> What I said was more like "I created it, therefore I should be compensated for my time and effort if I choose to allow you to use it."
In order to make this more interesting, would you care to explain exactly why do you think you're entitled to compensation?
You are an intelligent person so I assume that you can give an intelligent explanation.
And no, "because I invested time, effort and resources in it" does not count. See examples below.
Example #1: I invested time, effort and resources in digging a 1000m^3 hole and filling it with used refrigerators. I should be compensated.
Example #2: I created a work of art - a 15m high statue of GWB made entirely of bat guano. I don't understand why nobody wants to buy it (or pay to see it). I should be compensated.
Example #2b: Hey, the guys from across the street made their own guano statue and sold it for $1K. It's not fair, I thought of it first! I should be compensated!
> Are you saying that I should not be compensated for my time and effort to create a work that you derive value from?
For the sake of argument, let's assume I say exactly that. Now please prove me wrong.
Oh, just in case it was not clear, calling me names or questioning my morals does not constitute proof, it does not even count as an intelligent reply.
> No, not because open source is perfect, but because the guy is plainly an idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about, Dr. or no Dr.
Ah, another fine example of the "I don't understand what the man said so he must be an idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about" mentality.
First, try to check a person's credentials before calling him an idiot.
Second, make sure you exactly understand the point that is being argued. Corollary: don't comment untill you RTFA.
Now, to be fair, I cannot understand how an article without a link to said TFA was accepted (unless the inclusion of the words "Open Source" in the title is a guarantee of acceptance. Must try that sometime).
The original article never stated that "The greater danger [...], is that of a OS project forking". Rather, Sauer says:
According to well-known economists Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole, in an article recently published in the Journal of Industrial Economics, open-source software development needs to overcome a number of difficult problems before wide-scale adoption of open-source solutions in industry and government becomes feasible. Two of the more serious problems with open-source software are the "forking" of open-source projects and the orientation of open-source products towards high-end users.
He then proceeds to define "forking" in this context:
The forking of open-source projects occurs when passionate disputes between open-source software developers over product design lead to the splintering of projects into a multitude of varieties. With proprietary software, forking generally does not take place since development is centralized within a firm and disciplined by market forces. Relying on a current open-source product design is, therefore, inherently risky.
So it seems that he is referring more to project splitting than forking. The paper in question, The Scope of Open Source Licensing states:
Forking refers to an internal threat of competing groups moving in different directions and producing incompatible versions of the same initial open source project. It is unclear to us how license type will affect the probability of forking or the effectiveness of the original project leader's response; this topic may reward future research.
Which is, IMHO, a valid concern, although not a major one since it occurs very infrequently. Or possibly, you would like to argue that Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole are also "idiots who don't know what they are talking about"?
Regardless, the "forking" issue is not the major one.
Sauer's article addresses the possibility of Israel's Ministry of Finance abandoning the currently used commercial software in favor of open-source alternatives and their argument that the move will save Israeli taxpayers up to 60% of the cost of continuing to do business with Microsoft and other proprietary software companies.
Sauer says that
There is a common misconception that open-source software, such as Linux, is cost-effective because it can be freely loaded on as many computers as desired without incurring additional license fees. In fact, software license fees comprise only a small percentage of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of software. Most estimates place software acquisition costs between 5% and 8% of TCO. TCO is dominated by costs related to customizing systems, maintaining and servicing systems, and training systems personnel.
> First step is to transfer them all to a lower priced registrar: Reason for this is easy, registrars are now a commodity and the lowest price wins. I use godaddy for everything and have found their customer service to be pretty good.
I would say that the best price/features combination should win.
Personally, I find the package offered by eNom to be very comprehensive, their suppot quite good and the price cheap - as long as you buy through a reseller and not directly from eNom (e.g., $8.88/year from namecheap). If you don't need to use eNom's DNS services, you can buy just a domain name for $5.99. Free dynamic DNS service is a nice addition.
