Your kickstarter page lists Asimov and Clarke as partial inspiration implies hard sci fi, yet also has PR stuff about how people "like the look" which implies ultra-soft sci fi.
For people who don't know the difference, just Fing google it, or wikipedia it, and the reason why its important is people who like one genre invariably can't stand the other genre and even make comments about how they can't imagine why someone would like the opposite genre.
Lots of people I know (myself included) like things that are well-executed across the whole hard-soft scifi spectrum. So, I think its far from the case that people who like one of those invariably can't stand the other.
There's obviously a noisy loud contingent that only likes one extreme, or which (however much they like things across the spectrum) demands that only one extreme (usually, the hard scifi one) be called "scifi" while preferring some other label or set of labels for the other side, but you shouldn't confuse the level of noise with the degree to which that approach is common.
But im sure you will just call me a "shill" too because you can't produce a rebuttal to simple facts like this.
More likely, because you pick clauses out of context, ignoring, for instance, the clause in the same ToS that explains that Google's use of your information within the broad permissions granted is restricted by the options chosen within each particular Google service related to privacy, which, combined with the clause you point to, make it so that you are agreeing to give Google permission to do exactly whatever it is you request that they do by the privacy settings you apply to content through various Google applications, nothing more and nothing less.
This is a potential disaster in my eyes. We're talking about destroying the commercial web here.
Actually, we're talking about destroying DNT. The whole point of DNT is that its opt-in for users. Honoring the DNT flag is voluntary, and no one is going to honor it if major browser vendors reverse the design to make it opt-out.
Google makes it money from tracking users and selling customized ads. Google would look bad if they didn't honor DNT. Microsoft is setting the standard that DNT should be on by default, which reduces the ability for Google to track you all over the web. MS is not an ad company, so they really won't feel this as much.
Well, they are (they do sell ads, including customized ones, and do collect and track user data), they just aren't as successful at it as Google is. They also don't currently honor DNT. So what have DNT on-by-default in IE10 means is that the mass of users you use IE with default settings will continue to be tracked by Microsoft, and not tracked by all the parties that honor DNT.
When you file a complaint with the EU or ITC to ban the importation of a product, you file a claim against that product's manufacturer. You act like Apple purposely went after HTC as a proxy to Google.
That's because Apple purposely went after HTC as a proxy to Google, to wit, they weren't just going after HTC, they were trying to increase the perceived cost to hardware vendors of making and selling Android devices and, by that means, of stopping -- or at least slowing -- Google's erosion of Apple's position as a supplier of mobile operating systems and all the things (app sales, online advertising, e-book sales) where Google and Apple compete where Apple's position is driven by the market position of its mobile OS.
Just because someone argues for something in a legal case (and just because it convinced Florian Mueller) doesn't mean it is credible.
I agree.
This is inconsistent with your characterization of the Apple vs. Google situation, where you presented Apple's characterization as fact, and even the remedy Apple was seeking as if it was predetermined.
However the same thing can be said about Google's claims against Microsoft and Nokia.
Well, not the part about being endorsed by paid Microsoft shill Florian Mueller, but yes, you shouldn't accept Google's claims as fact just because Google claimed them. Were someone doing that, it might be relevant to point that out in response to to that person. But...that's not what you did.
In both cases, a claim is being made to the EU
Well, no, the United States International Trade Commission (where the HTC complaint against Apple is being made) is not an organ of the European Union.
and in both cases a finding has not been made.
Original complaints to regulators and decisions by regulators on complaints aren't the only source of information in the world.
So how is this case different from Apple's?
That's not the issue. You've made the "glass houses" charge, which isn't supported by merely observing that the complaint the target of the charge has made against others has also been made against the complainant. To support the position you have staked out against Google, you need to show evidence that they have actually done what they accuse others of doing, not that they have merely been accused of of the same thing they accuse others of doing.
You're misunderstanding the licensing issue with GPLed libraries. The licensing issue is that by linking against the GPLed library, you are using the actual GPLed code as part of your product, not just the headers, thus making your code a derivative work of that GPLed code because it depends on that code for correct operation.
