I've never used WBL, but it looks quite interesting (this thread is the first mention of it I've seen) and I'm going to explore it, possibly switch over to it permanently. So I, too, would like to thank you for posting personally here, and as you and the parent to my post state, it looks like the person criticizing this as piracy has quite a few lacunae in his understanding of the open source world.
There have been a lot of posts in this thread castigating the guy for the apparently heinous crime of writing GPL and expecting to make money off it, as though it's a logical contradiction -- some even explicitly stating that you write GPL/free software as a hobby, and if you're lucky you get a grant or a job.
This is plain ridiculous. Selling software and writing software are two wholly different things, but there's nothing at all about free software that prevents an individual or a business from selling it or making a profit on it. Whether a developer finds gainful employment at a commercial venture selling free software, or decides to write and market his or her own product, vendors can charge for free software and programmers can make money doing free software -- and there are any number of salary-earning individuals and profitable companies to illustrate this. Has the commercial=proprietary FUD become so ingrained that even GNU-loving slashdotters can't see beyond it?
Of course, I still agree that this guy's whining sounds petty and annoying.
It doesn't take much more than a fifth grade education to understand the distinction between public and free software. I won't bother with a detailed breakdown of your FUD, I'm sure you've got the necessary skills to look up the GPL or read commentary about it. But fundamentally, your idea that only proprietary software can be commercial is retarded.
And to add one more little subtlety, why are these people opposed to refined, specific alteration of genes, but not to more primitive human attempts at "interfering with nature" to suit ourselves?
One of the traits that evolved in humans through the natural process of evolution is our desire to affect nature through artificial means. We breed (and always have bred) animals to be pets, shepherds, fishers, hunters, cart-pullers, etc., and we breed (and always have bred) plants to be bigger, tastier, more nutritious, etc. Is that wrong? Should "organic farmers" only pick whatever fruit naturally grows, be it sickly little stalks or healthy vibrant ones?
Instead of a hypothetical question, how about an answer. "Healthy" and "vibrant" plants, or animals for that matter, have no intrinsic value in nature besides survivability. These words and concepts only have *desirability* because we evolved a desire for them (to suit our own survivability needs). In other words, what the GM scientist and the organic farmer do are the exact same thing, only the former do it far better. So to return to hypothetical questions, why would you think there's an ethical difference? What would that difference be?
And, as noted above, both genetic modification and organic farming -- methods of artificial gene selection -- arise from human nature, which is to say indirectly from natural gene selection. So it seems that in the end, it's all one of nature's tricks to have evolved an improved method of evolving traits, specifically that increase survivability: a way of speeding along its own -- natural -- genetic selection.
> Just look at what non-GM species can do when introduced to forign habitats.
Like, say, humans in Asia, Europe, America or Australia? How about wine grapes in France? Dogs or cats in human society? How about the introduction of pre-cursors of complex life to Earth in the first place?
Consider more thoroughly "circletimessquare"'s posts, in your case specifically the point that "the onus is on someone to PROVE a bad effect rather than the gm crowd to disprove every imaginable SCIENCE FICTION scenario" -- his/her comments are a lot more meaningful than they might first appear to be.
In reply to this and the other response to my original post:
Questions of the law are an important aspect of and kind of moral or ethical questions. Of course, they're very practical moral questions, but moral questions nonetheless.
This is not to say that politicians decide the morality proper of such issues (i.e. the degree to which they're right or wrong) or the ethics of them (what makes them right or wrong), but that they're important questions concerning our and other societal entities' rights and responsibilities. Legislating punishments for murder or the legality of abortion, for example, are moral questions that demand enlightened solutions, and I do want the politicians to decide these. That is their job. It doesn't entail that they are determining the universal rightness or wrongness of the actions in questions, but they are without doubt moral, not technical questions.
In a different system it would fall to different people to make these decisions, e.g. kings and queens in a monarchy, or autocratic rulers in a fascist state. But we've collectively decided in the West to entrust elected officials to make these decisions, which as I say above are legal questions, and by extension a certain kind of (practical) moral questions, that require technical knowledge. It's because of this that in America (and Canada, Britain, arguably parts of Europe, etc.) these decisions are made by political representatives of the people, not by technical experts. Technical experts' jobs in our society are to implement these kinds of measures, not originate them.
