I can't remember the context of the specific withholding, but in the documentary where this was mentioned, it was asserted that among the possible reasons to withhold was the hope that America would perceive a greater danger (or degree of knowledge by the Germans) and that, in turn, might improve the chances of an earlier intervention.
In a wartime environment, the strategic advantage of breaking the enemy's codes definitely would warrant a great deal of secrecy, even from one's allies.
If, indeed, the assertion that I mentioned is part of this documentary (assuming I remember correctly and am not confusing this with another program), it might denote some other bias or issue on the part of the author. I did like the show, though, even if it might have a few flaws.
Been a while since I saw this, I'll see it again tonight. One of the interesting bits (IIRC) is the assertion that Churchill withheld the extent of their ability to decode Enigma from Roosevelt, ostensibly to help accelerate American involvement in the war.
Some mention of Alan Turing, et.al., but not as much as might be expected.
All in all, a good overview of the British cryptography effort.
For those who can't see it at 9(EDT), it is also repeated Monday at 1am(EDT).
It has been argued (quite accurately, IMHO), that the mere fact of the trial has essentially imposed a restriction upon any blatantly anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. As long as they are under the auspices of a trial, and the resulting public scrutiny, they can't make any obvious efforts to quash competition (or perceived competition).
Given some of the gaffes made by Microsoft during the trial, and Judge Jackson's apparent attitude towards MS, there's a pretty good chance that a guilty verdict will be presented, which Microsoft will certainly appeal.
I would say that regardless of the punishment proposed in the event of a guilty verdict, it is the verdict itself (and the resultant appeal) that will provide the best short term protection for competition. An appeal would keep the issue public, and impose the same restrictions on potential anti-competitive behaviour as does the current trial. If we just had a guilty verdict, regardless of the actual punishment, it would very shortly leave MS in the position of being able to engage in more anti-competitive behaviour (at least until a subsequent trial).
I don't think you quite grasp that the idea that "property" denies others control over some resource, it does not enable the owner to do what they will with it. Your ability to use property is obvious and implicit. By the same token, I can steal your property and do whatever I want with it, too. That doesn't mean I own it.
This assertion, while true in a sense, is more a matter of legality rather than an issue of capitalism vs communism. Legal boundaries and potential theft notwithstanding, the right of the owner of property to control that property is one of the primary fundamentals of capitalism.
By giving code away [1], you have removed control over that property. Sure, you can do whatever you want with it, but so can everyone else. Nobody owns it, because its infinitely reproducable. It isn't really property any longer.
Only if you actually give it away. As you mention in your footnote, there is usually some kind of license involved. Given that, while the code may be already in the public, all members of the public except for the author, are still bound by that license, regardless of what the author does later in the chain. Admittedly, it may 'water down' any attempt to release that code in a non-free manner, but it does not prevent it, especially if the author enhances it in some way that differentiates it from the original product.
And what's with this "non-forced, voluntary participation" == capitalism stuff? Tell that to sweatshop workers with no education. I'm sure they'd love to tell you about their freedom.
I think this is kind of a non-sequitur. The freedom I'm speaking of is that of an individual having the right to their property, in that what the individual does voluntarily with their property (within the bounds of legality), is part of capitalism.
To reiterate the point I was making (perhaps unclearly), it is the fact that the author of a piece of software has the choice to release it open source, or keep it closed, and this decision is not forced upon him by government or society, and as such, is more representative of capitalism rather than communism.
Regarding intellectual property, "open source" software is very communistic, in that it distributes ownership to the community (or removes ownership altogether, which is the same thing if the community includes everybody).
Not quite. Even under the GPL, the original author(s) of the software can do anything they want with the software, including changing the license and going completely commercial, if they choose to.
It is not property, per. se., that is the foundation of capitalism, but that the individual maintains the right to do as they choose with that property. Under a fiefdom, for example, it is possible for one to own property without having much, if any, say in what they can do with it.
When the author of 'open source' software distributes it freely (GPL, etc.), they make the choice to do so.
They are not forced, participation is entirely voluntary, and the original author maintains ownership of that property, to do with as they please. Sounds an awful lot like capitalism to me.
While I think this could be a good idea, I question the assertion that the people involved with Linux (coders, writers, et.al) should not get paid (if they can) for their work.
It's true that many of us write code for the fun of it, and I suspect that there are many writers (even technical ones) that also write because they enjoy it, and would do it whether they get paid or not.
However, as many before me have argued, we don't have to separate Open Source from economic gain. Many of our favorite Linux coders are getting paid for Linux coding, do we grudge them that merely because the rest of us are doing it for free (or nearly so)? It is frequently argued that support is the most meaningful economic model for Open Source projects, in that you can get the software gratis, and you get the support at some cost (either you take the time to learn to do it yourself, or you lob a little cash to someone who is able to teach you).
I think the idea of an 'Open Book' is pretty cool, and almost certainly do-able. And it would be interesting to see how it would turn out, especially if there were many contributors. But if an author can make money writing a Linux book, I would say go for that if you can, just as if they could make the money writing Linux code.
This just sounds like another attempt to blame something else for peoples' behaviour.
Regardless of how much time someone spends online, the real point comes down to the rest of their behaviour. If their online time takes away from their responsibilities, then that's the problem, whether they spend 15 minutes online or 15 hours.
It's time to hold the individual responsible for their actions (and the results thereof), rather than looking for scapegoats in an effort to avoid the real problems.
Not to say that addiction can't be a problem, but addiction should be addressed by focusing on making sure the individual is taught how to deal with it, not by myopically focusing on the subject of that addiction. Some people will become addicted to something, and many won't become addicted to anything. Addiction is in the person, not in the object that they may be addicted to. To say that anyone may become addicted to something based on some fixed amount of exposure is foolish and misleading, and diminishes the efforts of those trying to fight real addictions.
