I consider the GPLv2 to be less free than the BSD license in precisely the same way as living in a country with a constitution and laws is less free than living in a country without them. Which of those two countries would you rather live in?
You can't possibly mean that as a blanket statement -- the nature of the country's laws is absolutely crucial. For example, a country could have a Constitution that says that (for example) anyone can vote, so long as they own land, and are white and male. That would not be as free as a different Constitution which allowed any citizen to vote.
And as an aside, the BSD license (revised or not) does have restrictions. It simply doesn't have nearly as many as the GPL -- I think a comparison between BSD and total anarchy is misguided.
The FSF, is looking at the net amount of freedom (i.e. how free you are with regard to all of the software descended from the original program), and finds that limited impairment of it can nevertheless result in more of it over time than the alternative you suggest.
That's fair and I can see your point. However, in the situation where the program is public domain, nothing prevents derivative authors from modifying the work and also releasing their derivatives to the public domain. You're (and perhaps the FSF) presuming that most actors following the original author will be less motivated than the original author to releasing further work to the public domain. In order for the "net freedom" argument to work, there has to be a presumption that without the restriction, there would be less free software.
I would argue that the BSDs are proof that this is not the case. While there are probably a greater absolute number of GPL'd pieces of software, I guess (and this is only my guess) this is due largely to the fact that Linux is GPL, and that's a the license many users have the most exposure to. That's speculation, of course, but I believe the "net freedom" argument is speculation as well.
Similar logic is behind the copyright system (where the ideal is maximum creation and publication and freedom, it is most closely approached by temporarily limiting some of these, so as to boost the long term outcome at the expense of the short term) and I doubt that most people would object to it in the abstract, though we might differ on how best to accomplish it.
FWIW, I'm a copyright attorney, so I've thought about this a bit. I would argue that it's not intended to boost the long term outcome at the expense of the short term, it's designed to incentivize creation and publication period. That is to say, without copyright, there would be little monetary incentive to create and publish new work. There might be other incentives, but (I would argue) [American] copyright law only really considers monetary incentives to be of value.
That's like saying you're not really in a free society because there are laws against fraud, property damage, theft, assault, battery, rape, murder, and they even make you uphold your end of a bargain - how can you truly be free if you can't do all those things to other people? How can software be truly free if you can't turn it into unfree software?
Actually, I would say that prohibitions on those things do make for a less free society. "Less free" does not necessarily mean "bad" -- it means "less free". You're inferring a value judgment where none exists. I did not say that the GPL was bad, only that it was less free than release to the public domain.
And incidentally, I do think those laws make me less free; however, I also think that's a good thing in this particular instance.
The first thing I noticed when reading your post is that I don't think you understand the goal of the GNU project and the FSF. Their goal is to promote Free Software:
I have always found it rather interesting, or perhaps contradictory, that the FSF claims they're all about making software "free" and yet their license is more restrictive than say the BSD license. The problem, I think, is that the FSF (and their chief proselytizer RMS) believes that part of freedom is the inability to create a system where there is less freedom. That is, they believe restrictions are necessary in order to prevent what they consider bad actors from reducing freedom down the line.
That is not a dictionary definition of freedom (see, e.g., http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom). The FSF's stance on "freedom" is a political philosophy; it's a means on maintaining freedom (perhaps); but it's not a state of freedom. The only true free software is that which is released into the public domain.
Let's say I release a piece of software to the world, and grant it to the public domain. No one can ever make that software "unfree". They simply cannot undo what I have done. On the other hand, they have the freedom to copy it, create derivative works based on it, perform it, display it, and distribute it. That seems to me to be a state of more freedom than the restrictions imposed by the GPL -- any version of the GPL. The GPL v3, of course, adds more restrictions than the GPL v2, making it less free.
So call a spade "a spade". Freedom is one thing -- the GPL is something less.
The second world war was decided in the east. You shouldn't forget that.