The FSF asserts that accepting the GPL is required for code that links either dynamically or statically to GPL code, but in the former case the GPL code (other than the headers) is not incorporated into the distributed work, only the headers (which simply state the API, which, under this decision, is functional and, as such, not subject to copyright) are. There is a functional dependency on some code that implements the API defined by the header, but there is no requirement that it be the actual GPL code (except for the API, which under the decision here, again, is not subject to copyright.)
One might argue that a combined work is created that incorporates the GPL code when the GPLed versions of the libraries are actually linked on the end-user system, but if any person is creating that work it is the end user, and they aren't distributing it. They may need to accept the GPL with respect to that work to create it (as a derivative work of the GPL-protected work), but since they never do anything with it other than use it, none of the substantive obligations of the GPL would ever apply.
The FSF has always relied on a fairly maximal view of the scope of copyright protection in its assertions as to when accepting and abiding by the GPL is required. This is unsurprising, because the purpose of the GPL is to compel behavior, and you can only do that when people have to abide by the license. Anything that increases the scope of freedom under copyright law reduces the compulsory power of the GPL.
Particularly, the decision in this case would seem to be fatal to the FSF's position that the GPL is required for code that links dynamically to GPL libraries.
Presuming it holds up on the inevitable appeal, mostly.
Or will Google have to make changes to Android in order to satisfy the end result of all these court rulings?
The end result of the Oracle v. Google trial has still not been reached, but the only infringement that was found was the rangeCheck method and 8 test suite files that were never distributed as part of Android. There will be some statutory damages awarded to Oracle for that infringement (which Google will hardly notice), but Google isn't going to have to make substantive changes to Android.
Not only do they extract out of android phone makers many times more than make from their own windows phones but now they want to extract cash out of google as well.
Actually, Google's complaint appears to be that MS is arming its proxies to attack Android phone makes to extract more money out of them (that includes Google now that Google owns Motorola Mobility, but the strategy at issue is an extension of MS's attack-the-handset-manufacturers strategy, not a shift to target Google-as-software-vendor.)
I just pointed out that Google also uses proxies in its patent battles.
You claimed that, but pointed to evidence of Google supporting HTC only after Apple attacked HTC as a proxy for Google. That is, while there is a sense that HTC is a proxy for Google in the Apple-Google patent war, its because Apple choose to make HTC such a proxy by attacking HTC as a way of attacking Android, not because Google made them a proxy.
Apple is in the process of having HTC complaints against them dismissed by the ITC due to lack of standing.
"Seeking to have" rather than "having" would be more accurate.
It seems that Google transferred five patents key to HTC complaint just prior to the filing with the ITC (less than week). The ITC hasn't ruled on Apple's motion, but it indicates that HTC is acting as Google's proxy in this matter.
Actually, what it shows is that when Apple launched a patent attack on HTC over importing devices using Google software -- that is, launched an attack-by-proxy on Google and the entire Android ecosystem through HTC -- Google handed HTC the ammunition to retaliate against Apple.
Since Apple has attacked HTC for allegedly improperly exercising Apple's patents by using Google software on HTC devices, they are hardly in a position to argue credibly that HTC lacks a bona fide domestic industrial use of the patents transferred from Google merely because HTC was a patent licensee rather than the patent owner until shortly before the complaint was issued.
Just because someone argues for something in a legal case (and just because it convinced Florian Mueller) doesn't mean it is credible.
Why the hell would they hide if they already do it openly and even if they do hide behind other companies how is this illegal?
Many jurisdictions have regulations (either as part of the antitrust regime, or their patent regime, or both) which restrict how a patent holder can use a patent to create or protect market power in a market broader than "things that exercise the patent". Assigning patent enforcement rights to a third-party, while itself generally legitimate, can be a manner to obscure an attempt to do what those rules seek to restrict.
Someone doesn't understand the meaning of the word "decimated".
What you say is true, though I expect you weren't intending to refer to the people who confuse the etymology of the word with its current meaning when you said "someone".
