Quoting: boltronicsIt reminds me of my time at RMIT in the early 2000s. I couldn't afford a laptop so I had Gentoo with all of my applications and work files loaded on a USB HDD, which I just plugged into one of the computers in the lab to do my work.

One day, a staff member noticed me working this way via a security camera and marched into the room to tell me that it was not allowed and demand that I immediately shut it down and boot the machine back into Windows. The person in question and some other more senior staff members called me into a meeting a few days later, and explained that it was against their ToS (which I believe they had only just made specifically for me as it wasn't even on the website yet) and said that I had compromised their computer.

I explained that all of the computers were set to boot from USB already, and I did no such thing, and that I was only doing my university work, but they didn't care.

I even protested this with a blog post explaining how absurd this was on my student account's blog (a service provided to all students simply by dropping files into ~/public_html), which the university deleted a few days later without explanation. Gosh studying there sucked! I always think about it when I think about bootable USB drives.

MUHAHA.
They must've pooped their pants.
Typical case of "security through obscurity".
Updating the TOS only keeps out only legit users like yourself.
Most students don't even read the TOS.
They could've updated their BIOS settings, but no they attack the one who was using it legit.

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I'm actually really curious how Microsoft will react to game developer run game streaming services.
It really undermines the power of Windows, because the users aren't reliant on the Windows api anymore and the game hoster doesn't have to fear all that pesky software freedom on Linux, because they control the computer.
This might motivate gaming companies to bring out "exclusive Linux natives" for their cloud platforms.
Also I'm curious how they plan to scale this up.
The reason video's went to streaming earlier is that they don't consume half as much system resources.
Books can nowadays be streamed on donations as long the license costs stay low enough(proof AO3).
Films still rely on subscription fees.
Games still eat RAM for breakfast.
Servers tend to be low on RAM.
Europe's new "data sovereignty" laws will also significantly affect this development.
When they break 1 million active users at a single moment they will need around 1.6 Peta bytes of RAM with current games, which can cause problems, because they will discover that modern processors can't really handle that.
This will probably start causing problems the next register size shift.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: 14I think there is an argument that reading copyrighted material is same as a human doing so and then writing their own creative work

Look up the legal standing of fan fiction. Than repeat that statement.
Using copyrighted "aspects" is enough to be considered a copyright violation.

I suggest looking up Marion Zimmer Bradley [External Link].

For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction. She encouraged submissions from unpublished authors and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies. This ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to one of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction

The fan threatened to take Marion Zimmer Bradley to court for infringing on the fan's copyright. The fan holds the copyright to their own prose. The fan clearly does not hold the copyright to the characters. But should the author of the original work use prose from a fan work...well, things get dicey.

You'd also expect to face some legal trouble if you ripped some fan subs and tried to pass them off as your own translation (which has been done before).

Of note is the Organization for Transformative Works [External Link], which works to protect fan works and has this to say:

Copyright is intended to protect the creator’s right to profit from her work for a period of time to encourage creative endeavor and the widespread sharing of knowledge. But this does not preclude the right of others to respond to the original work, either with critical commentary, parody, or, we believe, transformative works.

In the United States, copyright is limited by the fair use doctrine. The legal case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose held that transformative uses receive special consideration in fair use analysis. For those interested in reading in-depth legal analysis, more information can be found on the Fanlore Legal Analysis page.

And:

While case law in this area is limited, we believe that current copyright law already supports our understanding of fanfiction as fair use.

We seek to broaden knowledge of fan creators’ rights and reduce the confusion and uncertainty on both fan and pro creators’ sides about fair use as it applies to fanworks. One of our models is the documentary filmmakers’ statement of best practices in fair use, which has helped clarify the role of fair use in documentary filmmaking.

It's certainly not as cut and dry as you might think.

Thnx.
I'm happy to be proven wrong about the legal standing of fan fiction.
I like fan fiction and it having the option of being legal is a breath of fresh air.
I don't think it helps OpenAI, because I argue they "adversely affect the sale of the original", but I admit that is a matter of interpretation.

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Ooh, this is really interesting.
Although this is bad for gaming in general, it's really good for gaming on Linux.
Those are all the drm/anti-cheat heavy games anyway.
Linux gamers go from "only accesible through a game streaming service" to "only accesible through a game streaming service".

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Quoting: 14I think there is an argument that reading copyrighted material is same as a human doing so and then writing their own creative work

Look up the legal standing of fan fiction. Than repeat that statement.
Using copyrighted "aspects" is enough to be considered a copyright violation.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechieLuckily X is not online so it will probably keep running on some offline computers.

