. If it weren't for the snakes, we woud still exist because something else would exist that we had a need to spot and react really quickly to.
Assuming that's so...
That niche might have been taken by some sort large trapdoor spider like predator, that would erupt from hiding behind us.
So instead of evolving better binocular vision to spot them, we'd have super acute hearing to catch the rustle that gave us an extra split second warning.
we would still exist
But we wouldn't be able to drive or shoot worth shit. For some people that's not really much of a change I guess.:)
Nope. Not always wrong. Abandonware comes to mind.
And there are very legitimate arguments that the term of copyright has been extended beyond sane limits, violating the social contract that we agreed to for copyright to exist in the first place.
You... are NOT ENTITLED to products or services in which you have not paid money for.
If I see a shirt at the store I like I can make one myself just like it. Yet I have taken the idea from someone else. Copyright says I am entitled to do this, that the makers of clothes cannot copyright the designs. Seems odd doesn't it.
That I am, "NOT ENTITLED" to anyone elses ideas unless I've paid money for them... unless its clothing and then I can.
Services to highlight how artificial copyright is.
Its a social contract for the mutual good of creators and consumers. If it ceases to be for the mutual good, then copyright is wrong.
Which exists in Win8, as part of the Start Screen - you just start typing;)
Yes, and the start screen is actually pretty decent for search; as in when I actually need to look at the results, and try to find the one im interested in. Then the full screen UI makes a lot more sense than a small popup in the corner of my screen.
But for quick launch? Its distracting to go full screen and back just to launch notep...enter or rege...enter etc.
That's why I think search/autocomplete should be added to the Win+R dialog box. Its already got a history list... this would just be a minor augment to it.
Yes, the GPL substantially restricts use, and yes, it's in place right up front.
What use is restricted?
It's pure sophistry to claim otherwise. You're just saying, "it's okay to ignore stop signs on the road!" when there are no stop signs on the road.
So we agree then that there are no stop signs on the road? I didn't so much claim it was ok to ignore them as to claim it is moot.
That word. It does not mean what you think it means.
It means exactly what I think it means.
In what way? The sale of a copy refers to physical manipulation rights.
Possession (ownership) of a legal copy, by virtue of first sale and copyright extends certain rights to the owner. Including those rights required to use it.
The license is the legal arrangement governing your possession of it.
Which I did not accept, nor am I required to accept to use it. I am already permitted to use it under copyright law, by simply having legally purchased it.
You can't buy a copy of a copyrighted work without touching on copyright laws.
Perhaps I should have phrased that as the purchase of a copyrighted work doesn't touch upon any needs to license rights from the copyright holder that aren't already granted to me by copyright law for basic usage of the software.
When you hand over money is largely irrelevant, and yet you seem so fixated on it.
Grow up. I refer to the completion of the sale for which the act of handing money is a metaphor.
And you're basing that conclusion on what, exactly?
Copyright law, as cited.
And yet have no justification to offer in support of that feeling.
See above. As cited.
Everything about that is true of the GPL, too. You're rather proving GP's point.
The GPL is entirely different. It is an unconditional grant of additional rights NOT AVAILABLE BY DEFAULT under copyright law. Those additional rights do have strings attached, but provided you don't exercise the additional rights, you can use GPL software without being impacted by its terms. Because if you reject the GPL, default copyright law applies. That's the entire point of it. And default copyright allows me to use the program.
An end user rejecting the GPL is as meaningful as a motorist choosing to ignore stop signs on a road without any.
And besides, just because I'm friends with someone, doesn't mean we have similar tastes.
Pretty much this. I care and would be influenced by what brand one of my friends might go with for a gaming rig power supply... but couldn't care about his selection in cars, or wine, or clothes.
Another friend I might care about his tastes in wine, but would probably slap him upside the head if I even KNEW what hardware he was putting in his PC.
But I don't need (or use) facebook. When I'm buying wine I'll ask the friend I share taste with for a recommendation... that's what being friends in the real world means. You can just do that.
Without a license, you have no rights to make copies.
3. (1) For the purposes of this Act, âoecopyrightâ, in relation to a work, means the sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form whatever, to perform the work or any substantial part thereof in public or, if the work is unpublished, to publish the work or any substantial part thereof, and includes the sole right
[...]
(h) in the case of a computer program that can be reproduced in the ordinary course of its use, other than by a reproduction during its execution in conjunction with a machine, device or computer, to rent out the computer program,
I realize its pretty contorted, since the overt purpose of the clause is to assign the right to copyright owner over rentals of copies, but the read the exclusion sub-clause carefully.
Its saying that the copyright holder has the sole right to all copies, OTHER than those by reproduction during it's execution in conjunction with a machine. That is: that the copies made to run the program are not the sole right of the copyright holder.
You can also apply the interoperability clauses which grant the owner of a legally purchased program the explicit rights to make a copies and or modifications as necessary to interoperate with a machine. So, the legally purchased copy of X on a CD, may be legally reproduced (installed) onto a computer hard drive, as this is a necessary transformative copy for the program to interoperate with the machine, including modifying it to work as necessary.
Without a license, you have no rights to make copies.
Yes and no. The copyright act makes specific exceptions granting the right to make copies in specific circumstances. Installing a legally purchased piece of software onto a computer is one such legal copy.
Backups are another legally protected class of copies. I don't need a license to make a backup. Copyright law explicitly grants me that right.
29.24 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright in a work or other subject-matter for a person who owns [...] a copy of the work or subject-matter (in this section referred to as the âoesource copyâ) to reproduce the source copy if
(a) the person does so solely for backup purposes in case the source copy is lost, damaged or otherwise rendered unusable;
[...etc...]
Maybe where you live the laws are different, but here if you bought software. First sale and copyright combine to give you all the rights you require to use it without entering into a further EULA with the copyright holder.