No, its not. Its 1.1m +/- 0.9m. The margin of error is 0.9m. Its not a percentage, because you aren't measuring Y/N polling results or something else where the measurement is a percentage ("margin of error" isn't a percentage of the measurement -- and certainly not a percentage of the minimum measurement as you present it -- its the radius of the confidence interval, or, IOW, half the size of the range between the minimum and maximum value.)
It is true that 2.0 is 1000% of 0.2, but that has nothing to do with "margin of error".
Even if you do factor out the.2, you's at best be 900%
Even if you rewrite this into something that looks like English, you've confused "factor" with "subtract", and still don't know what a margin of error is, because just like its not the ratio of the maximum value to the minimum value, its also not the ratio of the size of the range to the minimum value.
If you wanted to measure something related to the margin of error as a ratio of anything (which might in some contexts be useful as a way to make it scale-independent), the only thing that would make sense would be measuring the ratio between the actual absolute margin of error (in this case, 0.9m) to the center of the distribution (1.1m), which would be ~82% in this case. (But note when an actual margin of error is reported as a percent, this isn't what it means, it means that the actual values being measured are percents, and the list percentage is still the absolute size of the range, not a ratio.)
The margin of error isn't the value calculated by, for a given confidence interval, computing (maximum value - minimum value)/(minimum value) but the value calculated by (mean value - minimum value)
Its only a percentage when you are doing something like polling where the actual values are percentages; as its a quantity in whatever units you are measuring the values in (so, if the unit is meters, the margin of error will be some number of meters.)
Whenever you are doing estimates like that you should always use some kind of quick common sense check of your result. For example, a 100% increase from 0.2 is 0.4 - so obviously your 90% calculation was way too low.
A "common sense" check that has no relation to the definition of the thing you are checking isn't very useful.
On top of that NASA estimates "Sea-Level rise within the next 87 years projects within a range of 0.2 meters to 2 meters, " That's an error margin of 1,000%
0.2m - 2m is 1.1m +/- 0.9m.
Its not an "error margin of 1,000%", which doesn't even make sense.
which in anyone's book is a WAG (wild-assed guess).
A wide margin of uncertainty from a model doesn't make the output a WAG.
I think the historical record is much less alarmist and is based on facts not guesses.
The historical record is a fact, but using it to predict the future always involves constructing a model. If its not based on some kind of actual science (like the existing models, which are based on the historical data about sea level rise and the historical data about other figures which have a scientifically demonstrated relationship to sea level rise), then it is simply a guess, and not even an educated one.
The governement has a duty to the people to operate on facts, not superstition, religion, or WAGs.
That's a noble sentiment. Unfortunately, the specific position you are opposing is government operating based on intelligent application of facts, and the one you are supporting is government action based on baseless speculation about the relation of past events to future behavior of a system. So, your specific position is diametrically opposed to the general principle you offer to justify it.
how are they going to lock out used games on physical media?
One way would be to sell media separate from licenses, and use all DRM mechanisms on the console to assure that you have a license, whether or not you have the media.
Note that Microsoft's concern cited in TFS isn't access to internet connectivity, its access to internet bandwidth. License verification may be connectivity-dependent, but it isn't bandwidth-dependent the way that delivering the whole game content online would be.
(1) My 750k internet would take 7 days to download a 50 gigabyte Bluray-sized game. (2) Easier to just buy the disc from amazon and have it shipped to me. (3) Plus when I get bored with the game I can sell the disc and recoup my money.
That they will support physical media doesn't mean they will play used games.
Most explorers explored to serve the interests of regular commerce like "truckers", but they weren't carrying cargo to a already-known place by an established route through previously explored territority. Or, at least, when they did that, it wasn't called "exploration", even if they did that as well as exploration.
Of course not. There will still be physical desktop machines, and they will still require some support.
OTOH, the amount of work involved in desktop administration is greatly reduced when your desktop machine isn't running a lot of software other than an OS and a web browser, and your key apps are all web apps -- whether on local, on-site servers or remotely hosted. "Cloud" (dynamic provisioning of virtual servers) isn't necessarily particularly relevant here, except as a supporting technology for increasing reliance on web apps.
