26 Dec
2002
26 Dec
'02
10:17 a.m.
Hi!
I've observed that somehow people advocating Linux bring morality into
picture. They argue about illegal (pirated) Windows and how bad it is
(morally) to use one.
Here is a checklist for all those paranoid about having their PC legal:
(Please add to this list something that I might have missed )
1. Is your PC or some part of it ( RAM,HDD,graphics card ) bought from
grey market ? If yes you can safely assume that it is illegal. The
required taxes have been evaded.
2. Do you have Mp3z on your Hard-Disk? Linux or Windows , they are
completely illegal ( Why are you making MP3z if you own the CD ?
If for giving it to friends then thats illegal too !).
Its illegal even if you have burnt them on your CD instead of keeping
them on your HDD
3. Do you have DivX/MPEG files of latest movies ? It is illegal.
4. Does your homepage/HDD have gif's. Arguably they are illegal too.
(Some compression patent problems I believe)
Here's my PC's status:
1. Bought from grey market. I lose the battle in first step itself ;)
2. Yep not a single mp3 on my HDD.
3. not a single MPEG/DivX
4. Dont have a homepage so no gif's created by me that are on the HDD
My point:
Windows user is on equal moral grounds (regarding legality of his/her PC)
if a Linux user satisfies any of the criteria.
There cannot be something less illegal. Either it is legal or it is not.
P.S.
(While I may be sounding Windows advocate let me tell you that I have only
two OS'es on my PC : Linux and Dos (the command.com from the rescue disk
of Windows 98, which is licensed, but not mine. I guess that's legal too
as Microsoft, I guess, does not say that you must possess a legal copy of
Windows 98 to use the command.com , Anywayz I use command interpreter of
FreeDos)
Nikhil
26 Dec
26 Dec
12:50 p.m.
On Wednesday 25 December 2002 06:24 pm, Nikhil Joshi wrote:
All my H/W is legal.
2. Do you have Mp3z on your Hard-Disk? Linux or
Windows , they are
completely illegal
Making mp3s is not legal, per se. You can make million copies of any song
and keep in on your hdd. As long as you dont distribute them to others free
of cost. This technology is very useful to people who have old cds which
are being worn out due to repeated use. The act of making mp3s becomes
illegal when one makes mp3s out of copyrighted music files and then
distributes them free of cost, or at a cost, but without explicit
permission of the copyright owner.
3. Do you have DivX/MPEG files of latest movies ? It
is illegal.
The above reasoning applies just as well to DivX encoded movies. Lets say
that I have bought a DVD of Kaante. Now imagine that I have a lot of small
children playing around my house. I am scared that they might cause some
physical damage to the DVD. Hence I use encoding software to store the
movie as a 3 cd .avi file on my computer so that I have a backup. This act
is completely legal.
Now imagine that I get greedy and decide to sell a set of 3cd avi's of
Kaante to some people I know, for a paltry Rs 100. THAT, is illegal.
Read more here.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-272805.html?tag=rn
4. Does your homepage/HDD have gif's. Arguably
they are illegal too.
(Some compression patent problems I believe)
GIF's have the same boolean status when it comes to legality. Nothing else
Matters (not even the OS).
Windows user is on equal moral grounds (regarding
legality of his/her PC)
if a Linux user satisfies any of the criteria.
When we are comparing the owner (type A) of a PC system using a pirated
compy of the latest Microsoft OS (purchased for free - just for the sake of
argument) to a person (type B) who has the same hardware as A but is using
a copy of Redhat 8.0 (or any other OS that is free as in beer), we have to
keep in mind that there are far more people of type A than type B. The
issues you talked about above apply to both, types A and B. In addition,
there are many more grounds on which a type A person can be legally wrong,
eg OS itself, Application software like MS office, photoshop etc. Sure
windows users could use OpenOffice and gimp. But very few actually do.
If you dont understand the above, read on for an analysis of the current
situation.
<analysis>
Lets consider that applications A_w, B_w .... Z_w are the 26 most popular
windows applications with a_w, b_w,...z_w users respectivey. Also let A_l,
B_l .... Z_l be the 26 most popular linux applications with a_l, b_l,...z_l
users respectively. Lets further assume, grossly incorrectly, a_w=a_l =a,
b_w=b_l=b,.... z_w=z_l=z. Call this assumption D.
Now put a realistic estimate on the percentage of users who use illegally
procured versions of A_w,B_w...Z_w. Call this percentage m. Do the same for
A_l, B_l...Z_l. Call this percetage n. Now, I am sure that most people will
agree that "m>n". Hence
m * (a_w + b_w + ... + z_w) *100 > n ( a_l + b_l + ... z_l) *100. --->
Equation 1
Thus the number of users using illegal copies of Windows' based programs
exceeds those using illegal copies of linux based programs. Now factor is
assumtion D. If this assumption were not to hold then most people would
agree that a_w>a_l .... z_w>z_l. Hence the Left Hand Side of Equation 1 is
likely to increase in magnitude. Equation 1 is more likely to be
m * (a_w + b_w + ... + z_w) *100 > > > n ( a_l + b_l + ... z_l) *100
Thus the number of legal windows users diminishes even further.
</analysis>
The point of this analysis is that, when we talk about a "typical" windows'
user, we cannot ignore the program "dependencies" that Windows brings
alongwith it. Hence, a majority of Windows users are legal offenders( or
criminals) guilty of more crimes than their linux/(whatever) counterparts.
There cannot be something less illegal. Either it is
legal or it is not.
Yes, there cannot be some"thing" less/more legal. But there can a person who
has broken more/less laws than another, which is what we are talking about
here.