GoDaddy seems to be good too and they have a promotion on.com ($7.95) and.us ($4.95) domains until the end of the year. I wonder how their package compares to eNom's.
> oh yeah its ANNOYING when i stupidly name files! here i was thinking it was > my fault and not the inatimate object that just takes what i give it... duh! > > dont get me started on how i can never remember my aol password! why doesnt > the computer remember it for me? surely this would save people MILLIONS of > hours of time!
I really hate this damned machine I wish that they would sell it It never does quite what I want but only what I tell it
> I have yet to encounter an email that was worth the bloat of HTML. > 99.99% of all html email I get is spam.
If it is not useful to you then it has no use to anyone, right?
>> Sometimes bold type is needed. > I seriously dought the "need."
There is also no "need" for high-level computer languages. After all, Assembly is good enough for Steve Gibson...
> And there are plenty of ways to express emphasis in plain text: just use > *this* like in the old days. Or _this_. Or/this/, if you like.
I often exchange peices of source code via email. Sometimes I'd like to emphasize parts of the code to (indicate changes or draw attention to something). Adding "emphasis" characters does not work well for C++ source that has to compile yet fonts/colours do (while allowing the snippets to be copied and pasted as-is into existing code).
> See also RFC 1855.
1. It was written October 1995. 8 years is a lot of time in the email scene.
2. It says nothing against HTML between consenting adults.
3. The telling statement is, IMO: "A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive."
Bottom line, it is bad form to send HTML-formatted (or RTF-formatted for that matter) email to people that haven't indicated their willingness to receive it. Other than that, the preferred format of communication between people is their business.
>> The man murdered over a million people in his own country, using chemical >> weapons. What possible GOOD could come from him staying in power? > > Those figures are getting higher and higher. Perhaps it would be wise to wait > until the dust settles until we make a judgement about how many people he got > killed?
<Carl Sagan> Billions and Billions... </Carl Sagan>
> I like Agent, and for the same money, Agent gives me a fairly capable newsreader as well. I just wish they'd get moving and get 2.0 out, it's got most of what I've been wanting for the last 4 years.
Agent supports neither IMAP nor SSL/TLS and, as far as I know, Agent 2.0 won't either.
The Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8) reads Congress shall have the power to
"promote the progress of science...by securing for limited times to authors...the exclusive right to their respective writings..."
What does that mean? The easy answer is that scientists and artists alike, who enrich our society with their discoveries and works, are granted an additional incentive to innovate and create new works of art. It's an exchange-share the work with society and society will allow you a limited monopoly. The goal is to disseminate ideas and enrich the public, while creating an incentive for the artist. After a limited time the artist's monopoly would dissolve and the work would return completely to the public.
The concept of "returning" works to the public suggests that no new idea is truly new, that it is only built from some previous societal knowledge. Perhaps this return concept can be best understood through the words of Sir Isaac Newton, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." The Constitution specifies, "limited times" to ensure that artists to not rest on their laurels but continue to innovate.
There is no inherent "right to profit". Copyright is granted by society as an incentive for creating things that enrich society, not the creator.
> If a person creates something, with their mind, their hands, their ideas. > And people still want to used their creation 20, 30, 100 years later why > should they suddenly be out of the loop simply because it was created xyz > years ago?
Not "out of the loop", just "on a level playing field".
Imagine a world where only one company can produce bicycles.
> If people still want their creation they should pay for it, not get it for > free because it is old.
Think about it when you take your children to see Disney's "Cinderella", "Sleeping beauty", "Beauty and the beast", "Bambi", "Aladdin", "Snow white", "Robin hood" or some of the other multitude of their movies based on classic stories.
The only reason that they were able to create those films (and reap huge profits from them) was because the original stories were in the public domain.
> And 5 year copyright? That is an amazingly stupid idea.
>> Even ROT13 qualifies as encryption > > What happens if you become so familiar with ROT13 that you can read it like English (or another language)? > Does that make your brain a circumvention device?
Yes.
Countless corporate and govenrment entities are currently drafting legislation that would outlaw any non-sanctioned use of your brain.