Web apps, of course, require application/server administration, but generally should require less administration per user than desktop apps.
No one has ever explained to me just why a company wants to Tivoize Linux?
The explanation B2B free software vendors gave to the FSF was apparently good enough that the FSF restricted the anti-tivoization provisions of the GPLv3, in its final form, to what amounts to consumer products.
B2C vendors weren't as concerned, as long as the license explicitly allowed two things (that it does): termination of any support responsibility and disconnection of modified-software devices from networks when the network owner (even when it is also the device supplier) doesn't like what the modified software does.
How does keeping me from changing the code on a device I've purchased help the manufacturer's bottom line?
Some parents might prefer products that they would use in their homes to not have published mechanisms available that would be accessible to parties other than the original vendor for replacing the manufacturer-supplied software, but might still prefer that the vendor software updates could be applied. The GPLv3 either requires the provision of software installation information for consumer products, or that the product not be updateable at all, which means that, to the extent that this preference exists, it can only be met with non-GPLv3 software.
I've never read about the FSF making any distinctions b/w business and consumer users
See the GPLv3, Sec. 6. Note, there, that the "anti-tivoization" provisions only apply to what the GPLv3 calls "User Products", which are, essentially, what would in normal parlance be consumer products as opposed to business products.
All they care about is the liberation of software.
That's what the advertisements say, but that's not what the license says. Which is the problem with the license.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of people I know (myself included) like things that are well-executed across the whole hard-soft scifi spectrum. So, I think its far from the case that people who like one of those invariably can't stand the other.
There's obviously a noisy loud contingent that only likes one extreme, or which (however much they like things across the spectrum) demands that only one extreme (usually, the hard scifi one) be called "scifi" while preferring some other label or set of labels for the other side, but you shouldn't confuse the level of noise with the degree to which that approach is common.
More likely, because you pick clauses out of context, ignoring, for instance, the clause in the same ToS that explains that Google's use of your information within the broad permissions granted is restricted by the options chosen within each particular Google service related to privacy, which, combined with the clause you point to, make it so that you are agreeing to give Google permission to do exactly whatever it is you request that they do by the privacy settings you apply to content through various Google applications, nothing more and nothing less.
Actually, we're talking about destroying DNT. The whole point of DNT is that its opt-in for users. Honoring the DNT flag is voluntary, and no one is going to honor it if major browser vendors reverse the design to make it opt-out.
Well, they are (they do sell ads, including customized ones, and do collect and track user data), they just aren't as successful at it as Google is. They also don't currently honor DNT. So what have DNT on-by-default in IE10 means is that the mass of users you use IE with default settings will continue to be tracked by Microsoft, and not tracked by all the parties that honor DNT.
That's because Apple purposely went after HTC as a proxy to Google, to wit, they weren't just going after HTC, they were trying to increase the perceived cost to hardware vendors of making and selling Android devices and, by that means, of stopping -- or at least slowing -- Google's erosion of Apple's position as a supplier of mobile operating systems and all the things (app sales, online advertising, e-book sales) where Google and Apple compete where Apple's position is driven by the market position of its mobile OS.
This is inconsistent with your characterization of the Apple vs. Google situation, where you presented Apple's characterization as fact, and even the remedy Apple was seeking as if it was predetermined.
Well, not the part about being endorsed by paid Microsoft shill Florian Mueller, but yes, you shouldn't accept Google's claims as fact just because Google claimed them. Were someone doing that, it might be relevant to point that out in response to to that person. But...that's not what you did.
Well, no, the United States International Trade Commission (where the HTC complaint against Apple is being made) is not an organ of the European Union.
Original complaints to regulators and decisions by regulators on complaints aren't the only source of information in the world.
That's not the issue. You've made the "glass houses" charge, which isn't supported by merely observing that the complaint the target of the charge has made against others has also been made against the complainant. To support the position you have staked out against Google, you need to show evidence that they have actually done what they accuse others of doing, not that they have merely been accused of of the same thing they accuse others of doing.
