vivaelamor 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Lack Of Food Copyright Helps Restaurant Innovation Thrive

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2010 @ 03:34pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Poor clearing houses!!!

    "Well, I disagree that the existence and/or desirablility of a middle ground is fallacious."

    Then you misunderstand. It is not fallacious to desire a middle ground, or for one to exist. It is fallacious to base your argument upon its existence. You say: "The truth is almost never at the extremes. It's almost always somewhere in the middle.", logic by which I would guess that the majority of convicted mass murderers are only actually guilty of half their crimes.

    You would do better to provide evidence on the actual effect of copyright, from which 'too much' and 'too little' might be determined, before heading for the middle ground.

  • On the post: Lack Of Food Copyright Helps Restaurant Innovation Thrive

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2010 @ 03:09pm

    Re: Re: Re: Now sounds like a good time

    "Except that when the laws are understood as incentivizing creativity rather than promoting sharing, the result is a tendency to favor monetary rewards for creativity over promoting progress for the public benefit."

    Copyright never had any facility designed to encourage sharing. As a monopoly its function is, at best, to provide an incentive to create by limiting the ability to share that which is inherently copyable. The Statue of Anne states, in its purpose: "for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books", which seems analogous to monetary rewards for creativity.

    By contrast, patents were designed to facilitate sharing by requiring disclosure of the invention. That said, whether disclosure for patents serves any purpose in practice is debatable.

  • On the post: Lack Of Food Copyright Helps Restaurant Innovation Thrive

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2010 @ 02:48pm

    Re:

    "Let me get this straight. 100 years ago food was boring and there was no copyright. Now food is more interesting and there is still no copyright. From this, we are supposed to conclude that food has become more interesting because of the lack of copyright? "

    If you want to ignore all the nuances of the argument, which claimed not definitive conclusion beyond 'the industry thrives despite a lack of copyright', then sure. Perhaps you should learn about the differences between fact and theory, as this article has both.

  • On the post: Lack Of Food Copyright Helps Restaurant Innovation Thrive

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2010 @ 02:28pm

    Re: signature meals

    "And conversely, should the time come when a couple mouseclicks can make indistinguishable replicas of a signature dish, especially one that underpins a restaurant and a culinary career, then distributes them all over the world essentially eliminating the need to go to a specific place and pay for that experience, we can reasonably expect chef's will equally lobby for and receive similar protections, to defend their artistic creations from the ransacking and price devaluation that has occurred in the world of recorded music and has constituted a huge and unethical (as well as unlawful) taking from musicians."

    Are you inviting a replicator analogy?

  • On the post: Lack Of Food Copyright Helps Restaurant Innovation Thrive

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2010 @ 02:25pm

    Re: Re: Poor clearing houses!!!

    "It's a mix, and just about ANY simplistic view of the situation is bound to be more wrong than right. The right approach is a balanced one."

    It's interesting that a middle ground fallacy is included in the same monologue as your deconstruction of DanDick's fallacious argument. Just saying.

  • On the post: Patent Lawyer Insists Open Source Stifles Innovation

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 04:19pm

    Re: Re: Re: open source

    'The creators of TCP/IP protocol didn't know anything about "open source" concept cause it did not exist'

    Wrong.

    'Neither the creators of Netscape Navigator or MShit IExplorer cared much about "open source"'

    Netscape was built by ex Mosaic developers, Mosaic was proprietary but pretty permissive on access to source code. Mozilla was founded by Netscape after it publicly announced its commitment to open source.

    "The UNIX system was purely commercial development"

    "The early BIND development was supported by DARPA contract"

    Even ignoring your ignorance, none of your points address Lawrence's assertions that open source is widely relied upon, including facilitating this conversation.

  • On the post: Patent Lawyer Insists Open Source Stifles Innovation

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 03:54pm

    Re: No joke, just the facts

    "Of course open source limits innovation. If everyone were just reinventing the wheel we would only have a reinvented wheel, not any advance."

    I'll roll with the wheel metaphor. Let's say I have a method for a wheel, but it's not a circle because I lack the relevant maths knowledge (which is what software boils down to). Someone comes along who knows how to deal with circles, but doesn't know how to create a wheel method. In a closed source system they would have to literally reinvent the wheel. In an open source system they would be able to combine their knowledge of circles to my knowledge of wheels to come up with a potential innovation: a circular wheel.

