One of Mr. Harris's legal theories is that a 'company is a physical thing, and as such analogous to a machine.'
I thought the legal representation of a company was as a legal entity comparable to an individual for tax and other purposes. Then, his argument breaks down because he'd be implying that individuals are analogous to machines...
My right run a business that *distributes* software according to the GPL license is as restricted as Hitler's ability to fight a land war during the winter in Russia.
The [GPL] license doesn't restrict your use of the software and thus does not impose morally unfair conditions upon users of GPL software.
The GPL imposes the restriction that I cannot modify software that's distributed under the GPL and then distribute that however I want. I am forced to choose between (a) not distributing it, and (b) distributing it according to the GPL. I am free to sell it however I'd like, but I cannot tell somebody that I sell it to that they can't distribute it however they'd want. Ergo, if the entity who buys my software feels empowered they're free to publish my modifications on the open internet, destroying the perceived value of the modification that I made to the original GPL software that I had gotten. Therefore, the conclusion to reach is that GPL (while being user-friendly) is less business friendly because it drives businesses to a "GPL application and infrastructure support" revenue stream and away from an "Application Innovation" revenue stream. Those who have taken economics 101 might realize that applications and infrastructure that are innovative, intuitive, and don't need 3rd party support are preferable.
Now... I agree with you. "Digital bits" (be they licensed, copyrighted, or patented) shouldn't be artificially restricted from being moved around all over the place (and to that extent, I disagree with selling digital information as well). However, by saying the consumers should be able to unlock the bits preventing them from accessing their "moral" rights is on par with saying big software companies should be able to "unlock" the wording in the GPL that prevents them from subverting it.
I would say... if it has artificial "locks"... DON'T BUY IT in the first place. This will effectively destroy DRM faster than any flamewar argument, so that the only people buying will be the people who don't know any better... and eventually they'll get pissed off enough to start looking elsewhere. No?
At this point this discussion should probably be modded Flaimwar, but from the biased opinion of a self-publisher and a GPL content consumer, I think both arguments are correct. GPL advocates need to differentiate why they should be able to disable the rights claimed by DRM content or else it comes off as "we want freedom to do what we want (in the interests of consumers) AND to prevent you from doing what you want (in the interests of producers).
Not respecting the rights that DRM imposes isn't too far off from not respecting the right that GPL imposes. Either copyright is valuable, or it isn't. Pick a side.... and know that you can't have your cake and eat it too. There are benevolent and greedy consequences on each side of the copyright argument.
Presumably there are enough copies in circulation that have been vetted by the author at the time of publication that they are readily agreed to be correct.
I've found type-o's in Neil Gaiman books. That sort of good-natured wrongness is fine to fix from printing to printing... it's mere copy-editting. But the type of changes I'm thinking of erode the context of the manuscript by changing the fundamental story. That's what is feared could be easily lost when all the power is in one set of hands.
This is exactly true. AFAIK, libraries still *pay* for the copies of books that come into their system. They have budgets taken from taxpayer dollars for (a) the library staff, (b) the costs of maintaining the property where the library is located, and (c) buying new books.
Basically, the authors still get paid from the funds generated by the books that sit on library shelves. It's possible that Google wants to digitize (a) and (b) out of the revenue streams and figure out how to fund (c) so that all deadtree libraries essentially before obsolete.
Of course, making deadtree libraries obsolete is a step in the direction of making deadtree books obsolete... and I would emphatically object to that. Printed copies should always exist for the single reason to ensuring that power mongers like Google or the government can't deliberately or inadvertently make subtle changes to the text without it being independently verified to be the "incorrect" version.
A hardware store? So that they'll compete against Dell and Best Buy and MicroCenter and CDW and every other sales group of hardware? Screw that. I'd rather see Linux hardware reviews. Graphics cards, processors, micro-controllers, displays, and specialized user interface devices (think touchscreens and Wiimotes). Then, extort^H^H^H^H^H^H^H allow advertisers to link to their own sales page to drive sales to their storefronts.
If I could logon and read a review about how I could buy XYZ device with my Linux desktop, I'd be apt to click on "Buy Here" links at the various vendors.
And reviews could be driven by readers and vetted by staff of the site. Lord knows there are countless individuals doing interesting things with hardware that supports Linux and they'd be willing to share their experiences. It's just that proofreading and providing an editors attention to detail is often needed to increase the understandability of what they've written.