Gnome panel is an app, of sorts. The reason I mentioned it in the context of the root window is that the gnome panel also contains the application menus. While the WM is the logical choice for handling root window clicks, if one of the Gnome apps is going to do it, it should be the panel, rather than the file manager. At least then, the mouse click could bring up an application menu, rather than the anemic menu like substance created by gmc.:)
It's just that an application doesn't need to handle root window clicks.
For example, if you have the Gnome/enlightenment combo (the one that comes with redhat 6), the default behaviour is that the middle mouse button call the enlightenment menu, and the right mouse button calls the gmc menu. But if you upgrade to a later version of E (where all three mouse buttons have menus) you get a conflict between the E right button menu and the gmc right button menu, and both show up, often with less than useful results.
It could be a matter for discussion which should take the root window clicks, the window manager or the integrated desktop, but there should be only one, or at least some way to specify or arbitrate the response, and I think this is kind of what Mandrake is getting at. Besides, gmc is an app, and it probably shouldn't get the clicks anyway. They should go to either the WM or the gnome panel.
It's a matter of choice. With Windows (which I do use BTW), you are pretty much stuck with *one* integrated desktop, and no other choices. Even apps like litestep and the like are only appearance, they don't have any real effect on the underlying interface thema.
With Linux/X, however, you get to choose whatever level of integration (or not) that you prefer. In addition, you can choose from *two* separate integrated desktop environments, and you can use the one *you* like, not the one that was provided for you.
The thing about the 'Man of the Year', 'Man of the Century' selections are that they are supposed to represent the person(s) who have had the greatest effect on the events of the year/century, and are not necessarily intended to represent the most popular personality (although that does seem to enter into at least part of it).
By this criteria, it can be argued that Saddam (and to a greater degree, Hitler) have had a profound effect upon the course of events in this century.
As cool as it is that Linus is high on the list, I'm not all that sure that his influence on the events in this century are sufficient to make him a Man of the Century, and I suspect he would probably agree (now, Man of the Year, I could see that ).
Before I upgraded the box, I ran E (0.14, 0.15.x, and 0.16) quite nicely on a Pentium 200, with 64M ram, Mach 64 video. The only thing that took any real time was changing themes, and I didn't do that all that often. I also usually had Netscrape, a half dozen Eterms, and X11amp running as well, and it was still ok as far as speed went (still faster than windows on the same box).
Since you have a good processor and enough ram, maybe it's a video card / X server thing?
The possibility of damaging hardware while programming it can be mostly eliminated with decent documentation, and the rest of the cases can be handled by including a disclaimer. The process of writing a driver isn't all that much trial and error, unless you don't have good documents, or if you're trying to venture outside of what the board is designed to do. I've blown up a few boards while writing drivers for them, but the majority of those were due to incomplete information about the hardware (the rest were coding errors and pushing the limits of the board).
As far as customer support goes, yes, there are those who will abuse it, especially if there is individual contact information handy in the distribution.
But this merely highlights a problem that is becoming even more endemic to the industry, that of poor support across the board. Customer support is often treated as an afterthought, and is usually staffed with neophytes or other poorly trained personnel. Admittedly, it is hard to deal with the clueless among the user community, as well, but a lot can be done with a good support service.
Even for a purely proprietary product, a support infrastructure is required, and they will have to deal with bug reports (accurate or otherwise), installation problems, driver conflicts, etc., anyway. One advantage of open source support for hardware would be that you would still provide a standard support model, in addition to being able to provide a single point of contact for bug fixes, etc., from the user community. This has the advantage of providing the service dept with more information than they might otherwise have, allowing them to provide even better support. There would be a need for more technically knowledgeable support personnel, but IMHO, these are needed anyway.
Sadly, there is no way to completely circumvent the clueless user, and as a result, someone in a service dept, or even the designer, will end up dealing with it. But a great deal can be ameliorated with good documentation for the specifics of the hardware and the software, and by providing a single point of contact (to a GOOD service department) for support issues.
The problem is, as you state, who is it that gets to draw the line?
My opinion on this is that for adults, no one should draw the line, there should be no restrictions AT ALL concerning what adults may read, hear, view, etc.
And as far as children go, the ones who should draw the line are the parents, not the government, not their church, not their next door neighbors.
The solution to the problem of how to deal with any kind of information availablity is the requirement of personal responsibility. If some adult, for example wants to read, whatever, information about making bombs, for example, so be it. If they choose to make them and use them, they should then be held responsible for the results, period, end of story, no babysitting, no mollycoddling, just appropriate punishment. In the case of children, if a parent chooses to allow the child access to such information, again, so be it. If the child then applies that knowledge, then the parents should be held responsible for the results of those actions, or if the child is past the age of about 10-12 or so, then the responsiblity should be applied to parent AND child.
The problems that are so harped upon in this country are not caused by guns, or bombs, or porn, or drugs, or whatever the flavor of the week is this time. The problems in this country are caused by the attitude that "It's not my fault, someone (or something) else made me do it!".
If we really want these problems to go away (to the degree that is possible to do so), we need to quit wasting our time and money trying to control the behaviour of people, and apply it to enforcing the requirement of personal responsibility, through education, and appropriate repercussions. Any other attitude is only going to make the problem worse.
1) Resistance is sometimes necessary. It is not entirely bad when an inaccurate article draws flames. We can only hope that the flames are tempered by the presence of more numerous polite comments. And, hopefully, the percent of flames will not exceed the degree of inaccuracy and/or malice in the article.
