I have to say I think you got caught on the wrong side of that debate, and long after some pretty powerful clues were available if this was recent. Take a look at Qafzeh. When you have sapiens and neanderthal living that close together for over 50,000 years without any evidence of drift between them, it's pretty hard for to see any possibility they were the same species. Human populations interbreed, and the harshest, most strict taboos against 'miscegenation,' brutally enforced upon pain of death and worse, have never been able to stop that from happening for small fractions of that time period.
That's strange. Lots of people have them working without any problem. I was using that for awhile myself, and it worked great until the card suffered a hardware failure.
Perhaps you have a reversible configuration error somewhere?
And just where does that say that non-citizens have no rights?
I was referring to the Bill of Rights, where the bulk of our protections are found. Look at amendment 4, for instance. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." There's no distinction there between citizen and noncitizen. Nor in amendment 6: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
By the plain text of the language, the same holds true of the US Constitution. It doesn't use the word 'citizen' at all - it speaks of the rights of 'people' instead. But the Constitution has always been seen as nothing but an inconvenience to the rulers, and they mostly don't even bother to pretend to follow it anymore.
Actually, that's part of it, but don't forget the thorough purge there recently. They probably thought that, after firing the bulk of their senior analysts a couple years ago and radically politicising the office, the point had been made. Obviously this girl didn't get the memo somehow...
Actually, without state enforcement (i.e. DMCA) of DRM, you'd have what you say you want. If the first company tried to screw you, you could hire a second to crack their DRM and salvage your data. (Inconvenient, yes, but a reasonable price to pay for being STUPID enough to lock your data up under DRM to begin with.) What's preventing that right now is exactly what the OP said - the state enforcement. Under the DMCA, and similar legislation in other jurisdictions, it's a criminal offense to break DRM, even when that's the only way to exercise your legal rights over your own works.
If ATi documents their card interfaces well enough that open-source drivers can be written, NVidia WILL steal their technology, and vice-versa.
The hidden premise here is that somehow documenting the interface will make it easier for competitors to 'steal' some advantage. That's so obviously wrong in so many ways it's shocking someone would assert it in good faith.
What are they going to do? Copy the interface so their card will be compatible with the other cards drivers? Well, yes, I suppose someone could do that. Wouldn't necessarily even be a bad thing (standard interfaces are generally considered a good thing, even ad hoc standards.) But this is a far cry from somehow "stealing" the actual video card technology. That technology is, in many cases, patented, rather than protected as a trade secret, so the competition can (and you can bet, has) gone and read the patents right off anyway. They just can't legally imitate it too closely. And to the extent there are things in hardware that *are* trade-secrets, a disection of one of the cards would be a much better way to get at them. Looking at the external interface is the last method one would use to try to disect the inner workings of a device. Note that refusing to disclose the interface doesn't do jack to stop the competitors from disecting the hardware.
No, I'm sorry, that whole line of argument is utter nonsense.
Sorry, but you are shit outta luck. There is no decent open-source graphics hardware at the moment.
Not true at all. There is no *high performance* graphics hardware for free software at the moment, but 'decent' doesn't imply 'top of the line' but rather 'good enough for general usage' and there are definitely some choices there. The on-board Intel video has great support, the Via is nearly as good I'm told, the Matrox G550 (±$30 retail, and awesome performance for the price) is fully supported with DRI drivers, and so are ATI Radeons up to and including I believe it's the 9200. Any of those offer performance exceeding top-of-the-line from a few years back, and are perfectly sufficient for the vast majority of uses. Any of them will make your xgl desktop fly, and run most games acceptably well. So unless your definition of 'decent' somehow implies 'Doom3 at high frame-rate'... well, in that case, I'd suggest you think of a different word for it.
The open graphics project is a wonderful thing, though, don't get me wrong. I'm strongly in support of it. But I don't think they're aiming at a card that will make the FPS junkies drool either.
Optimizing websites for the blind is about as intelligent as optimizing music for the deaf...
That's utter nonsense. First off, you think blind people can't process information? WTF?
Second, it's not even about 'optimising for the blind' so much as simply 'using (rather than abusing) the web.' The web was designed from the start to deliver information in a neutral format so that the user-agent (browser) could then deliver that information appropriately. This may mean laying it out on a screen (of unknown dimensions and capability,) or it may mean speaking it aloud, or whatever. Proper web design is accessible to everyone. The errors that make sites inaccessible to the blind are the same errors that make them annoying and sometimes unusable to the rest of us as well.
