no, even if the torrents used on tpb were predominantly used for pirated material (by which i assume you mean material whereby the owner does not have the right to distribute copies), it would be as if smith&wesson didn't make any guns but instead made a newspaper in which you could see adverts for guns.
a friend and i have started watching WWE stuff. the trouble is, in the country where i like you can only get shortened versions broadcast irregularly. without tpb we wouldn't be able to see the whole shows. until now, we've bought about 120$ of merchandising from the WWE as well, so i don't feel particularly bad about downloading the shows.
no the main problem is proprietary software. the amd64 could establish itself because it supported the existing proprietary software. it would be interesting to know what percentage of x86-64 systems are still running 32-bit software exclusively. i'd estimate about 90%. the reason? broken or missing flash for x86-64, broken or missing windows, broken or missing microsoft office, broken or missing photoshop, broken or missing autocad etc.
free software has the advantage that, if you aren't embedding assembler, the entire free software stack should work for a new architecture after adding a new target to gcc and a couple of assembly routines to the kernel code. this is the reason why i can change seamlessly from hppa over sparc32 over ppc over x86 over x86-64 over alpha over mips for all my daily needs without having to know which architecture i'm using.
and yet strangely someone bothered to translate anne rice into danish, and i doubt that even one percent of the danish are interested in buying those books.
dell and the other oems are pissed at microsoft for dictating their own business tactics for a decade. now with vista they have sensed blood in the water and are desperately trying strategies to further undermine microsoft's position.
interestingly this is more than the amount of memory the mmu for the athlon 64 can manage, it being limited to 48 significant bits in the 64 bit address space.
Not being able to run some windows apps is the reason 90% of windows users out there dont use linux.
i know it's hyperbole, but the reason 90% of windows users don't use linux is because windows is what came on their machines and they have no reason to change.
on a similar note, a few years ago now i played the goldberg variations. i must have practised 2 or 3 hours a day for 6 months, so we're looking at 500 hours total practice time. if i gave concerts more often and played them really well, i can imagine myself recouping this investment in a few months.
the company i used to work at recently decided to move to exchange. it has been a disaster, but they refuse to see it. in the ca. 6 months they've been using it, it's been offline for at least a fortnight in total. at some stage i quite regretted my refusal to become dependent on exchange, because it meant that i could work while others had the day off. i'm usually a free software advocate and don't think that much of the open-sourcers, but in this case they certainly have a point.
the web email i find terribly unintuitive. i sometimes had to search for minutes to find the functionality i needed. in the end it was often quicker to print the email i wanted to send and then put it on the desk of the recipient.
the lemote seems to be about as free as a system gets nowadays. i do not know however, if you can download schematics to the chip and microcode. you can do this with the opensparc processor, btw
but it isn't an applied science like astrophysics where you have to spend billions on equipment to find something new. it could be a free field where everybody has access to the sum knowledge and a machine to allow experimentation.
but no, that wasn't to be. instead we have patents on patterns of bits and bytes and mathematical algorithms. it really is quite sad and shows the weakness of government in the face of the corporations.
That is where prior art comes in. I think open source could be more creative than it is, and if someone had implemented this before Apple, then Apple couldn't get or defend a patent on this.
unfortunately, no. to the best of my knowledge it takes a lot of money to challenge a patent.
and the party that gets the best deal will be the party with the best lawyers. meanwhile, free software developers will be unable to use the idea because they could never afford to license it.
in the beginning, computing (like any theoretical science) was about learning and work and inventiveness and intelligence and dedication. now it's about who has the most money for lawyers.
The problem with charging to license a patent is that in some areas the money needed to license a patent would be the only expenditure. Patenting a physical thing that takes a large amount of money to create anyway is not a problem---if Sony develops a new technology for flatscreen tvs, then anybody who wants to use this technology to make a product will have to be rich enough to make the product anyway.
patenting software techniques is a whole different thing because the patent is the only thing stopping others from implementing this technique. instead of being an intellectual field where you get rewarded for the quality of your work, software development becomes a game for the very rich where you can buy certain must-have technologies.
Notepad reads and creates standards compliant ascii and (to the best of my knowledge) utf8 texts.
MS Paint reads and creates standards compliant jpeg, png, bmp and other formats.
Internet Explorer does not correctly parse standards compliant html, css and javascript. Also, the internet browser is one of the main methods of social interaction in the modern times. When a monopolist implements a broken standard here they can shut others out of social interaction. Examples of this are banking sites which only work with IE. You would be hard pressed to find a text which can only be opened in Notepad or an image which can only be edited in MS Paint.
it really depends on how much stronger intellectual property becomes. i'm sure we can all imagine a world where in order to reduce piracy we are not allowed to know how network-protocols work and all machines have to identify themselves with a unique number before they can join a network.
instead of boasting you've toppled MS, try going back to fixing the numerous issues with linux software that keep it off the desktop.
i find it telling that the microsoft borg mentality has so utterly infused you that you don't realise that some people who are involved in free software can do one thing while others do another thing.
one of the troubles of using closed-source software is that you often force others to use the same. i had this situation recently when i was sent a pdf with some strange extensions. to view it, i had to go to a computer with adobe acrobat reader. that was pretty annoying. now i don't know what sort of data formats photoshop uses for projects. i know adobe has written some non-standard extensions for png which can only be viewed properly using adobe software.