Indeed the USSR would have defeated Germany, but it's quite unclear that Europe west of Germany wouldn't have become a series of Soviet protectorates.
Also, there was this vast war in the Pacific that was decided by the US. Several European countries help, and of course a great deal of assistance was provided by Australia and New Zealand, but the US was the primary power to defeat Japan.
If you see someone bitch about Linux tell them to bitch about the shitty hardware. Put the blame where it ACTUALLY BELONGS.
...
So instead of being a pissy little bitch, actually do something about it. Grassroots man!
See how I'm talking here on/. about educating you? Do this sort of shit to people elsewhere and in real life.
I can't imagine such methods of "education" being particularly successful. Calling someone a "pissy little bitch" (and being modded Insightful for it!) doesn't make me want to practice what you're preaching. This kind of attitude is terrible for linux adoption. For that matter, it's harmful to linux development.
As I see it, the "linux community" (such as it is, perhaps I really mean the "slashdot community" or perhaps even the "slashdot / linux zealot community") desires a world with technological freedom. The best and most certain way to ensure technological freedom is to get as many people as possible to believe that it's an intrinsic good. One way to do that is to show all the cool things that technological freedom can do. For example, it can allow you to make your devices work together; it can make your job more productive; it can keep your private matters private.
Linux is an excellent example of the power of technological freedom -- perhaps the best example, because it provides a basis for the development of new and better ways to interact with technology without having the nightmares of proprietary licensing. Stepping further, part of the way we need to educate the public is to get them to see why Linux is good. And when they try to use it, we want as few excuses as to why Joe Blow shouldn't use it as possible. We also need to make sure they have a reason to keep using it.
To that end, blaming the user either for buying the wrong hardware or for being too stupid to use it is not a productive activity. Calling them "pissy little bitch[es]" is not educating them in anything except in seeing how socially adapt you really are.
I'm not advocating supporting hardware manufacturers who don't produce open drivers, but I'm encouraging you to work with users who end up with their products. If every Supreme Court justice used, say, OpenOffice on a Debian box, wouldn't you feel a lot better about the decisions that they make? If every Congessperson were familiar at least with the concept that there are different operating systems that offer different features, wouldn't that be a good thing? Insulting them will not get us there.
I don't buy this argument. In fact, I think that copyright restrictions and forced creative direction are what destroys an MMO. Look at Star Wars Galaxies, too many copyright restrictions and attempts at intervention from LucasArts as to how the game experience should feel.
Perhaps I'm being overly technical, but it doesn't seem like "copyright restrictions" are really the issue so much as creative control, or perhaps "continuity restrictions". SWG (I'm was in from Beta 2 until a year and a half after launch) suffered from a muddied vision of what the game should be, and from an overly ambitious release schedule. Further, there have always been anecdotal reports that LucasArts exerted a great deal of oversight over SOE. The designers originally had Jedi as an ultra-rare mystical thing, and then people discovered it was simply a profession grind for a class which wasn't necessarily well thought out. I maintain to this day that Jedi should have been chosen by special GM's hired just to find Jedi, but that's a topic for another day.
Saying "copyright restrictions" cause problems is misleading I think. Many parts of the Warcraft universe are protected by copyright, whether the embodiments may be as a game, a novel, or even a manual (IAAL, a copyright lawyer, in fact). Again, I think you really mean "continuity restrictions" or even "creative control from an outside agency". Copyright has little to do with it, other than copyright gives the outside agency some of its control (though trademark is as powerful a protection in this context IMO).
Indeed, without continuity, what makes "Star Wars" Star Wars? Noise in outer space? Fantastic alien creatures? Existence of the Force? Without some of those elements, the name alone is useless. I would say that LucasArts' insistence on keeping Star Wars "Star Wars" maintains the integrity of that universe. They may not know anything about MMO design, and perhaps their mistake was trying to exert too much creative control over something they knew nothing about.
Or maybe the article writer is right, and guns are really hard to implement in an MMO...
