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Comment Re:He's right (Score 2, Insightful) 357

No, Snowgirl is right. [...] Open Source does not mean anything other than you have the source available. For example, so you can inspect it for security reasons, so you can make in-house only changes

No. It used to be fairly common to sell software with source code, with explicit restriction that it may not be redistributed: source was only provided for in-house use. That is certainly not open source.

Open Source does imply the right to redistribute, and that's explicitly allowed in every OSI license, snowgirl's legalistic quibbling notwithstanding: the definition referred is not a license or any other legally binding document, and if someone really tried to make a license that explicitly forbids redistribution of the program in unmodified and non-aggregated form, I'm sure ISO would reject it - possibly clarifying their definition, if they thought it was necessary - but the intent of the definition is clear enough, whether or not it appears legally watertight.

Comment Re:All cracking legal? (Score 1) 258

Most countries have the power of the courts strictly limited to crimes committed within their own country. Other countries limit their jurisdiction to crimes committed within their borders, and crimes committed outside those borders by their own citizens.

Actually quite a few, if not indeed most countries have provisions in their laws to prosecute for crimes committed outside their territory, in particular crimes committed not only by but also against their citizens (although typically with caveat that the it must be criminal also in the country where it occurred), some crimes are often prosecutable no matter what (genocide, airplane hijackings, child abuse being common). And often there's a proviso that prosecution is possible in any case if decided high enough (state attorney or similar).

I'm not aware of any comprehensive survey of this around the world, I know only of a rather random sample of countries - if anyone knows of such a study, I'd be very interested.

Comment Re:All cracking legal? (Score 1) 258

I'd not heard of such abductions, but if there is any truth in this, it is indeed scary.

There is some truth in it, certainly. One glaring example is Manuel Noriega: he was not only foreign citizen but head of state, abducted by force by the US and flown to USA for trial. (Yeah, he was a thug and deserved what he got, but that's beside the point here.)

One has to wonder then, what is it about the U.S. that the feel they have the right to effectively violate the sovereignty of another nation to protect their own interests?

Because they're powerful enough to get away with it. I suspect everybody else would do it, too, if they could, and sometimes do. Israeli abduction of Eichmann is a good example: they got away with it not because of their military power but because those more powerful supported them, Eichmann being rather deserving of punishment, too. Most countries prefer to do such things less openly, resorting to assassination rather than claiming any legality to their actions - a bit further back in history, Trotsky is a prime example.

How would they react if such a crime, (I would consider this a crime), were perpetrated against one of their own citizens?

It would depend on how it'd suit the politics of the day. If the abductee was someone they wanted to get rid of, perhaps nothing but indignant speeches; if an American hero, anything up to full-scale war.

Comment Re:I think it's a good question. (Score 1) 249

did you figure in the cost of air-con in the summer time (and possibly winter depending on where you live)?

That's a good point. Where I live (about 62 degrees North) air conditioning isn't much of an issue, but heating is, and I've always tried to take that into account when doing power savings calculations and measurements. Hatta is right that surprisingly often old boxes turn out to be more efficient in the end - but not always. You really need to do the measurements and calculations to know, and sometimes results may be surprising.

Comment Re:I think it's a good question. (Score 4, Interesting) 249

my experience says that most people -even those in the lower income bracket- don't want the old gear.

There are people who like old gear for philosophical reasons, even when money isn't really an issue. I recently found a good home for an Athlon XP 1500+ (1.3GHz) -based box as an email/www terminal in a used car parts shop (put in a 40GB disk and two 512MB DIMMs scavenged elsewhere and installed Ubuntu in it), and they've been happy with it - suits their business idea of recycling old stuff, they told me.

I can remember many other amazingly old and slow machines that have found happy owners in people who could easily have bought new stuff if they wanted to.