And that's what Apple's SLA does as well: It gives you permission to use the software on a Mac
Which is fine, but I don't need Apple's permission for that. That permission is implicit by the fact that they sold me a copy of the software in the first place.
It doesn't include "permission to make copies on non-Macs".
Yeah. I don't need their permission to make the software I purchased legally to inter-operate with a machine, any more than I need their permission to use scissors to open the cellophane wrapper. Copyright law states that I have that right.
Well, that's the right of the copyright holder. Just as the copyright holder has the right to slap the GPL on their software, so does Apple has the right to put their license on their software.
Again you are conflating usage rights with copyrights. The copies made to use the software are permitted by copyright. I don't need a license for that. I only need to enter into a licening agreement if I wish to exercise one of the rights that is the sole right of the copyright holder. Installing the software onto a computer is not one of one of those rights.
No company that makes toys with lead in them will stay in business very long. All it takes is a few dead kids and that company will be out of business.
So we get a series of fly-by-night companies that each kill a few kids and then pop up with a new logo. Well that certainly seems reasonable.
Compare that to the MILLIONS of children who die every year thanks to goverment incomptence and corruption.
Your blaming the government incompetence and corruption for not saving them, not for actually killing them outright. So if we eliminate the government, they still die.
So you just argued for a more effective government, not a reduced government. Was that your intent? Somehow I doubt it.
Now if they started allowing Flash ads or ads with movement, that would bother me,
I guess someone would respond to that by saying,
"I really don't see how animated banner ads are any more evil than text ads, especailly when they're just runing them on search results. The only way it's really any worse is that it's mildly more distracting and takes up a trivially larger amount of bandwidth...."
Your own argument justifying them seems to apply here. If it was good enough to justify banner ads, why does it fail to justify animated banner ads? (Especially if banner ads are considered a fait accompli and this is just the next step...)
The only way it's really any worse is that it's mildly more distracting
The reason we put up with google's text based ads is precisely that they text based. We are already looking for text results, so a text ad is *minimally* distracting.
A picture is substantially more distracting than the text result we are looking for. We generally process pictures before text. Therefore the picture ads are much more distracting. It's that simple.
There are other competitors who don't do this if it bothers you, or you can just Adblock them.
I could. It would be nice if I didn't have to. So expressing displeasure is one way to get the message across. Who knows, if this becomes pervasive, maybe I'll switch to another search engine. Only reason I'm not using duck duck go or bing is i got attached to google when it was minimalist... the further it gets from that, the more motivated i am to just switch entirely.
If employees don't like being monitored, they should find companies to work for that dont monitor them.
No federal statutes restrict the use of GPS by employers, nor force them to disclose whether they are using it.
This is a GOOD thing, it means 48 states respect the RIGHTS of private citizens to control the things they own.
So, wait, how does that work? How do you propose the employee find companies to work for that don't monitor them if companies are allowed to keep it a secret?
What do you do for an encore? Argue that if you don't want lead in your kids toys just don't buy toys with lead in them, while simultaneously demanding that companies can keep using lead without having to tell anyone?
This is Slashdot. If it's not the GPL, people think the license can and should be ignored.
The GPL doesn't put any restrictions on anyone using the software. At all. None. It hard for a user to "ignore the GPL" even if they wanted to because it doesn't restrict their use of it in any way, at all, ever.
The only caveat is with redistribution rights, which you don't have BY LAW, BY DEFAULT. And in that case the GPL automatically grants you redistribution rights, provided you distribute the source. Otherwise you have to negotiate a separate distribution license with the copyright holder -- (something you would have to do with any software you wanted to re-distribute). And this of course is possible in many, but certainly not all cases.
The Apple EULA on the other hand, imposes usage restrictions on what hardware you may use it with by, quite frankly, abusing copyright laws, conflating "sale of copy" with "license".
Buying a copy of a software program and then using it should not even touch upon copyright laws as long as you don't redistribute. The copies made to install the software and in RAM etc are explicitly permitted by copyright law where I live, and yet we're still demanded to consent to a EULA after we purchase it, for permission to use it. Permission we, quite bluntly, DO NOT NEED. So damned right we feel justified in ignoring it.
EULAs disgust me. Contracts of adhesion, demanded after a sale, with no consideration,... fuck em.
Heh, yep, did not know that, likely wouldn't have found it. On the upside, with 8.1 being free for 8, I figure within a year 8.0 is going to be rarer than Vista.
The real issue, which he completely ignores, is the genuine threat to Linux provided by Microsoft's release of a free Windows 8.1 upgrade.
ROFLMAO
Only free to users of win 8, who got a raw deal having to use win8.:)
8.1 may not yet be perfect, but its a huge improvement. Right clicking the new start button gives you direct access to control panels, device manager, event viewer, computer management, powershell, add/remove programs, shutdown/restart... I hadn't realized this until a couple days ago as everyone had said the new start button is just brings up the win8 start screen. Even on the 8.1 preview -- it hadn't occured to me to right click it.
I now officially overall prefer the new start button/start screen more than windows 7 start menu, and think the start8/classic shell crowd are missing the boat.
I'm still not a fan of metro, but that's optional to use. And I still like the win7 start menu search widget for typing based "quick launch" -- and would like to see a powertoy for that; or even just to see that autocomplete/search functionality added to win+r.
Anyhow... as to Linus being afraid of a free 8.1 upgrade, or even OSX upgrades... it's absurd. OSX isn't free. Its a free upgrade for recent Macs. That's it.
Well if my current monitor is 30" and fits HD quite readably, than a 60" QuadHD (4K) monitor should leave the text exactly the same size... just 4x as much of it.:)
I think I'd like that too...