Did you sleep through history class? In our own country:
Our own country (by which I presume you mean the US) was also founded via armed rebellion against a monarch. It seems unlikely any amount of non-violent protest would have resulted in such foundation, at least at that time.
At some point, you have to have an option if non-violent protest does not work. If you have no guns, you have no option. Moreover, you have no threat of such an option. You simply can say "we're going to protest more."
Maybe it'll work... historically it works sometimes and not others. I wouldn't want to be caught in the "not others" column without any option to escalate things.
The victim is probably Vincent who was just doing what his supervisor told him to do. But, atlas, that's what you get to be when the bottom falls out; the scapegoat at the bottom.
I got the same treatment a while back when I was cancelling an account from AOL -- not quite as bad, but close. The rep kept offering me free months in exchange for not cancelling. I didn't know how I got signed up for AOL in the first place, but that's a different story.
In any case, it seems more like an established business practice than a rogue representative. The AOL rep was pushy, but he was probably doing nothing different than he was trained to do, and had done before. Perhaps he should file a wrongful termination lawsuit, and see if AOL wants their training practices scrutinized on the record...
compared to the rediculous systems the RIAA/MPAA has come up with, Apple's stuff is great.
I'm not sure what you mean. Neither than RIAA or MPAA come up with DRM systems. I can tell you that at least with the RIAA, their member companies do have to evaluate and approve a DRM system before they'll let you sell music, but they themselves do not describe it. Certainly, the major record labels have to have approved of Apple's DRM just the same as any others'.
In summary, members of the RIAA do not "come up with" DRM. They do approve (or disapprove) of various implementations. They have approved Microsoft's, Real's, but also Apple's. If you want to blame someone for crappy DRM, blame the right people.
Now, blame for DRM at all, that is properly placed on the members of the RIAA...
Not saying that I disagree, but the Sony ruling isn't necessarily that broad. The defense of Fair Use is a fact specific analysis. The Court in Sony held that time-shifting, as practiced by VTR users at the time of the ruling, was Fair Use. Specifically, the Court found that most people recorded a show to watch it later, watched it, and erased it to record something else. They found that most consumers still watched the commercials, so the money earning potential of TV was actually increased. If, say, the MPAA had waited another five to ten years, and then filed suit, it's not necessarily clear the legal analysis would have been the same (personally, I think the outcome would have been the same, but the precise holding might have differed).
Since the decision, many (if not most) commentators have interpreted the decision to mean that "time-shifting is fair use", but it is always possible for the Court to revisit the precise facts leading to that holding.
If anything, OpenDocument will allow much more deeply integrated software for disabled folks. I think once this starts to become a reality, disabled people will really enjoy the format.
That is a great thing about open source: Without question it allows it, but does the software actually exist now? I think it's appalling the number of people in the comments telling this man (or his organization) to write it himself! We're talking about a state government here, which has a legal and philosophical responsibility to enable all of its citizens to participate. The state of Massachusetts has to consider the difficulty that some of its citizens may encounter.
The word plug-in probably goes a long way to satisfying this particular organization's concerns. It may be merely a matter of educating the organization on how to use the Word plug-in to export on ODF. But for goodness sakes, get off your "write-it-yourself" horse, and look at reality. Everyone can't write software. We can't exclude people from governing, or the services of government because of that. Accessibility software is a good thing, and necessary for the penetration of free software into government. If you believe that's a good thing, you should have an interest in coding it yourself.
I guess my point was more that I've never been randomly stopped and had ID demanded of me. I've never driven across a state line and been checked out.
And yes, I do both of your examples on a regular basis. Some Federal buildings do require ID, but most of the ones I've been in do not. Checking ID on a commercial airline seems no more onerous than someone checking my ID if I pay with a credit car -- the airline (or business) is protecting me.
It's a bizarre thing that I cannot travel around the US without identification, Can I refuse to show a policeman identification anymore? (I don't think so, but it's been awhile since I've been back to the US).
