>>Not quite. Software is implementation of ideas. The source is speech, and could be classified as an idea, in the loosest sense.
Instead of saying that Software is idea's I would maybe say that "Software is the expression of ideas" Even close source software is an expresion of some sort.
It may be other things as well. But those attributes are added on without taking away from the expresive nature.
>>NO, there IS a difference.
>>That code just didn't come out of nowhere - someone had to spend time writing it.
True. But books are also difficult to write and take a lot of time. I'm not sure I follow you here...
Everyone should have the right to think about whatever they want to. And when they figure something out they should be able to tell people.
That's why laws against thinking about encryption technologies are wrong. And why people should be able to program and distribute file sharing utils like gnutella.
Sure, some programs may threaten big business. But as long as they don't threaten anyone's life they should be allowed under the first amendment.
I sometimes wish I could get my hands on the weed people smoke when they decide that napster can afford to spend a billion dollars to the record industry over five years.
Why would you invest in something like that? I do agree that millions of people would be willing to pay for mp3's on a subscription basis. But what's to differentiate napster from the hundreds of over clones that Canadian CS students set up in their dorm?
It's true, the Napster name brand has house hold recognition. But not the kind of recognition that's worth a billion dollars.
I really doubt napster will be around still by this Christmas.
>>How much responsibility do the creators of software owe to the rest of society? Most software has unforseen consequences. (As do grandiose political programs, but I'm talking about the software domain, here.)
Programmers should be allowed to write whatever they want (so long as it doesn't endanger human life) and lawyers should be allowed to say what they want.
This leads to conflict. And the short term results may be sub optimal. But if you try stifle expresion, you put civilization in danger.
>>witness Real Audio's continued existance as evidence that just Microsoft monopolistic power isn't necessarily enough
RA is still around is as a direct result of this trial.
In 1999 Real Audio was hurting. Microsoft was offerring to set up free servers with tech support to popular websites. Many people thought that Real Audio was a thing of the past.
Then right when the trial was in full swing microsoft lisenced their codecs for Real to use in their clients.
Some people thought it was generosity on Microsoft's part. But I maintain that it was because of the trial.
Ok. You are not a pirate because you bought all the music you own.
But I am a pirate because I downloaded Nirvana songs without paying for them. (This is literally the full extent of my pirated music, but I still maintain that I am, indeed, a pirate) And I were a betting man I'd wager that most of the people using napster have done the same thing at least once. That makes them pirates.
>>I don't believe you build a strong position by engaging in or supporting amoral or illegal acts (where the laws are legitimate).
I don't claim that this makes a good argument against the RIAA. I'm just saying people need to be honest with themselves.
I do feel sort of sad about trampling on the rights of Nirvana. But not bad enough to stop.
What I see happenning is that the RIAA will create ever more and more intrusive procedures to stop pirates like myself. So far, they have only sued people who host music. By next year we'll start to see them sueing people for downloading music as well as serving it.
I really, have no sympathy for the people who got banned from napster. That's the sort of punishment pirates deserve.
On the other hand, I think there is a valid limit to measure the RIAA should be allowed to take in order to stop pirates. Random harddrive searches and packet filtering etc we can all agree are wrong. Contacting the isp of every one who uses gnutella is shakier ground. Banning programs like Freenet is another example of something they could do.
It will be interesting to see how this all ends.
(btw, I'm hurt that someone moderated me redundant. Troll or flamebait, I could understand. Perhaps, it was some British person who thought redundant means "unemployed". I'll have you know that I have a great job working as bag boy at the local grocery store.)
Sure there were some people who got banned from napster that probably weren't doing anything wrong. But the fact is that most of the people who got banned from napster _were_ trading Metalica songs.
Maybe it's time to be honest... Trading music online is generally pirating. For what ever reason, we are pirates.
Sometimes it's because it's easier. Sometimes it's cheaper. Sometimes it's music we can't get in stores. Sometimes it just for background music while we play MUD.
Once you admit that you're a pirate you can stop making excuses. You don't have to say things like, "I'm only downloading it to see if I want to buy the CD." Or "Those were mostly just text files that someone had put a.mp3 extension on as a joke." As a pirate, you can focus on developing new technologies that allow millions of other pirates get together and discuss pirating without being banned.