> it has also some of the worst war mongers ever(thinking of sharon of course, but not the only one), even money can't buy you those... they come only with religious fanatics
> In Arabic, 123 would be read as "three and twenty and one hundred". This means that it is written from right to left, just like the rest of the language.
According to what I remember from my Arabic lessons in school, only the units and the tens are reversed. Thus "1945" would be read as "thousand, nine-hundred, five and forty".
I'll verify it with one a native Arabic speaker at work tomorrow (one of the peculiarities of living and working in Canada).
> while biblical Hebrew does use the decimal system more or less, it counts like the arabs (starting from the units, and advancing upwards).
> The writing notation resembles the roman one, and was not decimal.
Two systems were in use: either spelling out the numbers and a numerological system, where each letter has a numberical value (1-9, 10-90, 100-400) and the order does not matter (unless the number is larger than a thousand). However, the numerological system is a later one.
What you are missing is in the US, anyone has the right to sue anyone else. Yes, the RIAA can sue these people and they will have to go to court and defend themsleves. If they are innocent, they will have their day in court and the case will be thrown out. They can also sue the RIAA if they want. They can then sue them for harassing them. OR stealing their initials. Or anything else they want. And the RIAA will have to go and defend themselves in court. This happens daily with many corporations. That is the way the system works. The RIAA isn't abusing any system by suing people, they are using the system in the way it was designed. If you have a grievance you take it to court so it can be decided.
No, you are missing the fact that the system is skewed.
Whoever has the deeper pockets and the resources (read: better lawyers) has the advantage. (1) It usually costs more to fight than to settle. (2) Countersuing is only feasible if you can afford it. A crafty lawyer can drag a suit for years.
In some countries the losing party has to compensate the winning party for their the legal expenses (up to a reasonable, usually court-decided, sum). Not so in the US.
> Courts are only set up to handle cases that are brought in front of them with specific facts. They can rule to the applicability and constitutionality of a piece of legislation as that relates to that case in question. i.e., they do not have any say (or a formal vote) when laws are being passed.
Perhaps the process of challenging the constitutionality of a law should be made easier.
Many (most?) Americans are proud of their constitution. The point that I was trying to make is that having a constitution is not enough.
BTW, thank you for the quotes and links and yes, I do believe that they are as relevant today as they were in their times.
> But a teenager IS a child. A child with 5 more years of legal childhood and 8 more years of actual childhood still ahead of them. A child that is about to enter the most difficult years of his life. Why do you wish to add to his burdens?
The teenager in question is 13. 13 + 8 = 21.
Where I come from, 19 year-olds sometimes have to lead other people into battle, which requires assuming responsibility of other people's lives.
Most of them handle it in a pretty mature way (including those that risk their lives to save a comrade in arms and those that "voluntary" go to jail because they refuse to participate in said battles based on their moral principles).
I would hesitate to call a 21 years old "a child".
> Yes, that's exactly what I am saying - welcome to my opinion! The ultimate decision whether DMCA, or which parts of it, are unconstitutional is up to the courts... and that hasn't fully played out yet. 3 or 5 years is nothing in legal terms; often times it takes much longer for any meaningful case to reach the Supreme Court. > > In part, that's what corporations that purchased the DMCA could be wary of also. They wouldn't want to risk to have the whole act or major parts of it ruled as unconstitutional by the SCOTUS; they'd rather keep their controls and use "cease and desist" tactics and other threats, so they should prefer that their cases stay at lower levels with, their hope, much higher levels of success.
I am not arguing with your opinion. Just adding mine, which is:
Laws should be checked for constitutiality before they are passed. If that is not feasible, they should be re-examined as soon as sufficient doubt arises.
Who was it that said that price of freedom is eternal vigilance?
A constitution that is not preemptively upheld is not worth the paper (or is it vellum?) it is written on.
Nothing to do with the net, everything to do with raising your children.