I have never, ever, ever been challenged for identification in the US, except in the cases of 1) buying alcohol, 2) voting or 3) traffic stops. We require a passport for entry, but so does every other country I've been to... well, except Mexico, but that's a different story.
I wouldn't want you to think that we've become a locked-down society, no matter how much some people would like you to believe it (note I didn't say anything about our potential to become such, only that we're not there now). As for walking away from a police officer, you can so long as you don't run, and there's no reasonable suspicion you've been doing something wrong.
Alcohol is a different matter entirely -- blame MADD aka the new prohibitionist movement.
I personally loved Generals. I've played every C&C RTS to completion, and definitely enjoyed them, but Generals was a major improvement for me. Earlier C&C games had a side bar where you could build from. In other words, rather than clicking on the appropriate building and choosing your unit, you could queue up any unit right from the bar. I know some people enjoyed that, but I always found it cumbersome -- it took up a huge portion of screen real estate.
I also liked the present-day / near-future units in Generals. The Red Alert series has sort of a campy feel, and the Tiberium units were stereotypical. I suppose Generals has stereotyped units as well (e.g. the whole Chinese side), but they "feel" better to me, as non-specific as that is.
All in all, I just found (and find -- I still play Zero Hour) Generals to be more fun.
Sort of off-topic -- is it just me, or is every article which is 1) positive about Microsoft or 2) negative about Linux tagged FUD? Are there exceptions to this?
The US has claimed he will be tried in federal court just like any other criminal, but the very idea that he COULD be held indefinitely without any sort of due process under the current law is troubling.
Agreed, it is troubling. That said, what is the chance that the administration would actually do this to a Briton caught in Britain? Something approaching zero, I'd say. There's little doubt to me that the law should be changed; this particular defendant, however, doesn't really have much to worry about.
And since the American courts typically just allow the gov't to do whatever it wants
Ignoring, for a moment, the deep separation of powers discussing involved in any thorough analysis of American law, where exactly do you get this notion? Courts routinely throw out evidence, they turn over laws, and generally oppose the "gov't" (which, by your lucid and apparently "interesting" comment, likely refers primarily to the executive branch). Do you have some sort of general research which might indicate the courts "typically just allow the gov't to do what it wants" or were you just being a typical slashdotter interjecting opinions as fact?
Make no mistake, MS ahs a lot to lose from an adverse ruling and they won't be fighting this fairly. If you think their opening of these documents was an honest move you're sorely deluded. Just look back at how the US antitrust trial went if you don't understand why.
Honest? I'm not sure what you mean by "honest". If you mean "free of ulterior motive", then no, it is not honest. Then again, I assign most actions by most people as having an ulterior self-advancing motive, and most certainly MSFT has one here.
However, that is not a bad thing. The number of acts that I ascribe to altruism is extremely small, approaching zero. In this case, the result of their action is a positive, and I'm giving them credit for that.
no, it could not be transparent if it goes against the rules of procedure. You can't go on making and unmaking procedure rules at will and still be taken seriously as an impartial authority.
Of course you cannot make and unmake procedural rules at will; however, the default for any public action should be that the documentation surrounding that action should be public. It's possible there's a very involved reason why in this particular case things are secret, and if Microsoft did violate a rule, I hope the commission punishes them for it.
Again, the point of my original post was not to defend Microsoft or the commission -- it was to point out that transparency is a good thing, and that somebody like IBM would be praised, while Microsoft is condemned. Or if the EFF did it. Or Google. Or whoever is the favorite (or villain)
For all you know, if the EC can't, for whatever reason, put forth their own version of the facts, the whole timeline MS is quoting might be fabulation - remember, the trustee they nominated themselves said they did not conform to EC's requests - and now the trustee is no longer performing satisfactorily and should be replaced.
Regardless of how powerful Microsoft may be, it's still not as powerful as a foreign government, and the EU (or its commission) at that. I am not arguing that SCO is right. I am not arguing that MSFT is "good". I am arguing that 1) transparency is good; 2) if the Commission wanted to be transparent, it could be; and 3) generally, slashdot posters react emotionally with anger to MSFT, without reference to their actual behavior or logic.