The FSF asserts that accepting the GPL is required for code that links either dynamically or statically to GPL code, but in the former case the GPL code (other than the headers) is not incorporated into the distributed work, only the headers (which simply state the API, which, under this decision, is functional and, as such, not subject to copyright) are. There is a functional dependency on some code that implements the API defined by the header, but there is no requirement that it be the actual GPL code (except for the API, which under the decision here, again, is not subject to copyright.)
One might argue that a combined work is created that incorporates the GPL code when the GPLed versions of the libraries are actually linked on the end-user system, but if any person is creating that work it is the end user, and they aren't distributing it. They may need to accept the GPL with respect to that work to create it (as a derivative work of the GPL-protected work), but since they never do anything with it other than use it, none of the substantive obligations of the GPL would ever apply.
The FSF has always relied on a fairly maximal view of the scope of copyright protection in its assertions as to when accepting and abiding by the GPL is required. This is unsurprising, because the purpose of the GPL is to compel behavior, and you can only do that when people have to abide by the license. Anything that increases the scope of freedom under copyright law reduces the compulsory power of the GPL.
Particularly, the decision in this case would seem to be fatal to the FSF's position that the GPL is required for code that links dynamically to GPL libraries.
Presuming it holds up on the inevitable appeal, mostly.
The end result of the Oracle v. Google trial has still not been reached, but the only infringement that was found was the rangeCheck method and 8 test suite files that were never distributed as part of Android. There will be some statutory damages awarded to Oracle for that infringement (which Google will hardly notice), but Google isn't going to have to make substantive changes to Android.
Actually, Google's complaint appears to be that MS is arming its proxies to attack Android phone makes to extract more money out of them (that includes Google now that Google owns Motorola Mobility, but the strategy at issue is an extension of MS's attack-the-handset-manufacturers strategy, not a shift to target Google-as-software-vendor.)
IE is -- once you've made an OS choice, which is often made for reasons entirely irrelevant to web browser -- opt-out rather than opt-in.
Not the same thing as a smartphone OS.
You claimed that, but pointed to evidence of Google supporting HTC only after Apple attacked HTC as a proxy for Google. That is, while there is a sense that HTC is a proxy for Google in the Apple-Google patent war, its because Apple choose to make HTC such a proxy by attacking HTC as a way of attacking Android, not because Google made them a proxy.
How is drawing specific attention to the things that invoke Chinese government censorship supposed to be hiding the censorship?
"Seeking to have" rather than "having" would be more accurate.
Actually, what it shows is that when Apple launched a patent attack on HTC over importing devices using Google software -- that is, launched an attack-by-proxy on Google and the entire Android ecosystem through HTC -- Google handed HTC the ammunition to retaliate against Apple.
Since Apple has attacked HTC for allegedly improperly exercising Apple's patents by using Google software on HTC devices, they are hardly in a position to argue credibly that HTC lacks a bona fide domestic industrial use of the patents transferred from Google merely because HTC was a patent licensee rather than the patent owner until shortly before the complaint was issued.
Just because someone argues for something in a legal case (and just because it convinced Florian Mueller) doesn't mean it is credible.
Many jurisdictions have regulations (either as part of the antitrust regime, or their patent regime, or both) which restrict how a patent holder can use a patent to create or protect market power in a market broader than "things that exercise the patent". Assigning patent enforcement rights to a third-party, while itself generally legitimate, can be a manner to obscure an attempt to do what those rules seek to restrict.
This is impossible. Reversing a trial court decision is not in the legal power of any single moron.
What you say is true, though I expect you weren't intending to refer to the people who confuse the etymology of the word with its current meaning when you said "someone".
No, its not. Its 1.1m +/- 0.9m. The margin of error is 0.9m. Its not a percentage, because you aren't measuring Y/N polling results or something else where the measurement is a percentage ("margin of error" isn't a percentage of the measurement -- and certainly not a percentage of the minimum measurement as you present it -- its the radius of the confidence interval, or, IOW, half the size of the range between the minimum and maximum value.)
It is true that 2.0 is 1000% of 0.2, but that has nothing to do with "margin of error".
