Burn All GIFs!

[Darren Dirt]

 http://burnallgifs.org/archives/

And yay they mention XIPH - a way cool all-in-one place to find out the better "license-free alternatives" to image/audioplaying/CDripping software. Let FREEdom ring!



(PS: I guess Darren was in a "techie" mood the last hour or so )


PPS: remember kids to mirror this link to an easy place where you can DOWNLOAD DeCSS! <-- chew on that, media lawyers!!!

[Mr. Analog]

 Always good! Thanks for the link DD!

[Darren Dirt]

 DeCSS Now!

Spread the fog, kiddies!

[Shayne]

 ...patents dont suck.

[Mr. Analog]

 

...patents dont suck.

You can't say that, I patented saying that, the only way you can say that is if you pay me money for what you've said and promise in the future to never say it again. Thank You!

The Patent System was broken pretty much since it's inception, hate the monolithic structure of phone companies? Thank Alexander Graham Bell for patenting telephone technology and creating a virtual monopoly for the Bell Corporation that lasted well into the 20th Century. It ensured that telephone service should only be maintained by a single entity in a given region and that service charges and system expansion is not governed by the normal laws of supply & demand. The telephone did not become an ubiquitous household appliance until the 1940s mostly because prior to that Ma Bell could only expand at a rate that was governed by internal forces. Consequently large Cities (especially those found on the Eastern Seaboard) were enjoying the benefits of mass communication while rural areas did not even begin to get service until the mid-1920s.

All of this comes from a fascinating book I have buried somewhere at home that covers the early days of telecom in North America.

[Shayne]

 Hey, i can agree that the current system isnt the best implementation, but i do think that intellectual property should be protected.

I'd hate to be the guy who develops the ultimate solution to a world problem only to have my idea mass marketed by some monolithic entity and i see nothing from it.

Granted this is abused.  Nature of the beast.

Leaves little reason to innovate when your work becomes free to the masses; wouldnt you say?

[Mr. Analog]

Leaves little reason to innovate when your work becomes free to the masses; wouldnt you say?

Personally, I find OSS more innovative than anything coming out of Microsoft, Apple, etc...

Money isn't in product, it's in services.

[Thorin]

 Gee, good thing the idea of a round wheel wasn't patented.

Oh, and if telecom had been open to the laws of supply and demand, there'd *still* be farms with no phone service.  Telecom makes money in high-density areas, not when hundreds of kilometers of cable need to be laid for a few hundred customers.  Point in case - try using your cell phone in rural Alberta.  And I don't mean Morinville, that's not "rural".  Go north and see how long you have reception for.  Or go into the mountains.

Last but not least, the idea of Intellectual Property is largely a 20th- and 21st-century problem.  Before that, designs turned into physical products, and the physical products were frequently imitated, but the design cost less as a percentage of the overall product than today's electronic solutions such as intranet-based web apps.

So how do you convince a company to pay you to develop software that thereafter will be available for free to others?  I mean, saying that service is where you make the dough is one thing, but the pure OSS philosophy is that *all* software developed is freely shared with each other (this pure philosophy has yet to be completely embraced).

[Shayne]

 

Personally, I find OSS more innovative than anything coming out of Microsoft, Apple, etc...

I dunno about that...

1.  Microsoft Office is much better then Open Office.  Granted the gap is getting smaller, but Microsoft has yet to release their latest, and OO.org is just releasing v2.

2.  Microsoft Visual Studio, nothing can compare to this beauty.

3.  DirectX vs. OpenGL.  One is a standardized well documented, well supported API, the other is a community driven API who's main supporter is ID.

4.  MySQL vs. Oracle vs. MSSQL

5.  Apple OSX, sure its FreeBSD at the core, but the front end is whickedly innovative and nothing by KDE or Gnome

6.  Trillian vs. GAIM

...infact i find it very hard to find an innovative OSS project.  I was thinking firefox, but Opera coined most of the features loved by the firefox masses and its a pay-for browser (closed source too).

