I took some college classes aimed at getting into IT, right after I got out of the Navy, and decided it just isn't worth it. Too much education for too little pay (especially when I could walk into any energy company and command a low five/high six figure salary (which I have in fact done)).
No, they shouldn't. Neither this nor the 1998 witch-hunt were just actions, but then again, the US and EU ceased being just a long time ago. The "crime" of which Microsoft was "convicted" (using a successful platform to leverage a new product, kinda like the Diet Coke of the computing world) would simply be "good business practices" to any company with the right political connections or a lesser degree of success. Sadly "corporate greed" is the fashionable excuse to people who failed to make anything of their own lives, and selfsame people make the laws in both states, so "justice" is a long way off.
Ironically enough, that's about what they have decided anytime DeCSS went up in a court case. Not sure about libdvdcss, since the actual circumvention is done on the end user's machine (DeCSS was made with cracked player codes, libdvdcss "guesses" them at runtime).
Which is why RHEL has always included Apache (non-GPL compatible before the release of v3), openssl (still GPL-incompatible), postfix (ditto), and so on and so forth. (They also included stuff like mp3 support and Netscape back before they got on their high horse). Here's the relevant passage, from Section 5 of GPLv3:
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent
works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work,
and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program,
in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an
"aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not
used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users
beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work
in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other
parts of the aggregate.
They've never had an interest in "protecting freedom". Right now, the only reason they even bring up the Constitution (which most of them seem to think is an outdated piece of paper requiring an updated "living" approach) is to try and make Bush look bad, which is kinda like shooting out street lamps to make the sun go down at night.
War with "rules" is ultimately a slow defeat. Just look at Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and just about anywhere else conflict has broken out since the end of WWII. Either a nation is prepared to defeat its enemies, and willing to do whatever it takes to reach that end, or it is not. You can't make war into something other than war.
When it came to WWII, we really solved a problem we had created. If the US and the UK had been willing to back France and put real teeth in the Treaty of Versailles, a second world war wouldn't have happened in Europe. Instead, we let the Weimar politicians (and later Hitler) get away with bucking the treaty in both letter and spirit, the inevitable happened, and France (a victim of two previous wars of German agression in the last hundred years, and the top candidate for "bloody charnel house" in the third) said the equivalent of "Fuck you guys."
I will concede the point regarding Soviet aggression, however. I remember reading that the Soviets were contemplating an invasion of Western Europe as late as 1983, but backing off after the UK's strong showing in the Falklands.
This "war" (if you want to call it that) should have no other purpose than to ensure that the American people and territory are protected from further attack. (Admittedly, nothing we do in Iraq is going to affect that, so we should just bring the troops back home.) The Iraqi people weren't our problem to begin with, and if they weren't willing to seek freedom (or the mob rule we brought to the place) on their own, it's not our prerogative to hand it to them.
Right on. "Socialism" is at best an ad hoc concept, able to exclude "bad people" at will. Modern day socialists want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to separate themselves from Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and all the other evil fuckheads while remaining committed to the collectivist moral ideals they espoused. When you've accepted that the rights of the individual may be trampled on for the sake of the group, the actual number of corpses is just a matter of details.
The discrepancy is in the fact that patents are *much* more broad in scope than copyright. To violate copyright in any meaningful way, you pretty much have to copy directly from the source. With a patent, any implementation that falls under the patent, whether derived independently or not, is an infringement.
I think the "finish what dad started" and "war for oil" arguments are a bit too simplistic. They ignore that the neoconservative political ideology has wrapped itself around "democratic peace" ("democracy" in and of itself is a nicer name for "gang rape") and similar delusions for the longest time, and ultimately pushes for bullshit wars like in Iraq because drowning us in blood will give us some sense of "national purpose". I don't like the Left at all, but right now they're the best vehicle for fighting the Right, and the sooner they wake the fuck up and realize it's not 1980 anymore (and that Bush isn't running again in 2008), the better. (This was supposed to include a lenghty midpiece on what an Objectivist considers to be moral foreign policy, but I'm smashed, so fuck it)
This isn't a criminal case. 5th amendment law does not apply to civil cases (and they have been "charged" in the sense that there is an ongoing lawsuit).
Which is why their patent attacks haven't addressed the toolchain or gcc but rather the Linux kernel, GNOME/KDE, and OO.o (ie, stuff they *DON'T* distribute).
What you are arguing is not neo-conservative ideology, but rather libertarian ideology. Friedman, along with Murray Rothbard, is considered one of the fathers of the libertarian movement. Although not a libertarian myself (I'm an Objectivist), I am a strong advocate of rational self-interest. I take my own life and happiness as my standard of value, and I reject wholeheartedly any attempt to sacrifice those values to "the public good." Conversely, I do not demand that sacrifice of anyone else. We are the only animal on this earth with the capacity for reason, and it is that capacity, not brute strength or instinct, that enables us to produce that which we need to sustain human life. The only way that a man can cause another man to act against his own life and values is by introducing the element of physical force. Therefore, our chief moral law, if we wish to value life, is not to initiate force against others. Integrated into a political context, this produces the concept of individual rights: the rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness all boil down to the right to be free from force. Rights are not measured in degrees; they are either respected or they are violated. The only means by which we can deal with each other as free men is by means of voluntary trade, ie capitalism. If a man has more money than I do, by what right do I take it away from him? If a market has fewer sellers than I think is appropriate, by what right do I take their property from them to produce a "level playing field"? As for the rich getting richer, money does not breed in and of itself. A million dollars left in a bank vault does not become two by black magic. Wealth is only obtained by the production of value, by the application of the mind, and the values produced by those demonized as "the rich" have enriched the lives of the rest of us many times over.