Re: Forum (you're correct)
Re: Wiki (you're not correct. I'd rather see articles written and published that serves as references posted to the real Wikipedia. Linux is sufficiently important enough that encyclopedic information on it doesn't need it's own special playground. Plus, I don't want yet-another-site-login for editing technology content information.)
Who could possibly want to disturb such a vibrant ecosystem by delivering content directly from the author to their readers efficiently?
Your diatribe of people taking a cut from booksales neglected the original author of whatever book was being sold.
Personally, I'd love a world where I could give away my writing for free and then live off of money generated from readers paying me for whatever they thought my work was worth. If I could get 100,000 people to pay me $1 each, I'd be happy as heaven. Though... if you sent that $1 through PayPal or USPS or some other transaction system then the powers that be would take approximately $0.32 for "transaction fees".
River saved their asses on at least two occassions. She played a critical role securing the ship during the mission to bring Mal and Wash back from their torture sessions and she played "I am Serenity" during the episode when the bounty hunter captured the entire crew so he could turn River over to the authorities for a cash prize. Also, she was the main protagonist during the movie.
(1) Mal, (2) Kaylee, (3) River, (4) Zoe, (5) Wash, (6) Jayne, (7) Simon, and (8) the Sheppard. Inara only rented the extra craft for her personal business enterprises.
No... a patent gives you the right to prevent somebody from doing business with the thing that you've patented during the period of time that the patent is valid.
Author's also have the ability to self-publish and setup Amazon to manage their sales. This way they don't have to pay publishers, but they have to pay Amazon (a mere 55% of the non-discounted cover price for each sale), because operating a warehouse and shipping department is apparently more complicated than writing a book.
Mind you, this doesn't include the extra percentage of whatever the printing fees are, which the author would have had to pay for separately.
This means to make $1 for each sale, the author needs to price his work that costs $4-6 to print on a small run, multiplied by two, and you end up with $9 to $13 books (that haven't been through a publisher). And this gets the author a mere 10% of sales, so more realistic pricing is $15 to $20 for a low-quality paperback so the author can earn 30% of the revenue that his or her book generates (i.e. $3 or $4 per sale). Crazy, huh?
If it isn't 99.99% compatible, it isn't getting on my machine.
Your statement assumes that you require an OS to be compatible with at least 9,999 out of every 10,000 components in your system. Between my keyboard, mouse, harddrive, monitor, usb slots, firewire, ethernet card, wireless card, motherboard, and power adapter (ten components)... I'd say the OS should be 100% compatible. Beyond that, I'd blame device manufactures and software development companies for not provided me with the right code to use their products. But 99.99% is simply a fun number you pulled from your ass, because even if you did have 9,999 completely functional components in your computer, if there was no compatibility for a mouse, you'd be pissed off.
for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for a cheap and easy-to-buy codex...
Me thinks the author is being a bit biased since this is what he writes. I hate to break it to you Cory but long-form narratives are EXACTLY what an e-book reader is good for.
I think Cory's talking about computer monitors and smart phone displays rather than things like the Kindle or (to a greater extent) e-Ink Readers which are designed to be easy on the eyes.
I've never had the luxury of doing it because e-Book Readers are too expensive for me, but if I can curl up in bed and comfortably digest books on them, I'd imagine Cory would agree this is a fine way to read.
NASA also has the ability to hire professional writers with technical backgrounds. You might not want to believe it, but the vast majority of Slashdot (caveat emptor: with a decent editor) could do a grand job administering a NASA blog.
It's food for any argument against any web service that doesn't publish it's reliability information or publicize the data for what types of mechanisms it has in place in case of disasters like a corrupt database, fried motherboard, or busted hard drive.
There's a design methodology that's used by NASA for manned missions: Any individual component should be able to fail without compromising the mission. Of course, in the last few decades we've seen 2 out of 5 Shuttles go ka-boom! so obviously this NASA guideline isn't enough and it's *REALLY* hard to prevent failure when a perfect storm of multiple systems experience failure at the same time.
So if anything, I'd say this is an argument that supports robust, reliable, fault-tolerant design rather than just kludging a half dozen systems together and calling it a "web service".
