Perhaps they signed a contract and then violated it. They should certainly be held liable for that, but should I?
I should add that slashdotters who cite this argument are cleverly using the classic "computer science solution" -- add a layer of indirection -- to argue for fraud. Basically, this just amounts to fraud via a layer of indirection.
This would be a perfectly good way to evade certain kinds of laws, but you can't weasel out of moral principles via a layer of obfuscation.
Perhaps they signed a contract and then violated it. They should certainly be held liable for that, but should I?
Again, same reason we have laws against receiving stolen goods. Basically, your "right" to be a profiteer of fraud does not outweight the authors right to be protected from fraud.
Or perhaps I find it posted anonymously on Freenet. Why should the burden be on me to track down whoever wrote it, find out if a contract was involved,
I suppose this boils down to a reasonable person test. Would a reasonable person realise that this software was posted illegally ? If someone cleverly erased all signs of any EULA or click-through from the software, reskinned it to make it look unlike any well known software package, and claimed authorship, I think you'd be in the clear. But in most cases of software piracy, the software pirates know perfectly well they're not getting legal copies.
Sounds good to me. Of course, such a contract can only apply to someone who agrees to be bound by it. If you say "sign this contract before I give you a copy of my program", I might look elsewhere to find someone who'll give me a copy without requiring me to sign a contract.
But how did that someone else obtain the software ? That person either
is bound by the contract (so they don't give it to you)
illegally broke in to someones computer and obtained a copy against their will,
obtained it from such a person
Either way, the "fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck" argument doesn't hold up. Obtaining an authorised copy requires someone in the chain of possesion to have commited fraud or break-in, that's where the receiving stolen goods analogy comes in. The point is that if the chain of possesion is known to include a single theft (or in this case, fraud), then it doesn't matter if someone gave it to you without asking you to sign a contract.
Nope, sorry, I don't buy that argument. Just because you put time into something doesn't mean anyone owes you money.
That's a straw man. You don't address my arguments at all, instead you just rehash tried-and-true propaganda/and cookie-cutter arguments (that might rebut other arguments you disagree with, but do not address mine) that are not relevant to the discussion at hand. Could you tell me which part of the follow argument, previously posted, that you disagree with ?
(1) he is entitled to restrict access to his software. Or should he be forced to give it away/release it ?
(2) He is entitled to impose a contract that requires that users do not leak copies of his software. Or do you not believe in contracts/agreements ?
(3) He is also entitled to have the law back him up to prevent third parties from benefiting from egregious cases of theft or fraud (e.g. authorised users leaking software or unauthorised users breaking into computers and making unauthorised copies) Or do you support fraud ? What do you think of laws against receiving stolen goods, for example ?
but you and several others in this thread have been beaten to death on that argument that it is theft.
"Shouted down" would be a more accurate description. There is a such thing as "theft of services" (check a dictionary), so theft does not require removal of physical property. That's just slashdot propaganda. A million slashbots yelling it doesn't make it true.
Just like a mechanic or a barber, I don't worry about what someone else wants to do with the fruits of my labor, since I've already been paid for it.
Sorry, it doesn't work like that. How many users of a program like Microsoft word can afford to fund its development ? The reason that deferred, distributed compensation methods win out in the software market is because they are more efficient.
If you want to go hire a programmer to develop an application like MS Office, or if you want to write such a program yourself, then go right ahead and do it. I would prefer to be part of the group that agree to participate in this deferred/distributed compensation system. If you don't agree with that system, that's fine, but you're a hypocrite if you enjoy its benefits. Or to put it in terms of Kant's categorical imperative, it's morally unsound to conduct woneslf in a way that one does not wish to be universalised (e.g. if no-one paid for that software, it wouldn't be available to you)
Moreover, the author isn't entitled to get paid just because he made something. If Universal Studios spends $200 million and two years making a terrible movie, and it gets such bad reviews that no one ever buys a ticket, have the reviewers "stolen" something from them? Of course not.
