The massive and unwieldy size of the 9x11 rule books stems from the inexpensive printing of such sizes. By printing on such large paper (usually in mono-color black and white) they can reduce the cost of both printing and binding. Just run the paper through the printer, staple, and fold.
Printing in smaller sizes is bound to be a sign of quality rather than the lack thereof. Especially if grayscale, color, or (*gasp*) glossy paper are used.
Wizards of the Coast doesn't print many gaming rulebooks that aren't glossy, full-color hardbacks, and certainly not core books. Heck, a lot of the smaller publishers in the RPG industry don't do anything but glossy, full-color hardbacks. Things have changed since the 1990s.
It's either companies in the businesses affected writing them or, "The internet isn't a truck, it's a series of tube" Congresscritters.
Many of the times "Congresscritters" say stupid things that get them mocked by people who understand the subject, its not because they are particularly ignorant, but rather because they are trying to throw up a wall of obfuscation around the position they are carrying on behalf of industry, because they aren't interested in people paying attention to and understanding the substance of that position.
I'm not naive--I know it happens all the time, but I still get the shivers every time I read things like this. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the concept of corporations drafting laws?
Certainly not.
I wonder what our country's founding fathers would have thought of the newspapers of their time reporting "This bill, drafted by the Honourable East India Company, and passed by Congress..."
Our founding fathers were probably used to commercial interests drafting laws and lobbying for them, and probably used to far more aggressive (on both sides) press reporting about particular instances of that then we see today.
So, for those of you who are the entire IT department where you work, or if you run your own business as a consultant, (or some similar situation), you might want to pay attention to what is required regarding email and IM retention under the new rules.
And you might want to get your information from (for instancE) a lawyer familiar with the rules, rather taking on faith the description of the problem from the PR department of vendors trying to sell "solutions".
Internal rulemaking by the JUDICIAL branch - the supreme court and their hirelings - with concurrence from the LEGISLATIVE branch. The EXECUTIVE branch isn't even in this loop.
Yeah, its not like the Executive has any role in selecting who is in the judiciary or anything like that.
Printz v. United States was the case that struck down major portions of the Brady gun-control bill. Appellants argued, and the court agreed, that the law's requiring state employees to engage in extra work in order to compose and retain documentation in order to appease federal law violated both federalism and the concept of a unitary executive.
This seems pretty similar.
"Appease" is inappropriate here, the word is "enforce". Its important, here, because this law, unlike the Brady law, doesn't mandate state government enforce federal law.
It requires states just like any other litigants in federal court to comply with federal law, but that's not even remotely similar.
If your not a litigant in a federal court case, do these rules matter?
Yeah, well, you can voluntarily decide not to sue anyone in federal court, but its a lot harder to make the decision not to be sued in federal court stick.
I was wondering if someone could explain why this is in the jurisdiction of the federal government as opposed to the states.
You want to know why the rules governing civil procedure in the federal courts are in the jurisdiction of the federal government as opposed to the state governments?
Yeah, like.001% of them maybe if you are optimistic?
Um, no, predicting that "projects like the OLPC's one" will ship 7,750 computers is not "optimistic". Heck, predicting that OLPC alone will ship less than the
If you want to look at the facts rather than the hype, look at the Brazilian government's recent tax breaks on computers and its commitment to making computers as universally owned as televisions
That commitment includes participation in the OLPC project. Perhaps you ought to look at the facts.
I suspect that you haven't lived in California for very long. "Cal" or "California" refers to UC Berkeley, the original UC.
I've lived in California for about 3 decades. "Cal" refers to UC Berkeley, "California" almost never does except that there are a few particular phrases where it sometimes, rarely, used in place of "Cal" (the only example I can think of that I've seen or heard more than once is "California Bears"). At any rate, the Google Books deal is not with the Berkeley campus, anyway, but with the University of California, which is consistently referred to as the University of California or UC, so even if "California" were an acceptable way of referring to the Berkeley campus of the UC system, that would be irrelevant.