And they have. The final list that supposedly contains the details of the contested code IBM supposedly put into Linux was filed under seal. Only SCO, IBM and the court know what's in it.
Indeed, and my point is that SCO's insistence on such a thing is generally (on slashdot) regarded as a bad thing. Hence, transparency would be considered good there.
And more broadly, too often on/. if MSFT does it, it must be evil. It's simply not always the case.
Flat out: transparency in government is a good thing.
EU government (and the US gov't for that matter) is entirely too opaque for my preference.
I agree completely, and yet there are posters below arguing. Transparency is a per se good. Lack of transparency is good only in war -- and I mean real declared war where armies are attempting to destroy one another.
Legal proceedings should always be open to the public.
Let's turn it around, and say that SCO wants certain documents kept secret in their case. Is that something the slashdot community (if there is such a thing) would support?
It's very difficult to sell the public on unmanned probes or other harder science. The ISS similarly has failed to catch the public's imagination. What we need is to push the boundaries of where humans can go to get the general public back on board -- when they're there, then money for the other programs is much easier to get. For example, the Voyager probes were approved when the public was about as high on spaceflight as it ever got, and they were not cheap. A NASA that the public (and by extension Congress) is happier with has more freedom in budget and choice of project.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't possibly mean that as a blanket statement -- the nature of the country's laws is absolutely crucial. For example, a country could have a Constitution that says that (for example) anyone can vote, so long as they own land, and are white and male. That would not be as free as a different Constitution which allowed any citizen to vote.
And as an aside, the BSD license (revised or not) does have restrictions. It simply doesn't have nearly as many as the GPL -- I think a comparison between BSD and total anarchy is misguided.
That's fair and I can see your point. However, in the situation where the program is public domain, nothing prevents derivative authors from modifying the work and also releasing their derivatives to the public domain. You're (and perhaps the FSF) presuming that most actors following the original author will be less motivated than the original author to releasing further work to the public domain. In order for the "net freedom" argument to work, there has to be a presumption that without the restriction, there would be less free software.
I would argue that the BSDs are proof that this is not the case. While there are probably a greater absolute number of GPL'd pieces of software, I guess (and this is only my guess) this is due largely to the fact that Linux is GPL, and that's a the license many users have the most exposure to. That's speculation, of course, but I believe the "net freedom" argument is speculation as well.
Similar logic is behind the copyright system (where the ideal is maximum creation and publication and freedom, it is most closely approached by temporarily limiting some of these, so as to boost the long term outcome at the expense of the short term) and I doubt that most people would object to it in the abstract, though we might differ on how best to accomplish it.
FWIW, I'm a copyright attorney, so I've thought about this a bit. I would argue that it's not intended to boost the long term outcome at the expense of the short term, it's designed to incentivize creation and publication period. That is to say, without copyright, there would be little monetary incentive to create and publish new work. There might be other incentives, but (I would argue) [American] copyright law only really considers monetary incentives to be of value.
Actually, I would say that prohibitions on those things do make for a less free society. "Less free" does not necessarily mean "bad" -- it means "less free". You're inferring a value judgment where none exists. I did not say that the GPL was bad, only that it was less free than release to the public domain.
And incidentally, I do think those laws make me less free; however, I also think that's a good thing in this particular instance.
I have always found it rather interesting, or perhaps contradictory, that the FSF claims they're all about making software "free" and yet their license is more restrictive than say the BSD license. The problem, I think, is that the FSF (and their chief proselytizer RMS) believes that part of freedom is the inability to create a system where there is less freedom. That is, they believe restrictions are necessary in order to prevent what they consider bad actors from reducing freedom down the line.
That is not a dictionary definition of freedom (see, e.g., http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom). The FSF's stance on "freedom" is a political philosophy; it's a means on maintaining freedom (perhaps); but it's not a state of freedom. The only true free software is that which is released into the public domain.