That's a straw man. The author is entitled to ask for compensation from those who use the fruits of his labor. In particular, he is entitled to restrict access to his software. He is entitled to impose a contract that requires that users do not leak copies of his software. He is also entitled to have the law back him up to prevent third parties from benefiting from egregious cases of theft or fraud (e.g. authorised users leaking software or unauthorised users breaking into computers and making unauthorised copies)
I don't think any of my elected officials even have copyright/IP issues on their platform. Even if I do vote against them because of their stand on that issue,
If none of them have a stand, that points to ineffective lobbying. Someone needs to pressure them into stating a position on these issues. Even if you're not a lobby group, you could write them on this. If they get enough letters, it will occur to them that the issue is important, and they'll take a stand.
I would bet that they do actually have a stand, and you simply haven't educated yourself on it. Chances are the music industry has already done its share of lobbying.
The bottom line IMO is that the anti copyright mob are a bunch of spineless opportunistic whiners, so I don't expect to see them forming an effective, cohesive group of any sort.
This seems like as good a place as any to ask, are there places to get good cheap coffee online?
1st line have beans online. But the problem with ordering online is that you've got to pay for shipping, and you've got to buy enough to make it worth the shipping (so then you've got to worry about freshness).
Your best bet would be to go to a decent coffee shop and get whatever beans they use to make their espresso, if they're for sale. The advantage of this is that they are fresh (because of the volume, they order every day or 2 days). Most of the stuff in supermarkets is crap. Or you could go to a coffee bean shop. It will probably be cheaper than the supermarkets and it sure as hell will be better.
Re:Slashdot becoming fascist?
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot has been moving to the right for quite some time. The posters are mostly left-leaning but the site isn't.
Take a look at the commie BS that shows up whenever they talk about copyrights. The protectionist xenophobe platform isn't strictly left or right -- you get commie wackos and right wing wackos who embrace it. It seems that slashdot also embraces it. Because the editors are a bunch of tinfoil-hat wearing wackos. IMO they're largely left-leaning, but first and foremost, they're wackos.
In a free market system, no business is entitled to cry "foul" just because a potential customer chooses not to deal with them.
In a free market system, both sides have the right to walk away from the deal. A system where you forcefully impose your will on the other party (for example, by illegitimate copying) amounts to extortion or fraud, it isn't a "free market" at all.
Huh? Where are you getting your information? The MS Office file formats are closed and proprietary. The only reason other software can parse and render them is because of reverse engineering.
The AbiWord website used to have some comment to this effect. Can't find it now. I stand by my comments that parsing is not the primary problem -- just being able to parse a document does not even come close to getting it to render identically, and anything less is not generally considered 100% compatible, especially given the formatting demands of todays users. That's why HTML being "documented" has not instantly made all browsers "compatible" (especially by the standards users of word processors demand)
Sure they do. Some programmer(s) at MS _had_ to write the code that knows how to open an MS.doc file and display it.
It's one thing to open a file and parse it (which open source word processors do) and it's another to render the document. Documenting the format doesn't solve any problems, other word processors already can parse these documents, because the format is documented.
Other word processors are "compatible" with word the same way that MSIE is "compatible" with Mozilla -- every browser can parse HTML just fine, but they all render it differently, and there's not much chance that they will ever render it in exactly the same way, unless everyone agrees to standardise on exactly the same rendering algorithms (for example, Linux would need to ditch freetype and use an "MS compatible" font rendering engine), and also standardise the typefaces.
So far MS released source for two bits of technology that is absolutely useless to Linux. How about something useful for a change: doc file format.
They already have made documentation available for their file formats.
That would be very useful -- it would allow Open Office to be 100% compatible with MS Office.
HTML is documented, but Mozilla is still not "100% compatible" with MSIE, in fact no two browsers, not even the open source ones, are "compatible" in the way that you wish office suites to be compatible -- in particular, you are not going to get exactly the same document layout from two different browsers.
You have a number of issues to deal with, including availability of typefaces, font rendering, algorithms that determine when to break a page, when to break a line, what to do with that
figure that crosses a page. Then you have embedded and linked documents.
