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Interviews: Ask a Question To Christine Peterson, the Nanotech Expert Who Coined the Term 'Open Source'

Christine Peterson is a long-time futurist who co-founded the nanotech advocacy group the Foresight Institute in 1986. One of her favorite tasks has been contacting the winners of the institute's annual Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, but she also coined the term "Open Source software" for that famous promotion strategy meeting in 1998. Now Christine's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.

Interestingly, Christine was also on the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA's Nanotech Briefs, and on the state of California's nanotechnology task force. Her tech talks at conferences include "Life Extension for Geeks" at Gnomedex and "Preparing for Bizarreness: Open Source Physical Security" at the 2007 Singularity Summit. Another talk argues that the nanotech revolution will be like the information revolution, except that "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms," allowing molecule-sized machines that can kill cancer and repair DNA. Her most recent publication is "Cyber, Nano, and AGI RIsks: Decentralized Approaches to Reducing Risks." Christine graduated from MIT with a bachelors in chemistry.

So leave your best questions in the comments. (Ask as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment.) We'll pick the very best questions and forward them along for answers.

246 comments

  1. Open source and medicine by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How can we more open source medical software? Given that medical devices are so heavily regulated it seems like it will be hard to get, say, an open source pacemaker system that users can hack, or at least audit.

    Radio software seems to be in a similar state - cellular modems, wifi chipsets etc. are all heavily regulated and closed source, with signed code required for updates.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:Open source and medicine by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      There was OpenVMS in 1991. Just because something is Open-whatever might not necessarily mean a lot. But naming things does generally seem to lag behind practice.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:Open source and medicine by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Yep, that's what I thought when thinking about what OpenBSD was supposed to mean. It doesn't seem immediately obvious because it could have referred to a number of things.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Open source and medicine by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      For that matter, open source software has been around since at least the advent of source code in the mid 1960s.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    4. Re:Open source and medicine by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      We just need an organization with money to backup the product from all the lawsuits that will go against it.
      Most medical software is closed source, because they need to collect every cent to keep the organization strong enough, to survive, a mountain of legal battles.

      A person is very sick and they die. Their family sues the doctor for not spotting the problems, the doctor sues the medical device software for not showing them the problem (or having an error that day). The software company pays the doctor, the doctor pays the family. The software doesn't get fixed, because the company sold 20 more copies during this time. The customer is happy because he got his payment, and normally will recommend the product, even after fighting the legal suit.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    5. Re:Open source and medicine by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In the late 1980s every software on UNIX still came with source code so you could build it yourself.
      That dos not make it "open source".

      I built hundreds of kernels for Sun OS, early Solaris and DEC Ultrix. Of course most software I built was "open source" or early GPL.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    6. Re:Open source and medicine by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

      You might be "pretty sure", but you are wrong. It says so on the OSI website (which she is a part of)

    7. Re:Open source and medicine by Greyfox · · Score: 1
      SCO Unix used CDE as its desktop. It was the same one you'd get if you got a Sun workstation. It was motif based and had drag and drop and was like the shittiest UNIX desktop you could get. Which is pretty much all I remember about it.

      Wasn't Eric Raymond and that lot talking about open source a lot in the mid-to-late-90's? I started getting involved in Linux just shortly before IBM killed OS/2, which was around '95 or '96 IIRC. By that time RMS had been going on about free software for years, though I don't know if he ever used the term "open source" to describe it.

      Oh, slashdot was a lively place back then. I posted as an AC for a long time but was finally sold and convinced to sign up for an account since logged in accounts could block stories from Jon Katz. I'm kind of disappointed he's not still listed in my blocked writer list.

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    8. Re:Open source and medicine by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      You mean this one: http://osi.org/ ??

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    9. Re:Open source and medicine by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      https://opensource.org/history

      Look at the "Coining Open Source" section.

    10. Re:Open source and medicine by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      SCO Unix used CDE as its desktop.

      It was similar to CDE, and maybe even CDE-based, but it wasn't just CDE — at least, not at the time I'm talking about. For one thing, it had an actual background desktop onto which you could drag files.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:Open source and medicine by DevNull127 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Open standards" isn't remotely the same thing as open source. (Just because you can see someone's source code doesn't mean you can modify the source code, let alone re-distribute it.)

      I can't believe you're raving about proprietary software like it's somehow a good thing because they let you glimpse their source code once in a while.

      You can be bought pretty cheap, drinkypoo.

    12. Re:Open source and medicine by DevNull127 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > it was all that we meant when we said "Open Source"

      You've been pushing this lie a long time, but in fact there was no significant usage of the term "open source" before 1998. You've scoured the cosmos for anyone who happened to use the words open and/or source and glomming onto product names with the word "open" and then using it to act like the OSI is the bad guy.

      I understand that you think you're helping free software by attacking open source software -- but you take it too far when you also fabricate out of thin out this idea that people were using the phrase "open source software" before 1998. And you also denigrate all the work and contributions of the (actual) open source movement which began in 1998.

    13. Re:Open source and medicine by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm pretty sure, she did not and does not claim that she "coined the term". Some media did, or some idiots did.

      Um ...

      Yes, she does claim that..

    14. Re:Open source and medicine by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

      Oh, those daze.
      John Katz. Poor fellow.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    15. Re:Open source and medicine by DevNull127 · · Score: 1

      >>I can't believe you're raving about proprietary software like it's somehow a good thing because they let you glimpse their source code once in a while.
      >
      > I am doing no such thing. What I am [doing]

      ...is changing the subject.

      You assert things which are untrue, and expect us to congratulate you.

    16. Re:Open source and medicine by DevNull127 · · Score: 1

      > I and people I knew were using the term before Caldera's press release.

      You're lying. You've never proven this statement -- but you repeat it over and over because you want it to be true. And when pushed you pull out [one] press release from 1996 about proprietary software where the code was made viewable-but-not-usable.

      >The Caldera press release clearly uses "Open Source" in the sense which I describe, and the sense which we were using at the time.

      Great! So then we agree that Caldera's code was proprietary/non-modifiable/no distribution allowed. But Martin prefers hiding behind weasly phrases like "clearly used...in the sense which I describe." (That "sense" being proprietary/non-modifiable/no distribution code.) Whoopee. It's not something to be proud of.

      >That press release was a big deal, I actually remember it.

      Right, because you were "chumming" with your friends at SCO. We all get that you want to hurt the Open Source Initiative -- but to do it, you're making shit up.

    17. Re:Open source and medicine by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      Yeah, she really does.

      And I'd call bullshit on that claim. She's simply too late to the game.

    18. Re:Open source and medicine by mark-t · · Score: 0

      From 1993, using "Open Source" (capitalized, no less):

      https://groups.google.com/foru...

      Also, although I can't find a link to it with a verified date, I remember playing an MSDOS game in the late 1980's called Moria that was also released as "open source". The term was, in fact, in widespread usage even before this.

      OSI might be credited with the term "open source movement", but they did not invent the term "open source". The only reason why it's likely hard to find a lot of evidence of this on the internet prior to that time has more to do with that most of it wasn't yet even using the internet back then... but was largely on message boards of private or public BBS's.

    19. Re:Open source and medicine by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Troll

      You're lying. You've never proven this statement -- but you repeat it over and over because you want it to be true. And when pushed you pull out [one] press release from 1996 about proprietary software where the code was made viewable-but-not-usable.

      I've provided literally exactly as much proof for this statement as Christine Peterson has provided for her claims that she coined the phrase. Besides Lyle Ball (CEO of Netendeavor, formerly of Caldera) who was willing to publicly support my claim, others here on Slashdot have come forward to support me. We were using the phrase "Open Source" to describe software whose source you could get at and compile for yourself by the mid nineties.

      Great! So then we agree that Caldera's code was proprietary/non-modifiable/no distribution allowed. But Martin prefers hiding behind weasly phrases like "clearly used...in the sense which I describe." (That "sense" being proprietary/non-modifiable/no distribution code.) Whoopee. It's not something to be proud of.

      This is not about pride, for me at least. This is about facts, which are something I thought geeks cared about. Silly me.