Even if you rewrite this into something that looks like English, you've confused "factor" with "subtract", and still don't know what a margin of error is, because just like its not the ratio of the maximum value to the minimum value, its also not the ratio of the size of the range to the minimum value.
If you wanted to measure something related to the margin of error as a ratio of anything (which might in some contexts be useful as a way to make it scale-independent), the only thing that would make sense would be measuring the ratio between the actual absolute margin of error (in this case, 0.9m) to the center of the distribution (1.1m), which would be ~82% in this case. (But note when an actual margin of error is reported as a percent, this isn't what it means, it means that the actual values being measured are percents, and the list percentage is still the absolute size of the range, not a ratio.)
The margin of error isn't the value calculated by, for a given confidence interval, computing (maximum value - minimum value)/(minimum value) but the value calculated by (mean value - minimum value)
Its only a percentage when you are doing something like polling where the actual values are percentages; as its a quantity in whatever units you are measuring the values in (so, if the unit is meters, the margin of error will be some number of meters.)
A "common sense" check that has no relation to the definition of the thing you are checking isn't very useful.
0.2m - 2m is 1.1m +/- 0.9m.
Its not an "error margin of 1,000%", which doesn't even make sense.
A wide margin of uncertainty from a model doesn't make the output a WAG.
The historical record is a fact, but using it to predict the future always involves constructing a model. If its not based on some kind of actual science (like the existing models, which are based on the historical data about sea level rise and the historical data about other figures which have a scientifically demonstrated relationship to sea level rise), then it is simply a guess, and not even an educated one.
That's a noble sentiment. Unfortunately, the specific position you are opposing is government operating based on intelligent application of facts, and the one you are supporting is government action based on baseless speculation about the relation of past events to future behavior of a system. So, your specific position is diametrically opposed to the general principle you offer to justify it.
One way would be to sell media separate from licenses, and use all DRM mechanisms on the console to assure that you have a license, whether or not you have the media.
Note that Microsoft's concern cited in TFS isn't access to internet connectivity, its access to internet bandwidth. License verification may be connectivity-dependent, but it isn't bandwidth-dependent the way that delivering the whole game content online would be.
That they will support physical media doesn't mean they will play used games.
Most explorers explored to serve the interests of regular commerce like "truckers", but they weren't carrying cargo to a already-known place by an established route through previously explored territority. Or, at least, when they did that, it wasn't called "exploration", even if they did that as well as exploration.
SpaceX is doing space exploration in the same sense that trucking companies do land exploration.
Of course not. There will still be physical desktop machines, and they will still require some support.
OTOH, the amount of work involved in desktop administration is greatly reduced when your desktop machine isn't running a lot of software other than an OS and a web browser, and your key apps are all web apps -- whether on local, on-site servers or remotely hosted. "Cloud" (dynamic provisioning of virtual servers) isn't necessarily particularly relevant here, except as a supporting technology for increasing reliance on web apps.
Web apps, of course, require application/server administration, but generally should require less administration per user than desktop apps.
The explanation B2B free software vendors gave to the FSF was apparently good enough that the FSF restricted the anti-tivoization provisions of the GPLv3, in its final form, to what amounts to consumer products.
B2C vendors weren't as concerned, as long as the license explicitly allowed two things (that it does): termination of any support responsibility and disconnection of modified-software devices from networks when the network owner (even when it is also the device supplier) doesn't like what the modified software does.
Some parents might prefer products that they would use in their homes to not have published mechanisms available that would be accessible to parties other than the original vendor for replacing the manufacturer-supplied software, but might still prefer that the vendor software updates could be applied. The GPLv3 either requires the provision of software installation information for consumer products, or that the product not be updateable at all, which means that, to the extent that this preference exists, it can only be met with non-GPLv3 software.
See the GPLv3, Sec. 6. Note, there, that the "anti-tivoization" provisions only apply to what the GPLv3 calls "User Products", which are, essentially, what would in normal parlance be consumer products as opposed to business products.
That's what the advertisements say, but that's not what the license says. Which is the problem with the license.