Although 6 24" screens in a 3x2 grid is appealing too, and even more real space.
although, 2 weeks ago neither was the apple. and 2 weeks from now they both will. im not sure this is where to split hairs.
personally, i'd pay 20-25% more to get the system that i want... that doesn't run windows, and where i won't have to struggle with linux to get the system working smoothly.
fair enough. I'm writing this on an MBP myself, so I'm hardly rabidly anti-apple. I like the magsafe adapter, the overall metal build quality. etc. I'm fairly OS agnostic. The unix stuff i need to do... doesn't need to be done locally. remote access is fine for me, for that.
do you seriously want to speak with some idiot to figure out what laptop you can purchase?
As opposed to being able to pick from 3 models? The dell sales guys at the corporate level, at least tend to be able to offer more than the rigid website, and dells website is lot less rigid than apples.
i've been in the market to replace an aging windows laptop for over a year and have been watching prices closely. prices haven't dropped, even on low end windows laptops.
I dunno... there's always something on sale somewhere; and there's always good deals to be had if you shop around if you aren't dead set on a particular model/configuration. With apple its pretty much take it or leave it until the next hardware refresh.
Yes, let's compare the just announced apple refreshed product to stuff you randomly dug up on Dell.
Here's the thing about apple, the value proposition is actually pretty good assuming you only care about the specs in the base-line product AND you only do the price comparison the day after its released.
Whereas every other manufacturers products either steadily get cheaper over time, or steadily get spec bumps over time while the price stays constant -- Apple's specs and price stay exactly the same until the product is refreshed.
So come back 12 months from now, and the apple product will still be $1800, the RAM, SSD will be the same size, the graphics will be 1-2 generations old, and pretty much everything you can buy somewhere else will be better.
the most comparable thing i can find at dell.com is this...
i7 instead of i5 double the ram (16GB instead of 8GB) 1TB HD + 32GB mSata SSD -- vs 512MB SSD -- interesting trade off nvidia 750M with 2GB ram vs intel integrated 3200 x 1800 QHD+ display vs 2560x1600 15" vs 13"
Well.. the dell blows the apple away now overall for paltry $150 differential, but 15" to 13" right? Lets bump up the mac to 15" so its apples to well... apples:)
that gets us i7 -- parity 16GB ram -- parity 1TB+32GB ssd vs 512GB ssd -- same trade off as before nvidia 750M w 2GB ram -- parity 3200x1800 vs 2880x1800 -- slight edge on the dell
price? $1950 vs... $2600... $650 difference... ouch... even if you prefer the apple hard drive scenario, its not worth a $650 premium over the dell solution; retail cost on a DIY upgrade would be less. And that's just spending 5 minutes on the website. I expect I can do better and get exactly want, in volume for the company with a phone call to my dell rep. Can I do that with apple? Nope. Apple rep? Lol... is that even a thing?
We all know how StackOverflow works. You can always ask or answer a question, but other privileges are based on your reputation.
I'd hardly call that a model, it rapidly becomes as annoying as expert sex change.
Half the questions are stuffed with meta bickering about the "rules", who should get reputation, who shouldn't, disputes over whether the question is too much like some other question, a bunch of asshats duplicating and expanding on the same answer while trying to out-answer it to game the system for reputation.
I think my least favorite though is "not constructive". Yes, yes, it doesn't' have a definitive answer, but the ensuing discussion is generally pretty enlightening, and should be encouraged. And most of the real "hard" programming stuff falls into that category. (How to name things well for example (be it classes, database tables, interfaces, etc...)
No, actually that's wrong, my least favorite thing about stackoverflow is shitty hacks being up-voted. The C stuff about strcpy strncpy, or snprintf vs _snprintf vs sprintf_s etc is full of just really piss poor advice as a for instance. There's good info mixed in, but the bad never goes away and some of its rated really high.
If wikipedia followed stackoverflows model, every article would be 50 pages long of competing articles, voted up and down by
Its an interesting idea, but there are some major issues...
Firstly, substantially different vehicles do use the same tires. I know you can bit my Porsche tires on my parents BMW (the front ones anyway... the Porsche rears are wider while that BMW has the same size all around) etc.
Perhaps worse you may get people fitting inappropriate tires to try and avoid the tax especially if its significant. People do really stupid things to avoid taxes.
Secondly, this gets really confusing because the tires themselves have different lifespans, and if you calibrated taxes based on that it would appear to be punishing longer lasting tires with higher taxes, which would have the effect of encouraging customers to select tires that don't last as long.
You'd also have people clamoring for tax adjustments based on treadwear after tires get slashed, or after a blowout, or puncture, or if they sell them used...
The taxes would also be a fairly expensive -- likely more than the cost of the tire itself for at least non-performance/luxury tires; and people would riot over that, and again it would lead to people running bald tires because the price of replacement would be so much higher... and of course it amounts to "sticking it to the tax man" a bit too...at least until they crash and die because their tires are bald. Did I mention people are stupid.:)
This; why should we charge based on distance travelled, when some are driving super-lightweight gas-efficient cars that cause minimal damage to infrastructure, and some are driving gas guzzling dually trucks that cause significantly more damage to infrastructure, or even transport trucks.
what about super lightweight gas inefficient cars like 2 seater sports cars? Why should they pay a premium for a level of wear and tear they aren't causing?
what about heavy luxury electric vehicles that pay no gas taxes at all yet do just as much wear and tear on the infrastructure? A Tesla S weighs more than a pick up truck, yet pays no gas taxes at all.
You could also increase registration fees based on the weight of a vehicle.
And penalize people with heavy vehicles they rarely drive?
Honestly a tax based on weight x distance traveled seems pretty fair.
The documented curb weight of the vehicle is fine. I don't really care how fat the passengers are or whether they haul a bag of sand around. And an annual odometer reading isn't that much of a burden. Yes, it will capture the sports cars laps on the race track, your daily commute up and down your rural private driveway, and your out of state or out of country driving... but I'm not sure its worth forcing mandatory tracking on everyone just for that. And if those people want to volunteer to carry a GPS tracker around to save $50 a year in fuel taxes... they are welcome too... I'll opt for the odometer readings thanks.