      Right, because you were "chumming" with your friends at SCO. We all get that you want to hurt the Open Source Initiative -- but to do it, you're making shit up.

      My friends from SCO predate the SCO v. Linux SNAFU by many years. In fact, they predate Linux. I know quite a number of them, few of whom I will name here because I have not discussed that with them. I will stick only to public information. I knew these people because we moved in the same social circles — namely, the scruz geek community which grew up around UCSC. I came into it through BBSing; local BBS lists included two public-access SCO systems run by some of these employees, ex-employees, and friends. One of them was gorn (the planet gorn) which was a 386 running SCO Xenix. Another was deeptht (deep thought) which ran SCO Unix. Through these connections I got my hands on a trial copy of Xenix 286, which I ran on my own computer (inkpot) which was a 286@6MHz with 1MB RAM and a 40MB RLL disk. inkpot ran as a UUCP node hung off of deeptht for some years. Consequently, I can thank SCO (and friends at SCO) for introducing me to the world of UNIX and Unixlikes.

      Try to understand that's not "The SCO Group", but the real Santa Cruz Operation. Though amusingly, while I was acting as the admin at circus.com (formerly the Marshmallow Peanut Circus) we ran Caldera Network Desktop on IIRC a Compaq 486 with 16MB RAM. One of my housemates brought both the hardware and the software home one day from work, and I installed it. Circus.com had formerly been running on one of the other local geeks' '040 NeXT Turbo slab. We had an entire class C (165.227.17) connected through scruznet on a dedicated 28.8k SLIP using Hayes Accura modems. (28.8kbps was the last symmetric modem speed...)

      Please tell me which parts of this you believe I am making up. Be specific. Follow this up with an explanation as to why I'm not entitled to the opinion that Open Source and Free Software are not the same thing. The user must be entitled to the source code, and must be protected from workarounds which prevent them from using the source code.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    20. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I've provided literally exactly as much proof for this statement as Christine Peterson has provided

      This is false. Eye-witness Eric Raymond supports Christine Peterson's statement. But you're just making things up.

      Lyle Ball...

      ...worked at Caldera through 2001, and has publicly said that he doesn't remember whether it was before or after 1998 that his open source advocacy began.

      You're also being weasly. Ball says he used the phrase "broadly" -- which you like to pretend means "used all the time" when it actually means "we used a broad definition, not the one everyone has been using for the last 20 years."

      I believe you're intentionally conflating source-viewable code with the entirely different concept of "code you can actually change and redistribute." And you're doing it because you believe it hurts the Open Source Initiative, which you believe helps free software. As part of this malicious effort, you're finding stray instances of people revealing their (non-modifable) source code and acting like it proves Christine Peterson/the OSI are bad people who are lying.

    21. Re:Open source and medicine by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

      I've provided literally exactly as much proof for this statement as Christine Peterson has provided

      This is false. Eye-witness Eric Raymond supports Christine Peterson's statement. But you're just making things up.

      Point to what you claim I'm making up.

      Lyle Ball...

      ...worked at Caldera through 2001, and has publicly said that he doesn't remember whether it was before or after 1998 that his open source advocacy began.

      It is utterly and wholly irrelevant when his open source advocacy began, because he is the person who wrote the press release in which Caldera uses the phrase "Open Source" to refer to a source code license, and he was able to confirm that he was using the term in that sense.

      And you're doing it because you believe it hurts the Open Source Initiative, which you believe helps free software.

      Did you mean to write "harms" there, as opposed to "helps" which is what you believe?

      As part of this malicious effort, you're finding stray instances of people revealing their (non-modifable) source code and acting like it proves Christine Peterson/the OSI are bad people who are lying.

      I don't believe that there are bad or good people, only actions which are bad or good and people who are currently doing things for bad or good reasons. But when you do bad things for good reasons, they poison your would-be good deeds. And that's what lying about inventing the phrase "Open Source" does. If a case actually hinges upon that, it's trivial to prove false.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    22. Re:Open source and medicine by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      OSI might be credited with the term "open source movement", but they did not invent the term "open source". The only reason why it's likely hard to find a lot of evidence of this on the internet prior to that time has more to do with that most of it wasn't yet even using the internet back then... but was largely on message boards of private or public BBS's.

      If only I could pull up archives from forum, the software we used to communicate on the systems around scruz back in the day. It was a threaded message base which would work from a line printer... there were several fora, though. One at ucsc on ucscb, one at deeptht, etc etc. I imagine someone has 'em...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    23. Re:Open source and medicine by destinyland · · Score: 2

      He's lying again! Caldera never offered any license... (They only let you see the code.) You're making things up again.

    24. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And you're doing it because you believe it hurts the Open Source Initiative, which you believe helps free software.

      Did you mean to write "harms" there, as opposed to "helps" which is what you believe?

      I think he means that you believe that hurting the OSI helps free software.

    25. Re:Open source and medicine by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I think he means that you believe that hurting the OSI helps free software.

      I believe that the OSI is hurting itself by basing its reputation on a lie which is easily proven false, which is going to hurt Open Source and Free Software. I hope that sums up my position for once and for all.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    26. Re:Open source and medicine by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      https://groups.google.com/foru...|sort:relevance/comp.object.corba/z803p125OJ8/cF4BSsQ2B9cJ

    27. Re:Open source and medicine by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      Your ID is NULL, doesn't exactly help your argument.

    28. Re:Open source and medicine by Kaenneth · · Score: 0

      I guess /. doesn't do URL's with pipes.

      https://groups.google.com/foru...

    29. Re:Open source and medicine by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      Didn't CDE on the Sun workstations have desktop icons? I got to play with the sun lab for a bit at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute back in, oh, '86 or '87, but I don't rightly remember. AIX also had a similar desktop environment, IIRC. Funny all those UNIX vendors fragmenting the shit out of the market and keeping the same crappy window manager. Oh, and SCO wanted another, what, $1500 for the GUI environment? And another $1200 for the C compiler. I almost felt bad for them when Linux came out, some punk ass kid from Finland letting all the air out of their business model...

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    30. Re:Open source and medicine by stephanruby · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You've been pushing this lie a long time, but in fact there was no significant usage of the term "open source" before 1998.

      Significant? So tell me, which one should we consider more significant?

      Someone uttering a term at a meeting in February 1998 (that everyone familiar with OpenBSD should have already been familiar with).

      Or someone using that term and putting it into actual practice with an actual repository and an actual domain name in 1995.

      Tell me, do you believe the same thing about patents? That it's not the earlier practitioner, but the later person that supposedly gets the "idea" that should get the entire credit for it. Do you realize how ludicrous this sounds?

      As part of this malicious effort, you're finding stray instances of people revealing their (non-modifable) source code and acting like it proves Christine Peterson/the OSI are bad people who are lying.

      Please stop with the persecution complex, no one is calling anyone a liar. People repeat things they've previously heard all the time. That doesn't make them liars or bad people. That just makes them human beings, just like the rest of us. And yes, it's possible for human beings to be mistaken.

      And no, OpenBSD was not "(non-modifiable)". It was modifiable. It just wasn't copyleft. Have you even heard of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license?

      And no, I'm not trying to demean the copyleft licensing model. In fact, I find that licensing model far superior to anything else we've got. And the OSI folks should be proud of what they have accomplished. If anything, the only demeaning thing is the fact that some are unwilling to admit a minor mistake of original attribution (which is actually important in our circles) and just move on with far more important things to do.

    31. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why? For the first ten years on slashdot everyone agreed that logging in to everything was a bad idea. Now people are shocked that facebook, google, and the NSA tracks everyone and sells personal information.

      Choosing to post AC adds credibility to experience.

      The fact that you chose to focus on that and ignored the rest of the argumentation indicates that you can't refute the rest. If you could have, you would have...

    32. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Someone uttering a term at a meeting in February 1998 (that everyone familiar with OpenBSD should have already been familiar with).

      Do you have any evidence that anyone familiar with OpenBSD was using the term "open source" back then consistently or frequently? Because I have yet to see any.