    Your argument seems to be based on the premise that there is value in reinvention. As another poster has pointed out, doing something repeatedly in hope of stumbling across something new may have worked for Edison, but is not regarded by everyone to be a good way of working. One of the key tenets of software development, closed or open source, is code reuse. Whether through software libraries or object orientated programming, most developers design software around code reuse. This isn't a concept unique to open source, but common to all software development.

    If anything, open source melds the best of both worlds in reusing code but still allowing improvements by contribution. In the closed software model you may have a better wheel function but end up using the one I wrote because you have no way to change it. In the open source model, not only can you use your better wheel, but so can I.

  • On the post: Patent Lawyer Insists Open Source Stifles Innovation

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 03:06pm

    Re: Re: No joke, just the facts

    "I love it. You amuse me to no end. Now that I understand that you are pure satire, I have to say, Bravo, sir. Brilliant."

    If it's satire then someone has way too much time on their hands (having read the comments he makes on his article). Maybe TAM has a twin?

  • On the post: Patent Lawyer Insists Open Source Stifles Innovation

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 11:42am

    Re: Re:

    "Hey, WordPress isn't that bad. I'll admit, the source is a bit nasty, but the end product is far better than the likes of Drupal and Joomla. Better back end interface, a good plugin and theme API. (I have first-hand experience working on the WordPress core. It's a bit messy. I enjoy writing plugins though.)"

    Apparently it is good enough for the patent attorney in the featured article. A choice quote from him in the comments: "We have gone over this many time here. Why anyone pays for something that is free and works is beyond me. The fact that I use open source has nothing to do with the fact that open source thwarts innovation. Everything I said above is 100% correct, and those who oppose it are fooling themselves."

    Contrast this with his article, which states: "But copying does not advance technology and does not foster innovation. Copying is antithetical to the patent system and that is what is wrong with so much of the open source community."

    It would seem that while he believes copying does not advance technology and is 'wrong' when done by the open source community, he has no problem copying THEM when it suites him. The guy is a grade A hypocritical pillock.

  • On the post: Patent Lawyer Insists Open Source Stifles Innovation

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 11:26am

    Re:

    "its why most websites are still run on a web server that doesnt even do simple page caching."

    Which web server is this? Apache has had a stable caching function since 2.2. Apart from that, why not use Squid Cache? You don't need the web server to do simple page caching. Hell, you could even use Squid Cache (open source) with IIS or whatever web server you care to use.

  • On the post: Senate Candidate Angle Accuses Senator Reid Of Copyright Infringement For Displaying Angle's Website

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 10:42am

    Re: Re: Re: hrmm

    "There's more to this then just defamation. There's a reason I can't duplicate any website and re-post it anywhere. Any number of business and commerce websites come to mind, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, CNN, etc. Your argument, "Someone has every right to repost someone else's previous website and use it however s/he sees fit", is not thought out very well because, it makes the internet effectively useless."

    And those sites' commercial nature would be taken into account when considering fair use. However, as the site in question isn't of a commercial nature, I find the comparison rather pointless.

  • On the post: Senate Candidate Angle Accuses Senator Reid Of Copyright Infringement For Displaying Angle's Website

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 10:38am

    Re: Re: Too late

    "A web page is not journalism unless it's intended to be, like a blog or journalism website. "

    You don't need to be a journalistic publication to cite fair use.

  • On the post: Senate Candidate Angle Accuses Senator Reid Of Copyright Infringement For Displaying Angle's Website

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 10:30am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Missing Mike's point

    "Countless examples here of fair use given at Techdirt, which I agree with BTW. Now we have an example of verbatim copying and the best argument is, 'it's the internet, I can do what I want'. " The 'amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole' seems kinda irrelevant when the whole work is not only non commercial, but also political speech.

  • On the post: Teenager And Composer Argue Over File Sharing

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 07 Jul, 2010 @ 10:10am

    Re:

    "Something seems terribly wrong when doing that which is right and consistent with law is viewed by some as foolish and unwise." Who takes that view?

  • On the post: Microsoft's Comparison To Linux In The Server Market Conveniently Leaves Out Free

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2010 @ 05:50pm

    Re: Not really free

    'While it's disappointing to see MS leaving out useful information, from a total cost of ownership, most companies select MS over Linux after doing the analysis, not blindly. When you have an army of Linux engineers on staff (like Google) you can choose the "free" option, but not everyone has that.'

    Why is Google different? They were using Linux long before they could afford 'an army of engineers'.

  • On the post: Microsoft's Comparison To Linux In The Server Market Conveniently Leaves Out Free

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2010 @ 05:18pm

    Re: What about the free Linux distros ? what about them ?