Raising the gas tax encourages using less fuel, which also encourages less driving.
Or switching to electric, and then driving everywhere tax free.
There are *large* *families* of attacks that are higly paralelizable and automated that will break any combination of, e.g. XOR+substitution. It won't even *notice* you layered two levels, it will break both at the same time as it goes because it is actually attacking the composite transformation.
You missed the part where he ran it through the 'industry standard' encryption as well.
Don't fucking try to cook your own cypher. Just use the correct chain mode for what you need, one of the highly studied block cyphers that were not chosen due to resource usage (e.g. serpent is likely to be stronger than AES).
The encryption which we presume the NSA may have backdoored the implementation we are using?
And don't screw up on the random numbers, variable initalization vectors, and key exchange. Really, *don't*, because if you ever repeat the IV on DH or GCM, or implement GCM incorrectly, you will most likely leak the secret key.
Well that is reassuring.
This is the absolutely WORST advice you could ever give anyone about crypto for security!
His advice amounted to: use standard encryption, plus some simplistic cipher.
And you are right. The former is the real security, the latter is putting your jewelry in an ice cream container in the fridge instead of the jewelry box.
But if you assume the NSA etc can break the standard encryption with relative ease, and in an automated fashion -- then what?
Suppose the automated NSA dragnet backdoors your PGP email and they got gibberish out, now what?
So is it AES, TEA, ECC, rot/cipher/xor, 3DES... unless you are a high priority are they even going to bother flagging it to break it find out? And if you really fuck with them and 1 message in 5 actually just contains randomly generated gibberish xored with the first couple paragraphs of moby dick? How many resources are they going to work on that?
What is covered is that they're making the best decision for themselves
What does that even mean semantically, if the utility buyers assign to things is projected onto them by the suppliers?
Lets imagine ants. As a colony they gather the closest richest food source they can find.
Suppose a supplier puts out some food. The ants discover it and start harvesting it.
Then a competitor 'opens shop'; he's a bit closer, and his foods a bit richer. The ants discover it, and gradually they shift to the new source of food.
That's "capitalism" in the sense that the ants are collectively making the best decision for themselves. They've preferred the new source because its better utility. They harvest more energy and spend less energy doing it.
So far so good.
Then the first supplier wants to get the ants back. He could move even closer, or make his food even richer. He could clear route to his cache of predators... he could do any number of things to compete, to become the ants 'preferred choice'.
But he doesn't. He just goes and paints a strong pheromone trail to his cache. This literally overrides the ants decision making process, and they follow the new strong trail.
Are they making the best decision for themselves?
That's what sophisticated advertising is... it literally short circuits and reprograms our decision making processes to change how we value something.
Its a continuum of course... every external stimulus impacts us in some way, and I'm not suggesting we must block everything that influences us, so don't throw that straw man up.
But modern adverting is reaching levels of sophistication that are a whole different ballgame from more mundane examples of things that influence us.
Economics makes no such claim that people act under "rational self interest" or that people are well informed. It's not even covered in an econ class one way or the other, you'll just never hear it. The laws of economics apply regardless.
It starts to come up when you discuss philosophical issues pertaining to economics. For example, the idea that capitalism allocates resources efficiently per-supposes the parties are acting with rational self interest. I think we would agree that if the parties are acting irrationally, or against their own interests that the resultant resource allocations will not be efficient.
How is trying to control the information people receive about your product anything but a logical and necessary outcome of capitalism?
Capitalism relies on people trying to make the best decision for themselves they can, based on what information they have.
The validity of that hypothesis rests on several assumptions:
That people are not coerced. That people act under rational self interest. That the competitive market itself will facilitate consumers getting the information they need to make decisions.
Advertising has achieved a level of sophistication that this is no longer entirely true. The information available is not reliable, and I cannot make informed buying decisions.
All that's left working in the customers favor is direct word of mouth, reputation systems (wherein I might trust a particular reviewer who has steered me well in the past), and government regulation (truth in advertising, labelling laws, etc... which some beleive are anti-capitalist, and everyone knows are largely co-opted and corrupted or just outright violated by the regulated industries).
Compared what the industries are prepared to expend "controlling" information; with what I have at my disposal to research something? I am at such a substantial disadvantage that I am frequently operating against my own self interest. And I'm in the minority just being truly aware of it.
For example, if I want to buy an X and I don't know much about X, and its not something my friends or family use then I'm pretty much helpless.
Word of mouth doesn't work if I don't know people I trust with an X. I can't rely on a reviewer of X if I don't have any experience with that reviewer (and I know that many reviewers are shills, or just plain idiots)
I can't rely on review sites and such, I know in many cases the reviews are paid, the 'likes' and 'followers' and '+1' are corrupt or paid for, and full of idiots. And in the worst cases, the entire review site is 'fake' and hosted by the vendor.
I've learned to try and filter out what i need from newegg and amazon.com and other review sites -- but its cat and mouse, and the advertisers get cleverer, and my resources to combat them are not increasing proportionally. And for some products... I don't really know where to even start, and again I like to think I'm 'above average' at this 'game'.
Slashdot Mirror
. If it weren't for the snakes, we woud still exist because something else would exist that we had a need to spot and react really quickly to.
Assuming that's so...
That niche might have been taken by some sort large trapdoor spider like predator, that would erupt from hiding behind us.
So instead of evolving better binocular vision to spot them, we'd have super acute hearing to catch the rustle that gave us an extra split second warning.
we would still exist
But we wouldn't be able to drive or shoot worth shit. For some people that's not really much of a change I guess.:)
Good, piracy is wrong... period.
Nope. Not always wrong. Abandonware comes to mind.