The reason political representatives need technical advice is as proximate knowledge in coming to good conclusions. Similarly, congress needs technical (military) knowledge to figure out if they can win a war or not prior to deciding on a course of action, but ultimately the decision to wage war or not is a solution to moral questions (that may make mention of self-defence, national interests, human rights, etc.), not technical ones.
While your aim is commendable, you've confused the issue. Politicians do need to be asking technology experts questions, but don't and shouldn't be asking them solutions. Copyright protection and IP rights are moral questions, not technical ones -- as is occasionally pointed out on slashdot -- and thus need moral, not technical solutions. Of course, to moral questions in a technical medium like the internet, expert technical advice is helpful or necessary in coming to an enlightened solution.
On the last bit you're probably correct, i.e. that "for simple math-type computing problems, biological processing [will] probably never catch up to what we have now in electronic computers," as a simple result of the relative sizes and materials in the two different kinds of processing (never mind the added complexity, from an interfacing and programming point of view, of the former). However, the rest of your post is more about what one might call "engineering" problems, that thus pose a problem in the short term with respect to using biological computing efficiently, but don't indicate any reason why eventually they can't be equally or more efficient than electronic computing, and furthermore looking at the massively parallel architecture inter alia hint that with decent progress in research they'll likely surpass traditional computing methods.
I have no specific technical background from which to address your questions (I know, I know... this is Slashdot), but your moral questions are interesting:
* What will be the biggest issue determining the success of the adoption of biology-integrated computing? Will it be technology factors or will it be societal factors (e.g., rebellion by the Right Wing), or something else? What things must hold true to make the idea succeed?
First, I know it's only an example you've given (lit., "exempli gratia"), but the "societal" factors as you call it -- more political, really, but let's compromise on socio-political -- are not an exclusively "Right Wing" threat. The modern Left holds many central beliefs contrary to the integration of technology and biology, especially concerning human biology, for instance the primogeniture of society over the individual and (partially by extension) the malleable, ahistorical understanding of the human mind (a notion commonly referred to as "tabula rasa"). Under this view, attempting to "improve" or in any way alter humans as conscious beings by improving or altering us as biological beings will seem either immoral or, more likely, futile. This mostly to point out that limiting factors for the progress in your field don't come exclusively from conservative ideology. In general there seems to be a growing trend in intellectual/ethicist circles toward acknowledging the massive (though far from exclusive) importance of our evolutionary past, which in simple political terms is more or less centrist or apolitical, though could be interpreted as slightly "right wing" (more libertarian or classical liberal than conservative), which suitably allows you scientists to carry forth your apolitical and almost-amoral research, leaving as the likely culprit for "most likely to impede the progress of biology-integrated computing" common economical factors: what innovations will ultimately create the most value, and therefore what innovations will proximately be most likely to succeed (in getting funded, in getting researched, etc.). And if you take exception to my "almost-amoral" comment (which you shouldn't), I mean it compared to people who spend their lives sweating over the ones and zeroes of right and wrong -- not that you value ethical behaviour any less than they do, only that you likely (likely) pay less attention to the nuances of what makes ethical behaviour ethical; my guess is you probably subscribe to a simplistic (and ages-old and approximately, though probably not absolutely right) axiom like the biblical (new and old testament) reciprocating Golden Rule or the commission-of-harm-avoiding Hippocratic Oath -- good on you.
* And perhaps the hottest issue of all: Is there anything inherently wrong with pursuing this avenue? What may be some of the consequences?
There are numerous criteria for wrongness, and in the case that you mean moral wrongness there are numerous defensible moral systems. Also, if you mean specifically moral wrongness, most moral systems taken into consideration not just consequences of actions, but the intents behind them as well (brick-in-the-head obvious example, Western legal tradition's distinction between premeditated and non-premeditated murder, or either of those and accidental homicide) -- if you meant to imply the connection I've understood between inherent wrongness and consequences. I don't see anything one could construe as inherently wrong with the research you propose, if you don't believe in God or make intuitive essentialist ascriptions to the human form or subscribe to the aforementioned primogeniture of society over the individual and all that entails. In other words, assuming of course otherwise ethical behaviour, if you're a modern freedom-loving humanist (or, in the trivial case if you're a nihilist), it seems to me there's no basis for having qualms about the philosophical nature of what you're doing -- but it's healthy of you to be wary of slipping into less-than-savoury situations, and to constantly question yourself to defend against aforementioned slipping and to ameliorate yourself -- no doubt the skeptical scientist in you.