It was republicans who passed affirmative action laws, forced desegregation. It's generally conservatives who support a lot of the black communities core beliefs - the black community tends to be more religious, for example.
I take it that you've never been to a black church. The black church has very little in common with the
religious right.
but blacks have always been firmly in the democratic camp.
Do you have a source for this ? My understanding is that Republicans used to get much better support from black voters than they do today.
It really makes very little sense
No, it makes a lot of sense, at least today.
where I see vouchers helping more poor people stuck in inner city messes
But that's the problem. What you think is good for someone is ireelevant. You don't win someones vote by not listening to them, and lecturing them about how policies that were motivated by someone elses interests (in this case, private schools and their students) are what is best for them.
Why do blacks tend to align themselves with the Democrats (in the U.S. of course).' After all, if there are biological precursors to political affiliation, and blacks tend to overwhelmingly support democrats doesn't this express, at the very least, a correlation worth looking into?
It is worth looking into, but it's doubtful that there's a biological basis for it. Blacks in the US are distributed differently in terms of physical location (rural versus urban), income, education, and in fact almost every variable that is likely to have an effect on interests. Even if you attempt to control for these social variables by taking a comparable group of whites, firstly, you won't find a "comparable" group (there'll be a systematic difference in some variables) and secondly, there are issues like affirmative action that would divide them from the allegedly "comparable" group.
The real reason that African Americans support Democrats is that the Republicans are not terribly receptive to their concerns. You don't win someones votes by ignoring their concerns, and trying to tell them that policy written by Halliburton, HMOs, pharmaceuticals, and the NRA is actually in their best interests.
I'd love to learn how to make a runtime like Java or Python. I can code in Java and Python, but I want to understand the guts of it.
Take a look at the source code of prothon -- it's a very small interpreted language based on python. Or take a look at some other bite-sized interpreted language.
Cheers,
If having the tools and prior knowledge of others in the past is useful, then having them cheaper all the way to free is even more useful to use for your own new creation, yes? But wait, all those other folks insist on a huge sum of money, a non trivial amount, and want to dictate what you can do with their creations, they want it severely restricted. But wait again, those people themselves had others they relied on, and THOSE people further back up the creation-food chain want to restrict their efforts to a huge level as regards cost and what they allowed others to do with their products. And the folks ahead of them, and so on.
Yes, of course. Everyone gets their piece of the pie. That's only fair, isn't it ? You get rewarded for the marginal over the priors, you obviously can't expect to be paid for the labor of others as though it were your own. Given the choice between everyone getting their piece of the pie, and no-one getting their piece of the pie, the latter is clearly better for me.
You can't have it both ways, you must choose one way or the other.
The choice is obvious. If no-one gets their piece of the pie, then I don't eat. If everyone gets their piece of the pie, then I do eat (even if my piece of the pie is in fact just a modest slice).
"Free, free, free" doesn't put food on the table.
Rather, people would solicite their need for service. They would see that the kernel needs better foobar support, and offer to pay for this
Can you afford to single-handedly fund the development of an office suite ? How many people can ? Your model is not workable.
A more sensible model (and, for that matter, more fair) would be one where all the users shared the costs, instead of one user paying for everything, and a bunch of slashdot low-lives freeloading.
If you have 20 thousand people each of who are able to pay $50- or so, then you have a way to fund a million dollar development project, but none of those people are going to pay that million dollars out of their own pocket.
So, when TT decides to create some new template based container classes, hut to create their own rather than using the STL, I consider this to be non-standard.
Trolltech had container classes before C++ was standard. Recently, Trolltech have built in a substantial amount of STL compatibility to their classes. They're not moving away from the standard at all. BTW, the python bindings for Qt are very nice.
It always baffles me why people use VNC or convoluted scripts to copy over the settings when most of the time, remote X would do the job just fine.
You can't just walk away from your desk with an X session, and resume at another location. You can do exactly this with vnc. Your applications don't have to close, or anything. The problem with X is that the "X server" is running on the terminal. You can't close the X session without closing all the X-clients, but you may not want to close them.