Long term I'm full of hope. Given the choice between becoming a pirate and support the Recording Industry, I think most people would choose the former. Millions and millions of people have already made the choice. New techology is making it imposible for the RIAA to stop pirating without going after individual small time pirates. This will be an unpopular and expensive procedure and I don't think they will succeed.
(btw I have never used napster. The pirated Music I own is a Nirvana album on mp3. But I consider myself a pirate and you should too)
Re:Geeks and filesystems.
on
MUD Shell
·
· Score: 2
The story is not about filesystems. It's about user interface.
The question is why do Geeks like computers more than non-geeks?
Perhaps it's because they see something in computers that the non-geeks missed. If you're a programmer then you can show the rest of the world what you see by building different interfaces.
Construction workers take their work seriously. The results are often aethsetically appealing.
Programmers are the same way. They want their code to be readable, to use clean abstractions etc.
On the other hand when you look at Van Goughes painting of Crows flying over a field of wheat you feel a pain inside. It's beautifull. You look at it and you think you understand his loneliness.
Probably it could be done in less. Depends on how minimal you want to be. Most people would want it to have all the fancy do-dads like being able to download stuff.:P
Also the other poster is right when he says that gtk-mozembed doesn't have cookie support.
>it's because of AOL, who makes every stable Mozilla release into a horribly patched, rushed Netscape release
I thought they only did that one time? But you're probably right I bet that they add the same junk next time... although perhaps it will seem less rushed.
>As the Open Source community is already developing other browsers, it isn't clear how much work will be put into Mozilla, and how much will be spent reinventing the wheel.
KDE has been working on Konqueror for over a year now. It's actually quite nice.
All the other ones I've heard of have used the mozilla html renderrer. It's pretty easy to write a minimalistic browser with gtk-mozembed. I'd say it only takes around 5k lines of code.
It's only illegal in the US if it's over $500 worth per year.
Otherwise you're ok legally.
The retail store analogy is flawed. If you steal a Emenem CD from some old defenseless lady it's stealing and you can be charged for that. But if she burns a copy and gives it to you it's no big deal. Unless she does it too often...
Your problem is that you assume that the situation in 15 years time will be somewhat similar to the one we have today.
History has shown that nothing could be further from the truth.
Most computers today have _no_ development tools. Most high school students do not even have 3 years of computer programming classes. It is still acceptable for people to not own a computer in the home. Right now modems are more common than DSL and t1 lines. Today is still possible to find people who can not type well. In the future people will assume that any educated person can type faster than she can write by hand.
In the future every high school graduate will have to have some basic programming skills. Are you going to pay every high school student a six figure salary?
In the future, we will need high quality software that we can rely on. Not just rely on it in the most primitive sense that it doesn't crash every couple days. But reliable in the sense that it is utterly predictable. That for every question, there is an answer. Close source has no hope of attaining this kind of reliability.
That's problem Microsoft faces. They built a decent operating system in windows 2000. But they still rely on close source drivers that can't be debugged and are inherently unpredictable/unreliable.
Will programmers get paid less in the future? Some may. But others will get paid more than they do now. Hopefully, you are right to say that some applications will become so advanced they do not require a lot of support. But at the same time there will always be new programs to write. Voice recognition, and image recognition are exciting areas for the desktop right now...
But it almost seems like forever doesn't it? To me it's encouraging that this stuff is so new because it means that in 4 years I'll be a "grandfather of the internet" too.:)
You never mentioned the recent ruling that Linux should be split into 2 companies. One an applications company and the other will focus only on kernel development.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Not quite. Software is implementation of ideas. The source is speech, and could be classified as an idea, in the loosest sense.
Instead of saying that Software is idea's I would maybe say that "Software is the expression of ideas" Even close source software is an expresion of some sort.
It may be other things as well. But those attributes are added on without taking away from the expresive nature.
>>NO, there IS a difference.
>>That code just didn't come out of nowhere - someone had to spend time writing it.
True. But books are also difficult to write and take a lot of time. I'm not sure I follow you here...
Software is speach.
Everyone should have the right to think about whatever they want to. And when they figure something out they should be able to tell people.
That's why laws against thinking about encryption technologies are wrong. And why people should be able to program and distribute file sharing utils like gnutella.
Sure, some programs may threaten big business. But as long as they don't threaten anyone's life they should be allowed under the first amendment.