Keep in mind that you cannot dictate layout and use html properly and you'll have no problem. Ignore that fact and you shut out a lot of people, not just the blind.
I'll go you one better. Binary drivers aren't compatible with Free Software, period.
It's amazing to me the author of the article can put out as much verbiage as he did about this issue without ever once mentioning the real problem here - ATIs refusal to document the card interface so that the hardware can be properly supported.
Until they do, their customers that use Linux, *BSD, etc. remain broadly unsupported. Only a small subset of free systems even have the option of using the mushware they want to substitute for documentation, and at a cost many will not pay. They're making themselves irrelevant in what is probably the fastest growing segment of the computer market. Why would a free software user shell out big bucks for the latest ATI *or* Nvidious card only to face the choice of running it without accelleration for the same performance as a much cheaper card, or with buggy opaque mushware that that doesn't perform that much better and taints your system, assuming it will even run on it, which it often won't?
Actually, I haven't seen any evidence the RIAA is interested in *making* money at all, as the phrase implies creating things of value to other people, you know, actually working. They seem intent on *stealing* as much money as possible instead.
But you can get what you're calling 'Enterprise support' for Debian - from multiple vendors. From names like IBM and HP, for instance, both of whom will provide this level of support for large customers that choose to run Debian on hardware bought from them.
I'm not in favour of coercive anything - I am suggesting that the answer lies in the same direction as it has with software - the development of a public commons. As with free software, the way that could occur is manifold - from individual voluntary contribution through to corporate backing through to public funding (taxation, licence fees, etc).
(emphasis added.)
But what you're calling 'public funding' is inherently coërcive, and despite advancing some other ideas as well this time, you still come back to that one. So it sure sounds like you're in favour of it.
I don't see where I said anything about granting private monopolies on databases in my original post;
Perhaps I drew an incorrect implication, but you do (still!) seem to be arguing that databases should be copyrightable. Copyright is a private grant of monopoly.
Wait a second. You're in favour of coërcive funding of public databases, and given that you can't get that, you think granting coërcive monopolies to private databases is a good solution?
You're jumping from one ditch to another. Give the middle road a thought.
Easier copying enables people to spread existing materials more widely, so that more people can benefit from them at low cost. But there is a downside. It also drastically reduces the ability of anyone in the market to fund the development of these sorts of compilations. Why should I develop something that will take a huge investment if it will be copied?
Because you, or someone else willing to provide funding for you, need it? Really, this isn't rocket science. Think.
This is not an issue of petty rent-seeking.
To the contrary, that's exactly what it is. That's exactly what *all* "Intellectual Property" law is about.
Tell me where can I can download the human genome sequence?
Your first answer is just plain wrong. There is no social utility to maximising collection of unneeded, uncreative data. Quite the opposite.
The second argument, if it's valid at all, argues against copyright entirely, not for extending the privilege to uncreative works as well.
Your arguments are truly absurd. An analogy would be to claim that if I choose to spend all day rolling a large rock up the hill, and then roll it back down every night, I surely deserve a nice hefty paycheck guaranteed me from the public trough for this. After all, I'm working HARD!
OpenOffices biggest problem, besides the inertia factor and the ruthless way MS holds onto that and uses it as a weapon, is that it's too much like MSOffice. The whole word processor paradigm sucks, frankly, and if the marketplace as a whole ever wakes up to that fact and starts using the proper tool for the job... well a guy can dream, right?
Linux manages memory+vm+disk caching *much* more intelligently than Windows, so yes, this is a likely reason for the speed increases seen in certain cases. However, I've noticed wine outperforming windows in cases where it seemed unlikely that any of that should affect it - i.e. in situations where memory usage and disk access were minimal. I can only assume they're cases where Windows is hitting some insane code bloat, particularly considering that video performance in X *should* always be a bit below Windows, given that Windows sacrifices security for speed and runs it all in kernel ring.
A bit inconsistent, isn't it? You can cut out the parts you don't want to see (or for your kids to see) on your own copy and that's perfectly legal. You pay someone else to take your copy, do the work for you, and send it back (which is what these folks were doing, in essence - you sent them your copy, they sent you back a "fixed" copy) and they get sued. And lose.
Now, I don't have much sympathy for the urge to begin with. I have a feeling their customers were, in large part, the same folks that consistently vote in meatheads that want to censor what *I* see to fit the standards they find appropriate for their children, and to that extent I would count them as enemies in the full meaning of the word. But if I want my rights I have to allow them theirs. And I honestly can't see how the ruling in this case is in any way just.