1:29 p.m.
> 2. Do you have Mp3z on your Hard-Disk? Linux or
Windows , they are
> completely illegal
Making mp3s is not legal, per se. You can make million
copies of any song
and keep in on your hdd. As long as you dont distribute them to others
free
of cost.
Encoding mp3 requires that you license the encoding (file format, not the
algorithim used to
obtain the it, I believe) from Thomson Multimedia.
Our company uses lame to encode mp3's for our digital voice recorder.
We have to pay for a license for every unit of our product sold.
Regards
Shahed.
9:33 p.m.
On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Bhargav Bhatt wrote:
<analysis>
Lets consider that applications A_w, B_w .... Z_w are the 26
most popular windows applications with a_w, b_w,...z_w users
respectivey. Also let A_l, B_l .... Z_l be the 26 most popular linux
applications with a_l, b_l,...z_l users respectively. Lets further
assume, grossly incorrectly, a_w=a_l =a, b_w=b_l=b,.... z_w=z_l=z.
Call this assumption D.
let me guess... u love Mathematics?.. ;)
that was really novel and fun way of explaining
thx
The point of this analysis is that, when we talk about a "typical" windows'
user, we cannot ignore the program "dependencies" that Windows brings
alongwith it. Hence, a majority of Windows users are legal offenders( or
criminals) guilty of more crimes than their linux/(whatever) counterparts.
Yes that's what my argument was.
A criminal is a criminal no matter how many crimes he commits
Yes, there cannot be some"thing" less/more
legal. But there can a person who
has broken more/less laws than another, which is what we are talking about
here.
Again I feel that since a (pirated) Windows user and Linux user satisfying
one of the criteria have committed a crime ( of denying someone his
rightful money ) they are morally on the same level.
Nikhil
10:32 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Dec 2002, Nikhil Joshi wrote:
let me guess... u love Mathematics?.. ;)
that was really novel and fun way of explaining
thx
Yup. I am mathematics major :-}
Yes that's what my argument was.
A criminal is a criminal no matter how many crimes he commits
We can agree to disagree here, but the above statement is not
entirely true IMO. That statement amounts to saying that one can compare a
petty pickpocket with someone like say Bin Laden. The linux user who uses
the occasional .gif is like pickpocket and the Windows user who uses
almost all pirated non-free programs for free is like Bin Laden. Decide for
yourself if these two are equivalent considering the crimes they are
guilty of.
While the above analogy is obviously grossly out of proportions, it
serves the important point of explaining the a criminal status is not
like bit which can be 0 or 1. This is more like fuzzy logic (i.e it can assume
some value in between). The typical linux user is closer to 0 (absolute
honesty and no crime), whereas the typical windows user is closer to 1(die
hard murder addict !!! :-) )
Bhargav Bhatt
Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics,
Columbia University, New York.
--
Radcliffe: Is the space of solutions to f'(x)=f(x+1) infinite dimensional?
27 Dec
27 Dec
3:39 a.m.
On Thu, Dec 26, 2002 at 06:26:18AM -0500, Bhargav Bhatt wrote:
Even I would disagree with you here Bhargav.
Let me explain that.
Windows user using pirated windows software => criminal => crime is
using software
without license
Linux user using pirated linux apps => criminal => crime same as above
Osama bin Laden => criminal => crime is 9/11, murder, blah blah ...
Pickpocket => criminal => crime is picking a pocket
Legality status with reference to a specific crime is binary.
That I believe was what was meant.
ciao
Abhijeet More
A criminal is
a criminal no matter how many crimes he commits
We can agree to disagree here, but the above statement is not
entirely true IMO. That statement amounts to saying that one can compare a
petty pickpocket with someone like say Bin Laden. The linux user who uses
the occasional .gif is like pickpocket and the Windows user who uses
almost all pirated non-free programs for free is like Bin Laden. Decide for
yourself if these two are equivalent considering the crimes they are
guilty of. 
3:31 a.m.
On Wed, Dec 25, 2002 at 08:47:16PM -0500, Bhargav Bhatt wrote:
A_l, B_l...Z_l. Call this percetage n. Now, I am sure
that most people will
agree that "m>n".
Another thing, I disagree to that.
If a_w = a_l, there is nothing to justify m>n.
Using proprietary software need not necessarily mean a propensity to use
pirated or proprietary software, assuming the person is well informed of
all options.
Regards
Abhijeet More
22 Apr
22 Apr
10:05 p.m.
New subject: qmail bandwidth concurrencyremote
hi,
sorry if it comes in wrong mail group, but i browsed through most mail
groups couldnt find the solution.
what will be the max mail size, on 56k dialup connection, and
concurrencyremote value.
Regards
JAI
23 Apr
23 Apr
1:31 a.m.
New subject: qmail bandwidth concurrencyremote
sorry if it comes in wrong mail group, but i browsed
through most mail
groups couldnt find the solution.
did u check the man pages of qmail for concurrencyremote? and archives of
qmail mailing list ?
what will be the max mail size, on 56k dialup
connection, and
concurrencyremote value.
anyways ...
Concurrencyremote value by default is set to 20 which u can increase upto
254. Above than this u'll need to recompile qmail with edited src codes
....
I did not get the question right about "max mail size on 56 Kbps dialup
connection" ... u can have any size mail if ur 56K dialup is staying
online for hrs ...
will be able to ans this if u can elaborate ...
ranjeet
7283
days inactive
7400
days old
10 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Abhijeet More -
Amol Hatwar -
Bhargav Bhatt -
Bhargav Bhatt -
Jai -
Nikhil Joshi -
ranjeet＠nttindia.com -
Shahed Moolji