I think subscription based music is a very viable business plan.
But at the same time the barriers to entry in the field are really really low.
Too low, I believe, for napster to compete effectively while spending 200 million per year to the recording industry.
I sometimes wish I could get my hands on the weed people smoke when they decide that napster can afford to spend a billion dollars to the record industry over five years.
Why would you invest in something like that? I do agree that millions of people would be willing to pay for mp3's on a subscription basis. But what's to differentiate napster from the hundreds of over clones that Canadian CS students set up in their dorm?
It's true, the Napster name brand has house hold recognition. But not the kind of recognition that's worth a billion dollars.
I really doubt napster will be around still by this Christmas.
Of course, if they make changes to the kernel they are going to publish. That's the law. Why should there be any question about them publishing?
The interesting question is will their jvm will be open source?
>>How much responsibility do the creators of software owe to the rest of society? Most software has unforseen consequences. (As do grandiose political programs, but I'm talking about the software domain, here.)
Programmers should be allowed to write whatever they want (so long as it doesn't endanger human life) and lawyers should be allowed to say what they want.
This leads to conflict. And the short term results may be sub optimal. But if you try stifle expresion, you put civilization in danger.
the source forge says that it's gpl.
i've noticed that debian is missing a couple of fairly cool gpl video editing tools... shocking but true.
>>witness Real Audio's continued existance as evidence that just Microsoft monopolistic power isn't necessarily enough
RA is still around is as a direct result of this trial.
In 1999 Real Audio was hurting. Microsoft was offerring to set up free servers with tech support to popular websites. Many people thought that Real Audio was a thing of the past.
Then right when the trial was in full swing microsoft lisenced their codecs for Real to use in their clients.
Some people thought it was generosity on Microsoft's part. But I maintain that it was because of the trial.
>>It's kind of like the movie "Buckaroo Banzai". The priduction company went under, and no one knows who really has the rights to the film.
That was indeed the greatest movie EVER in the history of man.
Ok. You are not a pirate because you bought all the music you own.
But I am a pirate because I downloaded Nirvana songs without paying for them. (This is literally the full extent of my pirated music, but I still maintain that I am, indeed, a pirate) And I were a betting man I'd wager that most of the people using napster have done the same thing at least once. That makes them pirates.
>>I don't believe you build a strong position by engaging in or supporting amoral or illegal acts (where the laws are legitimate).
I don't claim that this makes a good argument against the RIAA. I'm just saying people need to be honest with themselves.
I do feel sort of sad about trampling on the rights of Nirvana. But not bad enough to stop.
What I see happenning is that the RIAA will create ever more and more intrusive procedures to stop pirates like myself. So far, they have only sued people who host music. By next year we'll start to see them sueing people for downloading music as well as serving it.
I really, have no sympathy for the people who got banned from napster. That's the sort of punishment pirates deserve.
On the other hand, I think there is a valid limit to measure the RIAA should be allowed to take in order to stop pirates. Random harddrive searches and packet filtering etc we can all agree are wrong. Contacting the isp of every one who uses gnutella is shakier ground. Banning programs like Freenet is another example of something they could do.
It will be interesting to see how this all ends.
(btw, I'm hurt that someone moderated me redundant. Troll or flamebait, I could understand. Perhaps, it was some British person who thought redundant means "unemployed". I'll have you know that I have a great job working as bag boy at the local grocery store.)
Sure there were some people who got banned from napster that probably weren't doing anything wrong. But the fact is that most of the people who got banned from napster _were_ trading Metalica songs.
.mp3 extension on as a joke." As a pirate, you can focus on developing new technologies that allow millions of other pirates get together and discuss pirating without being banned.
Maybe it's time to be honest... Trading music online is generally pirating. For what ever reason, we are pirates.
Sometimes it's because it's easier. Sometimes it's cheaper. Sometimes it's music we can't get in stores. Sometimes it just for background music while we play MUD.
Once you admit that you're a pirate you can stop making excuses. You don't have to say things like, "I'm only downloading it to see if I want to buy the CD." Or "Those were mostly just text files that someone had put a
Long term I'm full of hope. Given the choice between becoming a pirate and support the Recording Industry, I think most people would choose the former. Millions and millions of people have already made the choice. New techology is making it imposible for the RIAA to stop pirating without going after individual small time pirates. This will be an unpopular and expensive procedure and I don't think they will succeed.