Set a loose framework of rules that will give them enough room to make their own decisions (and mistakes) and experience the consequences but prevent them from doing things that you would absolutely, never ever accept, regardless of age. Explain the rules in advance, make sure they understand and try to make them agree in principle. Then, follow these rules religiously, always be consistent but be fair.
> Don't ever lie to us about what you're doing.
That should be, IMO, be rule #1: Never lie to us about anything.
Teaching them the meaning of trust and accepting responsibility for their actions is one of the most important lessons you can give.
Slashdot Mirror
> The funny thing is, if it was your creation being pirated in Asia, you'd be the first person suing.
Arguing that the rules need to be changed is one thing.
Not taking advantage of the rules when everybody else does is quite another.
> What I said was more like "I created it, therefore I should be compensated for my time and effort if I choose to allow you to use it."
In order to make this more interesting, would you care to explain exactly why do you think you're entitled to compensation?
You are an intelligent person so I assume that you can give an intelligent explanation.
And no, "because I invested time, effort and resources in it" does not count. See examples below.
Example #1:
I invested time, effort and resources in digging a 1000m^3 hole and filling it with used refrigerators. I should be compensated.
Example #2:
I created a work of art - a 15m high statue of GWB made entirely of bat guano. I don't understand why nobody wants to buy it (or pay to see it). I should be compensated.
Example #2b:
Hey, the guys from across the street made their own guano statue and sold it for $1K. It's not fair, I thought of it first! I should be compensated!
> Are you saying that I should not be compensated for my time and effort to create a work that you derive value from?
For the sake of argument, let's assume I say exactly that. Now please prove me wrong.
Oh, just in case it was not clear, calling me names or questioning my morals does not constitute proof, it does not even count as an intelligent reply.
> It's called "fair use," eh.
I believe the correct spelling is "eh?"
Ah, another fine example of the "I don't understand what the man said so he must be an idiot who doesn't know what he is talking about" mentality.
First, try to check a person's credentials before calling him an idiot.
Second, make sure you exactly understand the point that is being argued.
Corollary: don't comment untill you RTFA.
Now, to be fair, I cannot understand how an article without a link to said TFA was accepted (unless the inclusion of the words "Open Source" in the title is a guarantee of acceptance. Must try that sometime).
The original article never stated that "The greater danger [...], is that of a OS project forking". Rather, Sauer says:
He then proceeds to define "forking" in this context:
So it seems that he is referring more to project splitting than forking.
The paper in question, The Scope of Open Source Licensing states:
Which is, IMHO, a valid concern, although not a major one since it occurs very infrequently.
Or possibly, you would like to argue that Josh Lerner and Jean Tirole are also "idiots who don't know what they are talking about"?
Regardless, the "forking" issue is not the major one.
Sauer's article addresses the possibility of Israel's Ministry of Finance abandoning the currently used commercial software in favor of open-source alternatives and their argument that the move will save Israeli taxpayers up to 60% of the cost of continuing to do business with Microsoft and other proprietary software companies.
Sauer says that
He then continues to point the real problem:
> First step is to transfer them all to a lower priced registrar: Reason for this is easy, registrars are now a commodity and the lowest price wins. I use godaddy for everything and have found their customer service to be pretty good.
.com ($7.95) and .us ($4.95) domains until the end of the year.
I would say that the best price/features combination should win.
Personally, I find the package offered by eNom to be very comprehensive, their suppot quite good and the price cheap - as long as you buy through a reseller and not directly from eNom (e.g., $8.88/year from namecheap).
If you don't need to use eNom's DNS services, you can buy just a domain name for $5.99.
Free dynamic DNS service is a nice addition.
GoDaddy seems to be good too and they have a promotion on
I wonder how their package compares to eNom's.
Diplomacy.
No luck element.
Simple rules.
Complex human interaction.
> oh yeah its ANNOYING when i stupidly name files! here i was thinking it was
> my fault and not the inatimate object that just takes what i give it... duh!