When you run a VNC session, there is a virtual X session running, so you can relocate the X session to any other terminal.
This still doesn't answer my question:
Is there any credible party (slashdot fudders excluded) who is still arguing that Microsoft can pull the rug out ?
(-; Even that email puts MS in a bad position if they wanted to pull the rug out. Why would they send out such an email if that were their intention ?
The anti-GPL clause is not RAND in my opinion (what does the ND stand for ? Putting in a clause that amounts to saying "you can't use this on Linux" would be a clear case of "D").
But the real place to watch will be O'Reilly, and possibly a few other publishers which do a lot of Linux-type stuff.
You should check out the O'Reilly books already published -- Learning C# and C# cookbook are not overly windows-centric (the former just covers the core language). Programming C# covers quite a lot of the Windows stuff. Some of this (such as Winforms under portable.Net) can work in Linux. There is also a book on Winforms programming that sticks with a code-by-hand approach which means that one can work with it in portable.net (Windows Forms Programming in C#, Eric Brown, Manning Publications)
Slashdot Mirror
I should add that slashdotters who cite this argument are cleverly using the classic "computer science solution" -- add a layer of indirection -- to argue for fraud. Basically, this just amounts to fraud via a layer of indirection.
This would be a perfectly good way to evade certain kinds of laws, but you can't weasel out of moral principles via a layer of obfuscation.
Again, same reason we have laws against receiving stolen goods. Basically, your "right" to be a profiteer of fraud does not outweight the authors right to be protected from fraud.
Or perhaps I find it posted anonymously on Freenet. Why should the burden be on me to track down whoever wrote it, find out if a contract was involved,
I suppose this boils down to a reasonable person test. Would a reasonable person realise that this software was posted illegally ? If someone cleverly erased all signs of any EULA or click-through from the software, reskinned it to make it look unlike any well known software package, and claimed authorship, I think you'd be in the clear. But in most cases of software piracy, the software pirates know perfectly well they're not getting legal copies.
But how did that someone else obtain the software ? That person either
- is bound by the contract (so they don't give it to you)
- illegally broke in to someones computer and obtained a copy against their will,
- obtained it from such a person
Either way, the "fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck" argument doesn't hold up. Obtaining an authorised copy requires someone in the chain of possesion to have commited fraud or break-in, that's where the receiving stolen goods analogy comes in. The point is that if the chain of possesion is known to include a single theft (or in this case, fraud), then it doesn't matter if someone gave it to you without asking you to sign a contract.That's a straw man. You don't address my arguments at all, instead you just rehash tried-and-true propaganda/and cookie-cutter arguments (that might rebut other arguments you disagree with, but do not address mine) that are not relevant to the discussion at hand. Could you tell me which part of the follow argument, previously posted, that you disagree with ?
(1) he is entitled to restrict access to his software. Or should he be forced to give it away/release it ?
(2) He is entitled to impose a contract that requires that users do not leak copies of his software. Or do you not believe in contracts/agreements ?
(3) He is also entitled to have the law back him up to prevent third parties from benefiting from egregious cases of theft or fraud (e.g. authorised users leaking software or unauthorised users breaking into computers and making unauthorised copies) Or do you support fraud ? What do you think of laws against receiving stolen goods, for example ?
but you and several others in this thread have been beaten to death on that argument that it is theft. "Shouted down" would be a more accurate description. There is a such thing as "theft of services" (check a dictionary), so theft does not require removal of physical property. That's just slashdot propaganda. A million slashbots yelling it doesn't make it true.