And there are very legitimate arguments that the term of copyright has been extended beyond sane limits, violating the social contract that we agreed to for copyright to exist in the first place.
You... are NOT ENTITLED to products or services in which you have not paid money for.
If I see a shirt at the store I like I can make one myself just like it. Yet I have taken the idea from someone else. Copyright says I am entitled to do this, that the makers of clothes cannot copyright the designs. Seems odd doesn't it.
That I am, "NOT ENTITLED" to anyone elses ideas unless I've paid money for them... unless its clothing and then I can.
Services to highlight how artificial copyright is.
Its a social contract for the mutual good of creators and consumers. If it ceases to be for the mutual good, then copyright is wrong.
Which exists in Win8, as part of the Start Screen - you just start typing ;)
Yes, and the start screen is actually pretty decent for search; as in when I actually need to look at the results, and try to find the one im interested in. Then the full screen UI makes a lot more sense than a small popup in the corner of my screen.
But for quick launch? Its distracting to go full screen and back just to launch notep...enter or rege...enter etc.
That's why I think search/autocomplete should be added to the Win+R dialog box. Its already got a history list... this would just be a minor augment to it.
The entire premise around the GPL is that it binds the end user to always release any modifications under the same (or a newer) license.
The end user doesn't make modifications, nor redistribute. The GPL doesn't restrict end users at all.
It restricts software developers.
Ugh. This chestnut again.
The only chestnuts are in your skull.
Yes, the GPL substantially restricts use, and yes, it's in place right up front.
What use is restricted?
It's pure sophistry to claim otherwise. You're just saying, "it's okay to ignore stop signs on the road!" when there are no stop signs on the road.
So we agree then that there are no stop signs on the road? I didn't so much claim it was ok to ignore them as to claim it is moot.
That word. It does not mean what you think it means.
It means exactly what I think it means.
In what way? The sale of a copy refers to physical manipulation rights.
Possession (ownership) of a legal copy, by virtue of first sale and copyright extends certain rights to the owner. Including those rights required to use it.
The license is the legal arrangement governing your possession of it.
Which I did not accept, nor am I required to accept to use it. I am already permitted to use it under copyright law, by simply having legally purchased it.
You can't buy a copy of a copyrighted work without touching on copyright laws.
Perhaps I should have phrased that as the purchase of a copyrighted work doesn't touch upon any needs to license rights from the copyright holder that aren't already granted to me by copyright law for basic usage of the software.
When you hand over money is largely irrelevant, and yet you seem so fixated on it.
Grow up. I refer to the completion of the sale for which the act of handing money is a metaphor.
And you're basing that conclusion on what, exactly?
Copyright law, as cited.
And yet have no justification to offer in support of that feeling.
See above. As cited.
Everything about that is true of the GPL, too. You're rather proving GP's point.
The GPL is entirely different. It is an unconditional grant of additional rights NOT AVAILABLE BY DEFAULT under copyright law. Those additional rights do have strings attached, but provided you don't exercise the additional rights, you can use GPL software without being impacted by its terms. Because if you reject the GPL, default copyright law applies. That's the entire point of it. And default copyright allows me to use the program.
An end user rejecting the GPL is as meaningful as a motorist choosing to ignore stop signs on a road without any.
Ummmm you don't own the equipment your company is letting you use as part of your job.
And they don't own me. We have this agreement that I work for them, with some performance terms that I will complete X,Y,Z for A,B,C.
Its company property, and have every right to monitor its resources.
This includes YOU, while on company time.
I didn't agree to that. Did you?
Or are you one of those that thinks you are "entitled" ?
I'm not a slave. If the company expects me to show up for work, the terms of employment need to be agreeable to me. Otherwise I won't.
I don't see why you have a problem with this.
And besides, just because I'm friends with someone, doesn't mean we have similar tastes.
Pretty much this. I care and would be influenced by what brand one of my friends might go with for a gaming rig power supply... but couldn't care about his selection in cars, or wine, or clothes.
Another friend I might care about his tastes in wine, but would probably slap him upside the head if I even KNEW what hardware he was putting in his PC.
But I don't need (or use) facebook. When I'm buying wine I'll ask the friend I share taste with for a recommendation... that's what being friends in the real world means. You can just do that.
Without a license, you have no rights to make copies.
3. (1) For the purposes of this Act, âoecopyrightâ, in relation to a work, means the sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form whatever, to perform the work or any substantial part thereof in public or, if the work is unpublished, to publish the work or any substantial part thereof, and includes the sole right
[...]
(h) in the case of a computer program that can be reproduced in the ordinary course of its use, other than by a reproduction during its execution in conjunction with a machine, device or computer, to rent out the computer program,
I realize its pretty contorted, since the overt purpose of the clause is to assign the right to copyright owner over rentals of copies, but the read the exclusion sub-clause carefully.
Its saying that the copyright holder has the sole right to all copies, OTHER than those by reproduction during it's execution in conjunction with a machine. That is: that the copies made to run the program are not the sole right of the copyright holder.
You can also apply the interoperability clauses which grant the owner of a legally purchased program the explicit rights to make a copies and or modifications as necessary to interoperate with a machine. So, the legally purchased copy of X on a CD, may be legally reproduced (installed) onto a computer hard drive, as this is a necessary transformative copy for the program to interoperate with the machine, including modifying it to work as necessary.
Without a license, you have no rights to make copies.
Yes and no. The copyright act makes specific exceptions granting the right to make copies in specific circumstances. Installing a legally purchased piece of software onto a computer is one such legal copy.
Backups are another legally protected class of copies. I don't need a license to make a backup. Copyright law explicitly grants me that right.
29.24 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright in a work or other subject-matter for a person who owns [...] a copy of the work or subject-matter (in this section referred to as the âoesource copyâ) to reproduce the source copy if
(a) the person does so solely for backup purposes in case the source copy is lost, damaged or otherwise rendered unusable;
[...etc...]