My /. fortune when I loaded this page
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
This won't really help the situation any. No band will play the bar circuit forever, there's simply not enough money, fanbase, circulation, etc., and even musicians have to eat (and support families, etc.). For most of them, it's a chance to have fun, pay some of the bills, and ultimately, get heard and make a record. What happens then? They sign a contract with the record company you've been trying to avoid, and your choice is now to buy the CD from a retail store, or not at all. You'll be in an endless cycle of listening to up-and-coming bands as they work on their routine, always leaving them off once they hit the big-time. Yes, not all bands aim for million-dollar deals, stadiums, world tours, etc., but as I said before, no band is going to keep playing local bars forever, no matter how much hometown/non-label support you can drum up.
Of course, there's no reason one HAS to sign with a big label, as a musician. Sure they've got the distribution channels, marketing, etc. -- but if your complaint is that the music industry is run by cartel, then you'd better be ready to innovate the business practices, and not just make good music. There's no law against starting your own label, and while it's a difficult challenge, it's the only legitimate way, working within the system, to obsolete the cartels.
A suggestion for Slashdotters: even if you're not in the market for a notebook, call around your local computer shops, and ask them if they sell laptops with Linux installed. If they do, see if you'd still be charged the MS tax, ask questions, keep them talking a while.
A meatspace version of slashdotting, and perhaps when the managers look at the meatspace version of their referrer logs, some will start selling Linux on laptops.
Don't worry (yeh yeh, TM)... if this gets out of hand, patents will stop being respected. No need to worry our little panties off that this spells the end of the internet!
Hi, I think that's a most fascinating topic (and you also seem to have some fascinating insights). I'd be quite interested in reading your thesis, if possible, and/or discussing the issue with you. Would you mind sending me an e-mail, abortme@hotmail.com? I think this is really a significant and fundamental philosophical inquiry.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never used WBL, but it looks quite interesting (this thread is the first mention of it I've seen) and I'm going to explore it, possibly switch over to it permanently. So I, too, would like to thank you for posting personally here, and as you and the parent to my post state, it looks like the person criticizing this as piracy has quite a few lacunae in his understanding of the open source world.
-
site in sig is temporarily at geek.is-a-geek.org
Hmm. The Gimp is free and there's a large demand for a Gimp-like program only with a good interface, but the developers refuse to budge?
You know, one can always fork the project and design a good interface.
-
(URL in sig is temporarily geek.is-a-geek.org
See, e.g, here:
1 /27/021127hnerniball.xml?s=IDGNS
d er$172
http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/1
November 27, 2002
http://linux.bryanconsulting.com/stories/storyRea
10 June 2003
1 May 2002
etc. etc.
A little research please, editors
New York Times on reputation..... ouch.
You'd also find this interesting and useful:
The Blogdex at MIT - the "weblog diffusion index"
There have been a lot of posts in this thread castigating the guy for the apparently heinous crime of writing GPL and expecting to make money off it, as though it's a logical contradiction -- some even explicitly stating that you write GPL/free software as a hobby, and if you're lucky you get a grant or a job.
This is plain ridiculous. Selling software and writing software are two wholly different things, but there's nothing at all about free software that prevents an individual or a business from selling it or making a profit on it. Whether a developer finds gainful employment at a commercial venture selling free software, or decides to write and market his or her own product, vendors can charge for free software and programmers can make money doing free software -- and there are any number of salary-earning individuals and profitable companies to illustrate this. Has the commercial=proprietary FUD become so ingrained that even GNU-loving slashdotters can't see beyond it?
Of course, I still agree that this guy's whining sounds petty and annoying.
Nice troll.
It doesn't take much more than a fifth grade education to understand the distinction between public and free software. I won't bother with a detailed breakdown of your FUD, I'm sure you've got the necessary skills to look up the GPL or read commentary about it. But fundamentally, your idea that only proprietary software can be commercial is retarded.
Proof?
And to add one more little subtlety, why are these people opposed to refined, specific alteration of genes, but not to more primitive human attempts at "interfering with nature" to suit ourselves?
