You seem to be ignoring the part about code being "chopped up, modified, and recycled ad infinitum". Yes, it's quite simple when somebody just slaps their name on Paint.NET. It's not so simple as code is pulled in and modified from various sources, from little snippets, to big pieces of programs, and everything in between. As I said, it can get very laborious to accurately assign credit. At some point you'll just end up with an ever-growing list of names as it becomes impossible to disentagle who exactly wrote what.
It might not be Microsoft's first choice, but given that nobody is going to help them create yet another Microsoft monopoly Sadly untrue. Witness Silverlight and Mono's "Moonlight" implementation. Microsoft will never implement SVG unless they are actually losing the browser war and web authors write content only viewable in SVG-capable browsers.
No, there's no contradiction. I don't think there's anything wrong with making modifications, as long as you're honest about it: credit the original authors for what they wrote, and only credit yourself for the changes you made yourself. That's pretty clear in the beginning, but you quickly run into problems. What happens over time as the original bits are replaced with modified bits? How long is somebody entitled to have their name on a work, as it gets chopped up, modified, and recycled ad infinitum? When is somebody allowed to put their name on a work after making modifications? Do you have to credit every little snippet of code you reuse? What if you modify that snippet, are you going to attach your name to it?
Tracking credit can become very laborious. In the same way copyright can be denied as a principle of free speech, so can any requirements to assign credit.
Sure there is java. But Java is being blocked by a lot of corporate firewalls, just like activex is (which you didn't mention). And it is also plugin based. Flash is plugin based too. I agree with you that JavaScript+SVG support would be ideal. Too bad Microsoft will never support it.
The GP's point was that its all rubbish. I used to be of the same opinion, but there are enough interesting ones that it's a pain not having easy access to them. How many Slashdot stories now link to YouTube videos, like the infamous "don't taze me, bro"?
Videos are a useful form of communication. It's unfortunate that sites like YouTube are Flash based, but until there's an alternative, Flash + NoScript works great.
Be sure to read this earlier Slashdot story as well, which covers a previous scandal involving employee cheating. That was followed by another scandal.
LGPL is valid ONLY for dynamically linked libraries. Plugins are essentially dynamically linked libraries. The intent of the LGPL is clear: You should be able to modify the library and use the modified version with the non-LGPL work. Plugins let you do that. You "link" to the plugin. As long as you can relink to a modified plugin, the license is satisfied.
The problem is a plugin can declare itself LGPL, be downloaded and installed by a non-LGPL app WITHOUT RESTARTING the app and by the wording of the LGPL, the parent app has thus violated the LGPL. No way. Who is violating the LGPL? Surely not the author of the program, unless he is the one distributing the LGPL'd plugin. Is it the user of the software, the one who initiates the download? Can't be, unless he himself redistributes the LGPL'd plugin.
Repackage and sell it commercially? Fine, as long as I'm credited. You are aware of the "advertising" clause that was removed from the BSD license because of the problems it caused, right? Also, the BSD license states that the license must be included, which includes the copyright owner, so you have your credit.
That's because this is NOT a copyright issue, it is a plagiarism issue. The easiest way to defend the work is via copyright. I did a quick search, and I can find no explicit law against plagiarism. Wikipedia has some stuff on it. The best defense in the United States against plagiarism seems to be through a special case of trademark law: reverse passing off. There's an interesting (but old) paper on how this might apply to electronic information.
I'll state again: The best defense is to use copyright, and not "plagiarism".
Thanks for the laugh. This is the most hardcore, all-seeing government post I've seen in a while. By the way, assuming you actually achieved such a hardened status, what would you do with it besides posting tinfoil hat posts to Slashdot?
About the only way to fix this is to start completely over. That's the lazy, shallow, knee-jerk response. You're talking about huge amounts of destruction and a high possibility that the replacement isn't any better. Do you even know what you are advocating? You have the means to post free speech on the internet. How bad do you think it is that you want to tear apart a system to "start over"?
Besides that, it'll never happen. Bitching that we should just start over is a lazy way of taking no action at all.
How often do you win chargebacks using Geolocation? My impression was that online service providers pretty much lose all of their chargeback cases, and it's even worse when porn is involved.
How bad is your chargeback percentage anyways? Do you fly under the 1% radar? What percentage do you process in refunds?
Just curious, mind you. I used to work for a payment processor. As a rule we wouldn't take on gambling or porn (even turned down the Girls Gone Wild folks), though we took other dubious merchants who were providing less of an honest service than the porn guys.
The basic point of the original poster, the telecom worker, was to put a number on "this shit happened". Common sense says that number describes a loss, directly caused by a particular case of "shit happens". That number makes complete sense, and is much more meaningful than just the expense required to fix the problem. What the exact, precise accounting term used for this is besides the point.
Now somebody replied and starts ranting about "MAFIAA" and government tax breaks, and says "an outage didn't cost them squat, other than whatever extra expense they would incur to expedite repair". Complete nonsense inspired by hatred.
Um, I think what GP meant was I still don't understand his point. It seemed like ranting about corporations and copyright policy, not dealing with reality. The telecoms make their money by charging for services. If they would normally charge $4 million but don't due to a system failure, the failure cost them $4 million. It's only common sense, and ranting about business models or throwing around accounting terms doesn't change that.