Maybe where you live the laws are different, but here if you bought software. First sale and copyright combine to give you all the rights you require to use it without entering into a further EULA with the copyright holder.
And that's what Apple's SLA does as well: It gives you permission to use the software on a Mac
Which is fine, but I don't need Apple's permission for that. That permission is implicit by the fact that they sold me a copy of the software in the first place.
It doesn't include "permission to make copies on non-Macs".
Yeah. I don't need their permission to make the software I purchased legally to inter-operate with a machine, any more than I need their permission to use scissors to open the cellophane wrapper. Copyright law states that I have that right.
Well, that's the right of the copyright holder. Just as the copyright holder has the right to slap the GPL on their software, so does Apple has the right to put their license on their software.
Again you are conflating usage rights with copyrights. The copies made to use the software are permitted by copyright. I don't need a license for that. I only need to enter into a licening agreement if I wish to exercise one of the rights that is the sole right of the copyright holder. Installing the software onto a computer is not one of one of those rights.
No company that makes toys with lead in them will stay in business very long. All it takes is a few dead kids and that company will be out of business.
So we get a series of fly-by-night companies that each kill a few kids and then pop up with a new logo. Well that certainly seems reasonable.
Compare that to the MILLIONS of children who die every year thanks to goverment incomptence and corruption.
Your blaming the government incompetence and corruption for not saving them, not for actually killing them outright. So if we eliminate the government, they still die.
So you just argued for a more effective government, not a reduced government. Was that your intent? Somehow I doubt it.
Now if they started allowing Flash ads or ads with movement, that would bother me,
I guess someone would respond to that by saying,
"I really don't see how animated banner ads are any more evil than text ads, especailly when they're just runing them on search results. The only way it's really any worse is that it's mildly more distracting and takes up a trivially larger amount of bandwidth...."
Your own argument justifying them seems to apply here. If it was good enough to justify banner ads, why does it fail to justify animated banner ads? (Especially if banner ads are considered a fait accompli and this is just the next step...)
The only way it's really any worse is that it's mildly more distracting
The reason we put up with google's text based ads is precisely that they text based. We are already looking for text results, so a text ad is *minimally* distracting.
A picture is substantially more distracting than the text result we are looking for. We generally process pictures before text. Therefore the picture ads are much more distracting. It's that simple.
There are other competitors who don't do this if it bothers you, or you can just Adblock them.
I could. It would be nice if I didn't have to. So expressing displeasure is one way to get the message across. Who knows, if this becomes pervasive, maybe I'll switch to another search engine. Only reason I'm not using duck duck go or bing is i got attached to google when it was minimalist ... the further it gets from that, the more motivated i am to just switch entirely.
If employees don't like being monitored, they should find companies to work for that dont monitor them.
No federal statutes restrict the use of GPS by employers, nor force them to disclose whether they are using it.
This is a GOOD thing, it means 48 states respect the RIGHTS of private citizens to control the things they own.
So, wait, how does that work? How do you propose the employee find companies to work for that don't monitor them if companies are allowed to keep it a secret?
What do you do for an encore? Argue that if you don't want lead in your kids toys just don't buy toys with lead in them, while simultaneously demanding that companies can keep using lead without having to tell anyone?
This is Slashdot. If it's not the GPL, people think the license can and should be ignored.
The GPL doesn't put any restrictions on anyone using the software. At all. None. It hard for a user to "ignore the GPL" even if they wanted to because it doesn't restrict their use of it in any way, at all, ever.
The only caveat is with redistribution rights, which you don't have BY LAW, BY DEFAULT. And in that case the GPL automatically grants you redistribution rights, provided you distribute the source. Otherwise you have to negotiate a separate distribution license with the copyright holder -- (something you would have to do with any software you wanted to re-distribute). And this of course is possible in many, but certainly not all cases.
The Apple EULA on the other hand, imposes usage restrictions on what hardware you may use it with by, quite frankly, abusing copyright laws, conflating "sale of copy" with "license".
Buying a copy of a software program and then using it should not even touch upon copyright laws as long as you don't redistribute. The copies made to install the software and in RAM etc are explicitly permitted by copyright law where I live, and yet we're still demanded to consent to a EULA after we purchase it, for permission to use it. Permission we, quite bluntly, DO NOT NEED. So damned right we feel justified in ignoring it.
EULAs disgust me. Contracts of adhesion, demanded after a sale, with no consideration, ... fuck em.
Heh, yep, did not know that, likely wouldn't have found it. On the upside, with 8.1 being free for 8, I figure within a year 8.0 is going to be rarer than Vista.
The real issue, which he completely ignores, is the genuine threat to Linux provided by Microsoft's release of a free Windows 8.1 upgrade.
ROFLMAO
Only free to users of win 8, who got a raw deal having to use win8. :)
8.1 may not yet be perfect, but its a huge improvement. Right clicking the new start button gives you direct access to control panels, device manager, event viewer, computer management, powershell, add/remove programs, shutdown/restart... I hadn't realized this until a couple days ago as everyone had said the new start button is just brings up the win8 start screen. Even on the 8.1 preview -- it hadn't occured to me to right click it.
I now officially overall prefer the new start button/start screen more than windows 7 start menu, and think the start8/classic shell crowd are missing the boat.
I'm still not a fan of metro, but that's optional to use. And I still like the win7 start menu search widget for typing based "quick launch" -- and would like to see a powertoy for that; or even just to see that autocomplete/search functionality added to win+r.
Anyhow... as to Linus being afraid of a free 8.1 upgrade, or even OSX upgrades... it's absurd. OSX isn't free. Its a free upgrade for recent Macs. That's it.
Well if my current monitor is 30" and fits HD quite readably, than a 60" QuadHD (4K) monitor should leave the text exactly the same size... just 4x as much of it. :)
I think I'd like that too...