Anyhow, I suspect that CNN wasn't using a colloquial name reference when they referred to UC as "California", they were applying a "since we said 'universities such as', we should drop 'University' from the names" rule. Had they had a competent editor, they wouldn't have done that for UC, but clearly CNN is aspiring to the level of editorial negligence for which Slashdot has become famous.
The goal of the GPL is to promote the creation and adoption of freely modifiable, freely redistributable software. If the software running on that little black box underneath your television cannot be modified, then the GPL is no more serving its intended purpose than if the box was running something entirely proprietary.
That would be true, if the software could not be modified. However, in the real world, that is not the issue: the software can be modified, but modified software can't be run on the little black box. That is a different issue than the one you paint: the software is freely modifiable, and freely redistributable. The hardware is selective about what software it will run. As the authors of GPLv3 apparently recognize, there are good reasons why users might want hardware that is selective in that way, and tamperproof, and allowing such hardware to exist does not impinge on the purposes of the GPL.
However, the authors of the GPLv3 choose to recognize that fact trough a freedom-denying, inequality-creating distinction between "consumer" and other kinds of applications, rather than enhancing freedom in a way which would allow locked-down hardware, but prevent locked-down hardware from being a vault in which components of a system incorporating GPL software could remain closed. The way to do that would have been to extend the provisions that apply to software components that form an integrated whole with GPL-licensed material to hardware components that do the same thing.
What you have to understand is, if the corporate bastards have their way, the same "feature" that prevents you from running unsigned software on your TiVo will be coming to every computing device you buy, rendering the whole concept of open software irrelevant.
If there is consumer demand for freedom from the dictates of hardware vendors to do what they want with their machines, that won't win in the market, open-source software aside (since its a substantial barrier to choice even when it comes to proprietary third-party software.)
If there is not consumer demand for customizable software, that kind of system will win in the market regardless of the terms of the GPL, and the GPL making itself incompatible with that kind of system will just make GPL software irrelevant. Licensing does not substitute for consumer education and advocacy. (For one thing, with the increasing importance of interconnection—either to cell networks, the internet via an ISP, etc.—to the use of computing products, nothing the GPL can do can prevent the only contractual arrangements being offered by the "the corporate bastards" providing those kinds of networks from being ones that require locked-down, tamper-proof hardware for "security" reasons.)
Not really. Inalienable rights need not be based on religion. Not at all.
First, I didn't claim inalienable rights need to be based on anything, and second, I didn't claim anything was or needed to be based on religion. I stated that, as a matter of fact, the idea of inalieble rights is based on belief in things not demonstrated by scientific proof.
Perhaps next time you'd like to address what was actually said.
Midrange and low-end machines, though, turn out to be pretty comparable, with more choices in the PC arena but some good values if you happen to want what Apple has decided you need. So, if you're talking name-brand hardware, it's just no longer the case that PCs are cheaper than Macs.
Okay, so if you are looking for something that happens to be exactly what Apple thinks you want, and if you restrict the universe to major name brands, Apple isn't more expensive. True, but this isn't a "no longer", and doesn't point to any real "myth". The whole "Apple is more expensive" thing has always been based on the fact that people don't always want exactly the combination of features Apple has decided they need, and, even more importantly, because in the PC world, the universe of options is not restricted to the biggest names.
And, also, has always been more about desktops, rather than notebooks: in notebooks, the options even in the PC world have always been narrower than for desktops, and so the difference has never been as pronounced there.
TiVo is a great example of why GPLv3 is needed. I mean, look at the situation under GPLv2 (which TiVo is perfectly happy with): TiVo takes the Linux kernel so it can run their black box. TiVo makes changes to the code so it will run on black box. TiVo dutifully releases those changes to the world at large, because GPLv2 says they gotta. The world at large does not benefit, because the hardware the changes were meant to support will only run official TiVo-signed binaries.
So? If there is anything inherently useful in the software changes, it is available to the rest of the world, so they do benefit.