While this may be what happens, it doesn't mean it's the right way to respond. Flaming is NOT the correct way to respond, period. Flaming merely demonstrates that the flamer perceives themselves to be superior to those they flame, and as a result they alienate and offend those we should be trying to reach (or teach). The proper response to an inaccurate post / story is a reasonable, intelligent rebuttal of the inaccuracies, not personal attacks and invective. And the proper response to a malicious article is no response at all.
2) The Authors are always free to selectively cite and publish negative emails in order to disproportionately prove "rudeness" on the part of Linux advocates. Since they will quite likely feel defensive, this is always a possibility. Scott Hacker, for example, provided no data on the percentage of flames versus constructive criticisms. It may be that the negative comments were not at all representative of the whole.
Even so, we cannot permit ourselves to justify or condone bad behaviour, regardless of how the author might respond. At some point, we should demonstrate that we ARE better than that. As a matter of likelihood, it is very probable that the negative comments, while not representative of the whole, are representative of those received by the author. All too often, the reasonable replies are swamped by the childish ones.
Yes, there will always be those among us who cannot resist demonstrating their immaturity, but we cannot allow them to drag us down with them. A vocal minority is often perceived by the rest of the world as representative, and the rest of us must be just as vocal to offset it.
We spend a great deal of time improving our software, etc., and we spend a lot of time in discussion among ourselves. We should also use some of that time to offset the actions of the childish few. We should put the same effort into reasonable advocacy as we do into coding, etc. The mature among us IS the majority, but the rest of the world won't know it if we just sit back and allow the immature to speak for us.
Here's a link. Do a search on Joe Barr, and you'll get his posts. Not all are as crude as the mindcraft crap, but there are some pretty bad ones mixed in with the less offensive posts.
Admittedly, this was a pretty good article, even if it tended to be a 'rose colored glasses' sort of view.
My problem is, do we really want someone like Joe Barr as a public spokesperson?
I've read some of his responses to the Mindcraft debacle, not to mention many of his posts on the am-essentials forum, and his statements are often the worst form of childish, crude, and vitriolic invective I've ever had the displeasure of reading.
It's bad enough when this kind of garbage is posted by the usual trolls, but to have this kind of attitude in a visible (even more so now) 'advocate' does our cause far more harm than good.
While the current article managed to avoid this trap, what if some of the readers from CNN or LinuxToday decide to see what else Mr. Barr may have written, and come across some of the above examples? Any credibility that he might have had just went out the window.
We have enough children in the Linux community as it is, we certainly don't need them representing us in any form of official capacity.
'extraordinarily sensitive' info that's too secret to disclose publicly
This argument completely misses the point. There is a difference between information that should be kept secret and the method for keeping it secret.
There can be no doubt that any information deemed truly secret by the government will be protected with strong encryption, (at least), even if we disregard the various procedural and physical protocols that are also used.
It is disingenous to argue that the mere existence of strong encryption (and the free dissemination thereof) is, in and of itself, a threat to security.
What the argument really breaks down to is this:
"We (the government) want to be able to easily read any transmission of information under the auspices of protecting ourselves from terrorists and other criminals, and barring the ability to easily read these missives, we want to be able to hold the use of strong encryption itself as a criminal act, so that we can prosecute anyone who uses it, even if we can't prove that they were otherwise engaged in criminal behaviour".
In other words, they want the existence of a strongly encrypted message to remove the presumption of innocence.
As stated in the article, if everyone used strong encryption, they would lose the ability to use strong encryption as a flag to identify potential targets, not to mention that it would be far more difficult (and resource intensive) to attempt to decode all of those messages. What this means is that the government really does want to read your e-mail and intercept your e-commerce, etc., and the idea that they might not be able to really bothers them, despite all their rhetoric about national security and protection.
The free speech qualities of source code in this venue, at least, are clear. It is contradictory to argue that the source code should be restricted while other methods that could be used (printed word, voice communication) would convey the same information, and are already considered protected speech.
I suspect that if it comes before the Supreme Court (likely), they will uphold the decision of the 9th circuit court.
Music (and musical instruments) are not undifferentiated collections of mere frequency.
The frequencies we don't hear have a profound effect on the frequencies we do hear. A clarinet playing C#5 and a bassoon playing C#5 sound different, even though they are playing the same note.
A lot of the dynamics of the character of an instrument are expressed in the additional frequencies that are imposed on the base frequency by the physical nature of that instrument, and some of these additional frequencies are themselves beyond the range of human hearing.
Granted that some of these artifacts are digitized as part of the original sample, all you have to do to hear the difference is to record an audio input at an 11kHz sample rate vs 22 or 44 kHz. The difference in sound quality between the three is obvious.
Past a certain point, the limitations on the playback equipment will swamp out digitizing differences, but the sound then is limited only by the playback equipment, not by the frequency limitations AND the playback equipment.
In every society or community, there are always those that seem to be unable to express themselves without the use of childish behaviour, invective, or just out and out disrespect for others.
There are also those who defend this behaviour under the auspices of free speech, and that it is wrong to arbitrarily silence them, and they're right.
The solution, as I see it, is not to restrict or remove those opinions, but to demonstrate (by our example) that these members of our society are immature (like children), and just like children everywhere, most will grow out of it with time.
We do this by presenting our own views in a mature, objective manner. We do this by demonstrating that these opinions are the minority opinions, regardless of how many times they are repeated. In cases like the one described here, we should make a point to contact the author / poster in question, letting them know by our example that there *are* adults in this community, whether or not we agree with the posted position.
The simple fact of the matter is that you get back what you give. If you flame, you will be flamed in return. By expressing ourselves in a vitriolic and immature manner, we are essentially saying to those we are trying to reach that we aren't worth listening to, and any position we have, however valid, will consequently be ignored.