What I have stated is my viewpoint. Strip it of any meaning, reduce the concept of rights to simple axioms, and you have the libertarian viewpoint. These are not the neo-conservative viewpoint. Neo-conservatives, like, well, you, are proponents of capitalism to a degree. They parrot the free-market ideals of Friedman and Adam Smith, but in practice heavily regulate the market to their ideal of "Christian compassion" (ie, value is taken from some and given to others because that's what Jesus would want them to do) and "national interest" (ie value is taken from some and given to others because they think it will make America better). There's the usual old-boy network of pull peddlers; when a government accepts that it has carte blanche to violate the rights of its citizens, there's always those who line up for a piece of the pie. Then there's the blanket interventionism; as Americans, it is our moral duty to sacrifice and die so that other nations might someday get to choose their leaders by making a mark on a piece of paper (democracy, without freedom and invididual rights has all the moral characteristics of gang rape). This isn't a self-interested ideology. There's nothing in neo-conservatism that values anything about the self. It's just another sacrificial cult.
Trust a selfish man on this: Whatever it is they preach, it ain't selfishness. They're another sacrificial cult, but instead of sacrificing for the workers or some fuzzy concept of the "common good", it's sacrificing for Jesus and American Glory. They're former leftists, and although they may have dropped the parts of socialism that don't work in the real world, the collectivist moral ideal is still running in full force.
How on earth can they manage to do that? The Democrats have been the "anti-party" ever since they put McGovern up for a presidential nomination. They only get votes when people are too pissed off at the Republicans over the stupid shit they pull. The Republican's emphasis on faith and authority may be reprehensible to those of us who aren't believers, but the Dems have nothing that can counter that. Just an uneasy pragmatism and a vague concept of "social justice" that is well on its way to being co-opted by the Republicans (Hint: Ideas matter. Because the Republicans are centered around an idea (faith) rather than a platform, they can easily change or discard the portions of the platform to resonate with the mainstream American voters who put them in office). They can't really go much further to the left (we've dug up too many "worker's paradises" for that to happen in this day and age), and they can't go much further to the right without being indistinguishable from the opposition. Really, their only hope right now is to keep harping on Iraq and the general state of corruption in the White House (although most Americans learned to blank that out during the last administration), and hope like fuck that Bush doesn't end the war and pull the rug out from under them before November '08.
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Whoops, meant high 5/low 6. As for which, it's a bit vague, depending on incentives, overtime, and such.
I took some college classes aimed at getting into IT, right after I got out of the Navy, and decided it just isn't worth it. Too much education for too little pay (especially when I could walk into any energy company and command a low five/high six figure salary (which I have in fact done)).
They don't want to fork it. They want somebody else to fork it and give them the benefits with no effort on their part.
No, they shouldn't. Neither this nor the 1998 witch-hunt were just actions, but then again, the US and EU ceased being just a long time ago. The "crime" of which Microsoft was "convicted" (using a successful platform to leverage a new product, kinda like the Diet Coke of the computing world) would simply be "good business practices" to any company with the right political connections or a lesser degree of success. Sadly "corporate greed" is the fashionable excuse to people who failed to make anything of their own lives, and selfsame people make the laws in both states, so "justice" is a long way off.
Ironically enough, that's about what they have decided anytime DeCSS went up in a court case. Not sure about libdvdcss, since the actual circumvention is done on the end user's machine (DeCSS was made with cracked player codes, libdvdcss "guesses" them at runtime).
Which is why RHEL has always included Apache (non-GPL compatible before the release of v3), openssl (still GPL-incompatible), postfix (ditto), and so on and so forth. (They also included stuff like mp3 support and Netscape back before they got on their high horse). Here's the relevant passage, from Section 5 of GPLv3:
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.
They've never had an interest in "protecting freedom". Right now, the only reason they even bring up the Constitution (which most of them seem to think is an outdated piece of paper requiring an updated "living" approach) is to try and make Bush look bad, which is kinda like shooting out street lamps to make the sun go down at night.
They don't *have* to be separate from the distro -- that whole "mere aggregation" thing.
War with "rules" is ultimately a slow defeat. Just look at Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and just about anywhere else conflict has broken out since the end of WWII. Either a nation is prepared to defeat its enemies, and willing to do whatever it takes to reach that end, or it is not. You can't make war into something other than war.
History has shown that the only war crime can be safely summed up as "losing."