Let's say I release a piece of software to the world, and grant it to the public domain. No one can ever make that software "unfree". They simply cannot undo what I have done. On the other hand, they have the freedom to copy it, create derivative works based on it, perform it, display it, and distribute it. That seems to me to be a state of more freedom than the restrictions imposed by the GPL -- any version of the GPL. The GPL v3, of course, adds more restrictions than the GPL v2, making it less free.
So call a spade "a spade". Freedom is one thing -- the GPL is something less.
Indeed the USSR would have defeated Germany, but it's quite unclear that Europe west of Germany wouldn't have become a series of Soviet protectorates.
Also, there was this vast war in the Pacific that was decided by the US. Several European countries help, and of course a great deal of assistance was provided by Australia and New Zealand, but the US was the primary power to defeat Japan.
See how I'm talking here on /. about educating you? Do this sort of shit to people elsewhere and in real life.
I can't imagine such methods of "education" being particularly successful. Calling someone a "pissy little bitch" (and being modded Insightful for it!) doesn't make me want to practice what you're preaching. This kind of attitude is terrible for linux adoption. For that matter, it's harmful to linux development.
As I see it, the "linux community" (such as it is, perhaps I really mean the "slashdot community" or perhaps even the "slashdot / linux zealot community") desires a world with technological freedom. The best and most certain way to ensure technological freedom is to get as many people as possible to believe that it's an intrinsic good. One way to do that is to show all the cool things that technological freedom can do. For example, it can allow you to make your devices work together; it can make your job more productive; it can keep your private matters private.
Linux is an excellent example of the power of technological freedom -- perhaps the best example, because it provides a basis for the development of new and better ways to interact with technology without having the nightmares of proprietary licensing. Stepping further, part of the way we need to educate the public is to get them to see why Linux is good. And when they try to use it, we want as few excuses as to why Joe Blow shouldn't use it as possible. We also need to make sure they have a reason to keep using it.
To that end, blaming the user either for buying the wrong hardware or for being too stupid to use it is not a productive activity. Calling them "pissy little bitch[es]" is not educating them in anything except in seeing how socially adapt you really are.
I'm not advocating supporting hardware manufacturers who don't produce open drivers, but I'm encouraging you to work with users who end up with their products. If every Supreme Court justice used, say, OpenOffice on a Debian box, wouldn't you feel a lot better about the decisions that they make? If every Congessperson were familiar at least with the concept that there are different operating systems that offer different features, wouldn't that be a good thing? Insulting them will not get us there.
Shut it down? http://www.pvpgn.org/
Perhaps I'm being overly technical, but it doesn't seem like "copyright restrictions" are really the issue so much as creative control, or perhaps "continuity restrictions". SWG (I'm was in from Beta 2 until a year and a half after launch) suffered from a muddied vision of what the game should be, and from an overly ambitious release schedule. Further, there have always been anecdotal reports that LucasArts exerted a great deal of oversight over SOE. The designers originally had Jedi as an ultra-rare mystical thing, and then people discovered it was simply a profession grind for a class which wasn't necessarily well thought out. I maintain to this day that Jedi should have been chosen by special GM's hired just to find Jedi, but that's a topic for another day.
Saying "copyright restrictions" cause problems is misleading I think. Many parts of the Warcraft universe are protected by copyright, whether the embodiments may be as a game, a novel, or even a manual (IAAL, a copyright lawyer, in fact). Again, I think you really mean "continuity restrictions" or even "creative control from an outside agency". Copyright has little to do with it, other than copyright gives the outside agency some of its control (though trademark is as powerful a protection in this context IMO).
Indeed, without continuity, what makes "Star Wars" Star Wars? Noise in outer space? Fantastic alien creatures? Existence of the Force? Without some of those elements, the name alone is useless. I would say that LucasArts' insistence on keeping Star Wars "Star Wars" maintains the integrity of that universe. They may not know anything about MMO design, and perhaps their mistake was trying to exert too much creative control over something they knew nothing about.