If there isn't, they don't, but that's not because of a lack of openness, but because there is no benefit to be had from the source code modifications, either. (Really, TiVo its no different than the situation under the GPLv3 for an online service provider who has modified code to run on their custom hardware but is compelled to release it to the public under the new clause dealing with that kind of use: if you accept that TiVo type situations are a problem, GPLv3 has just pushed it around.)
Really, the TiVo "problem" could have been dealt with more consistently with the structure of the GPLv2 and the idea of freedom it incorporates by requiring release and open licensing of hardware designs where hardware is released as an integral part of the same product as a piece of GPL-licensed software (sort of a hardware extension to the the linking provisions in the GPLv2), rather than specifying functionality of GPL hardware/software combos as the GPLv3 does.
The loophole in v2 frees hardware manufacturers from the burden of "giving back" in any meaningful sense.
Only if they aren't doing software innovation in any meaningful sense.
If they find the idea of giving back so irksome, let them switch to Windows CE.
Presuming that everything available under the GPLv2 now shifts over to the GPLv3, many manufacturers that otherwise would have chosen GPL probably will (or to open source alternatives under BSD-style licenses, etc.). How will that advance the goals of supporters of the GPL?
The thing I never understood was that the fruit was meant to give 'knowledge of good and evil,' allowing them to choose between good and evil. Before eating the fruit, they were only capable of good, and yet were naked.
Before eating the fruit, they were incapable of doing good or evil, but were in a state like brute animals where there actions were inherently devoid of moral character.
After eating the fruit, they were still naked, but now they realised being naked was 'evil,' and so they must have been doing 'evil' while they were only capable of 'good.'
After eating the fruit, they were naked and realized that the nakedness provided an incitement to do evil or a distraction from doing good, and took responsible steps to mitigate that.
It's basically the same license, it's just that it's written in a more legally robust way, more explicitly enforcing the things that GPLv2 is already supposed to enforce.
Even if that were true (and that's, at best, debatable; certainly, people will disagree about whether some of the things the GPLv3 enforces are things v2 is "supposed" to enforce), it is a substantive change, because rational people choose a license based on what it actually does, not what some group of idealists think it is supposed to do.
Then I guess I'll call you crazy. America is a Constitutional Republic.
The American system of government is many things: it is a constitutional republic, a democratic republic, a representative democracy, a federal republic, etc., etc., etc.
People who have learned about one of a series of non-exclusive labels and think it is exclusive really should learn more, rather than calling people using a different, equally accurate, and more relevant label "crazy".
Please get a bluetooth headset and a phone with good voice dialing if and only if you must talk on the phone while driving.
Doesn't really make a difference. The source of danger from using a phone while driving is far more from tunnel vision that accompanies the conversation than anything else; while it is rather dangerous to talk on the phone while driving, its not substantially more dangerous to do so without a hands-free phone. Though, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal.
I hate AT&T and I am still trying to figure out why Apple went with them.
I'm pretty sure articles were linked to in earlier/. threads on the issue in which it was explained that they went with Cingular (now AT&T) because other people they contacted wanted far less favorable financial terms, from Apple's perspective, for the deal.
TiVo, since they in fact use the GPL, is not, an entity that wouldn't use the GPL anyway.
Since the claim was that the only people driven off would people who wouldn't use the GPL anyway, TiVo is a valid counterexample which disproves the claim.
So what you're saying is that people with a vested interest in making money on other people's code are demanding that code move to a more 'permissive' license like BSD instead of GPLV3? Because I've seen more projects move in the opposite direction -- moving away from BSD-like and into GPLV2 rather than the other way around.
Isn't a lot of the movement from BSD, etc., to GPLv2 to enable incorporating existing GPLv2 code? Whether that kind of pressure exists to move to GPLv3 is going to depend on how popular GPLv3 is on its own.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah.
"More petite" isn't. Square is, because lots of ctb's are, unlike most gaming rulebooks, square.