    33. Re:Open source and medicine by stephanruby · · Score: 0

      Do you have any evidence that anyone familiar with OpenBSD was using the term "open source" back then consistently or frequently? Because I have yet to see any.

      Again, why does it have to be consistently or frequently?

      For determining who used a particular term, one merely has to see the term cited in the right context, and this has to be done only once (because the assumption is that if you can find just a single citation, it probably means that it has been used many more times around that same time period, even if none of those other instances can now be found).

      For evidence, I've already provided it, you can look to my posting history for the links. But the domain name opensource.com was registered in early January of 1998, not in February of 1998 and not by Christine. This very fact, by itself, should be all that's needed.

      But if you're curious to know where that term was inspired from (directly or indirectly), you only have to look to OpenBSD. The project name OpenBSD name was used as a public repo name and was first registered as a domain name in 1995. The abbreviation OpenBSD means Open Berkeley Software Distribution. And the Berkeley Software Distribution license itself was included as a file in the source code itself of OpenBSD. And if this wasn't enough, the BSD license itself claims to be a license about the "Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided that..."

      Considering that context, it makes perfect sense that the OSI group only trademarked the term "Open Source Initiative", and not "Open Source". Open Souce was already in use and it was already in use in the context of computer software.

    34. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      > Again, why does it have to be consistently or frequently?

      Because it's likely that many people coined the term independently and you can hardly expect people to be aware of others' usage if it's uncommon.

      The argument I keep hearing here is that it was in common use before OSI came up with it, and there's just no evidence for that. All your links point to multiple independent origins with different meanings, not that "everyone was talking about open source" in the sense of code that could be freely shared.

    35. Re:Open source and medicine by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Well, we could argue back and forth, but for me the GPL is the license with the least freedom.
      With MIT/BSD/Apache etc. licenses the "user" can do what ever he wants, e.g. make a commercial product for sale without including the source.
      GPL only makes sense for me if you do some kind of dual licensing. However for most software that makes no sense, the potential customer would simply take the GPL version.
      Anyway, I'm still looking at it from the perspective of a single developer running his one man company wanting to make his living from software development.
      Of course it looked completely different if you would be a payed developer for eclipse.org or apache.org.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    36. Re:Open source and medicine by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Depends what you call "significant".
      When I was admin of several unix clusters in my university, from roughly 1989 to 1995, we called everything "open source", regardless if it was BSD/MIT or GPL licenses.
      It was just the logical name to call it. And actually except for one ephangelist, no one was talking about "free software". We only were interested in downloading it, installing it and complaining that it was not cross platform and did either not compile or the makefile was broken on a certain OS ...
      Or we had to hunt for dependencies and download yet another library ...

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    37. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if you don't want to share your code, why would you even look at GPL? That's a no-brainer.

      GPL is for people who want to share their code. All the bickering is by people who forget that.

    38. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're reading that as "(open source (code (model))" when it's really "(open (source code (model)))"

    39. Re:Open source and medicine by AnilJ · · Score: 1

      Even before that, Burrough B5700s came with their entire operating system printed on line printer. All of it was in Algol. One could go through (and some did) to see if some programs are DS6 ing (same as IBM Mainframe ABEND). B5xxx/B6xxx did not have von Neumann architecture. Eachn memory would have a three bit identifier as to what kind of location it is - an instruction, data, pointer, etc. So yes open source was there even before 1980.

    40. Re:Open source and medicine by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Of course it was. But it was not called like that.
      Until roughly 1990 all computers where sold with the software in source.
      Heck if you wrote a piece of software for a company, you usually always would ship it in source code, or at least add the source code. Kind of pointless in a certain sense when you program in assembler, as you can not port that easy to a new platform, but: most low level programming (and that went into the late 1960s) usually always involved to write a custom VM. A VM that had instructions fitting the business requirements. Those instructions would have been interpreted by a small assembler program, which was easy to port. Think about SWEET16 e.g.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    41. Re:Open source and medicine by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Until roughly 1990 all computers where sold with the software in source.

      No they weren't. Stop making shit up.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    42. Re:Open source and medicine by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      It is a typo you insensitive clod ... obviously it meant 1980, anyway the real computers like Suns, DEC etc. where sold with source code for everything minimum till 1995. (That is not a typo).

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    43. Re:Open source and medicine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      anyway the real computers like Suns, DEC etc. where sold with source code for everything minimum till 1995

      I don't know about DEC, but Suns did NOT ship with OS source code. They were closed-source and didn't open Solaris until 2005.

  2. 50 years ahead by EngineeringStudent · · Score: 2

    I heard a myth a few decades ago, that top-secret work in most fields is at least 50 years ahead of the current published state of the art. I can't begin to imagine what that would look like here.

    What would that look like here? What sorts of things do you think are solidly plausible within the next 50 years of work in the field of nano-technology, and how would we detect them "in the field" today, if we were to look for them? How and where might we start to look for them, if we wanted to be likely to find something?

    I know there were published discussions about silicon based listening and transmitting devices, bugs, that were smaller than grains of salt. I also know that there was great published fervor over single-pixel cameras, and, impo, I have seen a surprising gap in entangled non-return imaging. I expect "they" have working, single-photon, non-return-imaging cameras on grains of silicon too small for the eye to work with, so perhaps nano drone swarms used for data gathering/surveillance, where each drone is less than 0.1mm across?

    When I look at robo-cat, and the alleged robo-squirrels or robo-insects, I think they have such swarms that can be ingested/injected/otherwise-implanted inside animals that don't realize they have become "listening posts". What would you do with a fully-functional jet-engine that was only a few microns across? I remember sub-cellular size bar-codes made by shooting proton based cylindrical holes in silicon, then lithographing layers of gold or other stuff to make the code, then removing the silicon substrate. Could we put markers into people to inform future medical reconstruction such as "non-invasive" 3d printing of organs in-vivo? How would we detect sub-cell-size tagging, or fabrication? I like the idea of nanotech-driven bio-energy harvesting. Why can't we turn trees into solar panels by hacking into their organic photosynthesis?

    -EngrStudent

    1. Re:50 years ahead by GrumpySteen · · Score: 1

      Some of your questions are good, but it's very unlikely that they would get asked because you didn't adhere to the "one per comment" rule. You might want to pick the ones you're most interested in and post them separately.

    2. Re:50 years ahead by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no "top secret" work that is 50 years ahead. If there were, those people would quit and make billions in industry. You live in a fantasy world.

    3. Re:50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those people signed away those rights to learn the secrets..... they literally will be put to death if they tried.

      Did you even read Snowdens docs?

    4. Re:50 years ahead by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Baloney. There are no "secrets" like that. A jet engine a micron across? But we can barely make a functional F-35 after billions in development. Right.

    5. Re:50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The answer to all of your questions is "Science fiction is fiction."

    6. Re: 50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Multiple works of science fiction provided influence or at least ideas that were turned into real science. Jules Verne and Arthur C Clarke were two authors I think that envisioned future technologies before they became real.

    7. Re: 50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/

      Only 20 years ahead not 50 but still visionary.

    8. Re: 50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He also predicted that these satellites would be few in number ... and MANNED. Talk about missing it by a country mile, and probably being responsible for many cases of the mental illness "Space Nuttery".

      A real visionary would have understood that information is massless and processing information would require less and less material and become more and more reliable to the point that having people would be a liability.

      Imagine the economics of having a communication service depending on MANNED installations in geosynchronous orbit? Bahahahahaaa!!!

      Yeah, some "vision".

    9. Re:50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's obviously a coverup

      we

      Did they invite you to a factory tour?

    10. Re:50 years ahead by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      OK, you caught me out. We are directing a drone to your location...please stand by.

    11. Re:50 years ahead by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

      Not really. In a lot of cases the public sector moves much faster. There's more money and people working on it. This wouldn't necessarily be the case in a place like the Soviet Union though. But there are cases where technology even regresses, like supersonic transport, or super-heavy space lift, so it's perfectly possible some "secret tech" is 50 years ahead or whatever.

