I truly believe they are just trying to play hard ball and posture and threaten. In the end, IMO, their only goal is to get S.K. to drop their anti-trust allegations and let MS continue to operate on MS's terms.
Of course they are free to pull out and has been said elsewhere this may just be a "worst case scenario" SEC filing thing but until they *actually do* pull out of S.K. I will continue to look on this as just empty threats and posturing.
That's what made me switch at home finally. I love Linux. I've used since I first started looking for cheap/free C programming tools back in 93/94. I would go searching for things like "free c compiler" or "free programming tools" and I kept getting hits for gcc and Linux. So I bit. I downloaded slackware and just started playing with it. I loved it then and still do. But I kept Windows too. Same as most I guess, I wanted to play games, had jobs creating crappy little office automation tools in Access and Visual Basic, have a family that I thought wouldn't adopt Linux well. After XP came out and validation became a necessity I started feeling worse and worse about running MSDN copies of Windows from work. Feelings about MS aside I don't like the idea of taking something for free if the developers of it doesn't want me to do that. I'm not much into the games anymore but my family still needs an easy to use OS so I took the plunge and put Ubuntu on my wife's PC and on the family PC. Looking back I probably could have done it even sooner but by now, with the sharp, user friendly interfaces people have built around X my family has no problem at all adapting to Linux. The best example is my daughter; she uses Word XP at school and AbiWord at home. She has never complained to me that something didn't format correctly when switching from program to program. Of course she's not embedding complex objects into her documents or making extensive use of tables. I know these things do cause issues for people but for the day to day user who is just typing a paper for school Linux does just fine and better in some cases. And last but not least my monthly sessions of removing all the crap of the family windows PC are just distant memories.:)
RPM won't resolve deps for you automatically but it does point them out. It can be a pain in the rear to follow the chain of dep messages it spits out but in the end you can satisfy all deps whether adding or removing rpms by reading the output and playing along. Gotta love that apt front end for RPM though!:)
Well they don't all have to do they? Sure if a company wants to make a commercially viable Linux distro they probably should and will follow the standard. But if I decide to download Dettu[Xx] Linux (which was billed as 'the world's nastiest distribution' by it's developer) I pretty much know it won't follow the standard and I'm probably not going to want to put Photo Shop on it.
My point is the only distros that need to worry about the standard are those that care about the desktop market. Those of us who want/need the smallest, most secure Linux we can get for our servers already know a) where to get it and b) what to do with it.
If Debian decides not to follow the standard, for example, it doesn't matter to me, I'll still use it. But I may decide to put something that does follow the standard on my daughter's PC, especially if it results in more "end user" apps, because she uses the desktop. Regardless of the standards and who follows them or not there will continue to be plenty of Linux for everyone's special needs/desires.
Exactly! There was a recent ruling to that effect regarding a guy named Lemelson. Although the guy in question waited between 18 - 39 years before he started going after the industry. The original article I read on this is at Groklaw with a follow up concerning a ruling against Lemelson there as well. The basic gist is that a party may base a reasonable defense against patent infringement on the fact that the plaintiff waited too long to bring a case against them. I would hope that applies here as well!
It seems that if we go by this part: "causes to be accessed any computer, computer system, or computer network" then the admin who set up default passwords in the first place is guilty as well.
I don't think so. This gives the big companies a chance to push Linux out into the mainsteam. If the "single developer at home" wants to create ILD [ Incompatible Linux Distro] then there is nothing stopping her/him. That's the beauty of the GPL. But for the "single developer at home" that wants to create and sell the next Killer App these standards should only make it easier. Having big companies like this define standards does not change the fact that the software is and will continue to be free (libre).
I don't know how to answer this. I am really struggling here. I sense no/.-esque sarcasm yet, really, can anyone really be serious with that statement. Ah,/. can be so hard on me some days. I need a nap.
...but I think we all know how Forbes feels about it. Mod me off topic if you like but after reading TFA I have to say that this appears to be more of an opportunity by Forbes to take shots at the F/OSS community. Let's see, hmm, OK we have to really pique people's interest here; ah, we'll use the word terrorist. Of course we can't call Moglen a terrorist outright but we'll just slip the word in there. Yep, that will get the tone of the article off to the right start. Here's a few other choice quotes form TFA
"Moglen's comments would be easy to dismiss, except for the woe he's already caused the software industry".
"Moglen has been... in charge of defending the General Public License, a subversive bit of lawyering (sic) that turns property law on its head by prohibiting the users of open-source software from charging money for it"
There's more to it but I am ranting so I'll stop. Bottom line, IMHO, is that Eben maybe does not know as much as he should about radio frequencies before he spouts off about it but this Dan Fisher fellow at Forbes needs to be cracked a few times with a clue stick before he writes another article on anything remotely related to F/OSS.