(Then again, 9x9 compared to 9x11 is, to me, more "short and squat" than "petite".)
Wizards of the Coast doesn't print many gaming rulebooks that aren't glossy, full-color hardbacks, and certainly not core books. Heck, a lot of the smaller publishers in the RPG industry don't do anything but glossy, full-color hardbacks. Things have changed since the 1990s.
Many of the times "Congresscritters" say stupid things that get them mocked by people who understand the subject, its not because they are particularly ignorant, but rather because they are trying to throw up a wall of obfuscation around the position they are carrying on behalf of industry, because they aren't interested in people paying attention to and understanding the substance of that position.
Certainly not.
Our founding fathers were probably used to commercial interests drafting laws and lobbying for them, and probably used to far more aggressive (on both sides) press reporting about particular instances of that then we see today.
You also can't present what doesn't exist as exculpatory evidence when you are sued.
And you might want to get your information from (for instancE) a lawyer familiar with the rules, rather taking on faith the description of the problem from the PR department of vendors trying to sell "solutions".
Yeah, its not like the Executive has any role in selecting who is in the judiciary or anything like that.
"Appease" is inappropriate here, the word is "enforce". Its important, here, because this law, unlike the Brady law, doesn't mandate state government enforce federal law.
It requires states just like any other litigants in federal court to comply with federal law, but that's not even remotely similar.
The Rules at issue are the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, not the Federal Rules of Evidence.
Yeah, well, you can voluntarily decide not to sue anyone in federal court, but its a lot harder to make the decision not to be sued in federal court stick.
You want to know why the rules governing civil procedure in the federal courts are in the jurisdiction of the federal government as opposed to the state governments?
Um, no, predicting that "projects like the OLPC's one" will ship 7,750 computers is not "optimistic". Heck, predicting that OLPC alone will ship less than the
That commitment includes participation in the OLPC project. Perhaps you ought to look at the facts.
I've lived in California for about 3 decades. "Cal" refers to UC Berkeley, "California" almost never does except that there are a few particular phrases where it sometimes, rarely, used in place of "Cal" (the only example I can think of that I've seen or heard more than once is "California Bears"). At any rate, the Google Books deal is not with the Berkeley campus, anyway, but with the University of California, which is consistently referred to as the University of California or UC, so even if "California" were an acceptable way of referring to the Berkeley campus of the UC system, that would be irrelevant.
Anyhow, I suspect that CNN wasn't using a colloquial name reference when they referred to UC as "California", they were applying a "since we said 'universities such as', we should drop 'University' from the names" rule. Had they had a competent editor, they wouldn't have done that for UC, but clearly CNN is aspiring to the level of editorial negligence for which Slashdot has become famous.
That would be true, if the software could not be modified. However, in the real world, that is not the issue: the software can be modified, but modified software can't be run on the little black box. That is a different issue than the one you paint: the software is freely modifiable, and freely redistributable. The hardware is selective about what software it will run. As the authors of GPLv3 apparently recognize, there are good reasons why users might want hardware that is selective in that way, and tamperproof, and allowing such hardware to exist does not impinge on the purposes of the GPL.
However, the authors of the GPLv3 choose to recognize that fact trough a freedom-denying, inequality-creating distinction between "consumer" and other kinds of applications, rather than enhancing freedom in a way which would allow locked-down hardware, but prevent locked-down hardware from being a vault in which components of a system incorporating GPL software could remain closed. The way to do that would have been to extend the provisions that apply to software components that form an integrated whole with GPL-licensed material to hardware components that do the same thing.
If there is consumer demand for freedom from the dictates of hardware vendors to do what they want with their machines, that won't win in the market, open-source software aside (since its a substantial barrier to choice even when it comes to proprietary third-party software.)