Just like a mechanic or a barber, I don't worry about what someone else wants to do with the fruits of my labor, since I've already been paid for it. Sorry, it doesn't work like that. How many users of a program like Microsoft word can afford to fund its development ? The reason that deferred, distributed compensation methods win out in the software market is because they are more efficient. If you want to go hire a programmer to develop an application like MS Office, or if you want to write such a program yourself, then go right ahead and do it. I would prefer to be part of the group that agree to participate in this deferred/distributed compensation system. If you don't agree with that system, that's fine, but you're a hypocrite if you enjoy its benefits. Or to put it in terms of Kant's categorical imperative, it's morally unsound to conduct woneslf in a way that one does not wish to be universalised (e.g. if no-one paid for that software, it wouldn't be available to you) Moreover, the author isn't entitled to get paid just because he made something. If Universal Studios spends $200 million and two years making a terrible movie, and it gets such bad reviews that no one ever buys a ticket, have the reviewers "stolen" something from them? Of course not. That's a straw man. The author is entitled to ask for compensation from those who use the fruits of his labor. In particular, he is entitled to restrict access to his software. He is entitled to impose a contract that requires that users do not leak copies of his software. He is also entitled to have the law back him up to prevent third parties from benefiting from egregious cases of theft or fraud (e.g. authorised users leaking software or unauthorised users breaking into computers and making unauthorised copies)
I don't think any of my elected officials even have copyright/IP issues on their platform. Even if I do vote against them because of their stand on that issue,
If none of them have a stand, that points to ineffective lobbying. Someone needs to pressure them into stating a position on these issues. Even if you're not a lobby group, you could write them on this. If they get enough letters, it will occur to them that the issue is important, and they'll take a stand.
I would bet that they do actually have a stand, and you simply haven't educated yourself on it. Chances are the music industry has already done its share of lobbying.
The bottom line IMO is that the anti copyright mob are a bunch of spineless opportunistic whiners, so I don't expect to see them forming an effective, cohesive group of any sort.
1st line have beans online. But the problem with ordering online is that you've got to pay for shipping, and you've got to buy enough to make it worth the shipping (so then you've got to worry about freshness).
Your best bet would be to go to a decent coffee shop and get whatever beans they use to make their espresso, if they're for sale. The advantage of this is that they are fresh (because of the volume, they order every day or 2 days). Most of the stuff in supermarkets is crap. Or you could go to a coffee bean shop. It will probably be cheaper than the supermarkets and it sure as hell will be better.
Take a look at the commie BS that shows up whenever they talk about copyrights. The protectionist xenophobe platform isn't strictly left or right -- you get commie wackos and right wing wackos who embrace it. It seems that slashdot also embraces it. Because the editors are a bunch of tinfoil-hat wearing wackos. IMO they're largely left-leaning, but first and foremost, they're wackos.
In a free market system, both sides have the right to walk away from the deal. A system where you forcefully impose your will on the other party (for example, by illegitimate copying) amounts to extortion or fraud, it isn't a "free market" at all.
The AbiWord website used to have some comment to this effect. Can't find it now. I stand by my comments that parsing is not the primary problem -- just being able to parse a document does not even come close to getting it to render identically, and anything less is not generally considered 100% compatible, especially given the formatting demands of todays users. That's why HTML being "documented" has not instantly made all browsers "compatible" (especially by the standards users of word processors demand)
It's one thing to open a file and parse it (which open source word processors do) and it's another to render the document. Documenting the format doesn't solve any problems, other word processors already can parse these documents, because the format is documented.
Other word processors are "compatible" with word the same way that MSIE is "compatible" with Mozilla -- every browser can parse HTML just fine, but they all render it differently, and there's not much chance that they will ever render it in exactly the same way, unless everyone agrees to standardise on exactly the same rendering algorithms (for example, Linux would need to ditch freetype and use an "MS compatible" font rendering engine), and also standardise the typefaces.
They already have made documentation available for their file formats.
That would be very useful -- it would allow Open Office to be 100% compatible with MS Office.
HTML is documented, but Mozilla is still not "100% compatible" with MSIE, in fact no two browsers, not even the open source ones, are "compatible" in the way that you wish office suites to be compatible -- in particular, you are not going to get exactly the same document layout from two different browsers.
You have a number of issues to deal with, including availability of typefaces, font rendering, algorithms that determine when to break a page, when to break a line, what to do with that figure that crosses a page. Then you have embedded and linked documents.