While I agree in theory this is a good idea HTML is not really a great format for portability. Although a lot of devices read HTML and it's very platform neutral it does take some skill and effort to make it consistent across platforms. So that bugs the publishing crowd who wants control over the flow and layout of a document. Ah, CSS solves that! But my next point illustrates why this is also problematic. You mentioned containing images; images and other non-textual data in an HTML document are just links. When your browser hits a web server both sides know how to deal with this properly. Have you ever tried to explain to a colleague who tried to email an HTML attachment why their pictures didn't get sent with the message? Object linking in HTML makes it problematic when it comes to end users passing it around. It works great for the client/server web model but tends to fall apart when you try to force other applications to use it. Just look at the mess that is HTML email.
Troll? No... You think? Well it's good to know we have alert folk like you to protect us from these monsters. I mean, hell, I almost laughed for a minute there.
Sorry, sarcasm aside, you have to admit this was a pretty appropriate response to the "cloak and dagger" scenario described by the gp post.
I know you're joking but on a serious note, the US has far to go in this respect. I saw this little gem on Google News this morning:
While the United States continues to be the world's worst source of spam, computers there are relaying far fewer junk emails than a year ago, according to Sophos.
I don't exactly disagree with what your saying but could you back that up with some real data? I see your point about lack of data to prove the article but how many proprietary shops get rich off of software over night? Or ever? For every success I'm sure there are plenty of failures. What the success/failure ratio is for proprietary software vs. F/OSS software is not something I can answer but I think that bears evaluating before making broad brush comments like proprietary software is far more profitable.
Again I'm not necessarily disagreeing but if TFA is lacking in details, well, so is your comment.
Oh sure it was a proprietary, nightmare attempt to stave off the clones, but hey the idea was sound and Billy G. had to steal the concept of Plug and Play from someone right?:)
Slashdot Mirror
He read /.
Yes but with the way TIVO and other DVR/DVR-like services are heading how long will you be able to enjoy the luxury of fast forwarding through commercials? It seems to me that this will get shot down sooner or later for all but the most niche programs. They already have the broadcast flag to abuse and slowly but surely as revenue on the DVR business model slips they will quietly remove the ability to skip the commercials. At least Google's being up front about it.
(and no, "Badger badger badger badger" is to my knowledge not an official Ubuntu release song)
No, you're right, it's not. It's what coworkers do to you when they need something. (At least when the IT department is as small as mine).
When speaking against a law, offering any hope of changing bad laws, is illegal then people don't have much choice do they?
In a free society, where people have a means (even though it seems hopelessly overwhelming sometimes) to speak their minds and thus change unjust laws, I tend to agree with you. But if the fundamental method of evaluating a law and deciding after implantation that it was not such a good idea after all is illegal I say let the info arms race continue!
"In the good ol' days that would have been unthinkable..." I totally agree. But didn't Sun stop shipping a compiler with it's OS back in 90? From what I've read it had a significant (positive) impact on the distribution of gcc. MS isn't the first company to realize that shipping an OS and then charging for developer tools is just another way to make more money.
OK I hate grammar/spelling Nazis and I *did* note you said "In the Netherlands..." but a post on correct use of language that fails to use the plural of youngster correctly and uses a phrase like "more easy" instead of easier does not deserve to be moderated insightful. There are definitely times when using proper language, to the point of being obsessive about it, are important. A post about proper language is one of these times.
Oh well, good karma was fun while it lasted...
Citing violations of their sovereign law is hardly being a "shitty customer". This is not the same as walking into a 7/11 with no shoes and telling the guy behind the counter to go f* himself. Whether you agree with their laws or not if you want to do business there you have to obey them.
But as I said in another post they are free to pull out if they wish. I don't think they will but they are perfectly free to do so. Last time I checked shooting youself in the foot was not against the law.
Why not indeed. if they want to pull out then, so be it, they are free to do so. But, I really think that they won't. They a) will not want to give up this market and b) don't want to send a message to the rest of the world that it can happen to them at anytime thus spurring F/OSS adoption to new heights.
The part of this that bothers me I guess is that I truly believe they are just trying to play hard ball and posture and threaten. In the end, IMO, their only goal is to get S.K. to drop their anti-trust allegations and let MS continue to operate on MS's terms.
Of course they are free to pull out and has been said elsewhere this may just be a "worst case scenario" SEC filing thing but until they *actually do* pull out of S.K. I will continue to look on this as just empty threats and posturing.
That's what made me switch at home finally. I love Linux. I've used since I first started looking for cheap/free C programming tools back in 93/94. I would go searching for things like "free c compiler" or "free programming tools" and I kept getting hits for gcc and Linux. So I bit. I downloaded slackware and just started playing with it. I loved it then and still do. But I kept Windows too. Same as most I guess, I wanted to play games, had jobs creating crappy little office automation tools in Access and Visual Basic, have a family that I thought wouldn't adopt Linux well. After XP came out and validation became a necessity I started feeling worse and worse about running MSDN copies of Windows from work. Feelings about MS aside I don't like the idea of taking something for free if the developers of it doesn't want me to do that. I'm not much into the games anymore but my family still needs an easy to use OS so I took the plunge and put Ubuntu on my wife's PC and on the family PC. Looking back I probably could have done it even sooner but by now, with the sharp, user friendly interfaces people have built around X my family has no problem at all adapting to Linux. The best example is my daughter; she uses Word XP at school and AbiWord at home. She has never complained to me that something didn't format correctly when switching from program to program. Of course she's not embedding complex objects into her documents or making extensive use of tables. I know these things do cause issues for people but for the day to day user who is just typing a paper for school Linux does just fine and better in some cases. And last but not least my monthly sessions of removing all the crap of the family windows PC are just distant memories. :)
I always thought the industry abbreviation "Wintel" says it all. But then again the tinfoil on my hat just gets thicker every year.