>
> dont get me started on how i can never remember my aol password! why doesnt
> the computer remember it for me? surely this would save people MILLIONS of
> hours of time!
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it
It never does quite what I want
but only what I tell it
> I have yet to encounter an email that was worth the bloat of HTML.
/this/, if you like.
> 99.99% of all html email I get is spam.
If it is not useful to you then it has no use to anyone, right?
>> Sometimes bold type is needed.
> I seriously dought the "need."
There is also no "need" for high-level computer languages. After all, Assembly
is good enough for Steve Gibson...
> And there are plenty of ways to express emphasis in plain text: just use
> *this* like in the old days. Or _this_. Or
I often exchange peices of source code via email. Sometimes I'd like to
emphasize parts of the code to (indicate changes or draw attention to
something). Adding "emphasis" characters does not work well for C++ source
that has to compile yet fonts/colours do (while allowing the snippets to be
copied and pasted as-is into existing code).
> See also RFC 1855.
1. It was written October 1995. 8 years is a lot of time in the email scene.
2. It says nothing against HTML between consenting adults.
3. The telling statement is, IMO: "A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in
what you send and liberal in what you receive."
Bottom line, it is bad form to send HTML-formatted (or RTF-formatted for that
matter) email to people that haven't indicated their willingness to receive it.
Other than that, the preferred format of communication between people is their
business.
>> The man murdered over a million people in his own country, using chemical
>> weapons. What possible GOOD could come from him staying in power?
>
> Those figures are getting higher and higher. Perhaps it would be wise to wait
> until the dust settles until we make a judgement about how many people he got
> killed?
<Carl Sagan> Billions and Billions... </Carl Sagan>
> I like Agent, and for the same money, Agent gives me a fairly capable newsreader as well. I just wish they'd get moving and get 2.0 out, it's got most of what I've been wanting for the last 4 years.
Agent supports neither IMAP nor SSL/TLS and, as far as I know, Agent 2.0 won't either.
> I dont understand why things should go into public domain after xyz years,
> can someone explain this to me?
I could try but this "Public Knowledge" page does a better job.
There is no inherent "right to profit". Copyright is granted by society as an incentive for creating things that enrich society, not the creator.
> If a person creates something, with their mind, their hands, their ideas.
> And people still want to used their creation 20, 30, 100 years later why
> should they suddenly be out of the loop simply because it was created xyz
> years ago?
Not "out of the loop", just "on a level playing field".
Imagine a world where only one company can produce bicycles.
> If people still want their creation they should pay for it, not get it for
> free because it is old.
Think about it when you take your children to see Disney's "Cinderella", "Sleeping beauty", "Beauty and the beast", "Bambi", "Aladdin", "Snow white", "Robin hood" or some of the other multitude of their movies based on classic stories.
The only reason that they were able to create those films (and reap huge profits from them) was because the original stories were in the public domain.
> And 5 year copyright? That is an amazingly stupid idea.
Not any more stupid than min(120, life+95).
>> Even ROT13 qualifies as encryption
>
> What happens if you become so familiar with ROT13 that you can read it like English (or another language)?
> Does that make your brain a circumvention device?
Yes.
Countless corporate and govenrment entities are currently drafting legislation that would outlaw any non-sanctioned use of your brain.
> I have her blessing to screw nearly anyone I want to.
I take it you're a lawyer, right?
>> Now if ents really were as stupid as Jackson suggests, why weren't they destroyed or perverted in all those 7000+ years of existence?
> Well, in all fairness, they did manage to misplace their wives...
I am not sure this is an indication of stupidity.
> it has also some of the worst war mongers ever(thinking of sharon of course, but not the only one), even money can't buy you those... they come only with religious fanatics
Dubya is an Israeli? Live and learn...
I'd like to correct some of the parent's mistakes
> In Arabic, 123 would be read as "three and twenty and one hundred". This means that it is written from right to left, just like the rest of the language.
According to what I remember from my Arabic lessons in school, only the units and the tens are reversed. Thus "1945" would be read as "thousand, nine-hundred, five and forty".