When people say that their machine never crashes what have we learned? Nada. Exactly. I run Debian Linux and while it doesn't crash, it's downright quirky. For some reason it decides to powersave the monitor after 15 minutes and shuts down the machine after an hour of inactivity, but I can't figure out why. I looked at all the power settings and none of it makes sense. Not only that, when it does power down, it doesn't really power down completely. It used to work, but one of the kernel upgrades broke shutdown.
Even worse is the memory usage. Something eats up the memory and won't give it back. I think it has something to do with video applications but I haven't tracked it down yet. Is it my hardware, device drivers, or what? Beats me, but all I know is that it doesn't work like it should.
UNIX is what happens when you meet a set of interfaces defined by a standards body known as The Open Group. It's a shame that the standards can't be freely redistributed. Compare the terms from Open Group vs W3C. Note that the Open Group requires you to register to even look at the spec, charges for a PDF version, and forbids you from redistribution.
why do people continue to ascribe the Microsoft world view - everything and everyone is a competitor - to other companies? Sun and IBM and every other normal company (read: not a monopoly) has one business strategy: give the customer what they want. I think you need to remove your anti-Microsoft colored glasses. Every company is aware of their competitors. Every company would love to lock their customers in to proprietary solutions. That's the normal position. IBM was sued for being a monopoly decades ago. Sun competes with Linux. IBM embraced Linux and Sun embraced open source only because they were losing out in their old ways, and they wanted to ride the new waves. They both still have proprietary products. Microsoft only stands out from Sun and IBM because they have achieved market dominance, whereas IBM lost it and Sun never quite attained it.
Keep in mind unless you make the underlying engine some standards based (using RIM or terminology driven) or use good design software practices (Archetypes) RIM? Terminology driven? Archetypes?
Cool commercials, I had never seen them before. If you haven't seen it yet, the PS3 commercial that came out at the same time is an interesting contrast:)
I agree word of mouth and Wii Sports was a strong selling point, but Wii Sports was also advertised in the Wii commercials (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IEnc_l-jAO0), and it did come with the system. So you can't just point to Wii Sports as a generic model to sell millions of games on word of mouth alone.
For me it's about the fighting. Pure and simple. You don't like fighting? Ok, fine, but don't claim it's the same thing as something like the Video Game Awards.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be ignoring the part about code being "chopped up, modified, and recycled ad infinitum". Yes, it's quite simple when somebody just slaps their name on Paint.NET. It's not so simple as code is pulled in and modified from various sources, from little snippets, to big pieces of programs, and everything in between. As I said, it can get very laborious to accurately assign credit. At some point you'll just end up with an ever-growing list of names as it becomes impossible to disentagle who exactly wrote what.
Tracking credit can become very laborious. In the same way copyright can be denied as a principle of free speech, so can any requirements to assign credit.
Why not just kill yourself now then? Or better yet, get a sack of rice and move to the Alaskan wilderness.
Videos are a useful form of communication. It's unfortunate that sites like YouTube are Flash based, but until there's an alternative, Flash + NoScript works great.
Be sure to read this earlier Slashdot story as well, which covers a previous scandal involving employee cheating. That was followed by another scandal.
I'll state again: The best defense is to use copyright, and not "plagiarism".
Thanks for the laugh. This is the most hardcore, all-seeing government post I've seen in a while. By the way, assuming you actually achieved such a hardened status, what would you do with it besides posting tinfoil hat posts to Slashdot?
Besides that, it'll never happen. Bitching that we should just start over is a lazy way of taking no action at all.
How often do you win chargebacks using Geolocation? My impression was that online service providers pretty much lose all of their chargeback cases, and it's even worse when porn is involved.
How bad is your chargeback percentage anyways? Do you fly under the 1% radar? What percentage do you process in refunds?
Just curious, mind you. I used to work for a payment processor. As a rule we wouldn't take on gambling or porn (even turned down the Girls Gone Wild folks), though we took other dubious merchants who were providing less of an honest service than the porn guys.
The basic point of the original poster, the telecom worker, was to put a number on "this shit happened". Common sense says that number describes a loss, directly caused by a particular case of "shit happens". That number makes complete sense, and is much more meaningful than just the expense required to fix the problem. What the exact, precise accounting term used for this is besides the point.
Now somebody replied and starts ranting about "MAFIAA" and government tax breaks, and says "an outage didn't cost them squat, other than whatever extra expense they would incur to expedite repair". Complete nonsense inspired by hatred.
Even worse is the memory usage. Something eats up the memory and won't give it back. I think it has something to do with video applications but I haven't tracked it down yet. Is it my hardware, device drivers, or what? Beats me, but all I know is that it doesn't work like it should.
I would have thought that a lot of your chargebacks would come from parents or housewives, not fraudsters.
I agree word of mouth and Wii Sports was a strong selling point, but Wii Sports was also advertised in the Wii commercials (http://youtube.com/watch?v=IEnc_l-jAO0), and it did come with the system. So you can't just point to Wii Sports as a generic model to sell millions of games on word of mouth alone.
You mean the game that comes with the system??
AVS is free to use. Also, Achromatic1978 is right: AVS is not required, and when used it results in a lower rate.
For me it's about the fighting. Pure and simple. You don't like fighting? Ok, fine, but don't claim it's the same thing as something like the Video Game Awards.