In general, though, I'd discard (= recycle properly) stuff that's been significantly superseded in terms of electricity consumption - if a new one saves its price in one year's electricity bill, there's no point in keeping the old one. But stuff that's just slow by modern standards, like 802.11b gear, may well find a happy owner in someone who ideologically likes recycling and doesn't need more speed (and quite a few people don't). But people in low income brackets are more likely to feel using old stuff is somehow demeaning and reject it for that reason, even if it'd be perfectly usable.

Comment Re:pfsense? (Score 1) 221

a long time ago [...] I was under the impression that IpCop was based off of smoothwall and (IpCop) was pretty much a dead project.

IpCop was indeed originally forked off smoothwall, but it's not a dead project yet - indeed, it looks like the next major release (2.0) is going to materialize after all.

Comment Re:What's the difference between a lemming and law (Score 1) 268

Lemmings do NOT follow each other. They move blindly, period.

I guess you've never seen a real lemming. They most certainly are not blind, nor do they move blindly in a metaphorical sense. They do not follow each other thoughtlessly either, however, so that part of your rebuttal was correct.

Comment Re:The untimely war on filesharing. (Score 1) 290

I have (many) friends who, because they can, allot 0 dollars for entertainment and download every movie, song and game they want from the torrents. They then use that 100-200 dollars that would otherwise have been entertainment funds to buy more pot, better brands of cigarettes or a better brand of beer/beer at a more expensive bar depending on their preferred method of intoxication.

All of those count as entertainment in my book. The general point remains: most people will not increase their total entertainment expenditure no matter what, and the fight is not really between them and creators/producers but within the latter, not about how to make the cake bigger but how it is shared.

Censorship

Google Stops Ads For "Cougar" Sites 319

teh31337one writes "Google is refusing to advertise CougarLife, a dating site for mature women looking for younger men. However, they continue to accept sites for mature men seeking young women. According to the New York Times, CougarLife.com had been paying Google $100,000 a month since October. The Mountain View company has now cancelled the contract, saying that the dating site is 'nonfamily safe.'"
Linux Business

Penumbra: Overture Goes Open Source 74

As promised when the Humble Indie Bundle hit $1 million in donations the other day, indie developer Frictional Games has released Penumbra: Overture's source code. "The code for Penumbra: Overture is a continuation of the one used for the tech demo + some addition for the not so long lived Robo Hatch project. It also contains some code from Unbirth, giving it quite some history." The release also includes the HPL1 engine. "This is engine that has powered all of the Penumbra games and it even includes the stuff used to create the 2D platformer Energetic. The engine code was started in December 2004 and was actively developed until early 2008." The repositories are available at github.

Comment Re:Yes, but it may not mean what you think it mean (Score 1) 504

All the work you did for them belongs to them. [...] You have no rights to do whatever you want with the code you wrote for them.

It depends on the jurisdiction, and possibly what kind of employer it is. In particular governmental and some other public employers have restrictions in some countries - e.g., in Finland university teachers and researchers have copyright to what they create in their work. Also, there may be nationally binding agreements with trade unions that have similar effects on some professions.

As a rule, though, with a private employer, and in some countries with all, you are right.

Comment Re:Rediculous interpretation of law (Score 1) 259

Consider the antiquarian collector. A First Folio Shakespeare might be covered by a copyright issued for a new printing, edition, revised font, scholarly criticism edition of say the Tempest.

No. The new edition has its own copyright, created by the criticism and whatnot, but it has no affect on the original, whose copyright has expired. It does mean you can't copy the Tempest edition because the original's copyright has expired, but if you get your hands on the original you can copy it as much as you want, and of course you can also sell and resell it.

Comment EU is as bad (or worse) (Score 1) 259

So, if I live in England, legally buy an Omega watch there, then legally immigrate to the US, it is now a copyright violation to resell that watch on eBay?!? This flies in the face of common sense!

If you live in England, remember that the opposite is true as well: if you visit USA, buy a copyrighted item and bring it back home, you can't legally resell it there. The EU Copyright Directive explicitly limits the doctrine of first sale to first sales within EU (or actually within ETA, which includes also Norway &c).

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