I'll verify it with one a native Arabic speaker at work tomorrow (one of the peculiarities of living and working in Canada).
> while biblical Hebrew does use the decimal system more or less, it counts like the arabs (starting from the units, and advancing upwards).
Actually, both upwards and downwards systems were used.
> The writing notation resembles the roman one, and was not decimal.
Two systems were in use: either spelling out the numbers and a numerological system, where each letter has a numberical value (1-9, 10-90, 100-400) and the order does not matter (unless the number is larger than a thousand). However, the numerological system is a later one.
Speaking of older protocols.
Can anyone post a summary of the currently used P2P protocols (and the clients that implement them)with some pros and cons of each?
... which a rebadged plextor.
Whoever has the deeper pockets and the resources (read: better lawyers) has the advantage.
(1) It usually costs more to fight than to settle.
(2) Countersuing is only feasible if you can afford it. A crafty lawyer can drag a suit for years.
In some countries the losing party has to compensate the winning party for their the legal expenses (up to a reasonable, usually court-decided, sum). Not so in the US.
> Courts are only set up to handle cases that are brought in front of them with specific facts. They can rule to the applicability and constitutionality of a piece of legislation as that relates to that case in question. i.e., they do not have any say (or a formal vote) when laws are being passed.
Perhaps the process of challenging the constitutionality of a law should be made easier.
Many (most?) Americans are proud of their constitution.
The point that I was trying to make is that having a constitution is not enough.
BTW, thank you for the quotes and links and yes, I do believe that they are as relevant today as they were in their times.
> The moral of this story is that clever children can cheat their way out of a lot of parental and societal rules.
If your children feel the need to cheat you, you must be doing something seriously wrong.
> But a teenager IS a child. A child with 5 more years of legal childhood and 8 more years of actual childhood still ahead of them. A child that is about to enter the most difficult years of his life. Why do you wish to add to his burdens?
The teenager in question is 13. 13 + 8 = 21.
Where I come from, 19 year-olds sometimes have to lead other people into battle, which requires assuming responsibility of other people's lives.
Most of them handle it in a pretty mature way (including those that risk their lives to save a comrade in arms and those that "voluntary" go to jail because they refuse to participate in said battles based on their moral principles).
I would hesitate to call a 21 years old "a child".
> Yes, that's exactly what I am saying - welcome to my opinion! The ultimate decision whether DMCA, or which parts of it, are unconstitutional is up to the courts... and that hasn't fully played out yet. 3 or 5 years is nothing in legal terms; often times it takes much longer for any meaningful case to reach the Supreme Court.
>
> In part, that's what corporations that purchased the DMCA could be wary of also. They wouldn't want to risk to have the whole act or major parts of it ruled as unconstitutional by the SCOTUS; they'd rather keep their controls and use "cease and desist" tactics and other threats, so they should prefer that their cases stay at lower levels with, their hope, much higher levels of success.
I am not arguing with your opinion. Just adding mine, which is:
Laws should be checked for constitutiality before they are passed.
If that is not feasible, they should be re-examined as soon as sufficient doubt arises.
Who was it that said that price of freedom is eternal vigilance?
A constitution that is not preemptively upheld is not worth the paper (or is it vellum?) it is written on.
Nothing to do with the net, everything to do with raising your children.
Set a loose framework of rules that will give them enough room to make their own decisions (and mistakes) and experience the consequences but prevent them from doing things that you would absolutely, never ever accept, regardless of age.
Explain the rules in advance, make sure they understand and try to make them agree in principle. Then, follow these rules religiously, always be consistent but be fair.
> Don't ever lie to us about what you're doing.
That should be, IMO, be rule #1: Never lie to us about anything.
Teaching them the meaning of trust and accepting responsibility for their actions is one of the most important lessons you can give.
> DMCA is overreaching and unconstitutional as is
So, what you're saying is that the DMCA is unconstitutional, yet it has been in your law books for five years and is actively applied.
So much for your constitution...