    "what about them, do they maintain and install themselves, configure themselves, provide self service ?
    Require no administration, require no time to install, setup, test, deploy, and patch ?"

    You pillock. They said 'without service contracts', how does that translate into 'magic'? I use Linux without a service contract, am I magic?

    "Again, just because something is supposed to be "free" does not mean it is, and it does not mean its suitable for the job at hand."

    Saying something is free doesn't deny that there may be a cost associated with using it. Please stop being dense, really, please. You do not pay for the software. Ergo, it is free. You probably value your time, which if spent installing said software, may be counted as a cost. The software is still free.

  • On the post: Microsoft's Comparison To Linux In The Server Market Conveniently Leaves Out Free

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2010 @ 05:08pm

    Re: My Observations as a developer

    "Microsoft has one truly great advantage over Linux: Visual Studio. Although I am still not completely convinced of the usefulness of the .NET framework and Common Language Runtime (CLR), even after developing applications with it for several years, it is a nice development environment and there is nothing in Linux to truly compete with it - unless developing in Java, then the Linux platform is arguably superior (although I find Java libraries like Java Media Framework often more complete for Windows). The usual argument is that more development is done in Windows because there is a larger market. True, but if development becomes easier in Linux (especially if a cross compiler for Windows/.Net is available) and is cheap/free, there will be a lot more Linux development."

    You should take a good look at Qt and Qt Creator, bonus is that it runs on Windows too. Or just use Mono and stick with .NET.

    "Additionally, when (if) OS runtime environments are all virtual and CLR common intermediate language and JRT bytecode are compatible you'll see an explosion in Linux desktop and server use. Of course, MS came up with CLR as a competitor to JRT after failing to usurp Java from Sun and this is unlikely."

    I've not seen many desktop Linux developers seriously consider Java for a long time. Most of the stuff that was previously done in Java tends to be in Python now and I can't see that changing except where android is concerned.

  • On the post: Microsoft's Comparison To Linux In The Server Market Conveniently Leaves Out Free

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2010 @ 04:18pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "Clear now? So just how does free software take away from what Linux already is? You don't need to buy an extravagantly expensive license to install, test, tweak and deploy a Linux server. Nor do you get caught in vendor lock in."

    It's a bit much to expect TAM to 'get' free business models after years of reading a blog devoted to them. I'm guessing TAM is really some sort of perl bot, a one liner made in a fit of irony perhaps.

  • On the post: Microsoft's Comparison To Linux In The Server Market Conveniently Leaves Out Free

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2010 @ 04:13pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    '"the internet community thing is still pretty young, companies made their software choices in the past when linux was not a very good business option, and those companies continue down the path they have chosen". when the companies were making the choice, there was not a strong online community to support this stuff, and still to this day, while there is a strong community, it is often filled with people who dont have answers.'

    Support wise, the key difference between Linux and its closed source competitors is that Linux has public bug trackers and source repositories. Why you put more faith in people who are paid to deceive you than those who are committed to open development boggles the mind.

    "business people like their answers quickly and from an authoritative source. upper management isnt thrilled by "bob on the internet said we should...". they want to know that someone from a company they trust is on the job."

    Do you have a red phone marked 'Steve Ballmer' or something? I ask because the chances of getting an answer from an authoritative source via the normal channels as a Microsoft customer seems slim to none.

    "so again, while the internet thing might be cool right now, as little as a few years ago it sucked horribly. businesses do not change their operating systems and environments every year, nor do they do it lightly."

    That's hardly a point in closed source's favour. Famously, when Office 2000 reached end of support, Microsoft accidentally deleted all of the service packs. Of course, it's not actually lawful for anyone else to distribute them and Microsoft couldn't care less, they didn't even bother updating the broken links.

  • On the post: Microsoft's Comparison To Linux In The Server Market Conveniently Leaves Out Free

    vivaelamor ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2010 @ 03:52pm

    Re: Re: You need to have a "market" before you can have a market share

    "And this is for intelligent people not Windows fanbois or ZDNet trollers."

    I wish I'd read this person's original post properly before replying to the one I did, serves me right. This line cracked me up:

    "FOSS has had 20 plus years to sort itself out, and its going backwards not forwards. its getting more political, or adverserial, more bitter and its not getting them anywhere."

    I have a full Linux distribution on my phone. If that's going backwards then take me to the stone-age, by damn! I guess when I upgrade it to Meego in October I'll be partying like it's 1999.

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