Although 6 24" screens in a 3x2 grid is appealing too, and even more real space.
IT'S NOT EVEN SHIPPING YET
touche.
although, 2 weeks ago neither was the apple. and 2 weeks from now they both will. im not sure this is where to split hairs.
personally, i'd pay 20-25% more to get the system that i want ... that doesn't run windows, and where i won't have to struggle with linux to get the system working smoothly.
fair enough. I'm writing this on an MBP myself, so I'm hardly rabidly anti-apple. I like the magsafe adapter, the overall metal build quality. etc. I'm fairly OS agnostic. The unix stuff i need to do ... doesn't need to be done locally. remote access is fine for me, for that.
do you seriously want to speak with some idiot to figure out what laptop you can purchase?
As opposed to being able to pick from 3 models? The dell sales guys at the corporate level, at least tend to be able to offer more than the rigid website, and dells website is lot less rigid than apples.
i've been in the market to replace an aging windows laptop for over a year and have been watching prices closely. prices haven't dropped, even on low end windows laptops.
I dunno... there's always something on sale somewhere; and there's always good deals to be had if you shop around if you aren't dead set on a particular model/configuration. With apple its pretty much take it or leave it until the next hardware refresh.
Yes, let's compare the just announced apple refreshed product to stuff you randomly dug up on Dell.
Here's the thing about apple, the value proposition is actually pretty good assuming you only care about the specs in the base-line product AND you only do the price comparison the day after its released.
Whereas every other manufacturers products either steadily get cheaper over time, or steadily get spec bumps over time while the price stays constant -- Apple's specs and price stay exactly the same until the product is refreshed.
So come back 12 months from now, and the apple product will still be $1800, the RAM, SSD will be the same size, the graphics will be 1-2 generations old, and pretty much everything you can buy somewhere else will be better.
the most comparable thing i can find at dell.com is this...
Mmmm... sure... or why not this...
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9530/pd?oc=smx15w8p002&model_id=xps-15-9530
Its $150 more instead of $600 less
So... what do you get for $150 bucks more?
i7 instead of i5
double the ram (16GB instead of 8GB)
1TB HD + 32GB mSata SSD -- vs 512MB SSD -- interesting trade off
nvidia 750M with 2GB ram vs intel integrated
3200 x 1800 QHD+ display vs 2560x1600
15" vs 13"
Well.. the dell blows the apple away now overall for paltry $150 differential, but 15" to 13" right? Lets bump up the mac to 15" so its apples to well... apples :)
that gets us i7 -- parity
16GB ram -- parity
1TB+32GB ssd vs 512GB ssd -- same trade off as before
nvidia 750M w 2GB ram -- parity
3200x1800 vs 2880x1800 -- slight edge on the dell
price? $1950 vs ... $2600... $650 difference... ouch... even if you prefer the apple hard drive scenario, its not worth a $650 premium over the dell solution; retail cost on a DIY upgrade would be less. And that's just spending 5 minutes on the website. I expect I can do better and get exactly want, in volume for the company with a phone call to my dell rep. Can I do that with apple? Nope. Apple rep? Lol... is that even a thing?
We all know how StackOverflow works. You can always ask or answer a question, but other privileges are based on your reputation.
I'd hardly call that a model, it rapidly becomes as annoying as expert sex change.
Half the questions are stuffed with meta bickering about the "rules", who should get reputation, who shouldn't, disputes over whether the question is too much like some other question, a bunch of asshats duplicating and expanding on the same answer while trying to out-answer it to game the system for reputation.
I think my least favorite though is "not constructive". Yes, yes, it doesn't' have a definitive answer, but the ensuing discussion is generally pretty enlightening, and should be encouraged. And most of the real "hard" programming stuff falls into that category. (How to name things well for example (be it classes, database tables, interfaces, etc...)
No, actually that's wrong, my least favorite thing about stackoverflow is shitty hacks being up-voted. The C stuff about strcpy strncpy, or snprintf vs _snprintf vs sprintf_s etc is full of just really piss poor advice as a for instance. There's good info mixed in, but the bad never goes away and some of its rated really high.
If wikipedia followed stackoverflows model, every article would be 50 pages long of competing articles, voted up and down by
Its an interesting idea, but there are some major issues...
Firstly, substantially different vehicles do use the same tires. I know you can bit my Porsche tires on my parents BMW (the front ones anyway... the Porsche rears are wider while that BMW has the same size all around) etc.
Perhaps worse you may get people fitting inappropriate tires to try and avoid the tax especially if its significant. People do really stupid things to avoid taxes.
Secondly, this gets really confusing because the tires themselves have different lifespans, and if you calibrated taxes based on that it would appear to be punishing longer lasting tires with higher taxes, which would have the effect of encouraging customers to select tires that don't last as long.
You'd also have people clamoring for tax adjustments based on treadwear after tires get slashed, or after a blowout, or puncture, or if they sell them used...
The taxes would also be a fairly expensive -- likely more than the cost of the tire itself for at least non-performance/luxury tires; and people would riot over that, and again it would lead to people running bald tires because the price of replacement would be so much higher... and of course it amounts to "sticking it to the tax man" a bit too...at least until they crash and die because their tires are bald. Did I mention people are stupid. :)
This; why should we charge based on distance travelled, when some are driving super-lightweight gas-efficient cars that cause minimal damage to infrastructure, and some are driving gas guzzling dually trucks that cause significantly more damage to infrastructure, or even transport trucks.
what about super lightweight gas inefficient cars like 2 seater sports cars? Why should they pay a premium for a level of wear and tear they aren't causing?
what about heavy luxury electric vehicles that pay no gas taxes at all yet do just as much wear and tear on the infrastructure? A Tesla S weighs more than a pick up truck, yet pays no gas taxes at all.