You've never read the book you are referencing, right? Because BB relied on snitches to turn people in. They trained kids to report when their parents broke the rules.
Why don't you go back and actually read 1984 before you continue posting Big Brother FUD on it. The real implication of the novel is exactly what your clueless post indicated... that your friends will turn you in.
If you dig around long enough, they argue that the real purpose of the cameras is to "help in the case of a city evacuation". The images from the cams suck though. I'd expect better if they wanted to secretly spy on us. Perhaps the only things these will catch is the next group who tries to install LightBrite guerrilla advertising in the Porter Square.
Honestly, I'm not too worried if the Department of Homeland Security catches me biking to work in Cambridge. What I don't like is the traffic cameras that send you tickets when you run red lights. Those suck.
I love librivox.org too... but can you honestly say that you'd prefer it over a professionally done recording using equipment that doesn't Pop-P's or commit other unpleasant listening experiences?
I'd estimate that 1 out of every 5 of the lesser known works is recorded at sufficiently bad quality to make listening to it a bad experience. There's an Aldus Huxley book that proves my point (Yellow Something-or-other), where the reader was obviously stopping the recording whenever he messed up and the dead air between the breaks after he spliced it together was absolutely distracting.
Anyway... I think the writer's guild should wake up and smell the pizza because they're missing huge revenue streams by setting their prices in the $30+ range for works that thousands would spend $10 on.
And FWIW, I think the unnaturalness of the Kindle will make it good for non-fiction and terrible for dramatic works of fiction that requires inflection. Everything else will fall into some middle ground, though the Writer's Guild has to realize that they should easily be able to compete on quality for audiobook recordings done via software (and if they can't, then that market [the sale of audiobooks] ought to die).
Slashdot Mirror
One of Mr. Harris's legal theories is that a 'company is a physical thing, and as such analogous to a machine.'
I thought the legal representation of a company was as a legal entity comparable to an individual for tax and other purposes. Then, his argument breaks down because he'd be implying that individuals are analogous to machines...
Self-Godwin... FTW
My right run a business that *distributes* software according to the GPL license is as restricted as Hitler's ability to fight a land war during the winter in Russia.
???
Profit!
The [GPL] license doesn't restrict your use of the software and thus does not impose morally unfair conditions upon users of GPL software.
The GPL imposes the restriction that I cannot modify software that's distributed under the GPL and then distribute that however I want. I am forced to choose between (a) not distributing it, and (b) distributing it according to the GPL. I am free to sell it however I'd like, but I cannot tell somebody that I sell it to that they can't distribute it however they'd want. Ergo, if the entity who buys my software feels empowered they're free to publish my modifications on the open internet, destroying the perceived value of the modification that I made to the original GPL software that I had gotten. Therefore, the conclusion to reach is that GPL (while being user-friendly) is less business friendly because it drives businesses to a "GPL application and infrastructure support" revenue stream and away from an "Application Innovation" revenue stream. Those who have taken economics 101 might realize that applications and infrastructure that are innovative, intuitive, and don't need 3rd party support are preferable.
Now... I agree with you. "Digital bits" (be they licensed, copyrighted, or patented) shouldn't be artificially restricted from being moved around all over the place (and to that extent, I disagree with selling digital information as well). However, by saying the consumers should be able to unlock the bits preventing them from accessing their "moral" rights is on par with saying big software companies should be able to "unlock" the wording in the GPL that prevents them from subverting it.
I would say... if it has artificial "locks"... DON'T BUY IT in the first place. This will effectively destroy DRM faster than any flamewar argument, so that the only people buying will be the people who don't know any better... and eventually they'll get pissed off enough to start looking elsewhere. No?
At this point this discussion should probably be modded Flaimwar, but from the biased opinion of a self-publisher and a GPL content consumer, I think both arguments are correct. GPL advocates need to differentiate why they should be able to disable the rights claimed by DRM content or else it comes off as "we want freedom to do what we want (in the interests of consumers) AND to prevent you from doing what you want (in the interests of producers).
Not respecting the rights that DRM imposes isn't too far off from not respecting the right that GPL imposes. Either copyright is valuable, or it isn't. Pick a side.... and know that you can't have your cake and eat it too. There are benevolent and greedy consequences on each side of the copyright argument.
Presumably there are enough copies in circulation that have been vetted by the author at the time of publication that they are readily agreed to be correct.