When it came to WWII, we really solved a problem we had created. If the US and the UK had been willing to back France and put real teeth in the Treaty of Versailles, a second world war wouldn't have happened in Europe. Instead, we let the Weimar politicians (and later Hitler) get away with bucking the treaty in both letter and spirit, the inevitable happened, and France (a victim of two previous wars of German agression in the last hundred years, and the top candidate for "bloody charnel house" in the third) said the equivalent of "Fuck you guys."
I will concede the point regarding Soviet aggression, however. I remember reading that the Soviets were contemplating an invasion of Western Europe as late as 1983, but backing off after the UK's strong showing in the Falklands.
This "war" (if you want to call it that) should have no other purpose than to ensure that the American people and territory are protected from further attack. (Admittedly, nothing we do in Iraq is going to affect that, so we should just bring the troops back home.) The Iraqi people weren't our problem to begin with, and if they weren't willing to seek freedom (or the mob rule we brought to the place) on their own, it's not our prerogative to hand it to them.
Right on. "Socialism" is at best an ad hoc concept, able to exclude "bad people" at will. Modern day socialists want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to separate themselves from Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and all the other evil fuckheads while remaining committed to the collectivist moral ideals they espoused. When you've accepted that the rights of the individual may be trampled on for the sake of the group, the actual number of corpses is just a matter of details.
No, but there's a GPLv2 one...
The discrepancy is in the fact that patents are *much* more broad in scope than copyright. To violate copyright in any meaningful way, you pretty much have to copy directly from the source. With a patent, any implementation that falls under the patent, whether derived independently or not, is an infringement.
I think the "finish what dad started" and "war for oil" arguments are a bit too simplistic. They ignore that the neoconservative political ideology has wrapped itself around "democratic peace" ("democracy" in and of itself is a nicer name for "gang rape") and similar delusions for the longest time, and ultimately pushes for bullshit wars like in Iraq because drowning us in blood will give us some sense of "national purpose". I don't like the Left at all, but right now they're the best vehicle for fighting the Right, and the sooner they wake the fuck up and realize it's not 1980 anymore (and that Bush isn't running again in 2008), the better. (This was supposed to include a lenghty midpiece on what an Objectivist considers to be moral foreign policy, but I'm smashed, so fuck it)
Does the patent license expire immediately after discontinuation, or must it be offered for 3 additional years like source code?
You cannot be forced to incriminate yourself in *criminal* cases (clearly specified by the 5th amendment). This is a lawsuit.
This isn't a criminal case. 5th amendment law does not apply to civil cases (and they have been "charged" in the sense that there is an ongoing lawsuit).
Which is why their patent attacks haven't addressed the toolchain or gcc but rather the Linux kernel, GNOME/KDE, and OO.o (ie, stuff they *DON'T* distribute).
In other words, the logic of Microsoft's argument falls apart because Microsoft is "evil".
She's actually not a lawyer...
What I have stated is my viewpoint. Strip it of any meaning, reduce the concept of rights to simple axioms, and you have the libertarian viewpoint. These are not the neo-conservative viewpoint. Neo-conservatives, like, well, you, are proponents of capitalism to a degree. They parrot the free-market ideals of Friedman and Adam Smith, but in practice heavily regulate the market to their ideal of "Christian compassion" (ie, value is taken from some and given to others because that's what Jesus would want them to do) and "national interest" (ie value is taken from some and given to others because they think it will make America better). There's the usual old-boy network of pull peddlers; when a government accepts that it has carte blanche to violate the rights of its citizens, there's always those who line up for a piece of the pie. Then there's the blanket interventionism; as Americans, it is our moral duty to sacrifice and die so that other nations might someday get to choose their leaders by making a mark on a piece of paper (democracy, without freedom and invididual rights has all the moral characteristics of gang rape). This isn't a self-interested ideology. There's nothing in neo-conservatism that values anything about the self. It's just another sacrificial cult.
Trust a selfish man on this: Whatever it is they preach, it ain't selfishness. They're another sacrificial cult, but instead of sacrificing for the workers or some fuzzy concept of the "common good", it's sacrificing for Jesus and American Glory. They're former leftists, and although they may have dropped the parts of socialism that don't work in the real world, the collectivist moral ideal is still running in full force.
How on earth can they manage to do that? The Democrats have been the "anti-party" ever since they put McGovern up for a presidential nomination. They only get votes when people are too pissed off at the Republicans over the stupid shit they pull. The Republican's emphasis on faith and authority may be reprehensible to those of us who aren't believers, but the Dems have nothing that can counter that. Just an uneasy pragmatism and a vague concept of "social justice" that is well on its way to being co-opted by the Republicans (Hint: Ideas matter. Because the Republicans are centered around an idea (faith) rather than a platform, they can easily change or discard the portions of the platform to resonate with the mainstream American voters who put them in office). They can't really go much further to the left (we've dug up too many "worker's paradises" for that to happen in this day and age), and they can't go much further to the right without being indistinguishable from the opposition. Really, their only hope right now is to keep harping on Iraq and the general state of corruption in the White House (although most Americans learned to blank that out during the last administration), and hope like fuck that Bush doesn't end the war and pull the rug out from under them before November '08.