They used to make some real quality hard drives too. Strangely enough I can't seem to find any historical references to them on google. I remember clearly the day they closed out that entire division.
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I have to say I think you got caught on the wrong side of that debate, and long after some pretty powerful clues were available if this was recent. Take a look at Qafzeh. When you have sapiens and neanderthal living that close together for over 50,000 years without any evidence of drift between them, it's pretty hard for to see any possibility they were the same species. Human populations interbreed, and the harshest, most strict taboos against 'miscegenation,' brutally enforced upon pain of death and worse, have never been able to stop that from happening for small fractions of that time period.
What's so funny about mushware? It seems the most appropriate term for binary-only stuff, it's not really software, but not really hardware either.
If they'd document their interfaces, then we could get drivers that work, that's kind of the point...
That's strange. Lots of people have them working without any problem. I was using that for awhile myself, and it worked great until the card suffered a hardware failure.
Perhaps you have a reversible configuration error somewhere?
And just where does that say that non-citizens have no rights?
I was referring to the Bill of Rights, where the bulk of our protections are found. Look at amendment 4, for instance. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." There's no distinction there between citizen and noncitizen. Nor in amendment 6: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
By the plain text of the language, the same holds true of the US Constitution. It doesn't use the word 'citizen' at all - it speaks of the rights of 'people' instead. But the Constitution has always been seen as nothing but an inconvenience to the rulers, and they mostly don't even bother to pretend to follow it anymore.
Actually, that's part of it, but don't forget the thorough purge there recently. They probably thought that, after firing the bulk of their senior analysts a couple years ago and radically politicising the office, the point had been made. Obviously this girl didn't get the memo somehow...
Eh? Think you've got that about backwards. And yes, I've travelled a fair bit.
Now *that* is a suggestion that's not obviously and utterly incorrect.
Actually, without state enforcement (i.e. DMCA) of DRM, you'd have what you say you want. If the first company tried to screw you, you could hire a second to crack their DRM and salvage your data. (Inconvenient, yes, but a reasonable price to pay for being STUPID enough to lock your data up under DRM to begin with.) What's preventing that right now is exactly what the OP said - the state enforcement. Under the DMCA, and similar legislation in other jurisdictions, it's a criminal offense to break DRM, even when that's the only way to exercise your legal rights over your own works.
The hidden premise here is that somehow documenting the interface will make it easier for competitors to 'steal' some advantage. That's so obviously wrong in so many ways it's shocking someone would assert it in good faith.
What are they going to do? Copy the interface so their card will be compatible with the other cards drivers? Well, yes, I suppose someone could do that. Wouldn't necessarily even be a bad thing (standard interfaces are generally considered a good thing, even ad hoc standards.) But this is a far cry from somehow "stealing" the actual video card technology. That technology is, in many cases, patented, rather than protected as a trade secret, so the competition can (and you can bet, has) gone and read the patents right off anyway. They just can't legally imitate it too closely. And to the extent there are things in hardware that *are* trade-secrets, a disection of one of the cards would be a much better way to get at them. Looking at the external interface is the last method one would use to try to disect the inner workings of a device. Note that refusing to disclose the interface doesn't do jack to stop the competitors from disecting the hardware.
No, I'm sorry, that whole line of argument is utter nonsense.
Not true at all. There is no *high performance* graphics hardware for free software at the moment, but 'decent' doesn't imply 'top of the line' but rather 'good enough for general usage' and there are definitely some choices there. The on-board Intel video has great support, the Via is nearly as good I'm told, the Matrox G550 (±$30 retail, and awesome performance for the price) is fully supported with DRI drivers, and so are ATI Radeons up to and including I believe it's the 9200. Any of those offer performance exceeding top-of-the-line from a few years back, and are perfectly sufficient for the vast majority of uses. Any of them will make your xgl desktop fly, and run most games acceptably well. So unless your definition of 'decent' somehow implies 'Doom3 at high frame-rate'... well, in that case, I'd suggest you think of a different word for it.
The open graphics project is a wonderful thing, though, don't get me wrong. I'm strongly in support of it. But I don't think they're aiming at a card that will make the FPS junkies drool either.
That's utter nonsense. First off, you think blind people can't process information? WTF?