I've found type-o's in Neil Gaiman books. That sort of good-natured wrongness is fine to fix from printing to printing... it's mere copy-editting. But the type of changes I'm thinking of erode the context of the manuscript by changing the fundamental story. That's what is feared could be easily lost when all the power is in one set of hands.
This is exactly true. AFAIK, libraries still *pay* for the copies of books that come into their system. They have budgets taken from taxpayer dollars for (a) the library staff, (b) the costs of maintaining the property where the library is located, and (c) buying new books.
Basically, the authors still get paid from the funds generated by the books that sit on library shelves. It's possible that Google wants to digitize (a) and (b) out of the revenue streams and figure out how to fund (c) so that all deadtree libraries essentially before obsolete.
Of course, making deadtree libraries obsolete is a step in the direction of making deadtree books obsolete... and I would emphatically object to that. Printed copies should always exist for the single reason to ensuring that power mongers like Google or the government can't deliberately or inadvertently make subtle changes to the text without it being independently verified to be the "incorrect" version.
A hardware store? So that they'll compete against Dell and Best Buy and MicroCenter and CDW and every other sales group of hardware? Screw that. I'd rather see Linux hardware reviews. Graphics cards, processors, micro-controllers, displays, and specialized user interface devices (think touchscreens and Wiimotes). Then, extort^H^H^H^H^H^H^H allow advertisers to link to their own sales page to drive sales to their storefronts.
If I could logon and read a review about how I could buy XYZ device with my Linux desktop, I'd be apt to click on "Buy Here" links at the various vendors.
And reviews could be driven by readers and vetted by staff of the site. Lord knows there are countless individuals doing interesting things with hardware that supports Linux and they'd be willing to share their experiences. It's just that proofreading and providing an editors attention to detail is often needed to increase the understandability of what they've written.
Re: Forum (you're correct)
Re: Wiki (you're not correct. I'd rather see articles written and published that serves as references posted to the real Wikipedia. Linux is sufficiently important enough that encyclopedic information on it doesn't need it's own special playground. Plus, I don't want yet-another-site-login for editing technology content information.)
Who could possibly want to disturb such a vibrant ecosystem by delivering content directly from the author to their readers efficiently?
Your diatribe of people taking a cut from booksales neglected the original author of whatever book was being sold.
Personally, I'd love a world where I could give away my writing for free and then live off of money generated from readers paying me for whatever they thought my work was worth. If I could get 100,000 people to pay me $1 each, I'd be happy as heaven. Though... if you sent that $1 through PayPal or USPS or some other transaction system then the powers that be would take approximately $0.32 for "transaction fees".
You missed the other half of the joke...
$ sudo moderate discussion I've already posted in
Error! (a)bort? (r)etry? (f)ail?
> r
Error! (a)bort? (r)etry? (f)ail?
> f
$ sudo fuck Slashdot
Operation successful. Would you like a cigarette? (y/n)
> n
$ quit
Good-bye!
You didn't want to risk eventually getting one? It seems like checking availability may not have been your best course of action. :-P
All kidding aside... I understand your plight of waiting until it is "available" to buy it.
sudo mod me up
sudo make me a sandwich, and I'll mod you up.
River saved their asses on at least two occassions. She played a critical role securing the ship during the mission to bring Mal and Wash back from their torture sessions and she played "I am Serenity" during the episode when the bounty hunter captured the entire crew so he could turn River over to the authorities for a cash prize. Also, she was the main protagonist during the movie.
(1) Mal, (2) Kaylee, (3) River, (4) Zoe, (5) Wash, (6) Jayne, (7) Simon, and (8) the Sheppard. Inara only rented the extra craft for her personal business enterprises.
Theses are the 8 patents that are being disputed.
No... a patent gives you the right to prevent somebody from doing business with the thing that you've patented during the period of time that the patent is valid.
Author's also have the ability to self-publish and setup Amazon to manage their sales. This way they don't have to pay publishers, but they have to pay Amazon (a mere 55% of the non-discounted cover price for each sale), because operating a warehouse and shipping department is apparently more complicated than writing a book.
Mind you, this doesn't include the extra percentage of whatever the printing fees are, which the author would have had to pay for separately.