I, as an advocate of Open Source software, have no real problem with commercial, closed applications. The real benefit of OSS, especially in the beginning, is the availability of a commoditized OS so that the applications we want to run aren't tied to any particular distribution or company.
As we progress, the applications that are best expressed in the open source method will be, leaving only a very few, probably highly specialized apps as closed.
I we want to appear to be a coherent community then we must hold all Linux distros to the same standards that we attack MS under, if not then we are nothing but hypocrites and fantics.
I don't think this is as big of an issue as you make it. It is one of the strengths of Linux that a distribution can be tailored to suit a particular scope or purpose, without diluting the concept. If a bundled app is such that it will only run on one particular version of Linux, that would be an issue, but it seems to me that kind of bundling would seriously backfire.
It is not the presence of commercial software that I have a problem with, it the the presence of commercial software that is so strongly tied to one company's OS that you no longer have a real choice.
In past postings, many here have stated that they would be willing to purchase closed commercial games for Linux. Why then would there be an issue with closed commerical word processors, et.al.? There are open alternatives to virtually all of these, and therefore, we have a choice, and choice is what it's really about.
Really hate to break this to you, but the jet engine is fully understood in our current knowledge of physics and aerodynamics.
Also, there are only **TWO** types of mechanisms that can be categorized as thermodynamically impossible, those that claim to generate more energy than the system contains, and those that claim to generate energy from a single potential level.
For a point of argument, let's take the stand that these experiments actually did produce an excess of heat, as claimed.
There are still some serious shortcomings (IMHO) with the conclusions reached by the experimenters.
First and foremost is the assumption that the excess heat generated must be the result of a nuclear interaction of some sort. As a previous poster stated, there is no evidence of the expected byproducts of a nuclear interaction. As far as I know, there is no model for (or evidence of) any kind of nuclear level interactions that do not produce some amount of these byproducts (neutrons, gamma radiation, etc.).
Second, even if we assume that it is possible (however unlikely) to have nuclear interactions without particle emission, where is the description of the mechanism of this type of interaction? It is not enough to label this process a nuclear process, one must also hypothesise the mechanism (at the nuclear level) that would produce this effect. Science is not just about trying to repeat (or test) some observed phenomena, it is even more about hypothesizing the mechanism of that phenomena, and then testing that hypothesis. Without the test of a hypothesis, all you are doing is demonstrating an effect, but not explaining it.
That being said, there is still also the fact that it must also be verified that the phenomena being examined is truly an extant phenomena, and not an artifact of the experiment itself. The numbers usually provided as evidence of the cold fusion phenomena are extremely small. It is not enough to say that the experimenter has the ability to measure a temperature change with an accuracy of one-thousandth of a degree, the experimenter must also be able to account for *all* of the energies used in the experiment to at least that level of accuracy (including incipient environmental conditions).
I think if the cold fusion experimenters cannot meet these criteria, it's no wonder that they get little consideration from the mainstream science community.
I'm not a physicist, just an EE with a good knowledge of physics, and I have not examined every bit of information about the cold fusion experiments, so take my comments above in that context. However, what I have seen does not meet the criteria I state above.
No, it wouldn't --- you can never relieve population pressure by expanding to new territory. You can't transfer people fast enough. There will always be orders of magnitude more people being born than you can ship to the lunar colonies.
Actually, while this is true in principle, not having off-earth settlements would still be worse. Population pressure will increase regardless, and if we have no other relief for that pressure, we will overwhelm earth that much faster, and with far more permanent results.
Just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's worth preserving. Deserts are dead, too, mostly --- and we preserve those. There's no ecosystem, so it's a lot harder to make a mess (you don't have to worry about upsetting any kind of balance), but the counter to this is that any mess made on the surface is permanent. The Apollo hardware is still there. There are metal-lined craters from the hard-landed Luna probes, still there. If you strip-mine the surface of the moon, the scars will remain for millions of years.
Agreed. However, at some point, we still have to make the decisions that give us the best chances to preserve humanity. We can only hope that we learn enough of our lessons to use future resources wisely.
Personally, I think this is a good experiment, even if we had to build a brand new probe to accomplish it. The fact that we can use an existing one is frosting on the cake.
There's no logic in the argument that this kind of experiment is going to lead to more destruction of some 'natural' environment by man.
First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth. If we find water in some form on the moon, it is an additional aid to forming a settlement that can eventually be self supporting (admittedly quite a ways into the future, but a good goal, nonetheless).
Second, in the case of the moon, it is already dead. What possible damage could we do that would make it any more dead? On the other hand, if we settle it and make it habitable at least in some degree, we gain a great deal. For example, one thing to consider is the potential for some sort of global catastrophe on earth. Unless we spread ourselves out a bit onto other planets, a global catastrophe *could* cause the complete end of the human race. Settlements on other planets would give us at least some chance of avoiding complete extinction.
Finally, if we argue that we should avoid any efforts to settle other planets in the name of preserving their pristine characteristics, we would actually open the door to furthering the damage we already do to earth. Like it or not, human population is not going to diminish (barring a catastrophe), and as it expands, the drain on existing resources will only get worse. By offloading some of this drain onto other planets (and their associated resources), we have the potential to halt (or even reverse) the ecological damage we do to earth, and, if we have learned our lessons, we might even be able to use all of our resources (including those on other planets) more wisely, and maybe we can avoid repeating our mistakes.
To close off any avenue of expansion to our poplulation will eventually result in the extinction (or mortal damage) of the human race, either through population pressure, resource depletion, or a global natural disaster.
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Actually, I agree with your point.
I can't remember the context of the specific withholding, but in the documentary where this was mentioned, it was asserted that among the possible reasons to withhold was the hope that America would perceive a greater danger (or degree of knowledge by the Germans) and that, in turn, might improve the chances of an earlier intervention.