    12. Re:50 years ahead by Goldsmith · · Score: 1

      The concept is not that someone is 50 years ahead of their peers in science. The concept is that science is 50 years ahead of industry. That's actually pretty true, and this is a pretty common discussion in science.

      Generally, you lose money when bringing cutting edge research to industry. I wish it were as easy as you make it seem.

      I am an industrial scientist specialized in nanotechnology. I've seen the good and bad of how this works. If you have a single scientist working for a year to produce a groundbreaking gizmo, that means the gizmo costs about $100k to make (doesn't matter what the material cost is). Either you have a market where $100k gizmos can be sold (i.e. the military, which is part of why OP sounds like a conspiracy nut), or you have to show that building or renting the infrastructure to produce the gizmo cheaper leads to a profitable enough situation. That's neither fast nor easy.

    13. Re: 50 years ahead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every visionary knows how to play the game - make many different predictions, some even conflicting - then wait a few years. Most of the predictions will be completely off base and forgotten, but some will be close enough to brag about. People like you will be impressed.

  3. Just great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We have not mastered the art of manipulating bits, and now people propose we should replicate this incompetence with atoms? Thanks but no thanks.

  4. just don't call it morgellonstech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cease fire stand down.. weep along.. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=morgellons

  5. Futurist = Idiot by gweihir · · Score: 0

    No need to ask any questions, the answers will be worthless anyways.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Futurist = Idiot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every election pollster that predicted a Clinton landslide or at least soundly defeating Trump. Weather forecasts and even worse decades long climate forecasts. Estimates of when nuclear fusion power and humans landing on Mars (only a few decades away...again). The Population Bomb (why does anyone believe a word Erlich says these days?) Prognostications of economists including the hapless and always wrong Krugman. When The Wall will be built (as in never, and we're back to Trump again).

      Predictions are like as.....c'mon you know this song, sing it with me.

    2. Re:Futurist = Idiot by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Some people for whatever reason demonstrate skill at prediction. Alvin Toffler was a futurist that nailed it repeatedly. We are right in the middle of Powershift.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    3. Re:Futurist = Idiot by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Some things are obvious and do not need a "Futurist" to predict it. Others just got lucky. If you have 1000 morons making predictions, somebody will be right repeatedly.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    4. Re:Futurist = Idiot by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Some things are obvious and do not need a "Futurist" to predict it.

      Then name names. You cant. Hand waving is not an argument.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    5. Re:Futurist = Idiot by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Do your own research. Requesting proof on ./ is not only highly impolite, it is missing the point.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  6. What about coining a phrase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    makes you an expert on anything these dummies ask you?

    1. Re:What about coining a phrase by bug_hunter · · Score: 1

      Ummm... everything else in the summary makes her an expert on what Slashdot asks her (if they stay on topic).

      --
      It's turtles all the way down.
    2. Re:What about coining a phrase by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Ummm... everything else in the summary makes her an expert on what Slashdot asks her (if they stay on topic).

      Well, no. She seems to be an expert on nanotechnology. If Drexler wanted to co-write a book with her, that definitely demonstrates her chops. But she's clearly not an expert on Open Source Software. She didn't even know that people were using the term in 1995 and prior when she claims to have coined it. Even I know that, because I was one of the people who were using it. If she didn't know that, she is about as far from being an expert on that subject as it is possible to be.

      I checked her qualifications before writing this comment. How many people do you think will check her qualifications before reading this thread?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:What about coining a phrase by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How many people do you think will check her qualifications before reading this thread?

      Seven?

    4. Re:What about coining a phrase by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      she claims to have coined it.
      Any reference where and when she claimed to have coined it?
      As far as I can tell, some press, e.g. /., mentions that she has coined it. I'm not aware that she herself claims that, and even if she had coined it, why would she claim that (point it out?)?
      What fame would there be in claiming. "I coined the term X"?
      If one would stand in front of me and tell me "I coined the term X" I would dismiss him as an idiot. And I'm sure so would anyone else. Regardless what X would be.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    5. Re:What about coining a phrase by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      she claims to have coined it. Any reference where and when she claimed to have coined it? As far as I can tell, some press, e.g. /., mentions that she has coined it. I'm not aware that she herself claims that, and even if she had coined it, why would she claim that (point it out?)?

      How I coined the term 'open source'
      Christine Peterson finally publishes her account of that fateful day, 20 years ago.

    6. Re:What about coining a phrase by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

      If one would stand in front of me and tell me "I coined the term X" I would dismiss him as an idiot. And I'm sure so would anyone else.

      Well, people are actually lining up to defend that, and to mod me a troll for behaving as you say you would behave. So alas, your surety is misplaced. Welcome to Slashdot :D

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:What about coining a phrase by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      The OSI has a whole section devoted to the "Coining" claim. It seems pretty important to them. You should ask them why.

      https://opensource.org/history

    8. Re:What about coining a phrase by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The OSI has a whole section devoted to the "Coining" claim. It seems pretty important to them. You should ask them why.

      ...but prepare for massive downvotes when you do. BOHICA!

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:What about coining a phrase by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Thanx for the reference.
      Then she actually is an idiot.
      We used the term in my university long before it was 'coined'.
      I simply could not believe that some people actually proclaim themselves as 'I coined the term'.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  7. Ask of, or pose to, not ask to. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nanotech good, grammar bad.

  8. Patents, copyright and licensing by evanh · · Score: 2

    Cut back the max term lengths to something sane like 5 years.

    1. Re: Patents, copyright and licensing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) How much is Slashdot paying you to do this interview?

      2) Why are liberals pushing females in tech so hard right now?

      3) When will you resign for lying about being an expert in nanotechnology?

      4) When will you resign for lying about coining "open source"?

    2. Re: Patents, copyright and licensing by Keith+Henson · · Score: 1

      You have no relevant credential or experience in nanotechnology./p>

      The closest science to engineering nanotechnology is chemistry.

      'Peterson holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT."

      I knew Chris when she was a student at MIT, You could have looked it up, it's not hard.

      --
      End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
    3. Re: Patents, copyright and licensing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, having a bachelors degree in a related field now qualifies one as an expert?

  9. Recent improvements in physical security by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Recently big gains have been made in physical security. Many phones are encrypted by default and relatively difficult for unauthorized persons to unlock. Encrypted storage is increasingly common for computers too, although open source support for technologies like OPALv2 seems to be lagging behind closed source systems. In 2017 AMD introduced encrypted RAM.

    All of these rely on special hardware to protect encryption keys and perform encryption functions at speeds fast enough to avoid any significant performance loss. It seems like hardware is necessary for very high levels of physical security anyway, e.g. tamper-proof boot ROMs.

    How can open source provide this level of security when high end hardware is increasingly difficult for individuals to fabricate? Should we be thinking about how we can fabricate our own security processors and key storage, or is there another way achieve high levels of physical security?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re: Recent improvements in physical security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      August 19, 1993

      https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32/WoBvPB0U9Co/wXfpq5nEJTYJ

      [...]

      Anyone else into "Source Code for NT"? The tools and stuff I'm writing
      for NT will be released with source. If there are "proprietary" tricks
      that MS wants to hide, the only way to subvert their hoarding is to post
      source that illuminates (and I don't mean disclosing stuff obtained by
      a non-disclosure agreement). Open Source is best for everyone in the
      long run.

  10. The "morality" of source. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you agree or disagree with Eric Raymond and Tim O'Reilly about the need to seperate moral considerations like end user freedom, privacy and democracy from the question of having "open" access to source?

  11. Republican population control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are Republican efforts to prop up the "defense" industry and encourage a police state deliberate population control measures?

  12. Re:And .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trying really hard to overcompensate for your micropenis, aren’t you?

  13. Why do you continue making this erroneous claim? by drinkypoo · · Score: 0, Troll

    I have proven conclusively that you did not coin the term "Open Source" as pertains to software; not even the term Open Source Software is your creation. Ransom Love's corporation Caldera (which was later taken over by others, becoming The SCO Group) was actually using the phrase in press releases in 1995, but I (and others) who were in the scene at the time remember well using the phrase before Caldera did so. So why do you continue making these false claims? Is it simply for your own self-aggrandizement, or are you warming up for the OSI to make a run at copyrighting the phrase?