But, X is supposed to be "network transparent" and should have loads of network code?!?

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechieLuckily X is not online so it will probably keep running on some offline computers.

But, X is supposed to be "network transparent" and should have loads of network code?!?

X uses a "network transparant" protocol(X11), which means the protocol it uses could be used for network communications.
X doesn't actually use this feature.
The reason they still use the protocol is, because it allowed the people who were most likely to rely on it(front-end devlopers) to use a protocol they already knew.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: tuubithat would only be a problem if that software still had some practical value to someone.

That quote works on the web, but on local hardware this is a lot less true.
COBOL has been deprecated longer than the Linux kernel exists, endures a full instruction set switch, a developers shortage and the millennium bug. There're currently around 800million of actively maintained lines of COBOL code.
I've encountered phones in the wild with no Android upgrade path beyond Android 7 and users who want to use modern applications.
I've had to save an ancient laptop from the bloat that is Windows 10 without breaking any compatibility.

You misunderstood. What I meant is that it's more or less fine for software to stop working on modern systems if it's no longer useful.

Clearly businesses still have need for their COBOL software or they wouldn't pay for its maintenance. And people want to keep using their hardware longer than manufacturers are willing to support them. That's all beside my point.

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

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Quoting: tuubithat would only be a problem if that software still had some practical value to someone.

That quote works on the web, but on local hardware this is a lot less true.
COBOL has been deprecated longer than the Linux kernel exists, endures a full instruction set switch, a developers shortage and the millennium bug. There're currently around 800million of actively maintained lines of COBOL code.
I've encountered phones in the wild with no Android upgrade path beyond Android 7 and users who want to use modern applications.
I've had to save an ancient laptop from the bloat that is Windows 10 without breaking any compatibility.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: EikeWhat will run the little DEs in a decade, when X.org is full of problems nobody is fixing anymore?

Just for the sake of clarity, are you talking of any particular DEs here or just some hypothetical ones that will never move on from X.org?

It's hypothetical, I only ever used KDE. I kept hearing about other ones, some E...3?, TWN, I got no idea. Like with many Linux topics, there seem to be many little alternatives to the big fishes. But I have the impression that getting ones DE to work on Wayland is quite some work that little projects might not be able to do. Is this impressions wrong?

The smaller your array of existing code the easier it is(it requires you to check large percentages of your code base for X commands).
The flipside is also true. The bigger you're the more people can work on the review process.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: EikeWhen the world moves on to Wayland (in the next decade ;) ), will this be the death of all those little DEs that won't implement a Wayland compositor?

A. Killing a category of small FOSS projects is like weeding Reynoutria Japonica. Only achievable for large organisations with full control over the infrastructure and able to aggressively retribute to anyone who actively opposes the removal process. a.k.a there will always pop up more.
B. FOSS is big on compatibility I remember reading about problems with a removed function 19 years after getting deprecated.
C. FOSS projects don't rely on users to persist(*COUGH GNU/HURD *COUGH) just developers to maintain them.

I don't have the feeling you answered my question. Loads of FOSS projects are dying a silent death every day, GitHub is full of their corpses (and full of all those thriving projects, of course).

Quoting: LoudTechieI promise you that a single decade isn't enough to weed out the small non-implenting DE's or render them incompatible with your distro.

What will run the little DEs in a decade, when X.org is full of problems nobody is fixing anymore?

X will never(on a scale of decades) become any worse than it currently is.
Software doesn't get worse without active interference just more of its problems get known.

Well, there's even a name for it, bit rot [External Link]. And the difference between getting worse and having more known problems is little. Truth is, software, especially software with network components, needs people fixing it up to keep it's level of security. Yes, theoretically, it already has all holes that will become known the next years, but in practice, a hole nobody knows is not a threat. And new ways of finding security holes are invented. (I'd be surprised if AI is not able to find security holes, e.g.). So, yes, in my humble opinion, software (with network code) not being maintained rot over time.

Okay. Security wise I've to agree with you.
The answer to that part is somewhat less comfortable.
In its current state I expect X to sustain a "secure" state for the coming 2 decades wherein it will be getting security fixes at comparable speed people will keep publicly discovering them(both very slow, because interest will dwindle at both sides).
Halfway I expect a (non-security)buggy Wayland compatibility layer to show up saving around half of the code currently running X.
Luckily X is not online so it will probably keep running on some offline computers.

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