No, Activision has the right to sell the game they took a risk to produce. There is no entitlement to a profit; if there were then shitty games would be just as beneficial as decent games, and there would no incentive for anyone to improve anything.
I agree. I've been using Linux on my laptop for 5 years now, and I must say, I have saved millions of...well, choose your unit, and I've saved millions of it. Dollars, meters, liters, bytes, grams, etc.
Actually, I would wager a guess that seizing a computer hosting some VPS's would generate significant lawsuits, as the OP noted, from people who had nothing to do with the infringement and are left wondering why they suddenly lost their systems. Since virtualization is becoming very popular for hosting companies, it is really only a matter of time before such an event occurs, and at the very least this bill is amended into some level of sanity (probably the lowest level).
What I find excruciating about this is that the 4 senators who voted against the bill were all Republicans. It just goes to show why, in general, I support third party candidates.
On an unrelated (sort of) note, somebody at my university received a notice that they were engaged in copyright infringement, came to the computer center and asked what they had done -- they didn't even know what it meant to download music or movies. Or so they claimed.
I would guess that the FBI or NSA is involved in the investigation as well, since both agencies have contracts with Red Hat and since this is a major security breach.
People are missing one crucial detail here: the investigation of this breach may involve the FBI or the NSA, both of which contract with Red Hat and both of which would have an interest in keeping their investigations under wraps until they have reached their conclusions. Don't assume that it is only Red Hat making the decisions about what to disclose to the general public. I wouldn't be too surprised if, a month from now, Red Hat suddenly releases details on what happened and how they're going to stop it from happening again.
I would hope such a case actually occurred. In a democracy, the citizens must have unencumbered access to the laws. It is scary to think of a society in which citizens are not free to read, share, and discuss the laws that they are bound by.
I had my hopes up for a very quick port from a third party. Then I found out that Google is going to use the creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives license. I guess that we will only be seeing this when Google decides to port it to Linux, and only on those distros that Google feels are worthy of having Chrome ported to them, and only in the exact configuration Google selects. I suppose the Google fanboys will have endless explanations for why Google chose a no-derivatives license.
This whole thing doesn't sit right with me. Google is too large, too powerful. It is open source, which is good, but there is just something really wrong with this. I have a feeling that we might start seeing Google extensions to HTML and Javascript, that won't be easily added to Mozilla/Gecko or IE...and a new battle on the web.
It doesn't have to be tamper-proof, just tamper-evident. A tamper-evident seal, that would have to be broken in order to physically open the system, would be enough.
Also, modern registers seem to be undersized desktops, rather than oversized calculators. At least, that was the state of affairs 5 years ago when I was in "food services," and appears to be the case at the places I spend money these days (with the exception of a nearby bar).
The real solution to this problem, the only solution that could ever be enforced, would be a legal requirement that cash registers have temper evident seals and run a OS with verified security (EAL 4+), and signed software. Unfortunately, even a mention of that would get heavy lobbying against, accusations of communist sympathies, etc.
I have yet to see a modern, touch screen cash register not running Windows. Frankly, I don't understand why they wouldn't be running QNX or Minix, but whatever, I guess the people who deal with these things are too concerned...actually, according to TFA, they are probably glad it is not running a secure OS with tamper evident hardware.
Wow I don't know where to even begin. Red Hat's consultants might not know what ksh is? I guess you've never dealt with them before, either. Not only is there an existing bug reporting system (modified bugzilla), but they routinely send people to work on site for their larger customers, and those people are exposed to all sorts of sensitive documents. Red Hat is required by law to protect the privacy of their customers; I would sooner trust them than I would some random software developer who wrote a package that I am trying to use. Red Hat's employees spend all day troubleshooting these packages, without distractions from specific business needs within a corporation, and would arguably be better suited to solve problems with something like ksh than a typical IT employee. Red Hat currently employs thousands of developers, who can communicate with each other; if your IT department has thousands of developers, you are a very extreme corner case.
I should have been more clear, I was referring to large IT shops that must guarantee 24x7 availability for thousands or even millions of users, such as the firms down on Wall Street. Trying to accomplish this in-house is often more expensive for these companies than paid support from Red Hat or Novell.
You missed the part where I noted that there is more to it than hardware. I would suspect that Red Hat rarely gets support calls resulting from problems in configuring drivers. Really, Red Hat and Novell are spending their time solving problems like, "How do we work around this bug in ksh? Are you going to submit a fix to that?" rather than, "This network card isn't working." In fact, Red Hat publishes a list of supported hardware, and presumably getting support from them for hardware not on that list isn't even possible.