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  14. Transitioning by XXongo · · Score: 0

    Tell us about your experience transitioning from male to female. When did you decide to transition?

  15. Nanotech threat landscape by bjorng · · Score: 2

    How concerned should we be about nanotechnology equivalents of the software threats we see today?

    I would hate to have my circulatory system held hostage for bitcoin.

    --

    --
    This is why I don't post much.
    1. Re:Nanotech threat landscape by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Not concerned at all. Nanotechnology is the 1980s equivalent of what "AI" is today. It isn't anything at all, just hype and very limited use cases.

  16. I read "Life Extension for Greeks" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Am I the only one who read "Life Extension for Greeks"?

    It involves some "Embrace and Extend", and requires much openness, growing and physical externally-controlled openness at a given moment.

  17. Re:Open Source vs Free Software? by technosaurus · · Score: 1

    They are both behind the times. Github has done more for open source and free software in the last 5 years the FSF and others have since their foundation. It could be argued that Github would not exist if not for their prior work... probably true - put it in a foot note and let's move on.

  18. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    or are you warming up for the OSI to make a run at copyrighting the phrase?

    That would be sort of hard when the US copyright law disallows the copyrighting short phrases and this backed up by the USPTO. One can get a trademark on a phrase but tyat is not the same as a copyright. If you’re going to try to sound smart at least learn something about the subject before blabbing.

  19. April 1998 by Wayback by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 2
    1. Re:April 1998 by Wayback by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

      I'll say! Hilarious, this being a Microsoft Word template web page, originally hosted on IIS!

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
  20. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    Whoops! I made that same error last time I brought this up! Of course, you're an anonymous coward, and I treat you like you're all the same person, too pathetic to even log into Slashdot, so I'd say I'm doing pretty well compared to you right now. 99% of what you do is troll and spam.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  21. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bitch, please!

  22. Office of Special Investigations & Electron Sp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The OSI is essentially Bruce Perens and ESR.

    I didn't know that the Office of Special Investigations used Electron Spin Resonance.
    What do they use it for?

  23. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Even if the premise were true, why does it seem to bother you so much ? After all, men have been receiving more praise and attention than they deserve for millenia, and that didn't seem to bother you at all.

  24. Re:Photo by XXongo · · Score: 1

    Which one of these ladies is you?

    Try one of the first few rows of images in this search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Chri...

  25. Serious question. by grub · · Score: 2


    What do you think Tyrell Corporation should do with its current batch of Nexus 6 replicants? Obviously the 4 year life span has its own problems and wasn't the cure-all Dr. Tyrell expected.

    With enough eyeballs going over their source code, could open sourcing their programming find the cause of their tendency to rebel?

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  26. Re:And .... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Ans as usual the people making a fuss about her being female are the loud "it should just be about the code mah freeze peach" crowd, e.g. you.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  27. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Both should bother you, but it doesn't seem to. Why is that? Do you think making bogus claims about women in tech balances out some percieved injustice?

  28. Re:Free Software instead? by 110010001000 · · Score: 0

    THIS is an important question. The motivations of OSI are questionable at best.

  29. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I kind of agree with you that it was used before, but I think the point is that its widespread use started in 1998 from that meeting.

    It was basically meant as a term to replace "free software" without the undesirable connotations for businesses.

    The term "open source" was first proposed by a group of people in the free software movement who were critical of the political agenda and moral philosophy implied in the term "free software" and sought to reframe the discourse to reflect a more commercially minded position.[12] In addition, the ambiguity of the term "free software" was seen as discouraging business adoption.[13][14] The group included Christine Peterson, Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, Jon Hall, Sam Ockman, Michael Tiemann and Eric S. Raymond. Peterson suggested "open source" at a meeting[15] held at Palo Alto, California, in reaction to Netscape's announcement in January 1998 of a source code release for Navigator. Linus Torvalds gave his support the following day, and Phil Hughes backed the term in Linux Journal. [...]

    Raymond was especially active in the effort to popularize the new term. He made the first public call to the free software community to adopt it in February 1998.[18] Shortly after, he founded The Open Source Initiative in collaboration with Bruce Perens.[15]

    (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_model#Open_source_as_a_term )

    (Sheesh, Wikipedia articles feel so disjointed...)

  30. Is physical security a political problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Is physical security a political problem?
    At the tail end of it, there are countries acquiring anti-aircraft missile batteries, ballistic missiles or both, to guarantee their physical security. Or hypersonic anti-ship missiles or warheads. Should NATO be disbanded, and should more countries become able to sink aircraft carriers and warships full of Tomahawk missiles at will?

    Should we see "national intranets" as a good thing and try to build them?
    Getting closer to the subject of possible "nanobot" attacks, or "molecular-sized machines" used for nefarious purposes : we've been subject to war propaganda about a certain country committing an "act of war", consisting of an unsubstantiated allegation about using some minute amount of cold war chemical weapon with a made up name on British soil. UK and US are lying, and should have no credibility given their record about talking about other people's chemical weapons. But many vassal or accomplice countries (all Western of Five Eyes though) give them credit, and civil society or corporate media does nothing to call their bullshit.

    So, how to defend against molecule-sized machines is a question, but there is a meta-question there : will we be subject to constant false flag attacks and entrapment? Year 2030 : Great Leader or Deep State accuses you of carrying a nanotech attack. You and perhaps people of your supporting network get disappeared into high security facilities, solitary confinement and all. Can we disprove the authorities' lies? Will people be able to know, but not care or do nothing, perhaps out of preservation or selfishness? Will there be anyone left to speak for you?

  31. Re:Office of Special Investigations & Electron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Open Source Initiative and Eric S. Raymond.

    Also, RMS means either Root Mean Square or Richard M Stallman. Take your pick.

  32. Re:Open Source vs Free Software? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've seen Github crush a small free software project because some random idiot posted a DMCA takedown and Github was too busy earning money to follow proper procedure and first *ask* the victim.

    Since them, my maxim is stay away as far as possible from Github. Host my repos myself. If someone is just too retarded to enter a command line "git fork blah blah" and wants a shiny button in his browser "fork on github", I don't want them as contributor anyway.

  33. Re:And .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >freeze peach
    Shibboleth for PC loving petty tyrant cocksuckers

  34. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You didn't answer my question.

    But I'll still answer yours, even though it's so loaded it's unbelievable.

    A LOT of things bother me about humanity in general. It is my belief that humanity is an evolutionary dead-end. A species so hell-bent on self destruction cannot possibly be expected to last more than a few more thousand years. So in light of this, small annoyances become pretty trivial. Still, I don't let my beliefs turn into misanthropy. But I clearly sense that your beliefs, justified or not, true or not, are turning into misogyny. And that can't possibly be a good thing, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain.

    The quest for true social justice and equality is a noble cause, but it shouldn't be motivated or fueled by anger, resentment and hate. This applies to both you and the things you are fighting against.

  35. Pollution by lhowaf · · Score: 2

    Nano-materials, in general, seem to be becoming a significant source of hard-to-cleanup pollution. Do you see nano-tech heading in the same direction?

  36. Re:And .... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 0

    Ans as usual the people making a fuss about her being female are the loud "it should just be about the code mah freeze peach" crowd, e.g. you.

    Right. I just made up the whole "focus on women in tech" thing, instead of, you know, noticing it.

  37. Re:Open Source vs Free Software? by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    The biggest Open Source organization is probably: http://apache.org/

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  38. Re:Open Source vs Free Software? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    GitHub exists because of free/libre and open source software, but primarily the former since Linux Torvalds, the creator of Linux, also created git, the software which GitHub relies heavily since its inception, hence the name GitHub.

  39. Re:Open Source vs Free Software? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What do you mean "crushed"
    Can the victim not host the repos themselves?

  40. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Jesus, are you getting treatment for your autism? Your website is the sperglordiest thing I've seen in a long time.

    Also, your blog sucks.