In a wartime environment, the strategic advantage of breaking the enemy's codes definitely would warrant a great deal of secrecy, even from one's allies.
If, indeed, the assertion that I mentioned is part of this documentary (assuming I remember correctly and am not confusing this with another program), it might denote some other bias or issue on the part of the author. I did like the show, though, even if it might have a few flaws.
Been a while since I saw this, I'll see it again tonight. One of the interesting bits (IIRC) is the assertion that Churchill withheld the extent of their ability to decode Enigma from Roosevelt, ostensibly to help accelerate American involvement in the war.
Some mention of Alan Turing, et.al., but not as much as might be expected.
All in all, a good overview of the British cryptography effort.
For those who can't see it at 9(EDT), it is also repeated Monday at 1am(EDT).
It has been argued (quite accurately, IMHO), that the mere fact of the trial has essentially imposed a restriction upon any blatantly anti-competitive practices by Microsoft. As long as they are under the auspices of a trial, and the resulting public scrutiny, they can't make any obvious efforts to quash competition (or perceived competition).
Given some of the gaffes made by Microsoft during the trial, and Judge Jackson's apparent attitude towards MS, there's a pretty good chance that a guilty verdict will be presented, which Microsoft will certainly appeal.
I would say that regardless of the punishment proposed in the event of a guilty verdict, it is the verdict itself (and the resultant appeal) that will provide the best short term protection for competition. An appeal would keep the issue public, and impose the same restrictions on potential anti-competitive behaviour as does the current trial. If we just had a guilty verdict, regardless of the actual punishment, it would very shortly leave MS in the position of being able to engage in more anti-competitive behaviour (at least until a subsequent trial).
I don't think you quite grasp that the idea that "property" denies others control over some resource, it does not enable the owner to do what they will with it. Your ability to use property is obvious and implicit. By the same token, I can steal your property and do whatever I want with it, too. That doesn't mean I own it.
This assertion, while true in a sense, is more a matter of legality rather than an issue of capitalism vs communism. Legal boundaries and potential theft notwithstanding, the right of the owner of property to control that property is one of the primary fundamentals of capitalism.
By giving code away [1], you have removed control over that property. Sure, you can do whatever you want with it, but so can everyone else. Nobody owns it, because its infinitely reproducable. It isn't really property any longer.
Only if you actually give it away. As you mention in your footnote, there is usually some kind of license involved. Given that, while the code may be already in the public, all members of the public except for the author, are still bound by that license, regardless of what the author does later in the chain. Admittedly, it may 'water down' any attempt to release that code in a non-free manner, but it does not prevent it, especially if the author enhances it in some way that differentiates it from the original product.
And what's with this "non-forced, voluntary participation" == capitalism stuff? Tell that to sweatshop workers with no education. I'm sure they'd love to tell you about their freedom.
I think this is kind of a non-sequitur. The freedom I'm speaking of is that of an individual having the right to their property, in that what the individual does voluntarily with their property (within the bounds of legality), is part of capitalism.
To reiterate the point I was making (perhaps unclearly), it is the fact that the author of a piece of software has the choice to release it open source, or keep it closed, and this decision is not forced upon him by government or society, and as such, is more representative of capitalism rather than communism.
Regarding intellectual property, "open source" software is very communistic, in that it distributes ownership to the community (or removes ownership altogether, which is the same thing if the community includes everybody).
Not quite. Even under the GPL, the original author(s) of the software can do anything they want with the software, including changing the license and going completely commercial, if they choose to.
It is not property, per. se., that is the foundation of capitalism, but that the individual maintains the right to do as they choose with that property. Under a fiefdom, for example, it is possible for one to own property without having much, if any, say in what they can do with it.
When the author of 'open source' software distributes it freely (GPL, etc.), they make the choice to do so.
They are not forced, participation is entirely voluntary, and the original author maintains ownership of that property, to do with as they please. Sounds an awful lot like capitalism to me.
While I think this could be a good idea, I question the assertion that the people involved with Linux (coders, writers, et.al) should not get paid (if they can) for their work.
It's true that many of us write code for the fun of it, and I suspect that there are many writers (even technical ones) that also write because they enjoy it, and would do it whether they get paid or not.
However, as many before me have argued, we don't have to separate Open Source from economic gain. Many of our favorite Linux coders are getting paid for Linux coding, do we grudge them that merely because the rest of us are doing it for free (or nearly so)? It is frequently argued that support is the most meaningful economic model for Open Source projects, in that you can get the software gratis, and you get the support at some cost (either you take the time to learn to do it yourself, or you lob a little cash to someone who is able to teach you).
I think the idea of an 'Open Book' is pretty cool, and almost certainly do-able. And it would be interesting to see how it would turn out, especially if there were many contributors. But if an author can make money writing a Linux book, I would say go for that if you can, just as if they could make the money writing Linux code.
This just sounds like another attempt to blame something else for peoples' behaviour.
Regardless of how much time someone spends online, the real point comes down to the rest of their behaviour. If their online time takes away from their responsibilities, then that's the problem, whether they spend 15 minutes online or 15 hours.
It's time to hold the individual responsible for their actions (and the results thereof), rather than looking for scapegoats in an effort to avoid the real problems.
Not to say that addiction can't be a problem, but addiction should be addressed by focusing on making sure the individual is taught how to deal with it, not by myopically focusing on the subject of that addiction. Some people will become addicted to something, and many won't become addicted to anything. Addiction is in the person, not in the object that they may be addicted to. To say that anyone may become addicted to something based on some fixed amount of exposure is foolish and misleading, and diminishes the efforts of those trying to fight real addictions.