Also, keep in mind that Red Hat guarantees no more than 24 hours for a fix or workaround for basic support, and one hour for their highest paying customers. That is attractive to a lot of businesses.
Why reference a work of fiction? The Nazi government encouraged citizens to report each other as well, and ironically, the Nazis launched missiles at and dropped bombs on England.
True and, as the article pointed out, the ACLU negotiated rules about the cameras not pointing into people's homes, and about the feeds being stored for no more than 30 days.
However, cameras are a waste of public funds. Police forces love to cite case studies on how they used cameras to catch some criminal, but really, there hasn't been much change in crime in cities where the only change to the police department was the use of cameras. Notice that in this case, a lot more was changed: new computers (well, computers period, according to TFA), new administrators, etc. My guess is that the reduction in crime was due to those factors, and not the cameras. Frankly, anyone with a brain in their head can figure out where a camera's blind spot is.
Not all certifications are useless. As a case in point, consider the fundamentals of engineering exam and the certification one gets from it, "licensed professional engineer." Passing that test is no joke, and LPE's are generally the sort of people you want to hire for engineering work (in some places, they are the only people you can legally hire).
Ubuntu is ubiquitous? That's a laugh. Ubuntu is popular on the desktop, but last I checked, it was Red Hat derivatives that were dominant in the server market.
Really though, good point about support contracts being a reason to choose one distro over another. That's what the article misses: for a lot of IT shops, support contracts are very cost effective.
Who said that is how things are supposed to work? Last I checked, the way things were supposed to work is that you are entitled to a copy of the source code for your software, which you could redistribute under the same license that you received. Where did local economies fit into that?
Actually, there are plenty of reasons to choose a supported distro, even at a purely technical institution. For many organizations, it doesn't make sense to devote time or personnel to debugging system problems, and it often costs more to have an IT department handle everything than to have someone from Red Hat or Novell solve the problem. It is not just a question of hardware, it is also a question of software bugs, configuration problems, etc. Yes, any competent IT shop could take care of this, but that means devoting time that could otherwise be spent on business needs to solving little trivialities.
Or did you think the most successful financial companies in the world made an unplanned decision to pay Red Hat, Novell, Oracle, Sun, etc. large amounts of money for technical support, when they could have just done it in house?
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No, Activision has the right to sell the game they took a risk to produce. There is no entitlement to a profit; if there were then shitty games would be just as beneficial as decent games, and there would no incentive for anyone to improve anything.
Bittorrent, Kazaa, Gnutella, Usenet, ...
I agree. I've been using Linux on my laptop for 5 years now, and I must say, I have saved millions of...well, choose your unit, and I've saved millions of it. Dollars, meters, liters, bytes, grams, etc.
Actually, I would wager a guess that seizing a computer hosting some VPS's would generate significant lawsuits, as the OP noted, from people who had nothing to do with the infringement and are left wondering why they suddenly lost their systems. Since virtualization is becoming very popular for hosting companies, it is really only a matter of time before such an event occurs, and at the very least this bill is amended into some level of sanity (probably the lowest level).
What I find excruciating about this is that the 4 senators who voted against the bill were all Republicans. It just goes to show why, in general, I support third party candidates.
On an unrelated (sort of) note, somebody at my university received a notice that they were engaged in copyright infringement, came to the computer center and asked what they had done -- they didn't even know what it meant to download music or movies. Or so they claimed.
Today, actually. I am updating right now.
I would guess that the FBI or NSA is involved in the investigation as well, since both agencies have contracts with Red Hat and since this is a major security breach.
People are missing one crucial detail here: the investigation of this breach may involve the FBI or the NSA, both of which contract with Red Hat and both of which would have an interest in keeping their investigations under wraps until they have reached their conclusions. Don't assume that it is only Red Hat making the decisions about what to disclose to the general public. I wouldn't be too surprised if, a month from now, Red Hat suddenly releases details on what happened and how they're going to stop it from happening again.
Ironically, the ice in question was also on the rocks.
I would hope such a case actually occurred. In a democracy, the citizens must have unencumbered access to the laws. It is scary to think of a society in which citizens are not free to read, share, and discuss the laws that they are bound by.
Answer: no Chrome code will be entering Firefox. This is distributed under a no-derivatives license.
I had my hopes up for a very quick port from a third party. Then I found out that Google is going to use the creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives license. I guess that we will only be seeing this when Google decides to port it to Linux, and only on those distros that Google feels are worthy of having Chrome ported to them, and only in the exact configuration Google selects. I suppose the Google fanboys will have endless explanations for why Google chose a no-derivatives license.