If there is not consumer demand for customizable software, that kind of system will win in the market regardless of the terms of the GPL, and the GPL making itself incompatible with that kind of system will just make GPL software irrelevant. Licensing does not substitute for consumer education and advocacy. (For one thing, with the increasing importance of interconnection—either to cell networks, the internet via an ISP, etc.—to the use of computing products, nothing the GPL can do can prevent the only contractual arrangements being offered by the "the corporate bastards" providing those kinds of networks from being ones that require locked-down, tamper-proof hardware for "security" reasons.)
First, I didn't claim inalienable rights need to be based on anything, and second, I didn't claim anything was or needed to be based on religion. I stated that, as a matter of fact, the idea of inalieble rights is based on belief in things not demonstrated by scientific proof.
Perhaps next time you'd like to address what was actually said.
Okay, so if you are looking for something that happens to be exactly what Apple thinks you want, and if you restrict the universe to major name brands, Apple isn't more expensive. True, but this isn't a "no longer", and doesn't point to any real "myth". The whole "Apple is more expensive" thing has always been based on the fact that people don't always want exactly the combination of features Apple has decided they need, and, even more importantly, because in the PC world, the universe of options is not restricted to the biggest names.
And, also, has always been more about desktops, rather than notebooks: in notebooks, the options even in the PC world have always been narrower than for desktops, and so the difference has never been as pronounced there.
So? If there is anything inherently useful in the software changes, it is available to the rest of the world, so they do benefit.
If there isn't, they don't, but that's not because of a lack of openness, but because there is no benefit to be had from the source code modifications, either. (Really, TiVo its no different than the situation under the GPLv3 for an online service provider who has modified code to run on their custom hardware but is compelled to release it to the public under the new clause dealing with that kind of use: if you accept that TiVo type situations are a problem, GPLv3 has just pushed it around.)
Really, the TiVo "problem" could have been dealt with more consistently with the structure of the GPLv2 and the idea of freedom it incorporates by requiring release and open licensing of hardware designs where hardware is released as an integral part of the same product as a piece of GPL-licensed software (sort of a hardware extension to the the linking provisions in the GPLv2), rather than specifying functionality of GPL hardware/software combos as the GPLv3 does.
Only if they aren't doing software innovation in any meaningful sense.
Presuming that everything available under the GPLv2 now shifts over to the GPLv3, many manufacturers that otherwise would have chosen GPL probably will (or to open source alternatives under BSD-style licenses, etc.). How will that advance the goals of supporters of the GPL?
Its also the foundation of the entire idea of inalienable human rights.
Before eating the fruit, they were incapable of doing good or evil, but were in a state like brute animals where there actions were inherently devoid of moral character.
After eating the fruit, they were naked and realized that the nakedness provided an incitement to do evil or a distraction from doing good, and took responsible steps to mitigate that.
Even if that were true (and that's, at best, debatable; certainly, people will disagree about whether some of the things the GPLv3 enforces are things v2 is "supposed" to enforce), it is a substantive change, because rational people choose a license based on what it actually does, not what some group of idealists think it is supposed to do.
The American system of government is many things: it is a constitutional republic, a democratic republic, a representative democracy, a federal republic, etc., etc., etc.
People who have learned about one of a series of non-exclusive labels and think it is exclusive really should learn more, rather than calling people using a different, equally accurate, and more relevant label "crazy".
Doesn't really make a difference. The source of danger from using a phone while driving is far more from tunnel vision that accompanies the conversation than anything else; while it is rather dangerous to talk on the phone while driving, its not substantially more dangerous to do so without a hands-free phone. Though, in many jurisdictions, it is illegal.
I'm pretty sure articles were linked to in earlier
TiVo, since they in fact use the GPL, is not, an entity that wouldn't use the GPL anyway.
Since the claim was that the only people driven off would people who wouldn't use the GPL anyway, TiVo is a valid counterexample which disproves the claim.
Isn't a lot of the movement from BSD, etc., to GPLv2 to enable incorporating existing GPLv2 code? Whether that kind of pressure exists to move to GPLv3 is going to depend on how popular GPLv3 is on its own.