Gnome panel is an app, of sorts. The reason I mentioned it in the context of the root window is that the gnome panel also contains the application menus. While the WM is the logical choice for handling root window clicks, if one of the Gnome apps is going to do it, it should be the panel, rather than the file manager. At least then, the mouse click could bring up an application menu, rather than the anemic menu like substance created by gmc. :)
It's just that an application doesn't need to handle root window clicks.
For example, if you have the Gnome/enlightenment combo (the one that comes with redhat 6), the default behaviour is that the middle mouse button call the enlightenment menu, and the right mouse button calls the gmc menu. But if you upgrade to a later version of E (where all three mouse buttons have menus) you get a conflict between the E right button menu and the gmc right button menu, and both show up, often with less than useful results.
It could be a matter for discussion which should take the root window clicks, the window manager or the integrated desktop, but there should be only one, or at least some way to specify or arbitrate the response, and I think this is kind of what Mandrake is getting at. Besides, gmc is an app, and it probably shouldn't get the clicks anyway. They should go to either the WM or the gnome panel.
It's a matter of choice. With Windows (which I do use BTW), you are pretty much stuck with *one* integrated desktop, and no other choices. Even apps like litestep and the like are only appearance, they don't have any real effect on the underlying interface thema.
With Linux/X, however, you get to choose whatever level of integration (or not) that you prefer. In addition, you can choose from *two* separate integrated desktop environments, and you can use the one *you* like, not the one that was provided for you.
The thing about the 'Man of the Year', 'Man of the Century' selections are that they are supposed to represent the person(s) who have had the greatest effect on the events of the year/century, and are not necessarily intended to represent the most popular personality (although that does seem to enter into at least part of it).
By this criteria, it can be argued that Saddam (and to a greater degree, Hitler) have had a profound effect upon the course of events in this century.
As cool as it is that Linus is high on the list, I'm not all that sure that his influence on the events in this century are sufficient to make him a Man of the Century, and I suspect he would probably agree (now, Man of the Year, I could see that ).
Before I upgraded the box, I ran E (0.14, 0.15.x, and 0.16) quite nicely on a Pentium 200, with 64M ram, Mach 64 video. The only thing that took any real time was changing themes, and I didn't do that all that often. I also usually had Netscrape, a half dozen Eterms, and X11amp running as well, and it was still ok as far as speed went (still faster than windows on the same box).
Since you have a good processor and enough ram, maybe it's a video card / X server thing?
The possibility of damaging hardware while programming it can be mostly eliminated with decent documentation, and the rest of the cases can be handled by including a disclaimer. The process of writing a driver isn't all that much trial and error, unless you don't have good documents, or if you're trying to venture outside of what the board is designed to do. I've blown up a few boards while writing drivers for them, but the majority of those were due to incomplete information about the hardware (the rest were coding errors and pushing the limits of the board).
As far as customer support goes, yes, there are those who will abuse it, especially if there is individual contact information handy in the distribution.
But this merely highlights a problem that is becoming even more endemic to the industry, that of poor support across the board. Customer support is often treated as an afterthought, and is usually staffed with neophytes or other poorly trained personnel. Admittedly, it is hard to deal with the clueless among the user community, as well, but a lot can be done with a good support service.
Even for a purely proprietary product, a support infrastructure is required, and they will have to deal with bug reports (accurate or otherwise), installation problems, driver conflicts, etc., anyway. One advantage of open source support for hardware would be that you would still provide a standard support model, in addition to being able to provide a single point of contact for bug fixes, etc., from the user community. This has the advantage of providing the service dept with more information than they might otherwise have, allowing them to provide even better support. There would be a need for more technically knowledgeable support personnel, but IMHO, these are needed anyway.
Sadly, there is no way to completely circumvent the clueless user, and as a result, someone in a service dept, or even the designer, will end up dealing with it. But a great deal can be ameliorated with good documentation for the specifics of the hardware and the software, and by providing a single point of contact (to a GOOD service department) for support issues.
The problem is, as you state, who is it that gets to draw the line?
My opinion on this is that for adults, no one should draw the line, there should be no restrictions AT ALL concerning what adults may read, hear, view, etc.
And as far as children go, the ones who should draw the line are the parents, not the government, not their church, not their next door neighbors.
The solution to the problem of how to deal with any kind of information availablity is the requirement of personal responsibility. If some adult, for example wants to read, whatever, information about making bombs, for example, so be it. If they choose to make them and use them, they should then be held responsible for the results, period, end of story, no babysitting, no mollycoddling, just appropriate punishment. In the case of children, if a parent chooses to allow the child access to such information, again, so be it. If the child then applies that knowledge, then the parents should be held responsible for the results of those actions, or if the child is past the age of about 10-12 or so, then the responsiblity should be applied to parent AND child.
The problems that are so harped upon in this country are not caused by guns, or bombs, or porn, or drugs, or whatever the flavor of the week is this time. The problems in this country are caused by the attitude that "It's not my fault, someone (or something) else made me do it!".
If we really want these problems to go away (to the degree that is possible to do so), we need to quit wasting our time and money trying to control the behaviour of people, and apply it to enforcing the requirement of personal responsibility, through education, and appropriate repercussions. Any other attitude is only going to make the problem worse.
1) Resistance is sometimes necessary. It is not entirely bad when an inaccurate article draws flames. We can only hope that the flames are tempered by the presence of more numerous polite comments. And, hopefully, the percent of flames will not exceed the degree of inaccuracy and/or malice in the article.