Second, it's not even about 'optimising for the blind' so much as simply 'using (rather than abusing) the web.' The web was designed from the start to deliver information in a neutral format so that the user-agent (browser) could then deliver that information appropriately. This may mean laying it out on a screen (of unknown dimensions and capability,) or it may mean speaking it aloud, or whatever. Proper web design is accessible to everyone. The errors that make sites inaccessible to the blind are the same errors that make them annoying and sometimes unusable to the rest of us as well.
Keep in mind that you cannot dictate layout and use html properly and you'll have no problem. Ignore that fact and you shut out a lot of people, not just the blind.
I'll go you one better. Binary drivers aren't compatible with Free Software, period.
It's amazing to me the author of the article can put out as much verbiage as he did about this issue without ever once mentioning the real problem here - ATIs refusal to document the card interface so that the hardware can be properly supported.
Until they do, their customers that use Linux, *BSD, etc. remain broadly unsupported. Only a small subset of free systems even have the option of using the mushware they want to substitute for documentation, and at a cost many will not pay. They're making themselves irrelevant in what is probably the fastest growing segment of the computer market. Why would a free software user shell out big bucks for the latest ATI *or* Nvidious card only to face the choice of running it without accelleration for the same performance as a much cheaper card, or with buggy opaque mushware that that doesn't perform that much better and taints your system, assuming it will even run on it, which it often won't?
Actually, I haven't seen any evidence the RIAA is interested in *making* money at all, as the phrase implies creating things of value to other people, you know, actually working. They seem intent on *stealing* as much money as possible instead.
But you can get what you're calling 'Enterprise support' for Debian - from multiple vendors. From names like IBM and HP, for instance, both of whom will provide this level of support for large customers that choose to run Debian on hardware bought from them.
You sound very confused.
(emphasis added.)But what you're calling 'public funding' is inherently coërcive, and despite advancing some other ideas as well this time, you still come back to that one. So it sure sounds like you're in favour of it.
Perhaps I drew an incorrect implication, but you do (still!) seem to be arguing that databases should be copyrightable. Copyright is a private grant of monopoly.
Wait a second. You're in favour of coërcive funding of public databases, and given that you can't get that, you think granting coërcive monopolies to private databases is a good solution?
You're jumping from one ditch to another. Give the middle road a thought.
Because you, or someone else willing to provide funding for you, need it? Really, this isn't rocket science. Think.
To the contrary, that's exactly what it is. That's exactly what *all* "Intellectual Property" law is about.
Look here.
Your first answer is just plain wrong. There is no social utility to maximising collection of unneeded, uncreative data. Quite the opposite. The second argument, if it's valid at all, argues against copyright entirely, not for extending the privilege to uncreative works as well. Your arguments are truly absurd. An analogy would be to claim that if I choose to spend all day rolling a large rock up the hill, and then roll it back down every night, I surely deserve a nice hefty paycheck guaranteed me from the public trough for this. After all, I'm working HARD!
OpenOffices biggest problem, besides the inertia factor and the ruthless way MS holds onto that and uses it as a weapon, is that it's too much like MSOffice. The whole word processor paradigm sucks, frankly, and if the marketplace as a whole ever wakes up to that fact and starts using the proper tool for the job... well a guy can dream, right?
Linux manages memory+vm+disk caching *much* more intelligently than Windows, so yes, this is a likely reason for the speed increases seen in certain cases. However, I've noticed wine outperforming windows in cases where it seemed unlikely that any of that should affect it - i.e. in situations where memory usage and disk access were minimal. I can only assume they're cases where Windows is hitting some insane code bloat, particularly considering that video performance in X *should* always be a bit below Windows, given that Windows sacrifices security for speed and runs it all in kernel ring.
It's utterly ridiculous, but they seem to be getting away with it.
A bit inconsistent, isn't it? You can cut out the parts you don't want to see (or for your kids to see) on your own copy and that's perfectly legal. You pay someone else to take your copy, do the work for you, and send it back (which is what these folks were doing, in essence - you sent them your copy, they sent you back a "fixed" copy) and they get sued. And lose.
Now, I don't have much sympathy for the urge to begin with. I have a feeling their customers were, in large part, the same folks that consistently vote in meatheads that want to censor what *I* see to fit the standards they find appropriate for their children, and to that extent I would count them as enemies in the full meaning of the word. But if I want my rights I have to allow them theirs. And I honestly can't see how the ruling in this case is in any way just.
I do believe that's my Liz *sigh*.
They used to make some real quality hard drives too. Strangely enough I can't seem to find any historical references to them on google. I remember clearly the day they closed out that entire division.