RPM won't resolve deps for you automatically but it does point them out. It can be a pain in the rear to follow the chain of dep messages it spits out but in the end you can satisfy all deps whether adding or removing rpms by reading the output and playing along. Gotta love that apt front end for RPM though! :)
Well they don't all have to do they? Sure if a company wants to make a commercially viable Linux distro they probably should and will follow the standard. But if I decide to download Dettu[Xx] Linux (which was billed as 'the world's nastiest distribution' by it's developer) I pretty much know it won't follow the standard and I'm probably not going to want to put Photo Shop on it.
My point is the only distros that need to worry about the standard are those that care about the desktop market. Those of us who want/need the smallest, most secure Linux we can get for our servers already know a) where to get it and b) what to do with it.
If Debian decides not to follow the standard, for example, it doesn't matter to me, I'll still use it. But I may decide to put something that does follow the standard on my daughter's PC, especially if it results in more "end user" apps, because she uses the desktop. Regardless of the standards and who follows them or not there will continue to be plenty of Linux for everyone's special needs/desires.
Exactly! There was a recent ruling to that effect regarding a guy named Lemelson. Although the guy in question waited between 18 - 39 years before he started going after the industry. The original article I read on this is at Groklaw with a follow up concerning a ruling against Lemelson there as well. The basic gist is that a party may base a reasonable defense against patent infringement on the fact that the plaintiff waited too long to bring a case against them. I would hope that applies here as well!
It seems that if we go by this part: "causes to be accessed any computer, computer system, or computer network" then the admin who set up default passwords in the first place is guilty as well.
I don't think so. This gives the big companies a chance to push Linux out into the mainsteam. If the "single developer at home" wants to create ILD [ Incompatible Linux Distro] then there is nothing stopping her/him. That's the beauty of the GPL. But for the "single developer at home" that wants to create and sell the next Killer App these standards should only make it easier. Having big companies like this define standards does not change the fact that the software is and will continue to be free (libre).
"The day I come in front of the Gartner audience and say we have a better Unix than Linux, that'll be a good day."
Anybody else get that "pigs fly", "cold day in hell" feeling when they read this? Reactions to this article also came to mind.
"There is no 'h' in "Doctor Who". Try again.
/.-esque sarcasm yet, really, can anyone really be serious with that statement. Ah, /. can be so hard on me some days. I need a nap.
I don't know how to answer this. I am really struggling here. I sense no
There's more to it but I am ranting so I'll stop. Bottom line, IMHO, is that Eben maybe does not know as much as he should about radio frequencies before he spouts off about it but this Dan Fisher fellow at Forbes needs to be cracked a few times with a clue stick before he writes another article on anything remotely related to F/OSS.
While I agree in theory this is a good idea HTML is not really a great format for portability. Although a lot of devices read HTML and it's very platform neutral it does take some skill and effort to make it consistent across platforms. So that bugs the publishing crowd who wants control over the flow and layout of a document. Ah, CSS solves that! But my next point illustrates why this is also problematic. You mentioned containing images; images and other non-textual data in an HTML document are just links. When your browser hits a web server both sides know how to deal with this properly. Have you ever tried to explain to a colleague who tried to email an HTML attachment why their pictures didn't get sent with the message? Object linking in HTML makes it problematic when it comes to end users passing it around. It works great for the client/server web model but tends to fall apart when you try to force other applications to use it. Just look at the mess that is HTML email.
Troll? No... You think? Well it's good to know we have alert folk like you to protect us from these monsters. I mean, hell, I almost laughed for a minute there.
Sorry, sarcasm aside, you have to admit this was a pretty appropriate response to the "cloak and dagger" scenario described by the gp post.
Well sure it's expensive now. How is the inventor going to get "rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice" otherwise?
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume they meant "the most popular GNU/Linux IM client" or perhaps "...Open source IM client".
I don't exactly disagree with what your saying but could you back that up with some real data? I see your point about lack of data to prove the article but how many proprietary shops get rich off of software over night? Or ever? For every success I'm sure there are plenty of failures. What the success/failure ratio is for proprietary software vs. F/OSS software is not something I can answer but I think that bears evaluating before making broad brush comments like proprietary software is far more profitable.
Again I'm not necessarily disagreeing but if TFA is lacking in details, well, so is your comment.
Oh sure it was a proprietary, nightmare attempt to stave off the clones, but hey the idea was sound and Billy G. had to steal the concept of Plug and Play from someone right? :)