This means to make $1 for each sale, the author needs to price his work that costs $4-6 to print on a small run, multiplied by two, and you end up with $9 to $13 books (that haven't been through a publisher). And this gets the author a mere 10% of sales, so more realistic pricing is $15 to $20 for a low-quality paperback so the author can earn 30% of the revenue that his or her book generates (i.e. $3 or $4 per sale). Crazy, huh?
If it isn't 99.99% compatible, it isn't getting on my machine.
Your statement assumes that you require an OS to be compatible with at least 9,999 out of every 10,000 components in your system. Between my keyboard, mouse, harddrive, monitor, usb slots, firewire, ethernet card, wireless card, motherboard, and power adapter (ten components)... I'd say the OS should be 100% compatible. Beyond that, I'd blame device manufactures and software development companies for not provided me with the right code to use their products. But 99.99% is simply a fun number you pulled from your ass, because even if you did have 9,999 completely functional components in your computer, if there was no compatibility for a mouse, you'd be pissed off.
not-insignificant? You found a clever way of saying significant. You sly dog.
But I disagree that a significant percent of Mini 9 owners are running OS X.
for many kinds of books -- long-form narratives, for instance -- reading off a screen is a poor substitute for a cheap and easy-to-buy codex...
Me thinks the author is being a bit biased since this is what he writes. I hate to break it to you Cory but long-form narratives are EXACTLY what an e-book reader is good for.
I think Cory's talking about computer monitors and smart phone displays rather than things like the Kindle or (to a greater extent) e-Ink Readers which are designed to be easy on the eyes.
I've never had the luxury of doing it because e-Book Readers are too expensive for me, but if I can curl up in bed and comfortably digest books on them, I'd imagine Cory would agree this is a fine way to read.
I'd far rather read the rocket scientists blog
NASA also has the ability to hire professional writers with technical backgrounds. You might not want to believe it, but the vast majority of Slashdot (caveat emptor: with a decent editor) could do a grand job administering a NASA blog.
It's food for any argument against any web service that doesn't publish it's reliability information or publicize the data for what types of mechanisms it has in place in case of disasters like a corrupt database, fried motherboard, or busted hard drive.
There's a design methodology that's used by NASA for manned missions: Any individual component should be able to fail without compromising the mission. Of course, in the last few decades we've seen 2 out of 5 Shuttles go ka-boom! so obviously this NASA guideline isn't enough and it's *REALLY* hard to prevent failure when a perfect storm of multiple systems experience failure at the same time.
So if anything, I'd say this is an argument that supports robust, reliable, fault-tolerant design rather than just kludging a half dozen systems together and calling it a "web service".
You've never read the book you are referencing, right? Because BB relied on snitches to turn people in. They trained kids to report when their parents broke the rules.
Why don't you go back and actually read 1984 before you continue posting Big Brother FUD on it. The real implication of the novel is exactly what your clueless post indicated... that your friends will turn you in.
If you dig around long enough, they argue that the real purpose of the cameras is to "help in the case of a city evacuation". The images from the cams suck though. I'd expect better if they wanted to secretly spy on us. Perhaps the only things these will catch is the next group who tries to install LightBrite guerrilla advertising in the Porter Square.
Honestly, I'm not too worried if the Department of Homeland Security catches me biking to work in Cambridge. What I don't like is the traffic cameras that send you tickets when you run red lights. Those suck.
I love librivox.org too... but can you honestly say that you'd prefer it over a professionally done recording using equipment that doesn't Pop-P's or commit other unpleasant listening experiences?
I'd estimate that 1 out of every 5 of the lesser known works is recorded at sufficiently bad quality to make listening to it a bad experience. There's an Aldus Huxley book that proves my point (Yellow Something-or-other), where the reader was obviously stopping the recording whenever he messed up and the dead air between the breaks after he spliced it together was absolutely distracting.
Anyway... I think the writer's guild should wake up and smell the pizza because they're missing huge revenue streams by setting their prices in the $30+ range for works that thousands would spend $10 on.
And FWIW, I think the unnaturalness of the Kindle will make it good for non-fiction and terrible for dramatic works of fiction that requires inflection. Everything else will fall into some middle ground, though the Writer's Guild has to realize that they should easily be able to compete on quality for audiobook recordings done via software (and if they can't, then that market [the sale of audiobooks] ought to die).