This whole thing doesn't sit right with me. Google is too large, too powerful. It is open source, which is good, but there is just something really wrong with this. I have a feeling that we might start seeing Google extensions to HTML and Javascript, that won't be easily added to Mozilla/Gecko or IE...and a new battle on the web.
It doesn't have to be tamper-proof, just tamper-evident. A tamper-evident seal, that would have to be broken in order to physically open the system, would be enough.
Also, modern registers seem to be undersized desktops, rather than oversized calculators. At least, that was the state of affairs 5 years ago when I was in "food services," and appears to be the case at the places I spend money these days (with the exception of a nearby bar).
The real solution to this problem, the only solution that could ever be enforced, would be a legal requirement that cash registers have temper evident seals and run a OS with verified security (EAL 4+), and signed software. Unfortunately, even a mention of that would get heavy lobbying against, accusations of communist sympathies, etc.
I have yet to see a modern, touch screen cash register not running Windows. Frankly, I don't understand why they wouldn't be running QNX or Minix, but whatever, I guess the people who deal with these things are too concerned...actually, according to TFA, they are probably glad it is not running a secure OS with tamper evident hardware.
Wow I don't know where to even begin. Red Hat's consultants might not know what ksh is? I guess you've never dealt with them before, either. Not only is there an existing bug reporting system (modified bugzilla), but they routinely send people to work on site for their larger customers, and those people are exposed to all sorts of sensitive documents. Red Hat is required by law to protect the privacy of their customers; I would sooner trust them than I would some random software developer who wrote a package that I am trying to use. Red Hat's employees spend all day troubleshooting these packages, without distractions from specific business needs within a corporation, and would arguably be better suited to solve problems with something like ksh than a typical IT employee. Red Hat currently employs thousands of developers, who can communicate with each other; if your IT department has thousands of developers, you are a very extreme corner case.
I should have been more clear, I was referring to large IT shops that must guarantee 24x7 availability for thousands or even millions of users, such as the firms down on Wall Street. Trying to accomplish this in-house is often more expensive for these companies than paid support from Red Hat or Novell.
You missed the part where I noted that there is more to it than hardware. I would suspect that Red Hat rarely gets support calls resulting from problems in configuring drivers. Really, Red Hat and Novell are spending their time solving problems like, "How do we work around this bug in ksh? Are you going to submit a fix to that?" rather than, "This network card isn't working." In fact, Red Hat publishes a list of supported hardware, and presumably getting support from them for hardware not on that list isn't even possible.
Also, keep in mind that Red Hat guarantees no more than 24 hours for a fix or workaround for basic support, and one hour for their highest paying customers. That is attractive to a lot of businesses.
Why reference a work of fiction? The Nazi government encouraged citizens to report each other as well, and ironically, the Nazis launched missiles at and dropped bombs on England.
True and, as the article pointed out, the ACLU negotiated rules about the cameras not pointing into people's homes, and about the feeds being stored for no more than 30 days.
However, cameras are a waste of public funds. Police forces love to cite case studies on how they used cameras to catch some criminal, but really, there hasn't been much change in crime in cities where the only change to the police department was the use of cameras. Notice that in this case, a lot more was changed: new computers (well, computers period, according to TFA), new administrators, etc. My guess is that the reduction in crime was due to those factors, and not the cameras. Frankly, anyone with a brain in their head can figure out where a camera's blind spot is.
Not all certifications are useless. As a case in point, consider the fundamentals of engineering exam and the certification one gets from it, "licensed professional engineer." Passing that test is no joke, and LPE's are generally the sort of people you want to hire for engineering work (in some places, they are the only people you can legally hire).
Ubuntu is ubiquitous? That's a laugh. Ubuntu is popular on the desktop, but last I checked, it was Red Hat derivatives that were dominant in the server market.
Really though, good point about support contracts being a reason to choose one distro over another. That's what the article misses: for a lot of IT shops, support contracts are very cost effective.
Who said that is how things are supposed to work? Last I checked, the way things were supposed to work is that you are entitled to a copy of the source code for your software, which you could redistribute under the same license that you received. Where did local economies fit into that?
Actually, there are plenty of reasons to choose a supported distro, even at a purely technical institution. For many organizations, it doesn't make sense to devote time or personnel to debugging system problems, and it often costs more to have an IT department handle everything than to have someone from Red Hat or Novell solve the problem. It is not just a question of hardware, it is also a question of software bugs, configuration problems, etc. Yes, any competent IT shop could take care of this, but that means devoting time that could otherwise be spent on business needs to solving little trivialities.
Or did you think the most successful financial companies in the world made an unplanned decision to pay Red Hat, Novell, Oracle, Sun, etc. large amounts of money for technical support, when they could have just done it in house?