I take it that you've never been to a black church. The black church has very little in common with the religious right.
but blacks have always been firmly in the democratic camp.
Do you have a source for this ? My understanding is that Republicans used to get much better support from black voters than they do today.
It really makes very little sense
No, it makes a lot of sense, at least today.
where I see vouchers helping more poor people stuck in inner city messes
But that's the problem. What you think is good for someone is ireelevant. You don't win someones vote by not listening to them, and lecturing them about how policies that were motivated by someone elses interests (in this case, private schools and their students) are what is best for them.
It is worth looking into, but it's doubtful that there's a biological basis for it. Blacks in the US are distributed differently in terms of physical location (rural versus urban), income, education, and in fact almost every variable that is likely to have an effect on interests. Even if you attempt to control for these social variables by taking a comparable group of whites, firstly, you won't find a "comparable" group (there'll be a systematic difference in some variables) and secondly, there are issues like affirmative action that would divide them from the allegedly "comparable" group.
The real reason that African Americans support Democrats is that the Republicans are not terribly receptive to their concerns. You don't win someones votes by ignoring their concerns, and trying to tell them that policy written by Halliburton, HMOs, pharmaceuticals, and the NRA is actually in their best interests.
Take a look at the source code of prothon -- it's a very small interpreted language based on python. Or take a look at some other bite-sized interpreted language.
Cheers,
Yes, of course. Everyone gets their piece of the pie. That's only fair, isn't it ? You get rewarded for the marginal over the priors, you obviously can't expect to be paid for the labor of others as though it were your own. Given the choice between everyone getting their piece of the pie, and no-one getting their piece of the pie, the latter is clearly better for me.
You can't have it both ways, you must choose one way or the other.
The choice is obvious. If no-one gets their piece of the pie, then I don't eat. If everyone gets their piece of the pie, then I do eat (even if my piece of the pie is in fact just a modest slice). "Free, free, free" doesn't put food on the table.
Can you afford to single-handedly fund the development of an office suite ? How many people can ? Your model is not workable.
A more sensible model (and, for that matter, more fair) would be one where all the users shared the costs, instead of one user paying for everything, and a bunch of slashdot low-lives freeloading.
If you have 20 thousand people each of who are able to pay $50- or so, then you have a way to fund a million dollar development project, but none of those people are going to pay that million dollars out of their own pocket.
They release different versions of Qt under different licenses.
Trolltech had container classes before C++ was standard. Recently, Trolltech have built in a substantial amount of STL compatibility to their classes. They're not moving away from the standard at all. BTW, the python bindings for Qt are very nice.
You can't just walk away from your desk with an X session, and resume at another location. You can do exactly this with vnc. Your applications don't have to close, or anything. The problem with X is that the "X server" is running on the terminal. You can't close the X session without closing all the X-clients, but you may not want to close them. When you run a VNC session, there is a virtual X session running, so you can relocate the X session to any other terminal.
(-; Even that email puts MS in a bad position if they wanted to pull the rug out. Why would they send out such an email if that were their intention ?
The anti-GPL clause is not RAND in my opinion (what does the ND stand for ? Putting in a clause that amounts to saying "you can't use this on Linux" would be a clear case of "D").
Rubbish. The ECMA spec is transparent. They don't have control, but neither does MS.
This is the same kind of problem that WineHQ has suffered.
The Win32 API is not an ECMA standard. C# is.
Except that Microsoft have said that it does -- they've said "royalty free and otherwise RAND". See the FAQ
Is there any credible party (slashdot fudders excluded) who is still arguing that Microsoft can pull the rug out ?
You should check out the O'Reilly books already published -- Learning C# and C# cookbook are not overly windows-centric (the former just covers the core language). Programming C# covers quite a lot of the Windows stuff. Some of this (such as Winforms under portable.Net) can work in Linux. There is also a book on Winforms programming that sticks with a code-by-hand approach which means that one can work with it in portable.net (Windows Forms Programming in C#, Eric Brown, Manning Publications)