[CMake] 4th Edition CMake book now in stock

Alan W. Irwin irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca
Wed Feb 6 02:32:49 EST 2008


On 2008-02-05 19:50-0500 Brandon Van Every wrote:

>> Please think of what real piracy implies (rape, murder, looting, slavery)
>> before using the term so casually.
>
> "Piracy" is a technical term that everyone in the software industry is
> familiar with, and that most consumers are now familiar with as well,
> thanks to their something-for-nothing habits with MP3s, DVDs, and
> P2Ps.

Familiarity does not mean everybody is content with the term.  Instead, in
my view such language is part of a giant sell job to be pejorative about
_all_ copying no matter for what legal purpose, and this has bad practical
consequences for all computer users.  In Canada (and many other parts of the
world) you cannot buy CD blanks for computer backup without paying a levy to
the music industry.  And those guys used the extremely large amount of money
collected primarily to lobby the government to raise the levy and extend it
to more items such as ordinary computers. (After all a computer _might_ be
used for some nefarious music copying activity).  So far, sanity has
prevailed in Canada on refusing such extensions, but in the long term if the
computer industry does not wake up to this threat, their profits will all go
to the music industry. For another example, there have been North American
cases of ISP's trying to block file copying between computers because they
are worried some of it might be illegal copying.  In my view that is like
tearing up the streets since there have been used for a bank robbery getaway
cars in the past and will be so used in the future.  The fact is streets are
too useful for legitimate use to tear up because of illegal use and the same
is true of file copying over the internet.

>From the terminology you use, it appears you have bought into the idea that
copying is uniformly bad.  If you don't mean to make that impression, don't
use the pejorative term "pirated" when you really mean "copied".  If you
insist on using the term "pirated", then all I can say is you haven't
thought through the consequences for the computer industry of stopping all
legitimate copying.

>
>> Of course, Hollywood and the RIAA likes
>> to use such overblown terms for use of any of their products in any way they
>> don't like (whether legal or not),
>
> Hardly.  Those are new kids on the block.

I don't care since that is beside the point.

Finally, Brandon, I assume you disagree with some/all of the above since we
obviously live in different realities, but will you for once grant someone
else the courtesy of the last word in a given thread?  You rarely do that,
and it is frankly irritating behaviour.  Of course, my friends will tell me
something about kettle, pot, and black ( :-)), but I am aware of the issue
for myself and I am trying to deal with it so this is the last I will
respond to you in this thread even if you decide to grab the last word for
yourself once again.

Moving back to the original topic, I would still really appreciate the
KitWare guys commenting on whether they have plans to sell an electronic
version of their book for those of us who strongly prefer that format.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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