Or maybe the article writer is right, and guns are really hard to implement in an MMO...
Our own country (by which I presume you mean the US) was also founded via armed rebellion against a monarch. It seems unlikely any amount of non-violent protest would have resulted in such foundation, at least at that time.
At some point, you have to have an option if non-violent protest does not work. If you have no guns, you have no option. Moreover, you have no threat of such an option. You simply can say "we're going to protest more."
Maybe it'll work... historically it works sometimes and not others. I wouldn't want to be caught in the "not others" column without any option to escalate things.
I got the same treatment a while back when I was cancelling an account from AOL -- not quite as bad, but close. The rep kept offering me free months in exchange for not cancelling. I didn't know how I got signed up for AOL in the first place, but that's a different story.
In any case, it seems more like an established business practice than a rogue representative. The AOL rep was pushy, but he was probably doing nothing different than he was trained to do, and had done before. Perhaps he should file a wrongful termination lawsuit, and see if AOL wants their training practices scrutinized on the record...
I'm not sure what you mean. Neither than RIAA or MPAA come up with DRM systems. I can tell you that at least with the RIAA, their member companies do have to evaluate and approve a DRM system before they'll let you sell music, but they themselves do not describe it. Certainly, the major record labels have to have approved of Apple's DRM just the same as any others'.
In summary, members of the RIAA do not "come up with" DRM. They do approve (or disapprove) of various implementations. They have approved Microsoft's, Real's, but also Apple's. If you want to blame someone for crappy DRM, blame the right people.
Now, blame for DRM at all, that is properly placed on the members of the RIAA...
Not saying that I disagree, but the Sony ruling isn't necessarily that broad. The defense of Fair Use is a fact specific analysis. The Court in Sony held that time-shifting, as practiced by VTR users at the time of the ruling, was Fair Use. Specifically, the Court found that most people recorded a show to watch it later, watched it, and erased it to record something else. They found that most consumers still watched the commercials, so the money earning potential of TV was actually increased. If, say, the MPAA had waited another five to ten years, and then filed suit, it's not necessarily clear the legal analysis would have been the same (personally, I think the outcome would have been the same, but the precise holding might have differed).
Since the decision, many (if not most) commentators have interpreted the decision to mean that "time-shifting is fair use", but it is always possible for the Court to revisit the precise facts leading to that holding.
That is a great thing about open source: Without question it allows it, but does the software actually exist now? I think it's appalling the number of people in the comments telling this man (or his organization) to write it himself! We're talking about a state government here, which has a legal and philosophical responsibility to enable all of its citizens to participate. The state of Massachusetts has to consider the difficulty that some of its citizens may encounter.
The word plug-in probably goes a long way to satisfying this particular organization's concerns. It may be merely a matter of educating the organization on how to use the Word plug-in to export on ODF. But for goodness sakes, get off your "write-it-yourself" horse, and look at reality. Everyone can't write software. We can't exclude people from governing, or the services of government because of that. Accessibility software is a good thing, and necessary for the penetration of free software into government. If you believe that's a good thing, you should have an interest in coding it yourself.
I see that and immediately think: "bend over, here it comes..."
I don't know, I tend to think that's more like "we're not going to allow a PvE character to move to a PvP server" or something similar.
And yes, I do both of your examples on a regular basis. Some Federal buildings do require ID, but most of the ones I've been in do not. Checking ID on a commercial airline seems no more onerous than someone checking my ID if I pay with a credit car -- the airline (or business) is protecting me.
I have never, ever, ever been challenged for identification in the US, except in the cases of 1) buying alcohol, 2) voting or 3) traffic stops. We require a passport for entry, but so does every other country I've been to... well, except Mexico, but that's a different story.
I wouldn't want you to think that we've become a locked-down society, no matter how much some people would like you to believe it (note I didn't say anything about our potential to become such, only that we're not there now). As for walking away from a police officer, you can so long as you don't run, and there's no reasonable suspicion you've been doing something wrong.