  41. Re:100% Proof Caldera coined the term prior to 199 by DevNull127 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Proprietary code! Never ever touch it! Never modify it! Don't even think about re-distributing it!" That's what Caldera's talking about -- and it's evil.

    I can remember when Slashdot used to understand the difference between proprietary and non-proprietary code.

  42. Re:And .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, when yours’ is as large as a vienna sausage what do you expect?

  43. Open source or free software by Jim+Hall · · Score: 2

    In my view, Stallman created Free software as an ethical point. He didn't like that companies were selling software without source code. (To be clear, Stallman doesn't mind selling software, because the GPL allows that. Stallman doesn't like software without source code.)

    And the term open source software was invented to communicate a way of working together on something. Out of the chaos of the bazaar comes something good.

    Do you agree with that?

    1. Re:Open source or free software by Jim+Hall · · Score: 1

      Also:

      Some people prefer one term over the other. I'm curious: all these years later, do you still prefer the term open source software or are you more aligned to Free software?

    2. Re:Open source or free software by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      It isn't just ethical, it is practical as well. Without the source code, how do you know what the software is doing? How can you modify it to do what YOU want? We have created an industry that spies on its users because no one knows what is going on.

  44. "Instead of with bits, we should do it with atoms" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are there any worthwhile and comprehensive discussions regarding how this transfer of methodology "from bits to atoms" might extend to nefarious activities including but not limited to ransomware and other malware, state sponsored terrorism, modern warfare, control, coercion, surveillance, and other various biotech infections and unintended consequences that could be dangerous?

  45. It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Martin. There's a certain company out in San Diego that we all know, parts maker and patent troll. They are working to put royalty-bearing patents in modern standards. They are using the exact same language as you at the standards committees, telling us that "there isn't one Open Source" and then going on to tell us that Open Source should only be about copyright, and that there should be patent royalties in standards that - regardless of what they say about its being only about copyright - Open Source would then not be allowed to implement. Unfortunately, they are gaining traction in important standards committees, especially the national ones.

    I will give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not working for these guys, you sound exactly like you are. What you are doing hurts both Free Software and Open Source (they are really the same). As I fly around the world to educate standards committees about the Open Source Definition and what they really need to do to accommodate Open Source in standards, they're going to be pointing at your words and using them against me.

    This is really important. For medical reasons, this is probably the last decade of my life, and I am spending a good part of it to work on this issue. You're getting in the way. Cut it out. I promise that nobody can trademark the words "Open Source" today, and you are feeling threatened for nothing.

    1. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You have a right to an opinion, but since your campaign currently will do damage to Free Software and Open Source you need to think about how you are conducting yourself. If we get royalty-bearing patents in standards important to Free Software and Open Source, you will have contributed to that. Don't go thinking that what you are doing is good for Free Software, it's harmful to us all.

    2. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

      You have a right to an opinion, but since your campaign currently will do damage to Free Software and Open Source you need to think about how you are conducting yourself.

      You're trying to support your argument with a falsehood which is trivially proven false, so right back at you. At best you're building a house of cards.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's just not important that Caldera used the words once . It didn't have legs, when we started the Open Source campaign that very definitely had legs and still does today. There were undoubtably Gettysburgh Addresses before Lincoln too. Who remembers them?

      This is very pedantic of you and ends up creating a social negative as I've explained. The audience thinks you're a troll - because you are being one. Rethink what you are spending time upon.

    4. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by mark-t · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem I think people are having is not that OSI did not initiate the open source movement as they claim, but that they somehow actually coined the very term "open source" as it applies to software.

      The word was in use in that context long before 1998...

      One can also without too much difficulty find references to the term "open source" simply by searching old *.programmer groups on usenet.

      Here's a couple that I found without too much difficulty using google from 1993 and 1996.

      Also, here's another one from the comp.os.linux newsgroup from 1993 when discussing binary-only software for Linux.

      Speaking for myself, I first heard the term in the late 1980's, in connection with an MSDOS game called Moria. No link for that one I'm afraid, though... that was on a dial-up BBS, and not on the Internet. Perhaps a record of this usage exists somewhere online whose date can be verified, but I wouldn't know where or how to search for it.

      Anyways, I think what people might be getting their shorts in a knot about is that OSI's claiming to have coined the term comes across as some form of attempted history revisionism, by repeating a factually untrue statement that might require a modest effort to verify frequently enough that people start believing it without checking because they've simply heard it so often.

    5. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You really are convincing me that you're working for the patent trolls.

    6. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by mark-t · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure why you'd say that... leaving aside its ad-hominem nature, it's a grossly inaccurate assessment. I'm just someone who objects to historical revisionism. I'm not suggesting that any of the above people I mentioned invented the term "open source" either... I'm only saying it sure as heck wasn't coined in 1998.

    7. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 0

      Bruce, for once, you're acting like you are working for the patent pirates. Why is it OSI's claim so important to you?

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    8. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2

      If the existence of open source is going to depend on historical revisionism, then perhaps it is better off dead.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    9. Re:It's time for you to cut this out, Martin by dougmc · · Score: 1

      A shill gambit? I expected better from you.

      Dude, it is very, very clear the term was not coined in 1998 -- it was already in common use for at least several years before.

  46. Re: Why do you continue making this erroneous clai by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark.

  47. The Nanotechnology Corrolary to Metsploit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Intoernet of Things (IoT) seems to be a ramp-up to Micro-Electromechanical Machines (MEMs), which, in turn, will prime another ramp into atomic-scale nanotechnology.

    But already, security is atrocious. Worse than Windows XP's exploitation, endless automatic updates and a constant avalanche of zero-day patches.

    What will a metasploit framework and CVE database for IoT, MEMs and smaller systems look like? How will biomedical bug bounties, vulnerabilities, exploits and weaponized payloads play themselves out?

  48. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your question wasn't worth answering.

  49. Tell us about the Beal-Feynman First Prize... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tell us about the Beal-Feynman First Prize, and why it was rejected?

  50. Is Slashdot paying you to do this interview? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is Slashdot paying you to do this interview?

    If so, how much?

    If not, why not?

  51. Re:I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So it looks like ole creimey dumpty was probably IP banned from making new sockpuppers or AC shitposts and surprisingly he's not content to shitpost a couple -1 annoyances per account.

    He has to be sure people are reading his posts at at least 0 and people need to know who he is even if they hate what he writes or else it's just not worth posting to him it seems. So this means that the whole time he was here, fighting with us, annoying the piss out of everyone he was intentionally trying to make a big internet footprint on slashdot for his "personal brand" nevermind that it's overwhelmingly negative.

    What will you do now? Do you have any purposes left in life with no creimey?

  52. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "After all, men have been receiving more praise and attention than they deserve for millenia,"
    1) Prove it.
    2) Fine, go hunt and fend for yourself in the forest and invent math, science, and technology at the same time.

    Fuck you. We built it all for you to shit on, you cuck.

  53. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your question wasn't worth answering.

    Yeah, I figured as much. More like "Answering your question would have required me to use my brain, or question my present value system, neither of which I am willing/able to do".

    I was genuinely interested in what you had to say, and tried to give you friendly advice. Instead, you chose to be a bitter, resentful, misogynist little man. Fine. You'll continue blaming your loneliness and resentment on all the women that rejected you, instead of accepting the fact that no-one, man or women, in their right mind would want to hang around the hateful, bitter person that you have chosen to be.

  54. Re:How “open source” was coined by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Chris couldn’t read my mind, so she had no way to know that I spotted “open source” as the winner we were looking for the first or second time the phrase was mentioned [in that same meeting where Chris Peterson introduced the term, which is what this essay is about].

    Fixed that for you.

  55. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The whole point of Open Source software is you can modify it. You couldn't (and can't) modify this so-called "OpenDOS." And (as you acknowledge) you even had to pay Caldera if you wanted to pass on copies of that (un-modified) code.

  56. Re:Women and girls in tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And prove to me that women could not have accomplished the same if they had not been continuously put down, molested, belittled and enslaved for millenia.