(btw I have never used napster. The pirated Music I own is a Nirvana album on mp3. But I consider myself a pirate and you should too)
The story is not about filesystems. It's about user interface.
The question is why do Geeks like computers more than non-geeks?
Perhaps it's because they see something in computers that the non-geeks missed. If you're a programmer then you can show the rest of the world what you see by building different interfaces.
the fact that the pro-ucita factions didn't swipe it up, is proof once again that they are clueless about the internet.
Check it out here
Read the article.
There was no fanatism. RMS just said that the APSL was not Free software as defined by FSF and listed the reasons why.
You are free to do with that information as you wish.
You didn't read the article.
RMS merely stated that there were 3 things that stopped him from calling the new Apple license free. And he listed them with comments.
Nothing extreme about it.
Are construction workers artists?
Construction workers take their work seriously. The results are often aethsetically appealing.
Programmers are the same way. They want their code to be readable, to use clean abstractions etc.
On the other hand when you look at Van Goughes painting of Crows flying over a field of wheat you feel a pain inside. It's beautifull. You look at it and you think you understand his loneliness.
Code doesn't move me the same way.
With UCITA EULA's given over the internet are not binding. Only the shrink wrapped licenses on CD's.
So when GPL says that there is no garuanty on software that is not binding unless you use the CD version with a shrink wrap lisence.
5000 lines is pretty good...
:P
Probably it could be done in less. Depends on how minimal you want to be. Most people would want it to have all the fancy do-dads like being able to download stuff.
Also the other poster is right when he says that gtk-mozembed doesn't have cookie support.
>it's because of AOL, who makes every stable Mozilla release into a horribly patched, rushed Netscape release
I thought they only did that one time? But you're probably right I bet that they add the same junk next time... although perhaps it will seem less rushed.
>As the Open Source community is already developing other browsers, it isn't clear how much work will be put into Mozilla, and how much will be spent reinventing the wheel.
KDE has been working on Konqueror for over a year now. It's actually quite nice.
All the other ones I've heard of have used the mozilla html renderrer. It's pretty easy to write a minimalistic browser with gtk-mozembed. I'd say it only takes around 5k lines of code.
It's only illegal in the US if it's over $500 worth per year.
Otherwise you're ok legally.
The retail store analogy is flawed. If you steal a Emenem CD from some old defenseless lady it's stealing and you can be charged for that. But if she burns a copy and gives it to you it's no big deal. Unless she does it too often...
Your problem is that you assume that the situation in 15 years time will be somewhat similar to the one we have today.
History has shown that nothing could be further from the truth.
Most computers today have _no_ development tools. Most high school students do not even have 3 years of computer programming classes. It is still acceptable for people to not own a computer in the home. Right now modems are more common than DSL and t1 lines. Today is still possible to find people who can not type well. In the future people will assume that any educated person can type faster than she can write by hand.
In the future every high school graduate will have to have some basic programming skills. Are you going to pay every high school student a six figure salary?
In the future, we will need high quality software that we can rely on. Not just rely on it in the most primitive sense that it doesn't crash every couple days. But reliable in the sense that it is utterly predictable. That for every question, there is an answer. Close source has no hope of attaining this kind of reliability.
That's problem Microsoft faces. They built a decent operating system in windows 2000. But they still rely on close source drivers that can't be debugged and are inherently unpredictable/unreliable.
Will programmers get paid less in the future? Some may. But others will get paid more than they do now. Hopefully, you are right to say that some applications will become so advanced they do not require a lot of support. But at the same time there will always be new programs to write. Voice recognition, and image recognition are exciting areas for the desktop right now...
Heh. Grandpa indeed.
:)
MP3 first came out in 1996.
But it almost seems like forever doesn't it? To me it's encouraging that this stuff is so new because it means that in 4 years I'll be a "grandfather of the internet" too.
This is a truly fun time to be alive.
1) Actually the term "open source" has more to do with releasing the source under an open source license.
2) And besides gnome didn't decide to "aim low" read the article more carefully.
3) Another slashdot philosophy is "release early and often."
You never mentioned the recent ruling that Linux should be split into 2 companies. One an applications company and the other will focus only on kernel development.