Alcohol is a different matter entirely -- blame MADD aka the new prohibitionist movement.
I personally loved Generals. I've played every C&C RTS to completion, and definitely enjoyed them, but Generals was a major improvement for me. Earlier C&C games had a side bar where you could build from. In other words, rather than clicking on the appropriate building and choosing your unit, you could queue up any unit right from the bar. I know some people enjoyed that, but I always found it cumbersome -- it took up a huge portion of screen real estate.
I also liked the present-day / near-future units in Generals. The Red Alert series has sort of a campy feel, and the Tiberium units were stereotypical. I suppose Generals has stereotyped units as well (e.g. the whole Chinese side), but they "feel" better to me, as non-specific as that is.
All in all, I just found (and find -- I still play Zero Hour) Generals to be more fun.
Agreed, it is troubling. That said, what is the chance that the administration would actually do this to a Briton caught in Britain? Something approaching zero, I'd say. There's little doubt to me that the law should be changed; this particular defendant, however, doesn't really have much to worry about.
Ignoring, for a moment, the deep separation of powers discussing involved in any thorough analysis of American law, where exactly do you get this notion? Courts routinely throw out evidence, they turn over laws, and generally oppose the "gov't" (which, by your lucid and apparently "interesting" comment, likely refers primarily to the executive branch). Do you have some sort of general research which might indicate the courts "typically just allow the gov't to do what it wants" or were you just being a typical slashdotter interjecting opinions as fact?
Honest? I'm not sure what you mean by "honest". If you mean "free of ulterior motive", then no, it is not honest. Then again, I assign most actions by most people as having an ulterior self-advancing motive, and most certainly MSFT has one here.
However, that is not a bad thing. The number of acts that I ascribe to altruism is extremely small, approaching zero. In this case, the result of their action is a positive, and I'm giving them credit for that.
no, it could not be transparent if it goes against the rules of procedure. You can't go on making and unmaking procedure rules at will and still be taken seriously as an impartial authority.
Of course you cannot make and unmake procedural rules at will; however, the default for any public action should be that the documentation surrounding that action should be public. It's possible there's a very involved reason why in this particular case things are secret, and if Microsoft did violate a rule, I hope the commission punishes them for it.
Again, the point of my original post was not to defend Microsoft or the commission -- it was to point out that transparency is a good thing, and that somebody like IBM would be praised, while Microsoft is condemned. Or if the EFF did it. Or Google. Or whoever is the favorite (or villain)
Regardless of how powerful Microsoft may be, it's still not as powerful as a foreign government, and the EU (or its commission) at that. I am not arguing that SCO is right. I am not arguing that MSFT is "good". I am arguing that 1) transparency is good; 2) if the Commission wanted to be transparent, it could be; and 3) generally, slashdot posters react emotionally with anger to MSFT, without reference to their actual behavior or logic.
Indeed, and my point is that SCO's insistence on such a thing is generally (on slashdot) regarded as a bad thing. Hence, transparency would be considered good there.
And more broadly, too often on /. if MSFT does it, it must be evil. It's simply not always the case.
EU government (and the US gov't for that matter) is entirely too opaque for my preference.
I agree completely, and yet there are posters below arguing. Transparency is a per se good. Lack of transparency is good only in war -- and I mean real declared war where armies are attempting to destroy one another.
Legal proceedings should always be open to the public.
Let's turn it around, and say that SCO wants certain documents kept secret in their case. Is that something the slashdot community (if there is such a thing) would support?
It's very difficult to sell the public on unmanned probes or other harder science. The ISS similarly has failed to catch the public's imagination. What we need is to push the boundaries of where humans can go to get the general public back on board -- when they're there, then money for the other programs is much easier to get. For example, the Voyager probes were approved when the public was about as high on spaceflight as it ever got, and they were not cheap. A NASA that the public (and by extension Congress) is happier with has more freedom in budget and choice of project.