    Prove to me that it's not women who invented fire, cooking, stone tools, sewing, the wheel, agriculture, or domesticated the first animals, while their men were out for days and weeks getting themselves killed hunting rhinos and mammoths.

    It wouldn't be so hard for good, decent men like me to approach women and win their trust if we didn't have to first climb over the piles of filthy, disgusting, misogynistic pigs like you that they've had to continuously fend off all their lives.

    So fuck you too, miserable, pathetic, worthless piece of misogynistic filth.

  57. What was it like in 1998? by DevNull127 · · Score: 2

    As someone who worked closely with Eric Raymond (and had interactions with Jon "maddog" Hall), what were they like in 1998? I'm curious what the whole "mood" of the development community was like in 1998 at that historic meeting. Maybe you could also talk about how things changed -- what they were like before the Open Source movement revved into high gear, and what they were like after.

    And how does it all compare to when you first joined the tech scene in the 1980s?

  58. Re:open source software in 1997 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You do understand that there's a difference between letting people read your code (the "open source code model") and actually letting people edit your code (and redistribute the edited version) -- right?

    So the handful of people talking about viewable source code is an entirely different thing. (And it is literally a handful -- I can count them on the fingers on one hand.) Doesn't it seem weird to you that in the responses, nobody picks up the phrase "open source code model"? Because nobody cared if they couldn't actually access the code themselves.

  59. Why Nanotechnology, for Laypeople by qaute · · Score: 1

    Integrated circuits, solar panels, and GMOs are some pretty big results in nanotech these days. What are some future benefits we can look forward to that help justify further research to non-techies?

  60. Open Source Utopia by qaute · · Score: 1

    The ultimate dream in nanotechnology is a molecular assembler (atomic 3D printer) on every desktop, with a widespread community of hardware designers/developers analogous to open source software today. You'll be able to, say, download files to build a new car from GitHub. Hackaday has a good writeup (https://hackaday.com/2018/02/27/can-open-source-hardware-be-like-open-source-software/). Suppose that someone finally figures out how to build such a molecular assembler. Chances are it'll be patent-encumbered and NDA'd. How can we from here to there?

  61. Nanotech Prognosis by qaute · · Score: 1

    What's the current outlook for nanotechnology? Technically speaking, do we get Star Trek replicators soon, or is that still a 25+ year thing (https://www.xkcd.com/678/)? Politically, how do regulations, industry, and patents look? Socially, is it generally viewed as positive or negative these days?

  62. Re:I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is "me"? You've assured us repeatedly that you're not creimer, but a 30 year old "girl" in New York. So who is "me"?

    (BTW, how was your Easter holiday, Chris?)

  63. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by 110010001000 · · Score: 0

    Actually the whole point of Free Software is that you can use, modify it and redistribute it with the rights still intact. The term "Open Source" has many meanings.

  64. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Never. You started this, we will finish it.

  65. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by drinkypoo · · Score: 0, Troll

    Actually the whole point of Free Software is that you can use, modify it and redistribute it with the rights still intact. The term "Open Source" has many meanings.

    Thank you for understanding this. Free Software and Open Source are fundamentally different things, and I believe that the OSI's ongoing attempts to conflate them when they know better are harmful to users both in the short and the long term. They like to claim that Open Source is sufficient, but that's simply doing the will of corporations rather than actually serving the needs of users. Settling for Open Source when what users need is Free Software is the white flag of surrender. We need integrity and courage, not lies and cowardice. We can't win by giving up.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  66. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's amazing that a creature your size can shift positions so rapidly. Face it, Chris, you're a mostly unlikable, uninteresting, tiresome, and repulsive individual.

    You lost. Face it.

  67. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by 110010001000 · · Score: 0

    We are on the same page here. I am completely against the idea of Open Source, and support Free Software. It is the meaninglessness of the term "Open Source" that has got us into this complete mess we are in today. Computing has regressed. It used to be about empowerment of the individual. Open Source is just a meaningless marketing term. We should have been fighting to Free Software all along. Too bad OSI has obfuscated what is important.

  68. Re: Why do you continue making this erroneous clai by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

    The best outcome is that OSI is widely and publicly humiliated for this and learns that even the noblest house is worthless when built on a shaky foundation.

    I don't know that is the best outcome. I think the best outcome is that the OSI adopts humility by choice at this point instead of essentially by force at some later point when — as you say — the house of cards falls. I far prefer Open Source to closed source, and I don't want to see the OSI go down hard and take FOSS with it even though I believe that Open Source is a half measure, and that what is needed to preserve the rights of users is Free Software. We are agreed that integrity is a requirement, however. It's one thing for entrenched powers with limitless budgets to behave as they like; they can afford to buy their way out of problems. The good guys have to be scrupulous. If they aren't, then they aren't the good guys anyway.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  69. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could you shove any more exposition into this post?
      In your next video please troll us hard with a trollface gif and make sure to tell us how much traffic your april fools video generated. I'm sure our jaws will hit the floor and we'll die of embarrassment. Golly creimer was trolling us the whole time!!!

  70. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    can you hurry up and post your victory video about how you're not banned and we're all super april-fooled!!!
    POFFERL
    CRFL
    ROFL

  71. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey creimer. I am highly disappointed by your latest videos. I was expecting a tenth video on Stan Wee but instead, you decided to talk about something else. You are unreliable!

  72. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chris' case is getting worse, he spends all day replying to himself as AC on /. and now, on YouTube in order to grab attention!

    The tests we ran on Chris have shown that Chris has the intelligence of an ameba:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    So, technically, he is able to conceive some kind of agenda but it will be silly or impossible to follow on a human scale.

    For example, Chris had an agenda to post anything he felt like on Slashdot which did not work well because it was based on his false beliefs that he had an infinite number of karma points as he wrote here several times.

    Several people here explained to Chris that karma maxed out at some level like 50 or so but Chris kept on insisting that his python script had confirmed that he had millions of karma points!

    Oh well, as I wrote before: "It isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody."

    For the valuable /. users that might already have read the following, please note that there is an important update.

    IMPORTANT UPDATE:
    Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education has invested money to buy Chris a new chair:
    http://www.keynamics.com/image...

    Information about Christopher Dale Reimer and autistic people:

    Autistic people have obsessions about things normal people don't care. For example, one of our autistic patient went haywire when he realized that there was a penny missing in his pocket change.

    To calm him down, one of our educator pretended to have found it on the floor and gave a penny to him.

    The autistic patient condition went even worse because he realized it wasn't the same penny!

    Chris has an obsession with budgeting every penny. He doesn't understand that most people do not budget to the penny and have a flexible amount they allow for miscellaneous items.

    I am Nancy Guerrero and I am Director of Special Education for the Santa Clara County Office of Education. We use Chris' (a.k.a. creimer,cdreimer) picture in our document because he is the hardest case we have ever had to handle:
    http://www.sccoe.org/depts/stu...

    Our artists were inspired by the low carb diet that Christopher follows scrupulously for the small lunch box and by the picture linked below for the rest. I am sure that you will notice the similarities such as the bump on the side of his chest and more:
    https://ibb.co/gVad65

    Please be easy on Christopher although, I am aware that some of our staff handling Chris post joke comments here and obvoiusly, the Santa Clara County Office of Education disapprove that behavior vehemently:
    http://ibb.co/mRVSaG

    But it isn't Chris' fault if he is the way he is. We do the best we can do with him and he is partially integrated into society. We try to cure his abnormal need for attention but he is kind of stubborn and won't listen to anybody.

    Thank You dear users,
    ---
    Nancy Guerrero
    Director
    Special Education
    Santa Clara County Office of Education

  73. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dear Team Creimer,

    I just noticed that the Humpty-Dumpty video has ~375 millions views, that should make you salivate!

    I have plenty of ideas to make the views on your own youtube channel skyrocket but you didn't contact me yet. Is it because I am a lady? Ethell says that you are sexist but I hope it isn't true.

    Anyway, I will give you a free hint anyway: Dress-up as Humpty in your videos, you shouldn't need that much makeup making this a money saving situation in your own case.