While this may be what happens, it doesn't mean it's the right way to respond. Flaming is NOT the correct way to respond, period. Flaming merely demonstrates that the flamer perceives themselves to be superior to those they flame, and as a result they alienate and offend those we should be trying to reach (or teach). The proper response to an inaccurate post / story is a reasonable, intelligent rebuttal of the inaccuracies, not personal attacks and invective. And the proper response to a malicious article is no response at all.
2) The Authors are always free to selectively cite and publish negative emails in order to disproportionately prove "rudeness" on the part of Linux advocates. Since they will quite likely feel defensive, this is always a possibility. Scott Hacker, for example, provided no data on the percentage of flames versus constructive criticisms. It may be that the negative comments were not at all representative of the whole.
Even so, we cannot permit ourselves to justify or condone bad behaviour, regardless of how the author might respond. At some point, we should demonstrate that we ARE better than that. As a matter of likelihood, it is very probable that the negative comments, while not representative of the whole, are representative of those received by the author. All too often, the reasonable replies are swamped by the childish ones.
Yes, there will always be those among us who cannot resist demonstrating their immaturity, but we cannot allow them to drag us down with them. A vocal minority is often perceived by the rest of the world as representative, and the rest of us must be just as vocal to offset it.
We spend a great deal of time improving our software, etc., and we spend a lot of time in discussion among ourselves. We should also use some of that time to offset the actions of the childish few. We should put the same effort into reasonable advocacy as we do into coding, etc. The mature among us IS the majority, but the rest of the world won't know it if we just sit back and allow the immature to speak for us.
Should have been am-info, not am-essentials :/
Here's a link. Do a search on Joe Barr, and you'll get his posts. Not all are as crude as the mindcraft crap, but there are some pretty bad ones mixed in with the less offensive posts.
http://lists.essential.org/am-info/
Admittedly, this was a pretty good article, even if it tended to be a 'rose colored glasses' sort of view.
My problem is, do we really want someone like Joe Barr as a public spokesperson?
I've read some of his responses to the Mindcraft debacle, not to mention many of his posts on the am-essentials forum, and his statements are often the worst form of childish, crude, and vitriolic invective I've ever had the displeasure of reading.
It's bad enough when this kind of garbage is posted by the usual trolls, but to have this kind of attitude in a visible (even more so now) 'advocate' does our cause far more harm than good.
While the current article managed to avoid this trap, what if some of the readers from CNN or LinuxToday decide to see what else Mr. Barr may have written, and come across some of the above examples? Any credibility that he might have had just went out the window.
We have enough children in the Linux community as it is, we certainly don't need them representing us in any form of official capacity.
'extraordinarily sensitive' info that's too secret to disclose publicly
This argument completely misses the point. There is a difference between information that should be kept secret and the method for keeping it secret.
There can be no doubt that any information deemed truly secret by the government will be protected with strong encryption, (at least), even if we disregard the various procedural and physical protocols that are also used.
It is disingenous to argue that the mere existence of strong encryption (and the free dissemination thereof) is, in and of itself, a threat to security.
What the argument really breaks down to is this:
"We (the government) want to be able to easily read any transmission of information under the auspices of protecting ourselves from terrorists and other criminals, and barring the ability to easily read these missives, we want to be able to hold the use of strong encryption itself as a criminal act, so that we can prosecute anyone who uses it, even if we can't prove that they were otherwise engaged in criminal behaviour".
In other words, they want the existence of a strongly encrypted message to remove the presumption of innocence.
As stated in the article, if everyone used strong encryption, they would lose the ability to use strong encryption as a flag to identify potential targets, not to mention that it would be far more difficult (and resource intensive) to attempt to decode all of those messages. What this means is that the government really does want to read your e-mail and intercept your e-commerce, etc., and the idea that they might not be able to really bothers them, despite all their rhetoric about national security and protection.
The free speech qualities of source code in this venue, at least, are clear. It is contradictory to argue that the source code should be restricted while other methods that could be used (printed word, voice communication) would convey the same information, and are already considered protected speech.
I suspect that if it comes before the Supreme Court (likely), they will uphold the decision of the 9th circuit court.
What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?
Quite a lot, actually.
Music (and musical instruments) are not undifferentiated collections of mere frequency.
The frequencies we don't hear have a profound effect on the frequencies we do hear. A clarinet playing C#5 and a bassoon playing C#5 sound different, even though they are playing the same note.
A lot of the dynamics of the character of an instrument are expressed in the additional frequencies that are imposed on the base frequency by the physical nature of that instrument, and some of these additional frequencies are themselves beyond the range of human hearing.
Granted that some of these artifacts are digitized as part of the original sample, all you have to do to hear the difference is to record an audio input at an 11kHz sample rate vs 22 or 44 kHz. The difference in sound quality between the three is obvious.
Past a certain point, the limitations on the playback equipment will swamp out digitizing differences, but the sound then is limited only by the playback equipment, not by the frequency limitations AND the playback equipment.
In every society or community, there are always those that seem to be unable to express themselves without the use of childish behaviour, invective, or just out and out disrespect for others.
There are also those who defend this behaviour under the auspices of free speech, and that it is wrong to arbitrarily silence them, and they're right.
The solution, as I see it, is not to restrict or remove those opinions, but to demonstrate (by our example) that these members of our society are immature (like children), and just like children everywhere, most will grow out of it with time.
We do this by presenting our own views in a mature, objective manner. We do this by demonstrating that these opinions are the minority opinions, regardless of how many times they are repeated. In cases like the one described here, we should make a point to contact the author / poster in question, letting them know by our example that there *are* adults in this community, whether or not we agree with the posted position.
The simple fact of the matter is that you get back what you give. If you flame, you will be flamed in return. By expressing ourselves in a vitriolic and immature manner, we are essentially saying to those we are trying to reach that we aren't worth listening to, and any position we have, however valid, will consequently be ignored.