You could also increase registration fees based on the weight of a vehicle.
And penalize people with heavy vehicles they rarely drive?
Honestly a tax based on weight x distance traveled seems pretty fair.
The documented curb weight of the vehicle is fine. I don't really care how fat the passengers are or whether they haul a bag of sand around. And an annual odometer reading isn't that much of a burden. Yes, it will capture the sports cars laps on the race track, your daily commute up and down your rural private driveway, and your out of state or out of country driving... but I'm not sure its worth forcing mandatory tracking on everyone just for that. And if those people want to volunteer to carry a GPS tracker around to save $50 a year in fuel taxes... they are welcome too... I'll opt for the odometer readings thanks.
Raising the gas tax encourages using less fuel, which also encourages less driving.
Or switching to electric, and then driving everywhere tax free.
There are *large* *families* of attacks that are higly paralelizable and automated that will break any combination of, e.g. XOR+substitution. It won't even *notice* you layered two levels, it will break both at the same time as it goes because it is actually attacking the composite transformation.
You missed the part where he ran it through the 'industry standard' encryption as well.
Don't fucking try to cook your own cypher. Just use the correct chain mode for what you need, one of the highly studied block cyphers that were not chosen due to resource usage (e.g. serpent is likely to be stronger than AES).
The encryption which we presume the NSA may have backdoored the implementation we are using?
And don't screw up on the random numbers, variable initalization vectors, and key exchange. Really, *don't*, because if you ever repeat the IV on DH or GCM, or implement GCM incorrectly, you will most likely leak the secret key.
Well that is reassuring.
This is the absolutely WORST advice you could ever give anyone about crypto for security!
His advice amounted to: use standard encryption, plus some simplistic cipher.
And you are right. The former is the real security, the latter is putting your jewelry in an ice cream container in the fridge instead of the jewelry box.
But if you assume the NSA etc can break the standard encryption with relative ease, and in an automated fashion -- then what?
Suppose the automated NSA dragnet backdoors your PGP email and they got gibberish out, now what?
So is it AES, TEA, ECC, rot/cipher/xor, 3DES... unless you are a high priority are they even going to bother flagging it to break it find out? And if you really fuck with them and 1 message in 5 actually just contains randomly generated gibberish xored with the first couple paragraphs of moby dick? How many resources are they going to work on that?
What is covered is that they're making the best decision for themselves
What does that even mean semantically, if the utility buyers assign to things is projected onto them by the suppliers?
Lets imagine ants. As a colony they gather the closest richest food source they can find.
Suppose a supplier puts out some food. The ants discover it and start harvesting it.
Then a competitor 'opens shop'; he's a bit closer, and his foods a bit richer. The ants discover it, and gradually they shift to the new source of food.
That's "capitalism" in the sense that the ants are collectively making the best decision for themselves. They've preferred the new source because its better utility. They harvest more energy and spend less energy doing it.
So far so good.
Then the first supplier wants to get the ants back. He could move even closer, or make his food even richer. He could clear route to his cache of predators... he could do any number of things to compete, to become the ants 'preferred choice'.
But he doesn't. He just goes and paints a strong pheromone trail to his cache. This literally overrides the ants decision making process, and they follow the new strong trail.
Are they making the best decision for themselves?
That's what sophisticated advertising is... it literally short circuits and reprograms our decision making processes to change how we value something.
Its a continuum of course... every external stimulus impacts us in some way, and I'm not suggesting we must block everything that influences us, so don't throw that straw man up.
But modern adverting is reaching levels of sophistication that are a whole different ballgame from more mundane examples of things that influence us.
I can't be bothered... but you can look for yourself
http://yourworldnews.org/blog/?p=3689
Economics makes no such claim that people act under "rational self interest" or that people are well informed. It's not even covered in an econ class one way or the other, you'll just never hear it. The laws of economics apply regardless.
It starts to come up when you discuss philosophical issues pertaining to economics. For example, the idea that capitalism allocates resources efficiently per-supposes the parties are acting with rational self interest. I think we would agree that if the parties are acting irrationally, or against their own interests that the resultant resource allocations will not be efficient.
How is trying to control the information people receive about your product anything but a logical and necessary outcome of capitalism?
Capitalism relies on people trying to make the best decision for themselves they can, based on what information they have.
The validity of that hypothesis rests on several assumptions:
That people are not coerced.
That people act under rational self interest.
That the competitive market itself will facilitate consumers getting the information they need to make decisions.
Advertising has achieved a level of sophistication that this is no longer entirely true. The information available is not reliable, and I cannot make informed buying decisions.
All that's left working in the customers favor is direct word of mouth, reputation systems (wherein I might trust a particular reviewer who has steered me well in the past), and government regulation (truth in advertising, labelling laws, etc... which some beleive are anti-capitalist, and everyone knows are largely co-opted and corrupted or just outright violated by the regulated industries).
Compared what the industries are prepared to expend "controlling" information; with what I have at my disposal to research something? I am at such a substantial disadvantage that I am frequently operating against my own self interest. And I'm in the minority just being truly aware of it.
For example, if I want to buy an X and I don't know much about X, and its not something my friends or family use then I'm pretty much helpless.
Word of mouth doesn't work if I don't know people I trust with an X.
I can't rely on a reviewer of X if I don't have any experience with that reviewer (and I know that many reviewers are shills, or just plain idiots)
I can't rely on review sites and such, I know in many cases the reviews are paid, the 'likes' and 'followers' and '+1' are corrupt or paid for, and full of idiots. And in the worst cases, the entire review site is 'fake' and hosted by the vendor.
I've learned to try and filter out what i need from newegg and amazon.com and other review sites -- but its cat and mouse, and the advertisers get cleverer, and my resources to combat them are not increasing proportionally. And for some products... I don't really know where to even start, and again I like to think I'm 'above average' at this 'game'.
It's sick really.