Sure many of these are not innovative examples, but they are examples of big companies putting big dollars behind projects and their OSS equivelant.

Off topic sorta, but i dont think Open Source is all its cracked up to be (and im a big advocate of OSS)

[Shayne]

 ....okay.  PNG is much cooler then any other graphics format.  And its open.

[Lazybones]

 

1.  Microsoft Office is much better then Open Office.  Granted the gap is getting smaller, but Microsoft has yet to release their latest, and OO.org is just releasing v2.

Agree, but then again Open Office has a non patented open document format standard.

2.  Microsoft Visual Studio, nothing can compare to this beauty.

Still using Delphi 5 and its IDE, only in the .NET version has MS finnished coping most of the time saving features of the Borland IDE that have been around for years.  I went to the MS .Net thing last year.. And almost laughed at every "NEW" feature they described.

3.  DirectX vs. OpenGL.  One is a standardized well documented, well supported API, the other is a community driven API who's main supporter is ID.

One is highly portable, one is not. Direct X is the best tool for windows

4.  MySQL vs. Oracle vs. MSSQL

Why does MySQL even get mentioned in the same breath as real databases such as Oracle and MSSQL? PostgreSQL would be a better example.

After working with both Oracle and MSSQL for several years I must admit that I prefer MSSQL

5.  Apple OSX, sure its FreeBSD at the core, but the front end is whickedly innovative and nothing by KDE or Gnome

6.  Trillian vs. GAIM

...infact i find it very hard to find an innovative OSS project.  I was thinking firefox, but Opera coined most of the features loved by the firefox masses and its a pay-for browser (closed source too).

Trillians UI is far better than GAIM thats for sure, and your right FireFox is not all that different from what Opera was already doing.

Sure many of these are not innovative examples, but they are examples of big companies putting big dollars behind projects and their OSS equivelant.

Off topic sorta, but i dont think Open Source is all its cracked up to be (and im a big advocate of OSS)

True, but there are some cool OSS projects out there.

[Shayne]

 

Agree, but then again Open Office has a non patented open document format standard.

...and?  The functionality and ease of use is not yet there (i only use OO.org at home).  I want to see a freeware AccessDB and GUI.

Still using Delphi 5 and its IDE, only in the .NET version has MS finnished coping most of the time saving features of the Borland IDE that have been around for years.  I went to the MS .Net thing last year.. And almost laughed at every "NEW" feature they described.

This was a very poor example for me.  I use Zend Studio, but some of the features that the .NET IDE has makes me drool (names space, collapsable if/else/functions/etc).  Its pretty bulky though, my studio is about 50MB, built in SQL browser, FTP client, etc. (closed source though)

One is highly portable, one is not. Direct X is the best tool for windows

Xbox2 on PowerPC.  Pretty portable if you ask me, sure it wont work in Unix, but it can be compiled to run on the architecture.

Why does MySQL even get mentioned in the same breath as real databases such as Oracle and MSSQL? PostgreSQL would be a better example.

What we need is a combo project.  The speed, support, reliability of MySQL, with the advanced SQL features of PostgreSQL (though MySQL 5 is a step in the right direction, and is very usable early in its development, im running my development game on it)

I agree that support is where the money is, and im glad to see many OSS companies going this route.  MySQL is the biggest notable as we deal with them often (and have a support contract).

[Darren Dirt]

 As Homestar would say, Hoe-wee Cwap.

I didn't expect this to turn into a debate about why software patents suck (although the majority of those lengthy debates elsewhere certainly do show WHY they suck, from logistics/fairness/questionableauthority/motivationofcreatros perspectives - so it's not as simple as saying "no they don't, intellectual rights need to be protected").

I'll read the responses after work, I totally don't want to get distracted

Oh yeah, I wanted to add a link to a site with lots of "rare wares" (not warez) including en/decoders for Ogg - http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.html

*ducks away from debate*