You have to start somewhere.
I, as an advocate of Open Source software, have no real problem with commercial, closed applications. The real benefit of OSS, especially in the beginning, is the availability of a commoditized OS so that the applications we want to run aren't tied to any particular distribution or company.
As we progress, the applications that are best expressed in the open source method will be, leaving only a very few, probably highly specialized apps as closed.
I we want to appear to be a coherent community then we must hold all Linux distros to the same standards that we attack MS under, if not then we are nothing but hypocrites and fantics.
I don't think this is as big of an issue as you make it. It is one of the strengths of Linux that a distribution can be tailored to suit a particular scope or purpose, without diluting the concept. If a bundled app is such that it will only run on one particular version of Linux, that would be an issue, but it seems to me that kind of bundling would seriously backfire.
It is not the presence of commercial software that I have a problem with, it the the presence of commercial software that is so strongly tied to one company's OS that you no longer have a real choice.
In past postings, many here have stated that they would be willing to purchase closed commercial games for Linux. Why then would there be an issue with closed commerical word processors, et.al.? There are open alternatives to virtually all of these, and therefore, we have a choice, and choice is what it's really about.
Really hate to break this to you, but the jet engine is fully understood in our current knowledge of physics and aerodynamics.
Also, there are only **TWO** types of mechanisms that can be categorized as thermodynamically impossible, those that claim to generate more energy than the system contains, and those that claim to generate energy from a single potential level.
For a point of argument, let's take the stand that these experiments actually did produce an excess of heat, as claimed.
There are still some serious shortcomings (IMHO) with the conclusions reached by the experimenters.
First and foremost is the assumption that the excess heat generated must be the result of a nuclear interaction of some sort. As a previous poster stated, there is no evidence of the expected byproducts of a nuclear interaction. As far as I know, there is no model for (or evidence of) any kind of nuclear level interactions that do not produce some amount of these byproducts (neutrons, gamma radiation, etc.).
Second, even if we assume that it is possible (however unlikely) to have nuclear interactions without particle emission, where is the description of the mechanism of this type of interaction? It is not enough to label this process a nuclear process, one must also hypothesise the mechanism (at the nuclear level) that would produce this effect. Science is not just about trying to repeat (or test) some observed phenomena, it is even more about hypothesizing the mechanism of that phenomena, and then testing that hypothesis. Without the test of a hypothesis, all you are doing is demonstrating an effect, but not explaining it.
That being said, there is still also the fact that it must also be verified that the phenomena being examined is truly an extant phenomena, and not an artifact of the experiment itself. The numbers usually provided as evidence of the cold fusion phenomena are extremely small. It is not enough to say that the experimenter has the ability to measure a temperature change with an accuracy of one-thousandth of a degree, the experimenter must also be able to account for *all* of the energies used in the experiment to at least that level of accuracy (including incipient environmental conditions).
I think if the cold fusion experimenters cannot meet these criteria, it's no wonder that they get little consideration from the mainstream science community.
I'm not a physicist, just an EE with a good knowledge of physics, and I have not examined every bit of information about the cold fusion experiments, so take my comments above in that context. However, what I have seen does not meet the criteria I state above.
No, it wouldn't --- you can never relieve population pressure by expanding to new territory. You can't transfer people fast enough. There will always be orders of magnitude more people being born than you can ship to the lunar colonies.
Actually, while this is true in principle, not having off-earth settlements would still be worse. Population pressure will increase regardless, and if we have no other relief for that pressure, we will overwhelm earth that much faster, and with far more permanent results.
Just because it's dead doesn't mean that it's worth preserving. Deserts are dead, too, mostly --- and we preserve those. There's no ecosystem, so it's a lot harder to make a mess (you don't have to worry about upsetting any kind of balance), but the counter to this is that any mess made on the surface is permanent. The Apollo hardware is still there. There are metal-lined craters from the hard-landed Luna probes, still there. If you strip-mine the surface of the moon, the scars will remain for millions of years.
Agreed. However, at some point, we still have to make the decisions that give us the best chances to preserve humanity. We can only hope that we learn enough of our lessons to use future resources wisely.
Personally, I think this is a good experiment, even if we had to build a brand new probe to accomplish it. The fact that we can use an existing one is frosting on the cake.
There's no logic in the argument that this kind of experiment is going to lead to more destruction of some 'natural' environment by man.
First off, any eventual settlement we put on the moon (or mars, etc.), will only aid in alleviating the effects of human population pressure on earth. If we find water in some form on the moon, it is an additional aid to forming a settlement that can eventually be self supporting (admittedly quite a ways into the future, but a good goal, nonetheless).
Second, in the case of the moon, it is already dead. What possible damage could we do that would make it any more dead? On the other hand, if we settle it and make it habitable at least in some degree, we gain a great deal. For example, one thing to consider is the potential for some sort of global catastrophe on earth. Unless we spread ourselves out a bit onto other planets, a global catastrophe *could* cause the complete end of the human race. Settlements on other planets would give us at least some chance of avoiding complete extinction.
Finally, if we argue that we should avoid any efforts to settle other planets in the name of preserving their pristine characteristics, we would actually open the door to furthering the damage we already do to earth. Like it or not, human population is not going to diminish (barring a catastrophe), and as it expands, the drain on existing resources will only get worse. By offloading some of this drain onto other planets (and their associated resources), we have the potential to halt (or even reverse) the ecological damage we do to earth, and, if we have learned our lessons, we might even be able to use all of our resources (including those on other planets) more wisely, and maybe we can avoid repeating our mistakes.
To close off any avenue of expansion to our poplulation will eventually result in the extinction (or mortal damage) of the human race, either through population pressure, resource depletion, or a global natural disaster.