    My YouTube channel has 222K subscribers and many videos with hundreds of thousands of views:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    Now, with some slight adjustments, I think that together, we could make the view count skyrocket on your very own Team Creimer youtube channel :)

    Please feel confident to contact me if you want me to coach you, we aren't living so far away from each other so we could even easily meet.

    Love XX,

    --
    -Granny

  74. Re:I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't get to draw attention to yourself for ten years, make a spectacle, sign up a dozen cashews accounts, then cry "bullying" because your on-line fantasy didn't go the way you expected, you autistic half-wit Unabomber-lite retard.

  75. Re:Why do you continue making this erroneous claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perens supports women's rights.

  76. Re:I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There you are shit posting again, you revenue stream hogging disgusting fat sexist tube of lard, Christopher Dale Reimer!

    You can be sure I will be watching this fake account too. I know this is you because you told me you were working on your freepass 11 file server and you are so dumb that you can't even masquerade yourself properly.

    Now, I told you I was out of meds last week and you didn't even care to contact me you lazy fucker.

    How many times do I have to express the emergency of the situation??????

    The python click script you wrote for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work!!!!!!

    You fucking incompetent python script writer!!!

    When it works, I get 4000+ clicks a day on my pheromone revenue stream web site but only 5 or 6 without it!!!!

    Now, it seems like you dont care and that you have abandoned me you heartless fucking pig!

    Bonus:
    Here is a story that creimer told me when convincing me what a hard life he had:

    The tree was him and the tree knot was his butt hole!

    So, his uncle packed his fat ass with lard and with his cock! Not that it makes much of a difference but anyway, there it is!

    Signed:
    Ethell, The girl that used to love you and now hates you, burn in hell where you belong you sexist pig!

  77. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CROFLOL!

    creimer has already managed to fuck up on youtube and creimer youtube channel already begins to look like slashdot where he is the king creimy-dumpty!

    Here is one user comment about creimer on creimer youtube channel (calling creimer stupid):

    once again another youtuber looking stupid like i said i got the email from registration confirming his was coming youtube is fake news.?

    Then creimer replies:

    C.D. Reimer
    C.D. Reimer
    12 hours ago (edited)
    If you think I look stupid now, wait until you see my next video as I retrace what happened.

    1) The Daily Beast comes out with a detailed article describing Stan Lee's troubles.
    2) Stan Lee cancels ComicCon Asia in Manila (third consecutive comic con cancellation).
    3) Stan Lee's profile and ticket listings are taken down from SVCC website without explanation, which was what happened when Jeff Goldblum cancelled.
    4) No confirmation or denial from SVCC for a whole week, rumors and speculation run rampant.
    5) Stan Lee's Facebook video was his first public communication since late February.

    If you want to scream fake news, complain to the SVCC organizers who pulled Stan Lee's profile (still missing) and ticket listings, refused to communicate about what was going on their own Facebook page, and had to get Stan Lee to save their asses from the problems that they created.?

    CROFLOL!
    CROFLOL! CROFLOL!

    Just like slashdot! : complain to management, I ain't responsible for my own fuck-ups since I am a fat retard, please still keep clicking on my stupid links although, etc. etc.
    --
    Balena!

  78. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    C.D. Reimer
    12 hours ago (edited)
    If you think I look stupid now, wait until you see my next video as I retrace what happened.

    Hey creimer! So, you promise to look even more stupid in your next video? OK, I'll watch it then.

    Also, I see "12 hours ago (edited)" above. You must enjoy the edit functionality allowing you to re-arrange your reality at will, you delusional fucktard!

  79. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey creimer! Where is that video where you "retrace what happened" e.g. you being a fattard creimy-dumpty over and over again?

    I was expecting to watch it since you promised to look even more stupid in it.

    --
    A disgruntled former Team Creimer fan.

  80. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    creimer says he is going to post one comic con video every day in April but creimer lied to be a comic con affiliate and maybe win a t-shirt; By then, creimer will already have moved to his next get rich quick scheme!

    He always lies! He also said that he would publish books in January but he has moved to the comic con/youtube get rich quick scheme instead!

  81. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    creimer is already busy with too many affiliate link programs.

    creimer would accept the mascot position although if pay is more than 5$ an hour, which is much more than creimer does collecting second hand lottery tickets.

    creimer would save the puffer con with costume charge and creimer would look more like a puffer than this guy:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    As long as creimer can still collect second hand lottery tickets while acting as mascot you got deal.

  82. How to deal with nanotech hype problem? by Goldsmith · · Score: 1

    I am a nanotechnologist. I've done great academic research, worked for the government, managed a few grants, and started a few companies.

    It's very easy to hype the potential of nanotechnology.

    On the other hand, it's very hard to get attention put on results from serious commercial efforts.

    Granting agencies and our community are not good at supporting companies that do what we all tell each other needs to get done (i.e. NanoIntegris). We are great at supporting academic research groups that have a patina of commercial application (i.e. IBM).

    As a field we've missed celebrating a number of major commercialization milestones. CNT and graphene electronics are available commercially! Who knew? For five years or so, you could find commercial graphene electronics in cell phone screens in Shenzhen. For the last two years, you could find commercial graphene biosensors at many big pharma companies. For the last year, you could buy CNT based high power RF electronics.

    If we were interested in showing the real potential of the field, wouldn't the leaders want to show everyone that it IS working? We have actually met the NNI timeline for commercialization set in the 1990s. The goals we set out with 20 years ago seem to mean nothing to the hype machine we've created.

    Simply put, how do we deal with the addiction to hype in nanotechnology, and focus a bit more on substantive accomplishment?

    1. Re:How to deal with nanotech hype problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IMHO the hype is the redefinition of 'nanotechnology' to include any nano-scale engineering.

      The original meaning of the term as Drexler used it was the construction of things atom-by-atom, and AFAIK that has only been done to date with a scanning tunneling electron microscope.

      Everthing else they're calling 'nanotechnology' is just some sophisticated chemistry.

  83. Re: I've read K Eric Drexler's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have to be delusional to think that anyone believes Slashdot would ban your accounts because of a low-profile zero-view video.

    More self-aggrandizing history-rearranging backside noise from Slashdot's only shit-moth.

  84. Re:How “open source” was coined by najajomo · · Score: 1

    @Anonymous Coward: "Chris couldn’t read my mind, so she had no way to know that I spotted “open source” as the winner we were looking for the first or second time the phrase was mentioned [in that same meeting where Chris Peterson introduced the term, which is what this essay is about]

    Fixed that for you
    ."

    I'm sure Raymond will appreciate you correcting him :]

  85. Re:Photo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So that's a "no" then.

  86. What exactly happened in 1998? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Prior to 1998, had you heard anyone using the phrase "open source" before?

    Or was it something you came up with on your own as the only logical set of words to describe source code which is openly shared.

  87. How important is visualization of nano surfaces? by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 1

    I.e. how important is it for researchers and manufacturers to observe objects at the nano level, how often and how easily? What kinds of improvements in methods like atomic force microscopy would be most relevant for researchers, and what other methods/breakthroughs would be key in your opinion? (Disclosure, I work for an AMF manufacturer, just started.)

    Also when will we have self-assembling nanorobots like in Michael Crichton's Prey? (J/k, that falls under "hype" from previous question. :-)

  88. Re:open source software in 1997 by drinkypoo · · Score: 0

    You do understand that there's a difference between letting people read your code (the "open source code model") and actually letting people edit your code (and redistribute the edited version) -- right?

    That's what the OSI claims, but the abundant evidence around this thread from USENET posts shows it doesn't. Further, people were distributing patches to that type of open source code before the OSI existed, and that served as a perfectly functional workaround. In practice, there is no functional difference whatsoever between an open source license that permits you to distribute changed versions, and an open source license which doesn't — you can still distribute your changed version in effect by distributing a patch.

    Free Software is fundamentally different because it requires you to distribute sources to people who get binaries. Open Source is of interest only to developers, and people who want free (as in no cost) software right now. Free Software serves users, and people who want their computers and applications to work both now and in the future. It's actually not a subtle distinction.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"