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i don't know about ireland but in germany there is a debate as to the legality of having an unsecured wifi net.
no, even if the torrents used on tpb were predominantly used for pirated material (by which i assume you mean material whereby the owner does not have the right to distribute copies), it would be as if smith&wesson didn't make any guns but instead made a newspaper in which you could see adverts for guns.
i know how you feel.
a friend and i have started watching WWE stuff. the trouble is, in the country where i like you can only get shortened versions broadcast irregularly. without tpb we wouldn't be able to see the whole shows. until now, we've bought about 120$ of merchandising from the WWE as well, so i don't feel particularly bad about downloading the shows.
no the main problem is proprietary software. the amd64 could establish itself because it supported the existing proprietary software. it would be interesting to know what percentage of x86-64 systems are still running 32-bit software exclusively. i'd estimate about 90%. the reason? broken or missing flash for x86-64, broken or missing windows, broken or missing microsoft office, broken or missing photoshop, broken or missing autocad etc.
free software has the advantage that, if you aren't embedding assembler, the entire free software stack should work for a new architecture after adding a new target to gcc and a couple of assembly routines to the kernel code. this is the reason why i can change seamlessly from hppa over sparc32 over ppc over x86 over x86-64 over alpha over mips for all my daily needs without having to know which architecture i'm using.
and yet strangely someone bothered to translate anne rice into danish, and i doubt that even one percent of the danish are interested in buying those books.
let me know if this is too subtle for you.
yeah, but that's not why dell's doing it.
dell and the other oems are pissed at microsoft for dictating their own business tactics for a decade. now with vista they have sensed blood in the water and are desperately trying strategies to further undermine microsoft's position.
basically, yes.
if cuba tried to distribute gpl software without source, i'm sure the fsf could get ibm and google to go ape-shit about it.
interestingly this is more than the amount of memory the mmu for the athlon 64 can manage, it being limited to 48 significant bits in the 64 bit address space.
Not being able to run some windows apps is the reason 90% of windows users out there dont use linux.
i know it's hyperbole, but the reason 90% of windows users don't use linux is because windows is what came on their machines and they have no reason to change.
40000 for equipment is a lot.
on a similar note, a few years ago now i played the goldberg variations. i must have practised 2 or 3 hours a day for 6 months, so we're looking at 500 hours total practice time. if i gave concerts more often and played them really well, i can imagine myself recouping this investment in a few months.
i think it has something to do with intel's sabotaging of the olpc project and their continued insider dealing against amd.
the company i used to work at recently decided to move to exchange. it has been a disaster, but they refuse to see it. in the ca. 6 months they've been using it, it's been offline for at least a fortnight in total. at some stage i quite regretted my refusal to become dependent on exchange, because it meant that i could work while others had the day off. i'm usually a free software advocate and don't think that much of the open-sourcers, but in this case they certainly have a point.
the web email i find terribly unintuitive. i sometimes had to search for minutes to find the functionality i needed. in the end it was often quicker to print the email i wanted to send and then put it on the desk of the recipient.
have a look here: http://guiodic.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/richard-stallman-interview/
the lemote seems to be about as free as a system gets nowadays. i do not know however, if you can download schematics to the chip and microcode. you can do this with the opensparc processor, btw
but it isn't an applied science like astrophysics where you have to spend billions on equipment to find something new. it could be a free field where everybody has access to the sum knowledge and a machine to allow experimentation.
but no, that wasn't to be. instead we have patents on patterns of bits and bytes and mathematical algorithms. it really is quite sad and shows the weakness of government in the face of the corporations.
unfortunately, no. to the best of my knowledge it takes a lot of money to challenge a patent.
and the party that gets the best deal will be the party with the best lawyers. meanwhile, free software developers will be unable to use the idea because they could never afford to license it.
in the beginning, computing (like any theoretical science) was about learning and work and inventiveness and intelligence and dedication. now it's about who has the most money for lawyers.
The problem with charging to license a patent is that in some areas the money needed to license a patent would be the only expenditure. Patenting a physical thing that takes a large amount of money to create anyway is not a problem---if Sony develops a new technology for flatscreen tvs, then anybody who wants to use this technology to make a product will have to be rich enough to make the product anyway.
patenting software techniques is a whole different thing because the patent is the only thing stopping others from implementing this technique. instead of being an intellectual field where you get rewarded for the quality of your work, software development becomes a game for the very rich where you can buy certain must-have technologies.
Notepad reads and creates standards compliant ascii and (to the best of my knowledge) utf8 texts.
MS Paint reads and creates standards compliant jpeg, png, bmp and other formats.
Internet Explorer does not correctly parse standards compliant html, css and javascript. Also, the internet browser is one of the main methods of social interaction in the modern times. When a monopolist implements a broken standard here they can shut others out of social interaction. Examples of this are banking sites which only work with IE. You would be hard pressed to find a text which can only be opened in Notepad or an image which can only be edited in MS Paint.
do you now understand the difference?
it really depends on how much stronger intellectual property becomes. i'm sure we can all imagine a world where in order to reduce piracy we are not allowed to know how network-protocols work and all machines have to identify themselves with a unique number before they can join a network.
the standard european plug is just as small as the american and works on a net of 220V
instead of boasting you've toppled MS, try going back to fixing the numerous issues with linux software that keep it off the desktop.
i find it telling that the microsoft borg mentality has so utterly infused you that you don't realise that some people who are involved in free software can do one thing while others do another thing.
one of the troubles of using closed-source software is that you often force others to use the same. i had this situation recently when i was sent a pdf with some strange extensions. to view it, i had to go to a computer with adobe acrobat reader. that was pretty annoying. now i don't know what sort of data formats photoshop uses for projects. i know adobe has written some non-standard extensions for png which can only be viewed properly using adobe software.
well i searched the net and it looks like i'm right that there isn't a flash player for arm, but they plan to release one in 2009
i presume it uses gnash or swfdec. why don't you go look?