Comments for Linux User

Comment on Piracy and the value of freedom by Emil

Emil — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:42:25 +0000

John N: “Does the artist benefit if there is no copyright?”
Slave owner: “Do I benefit if there are no slaves?”

I don’t care if it benefits the artists. It benefits society. Monopoly and censorship of ideas are bad and should never be supported.

Comment on Piracy and the value of freedom by Links 7/2/2012: Firefox 11 Enters Beta, Canonical Disappoints KDE | Techrights

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:42:19 +0000

[...] Piracy and the value of freedom I think you’ve heard about the piracy happening in the waters surrounding Somalia. Entire ships are captured, and their passengers are often hurt and sometimes even killed. [...]

Comment on Linux Kernel 3.2.4 released, Android kernel available from 3.3 by Links 7/2/2012: Firefox 11 Enters Beta, Canonical Disappoints KDE | Techrights

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:41:26 +0000

[...] Linux Kernel 3.2.4 released, Android kernel available from 3.3 [...]

Comment on Canonical pulls funding on Kubuntu after 7 years by Phil

Phil — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:02:04 +0000

A previsible movement… how can you expect some success to Kubuntu with the little love Cannonical always show to KDE? Kubuntu always had a lot of problems and bugs not related to KDE that other kde-friendly distros never had (Mandriva, opensuse.. even Fedora KDE spin!!). I suspect Canonical need all their manpower to try make unity usable at last. Good luck, guys!

But is funny.. just when linux mint has firm a full time KDE developer and a sponsorship with bluesystem… :D

Comment on Piracy and the value of freedom by Shaun Hunter

Shaun Hunter — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:29:57 +0000

Intellectual Property, even the term for it makes it obvious that it doesn’t exist.

It’s like campaigning to “Save the Unicorns!”

The media’s problem is that they’ve priced themselves out of the game.

Who’s going to pay $100 for Avatar 3D when they can watch anything they wan’t including Avatar for an entire year on Netflix for the same price?

Who’s going to pay $20 for a want add when cragslist.com will let you post it for free just to be able to advertise along side it?

Who’s going to pay $1000′s for and add when google will get it to a larger and more specific market for a fraction.

Let failing businesses fail or just give up on capitalism all together because saving these fools defeats the market.

Comment on Piracy and the value of freedom by John Copper

John Copper — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:48:22 +0000

” Does the artist benefit if there is no copyright? ”
Give us a micropayment facility and yes the artist would benefit.

The pharmaceutical example is extreme. And who cares anyway about the drugs created that purport to solve one problem and create 3 more.

Privatization of ideas is stupid. Let companies compete on cost and service.

Comment on Piracy and the value of freedom by John N.

John N. — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:17:55 +0000

Shawn –

There is an innate conflict between encouraging innovation and creation and society’s desire to take such innovation and build on it. Eli Whitney knew the problem. He built the cotton gin and solved a problem, the solution of which was obvious from the invention and spent the rest of his life defending his patents. A similar problem exists in drug manufacturing – spend a billion and have your efforts copied for pennies.

That said, you are quite right that copyrights run too long and, given the current patents being issued, the USPTO would likely not be missed if it were closed.

My solution is to cut copyrights way back (seven years seems long enough for Metallica, to me) and the return to the patent test of novel, non-obvious (to practioners in the field) and useful. Patenting the unlock gesture for the iPhone is a case in point.

You damn the current system because it doesn’t benefit the artist. Does the artist benefit if there is no copyright? Would you like your IP, be it a film, an iPhone app, an iconic photo or even a thesis to be co-opted to someone else’s profit before the ink is dry? Perhaps the app store will operate just fine when no one is paid for their efforts. Perhaps not.

Comment on Piracy and the value of freedom by Shawn

Shawn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:16:51 +0000

No, some copyright is not needed. Any government does not have the authority to create monopolies unless it can show beyond a reasonable doubt that society as a whole will benefit more from them than without them. And it has to repeatedly demonstrate this since circumstances change. Copyright has never benefited the artist; it has only benefited the middleman. That is not sufficient grounds to have it. The sooner it is eliminated, the better off we’ll all be.

Comment on eyeOS 2.5 Open Source review – how the mighty have fallen by Daniele Pais

Daniele Pais — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:06:36 +0000

I have been testing this project since 2008 when it was still on 1.5 or 1.6
A very interesting idea which has never made it in to real world. There is many of bugs in almost all the applications and issues arise when you install it to your server. Try it on your local machine first, if you have apache running, it would be better than installing to your server and trying live.

Despite the fact is an open source is not worth the time to try setup / fix / debug.
Such a pity, it could have been a great little tool to run from your home server.

Comment on Fedora 16 review – laying the groundwork for an exciting future by ggokhan

ggokhan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:37:44 +0000

i am using ubuntu 10.1 distribution and i readed all your comments! just i couldn’t understan that i should try that distr. or not…
thanks a lot…

Comment on fit-PC3 mini-PC review – impossibly small & remarkably powerful by Sammy

Sammy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:23:04 +0000

I want it. Honestly – my next PC will look something like that. I’m so tired of big and bulky systems. This one you can simply affix to the back of your monitor.

Comment on openSUSE 12.1 review – new heights of high tech by Parsen

Parsen — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:16:36 +0000

This article covered some items that were not discussed in some much longer previews.
I installed with btrfs just for fun, not sure if Snapper is really going to be that useful for an average user but I’ll try it out. I guess some users are not happy with kmail changes in 12.1.
thanks