One of the traits that evolved in humans through the natural process of evolution is our desire to affect nature through artificial means. We breed (and always have bred) animals to be pets, shepherds, fishers, hunters, cart-pullers, etc., and we breed (and always have bred) plants to be bigger, tastier, more nutritious, etc. Is that wrong? Should "organic farmers" only pick whatever fruit naturally grows, be it sickly little stalks or healthy vibrant ones?
Instead of a hypothetical question, how about an answer. "Healthy" and "vibrant" plants, or animals for that matter, have no intrinsic value in nature besides survivability. These words and concepts only have *desirability* because we evolved a desire for them (to suit our own survivability needs). In other words, what the GM scientist and the organic farmer do are the exact same thing, only the former do it far better. So to return to hypothetical questions, why would you think there's an ethical difference? What would that difference be?
And, as noted above, both genetic modification and organic farming -- methods of artificial gene selection -- arise from human nature, which is to say indirectly from natural gene selection. So it seems that in the end, it's all one of nature's tricks to have evolved an improved method of evolving traits, specifically that increase survivability: a way of speeding along its own -- natural -- genetic selection.
> They'll be lunch before you can say "cyalume".
Yes, but that gives them a helluva long time. Sigh-a-loom... key-a-loom... cha-loom-ee... uhh.....
> Just look at what non-GM species can do when introduced to forign habitats.
Like, say, humans in Asia, Europe, America or Australia? How about wine grapes in France? Dogs or cats in human society? How about the introduction of pre-cursors of complex life to Earth in the first place?
Consider more thoroughly "circletimessquare"'s posts, in your case specifically the point that "the onus is on someone to PROVE a bad effect rather than the gm crowd to disprove every imaginable SCIENCE FICTION scenario" -- his/her comments are a lot more meaningful than they might first appear to be.
In reply to this and the other response to my original post:
Questions of the law are an important aspect of and kind of moral or ethical questions. Of course, they're very practical moral questions, but moral questions nonetheless.
This is not to say that politicians decide the morality proper of such issues (i.e. the degree to which they're right or wrong) or the ethics of them (what makes them right or wrong), but that they're important questions concerning our and other societal entities' rights and responsibilities. Legislating punishments for murder or the legality of abortion, for example, are moral questions that demand enlightened solutions, and I do want the politicians to decide these. That is their job. It doesn't entail that they are determining the universal rightness or wrongness of the actions in questions, but they are without doubt moral, not technical questions.
In a different system it would fall to different people to make these decisions, e.g. kings and queens in a monarchy, or autocratic rulers in a fascist state. But we've collectively decided in the West to entrust elected officials to make these decisions, which as I say above are legal questions, and by extension a certain kind of (practical) moral questions, that require technical knowledge. It's because of this that in America (and Canada, Britain, arguably parts of Europe, etc.) these decisions are made by political representatives of the people, not by technical experts. Technical experts' jobs in our society are to implement these kinds of measures, not originate them.
The reason political representatives need technical advice is as proximate knowledge in coming to good conclusions. Similarly, congress needs technical (military) knowledge to figure out if they can win a war or not prior to deciding on a course of action, but ultimately the decision to wage war or not is a solution to moral questions (that may make mention of self-defence, national interests, human rights, etc.), not technical ones.
While your aim is commendable, you've confused the issue. Politicians do need to be asking technology experts questions, but don't and shouldn't be asking them solutions. Copyright protection and IP rights are moral questions, not technical ones -- as is occasionally pointed out on slashdot -- and thus need moral, not technical solutions. Of course, to moral questions in a technical medium like the internet, expert technical advice is helpful or necessary in coming to an enlightened solution.
On the last bit you're probably correct, i.e. that "for simple math-type computing problems, biological processing [will] probably never catch up to what we have now in electronic computers," as a simple result of the relative sizes and materials in the two different kinds of processing (never mind the added complexity, from an interfacing and programming point of view, of the former). However, the rest of your post is more about what one might call "engineering" problems, that thus pose a problem in the short term with respect to using biological computing efficiently, but don't indicate any reason why eventually they can't be equally or more efficient than electronic computing, and furthermore looking at the massively parallel architecture inter alia hint that with decent progress in research they'll likely surpass traditional computing methods.
I have no specific technical background from which to address your questions (I know, I know... this is Slashdot), but your moral questions are interesting:
* What will be the biggest issue determining the success of the adoption of biology-integrated computing? Will it be technology factors or will it be societal factors (e.g., rebellion by the Right Wing), or something else? What things must hold true to make the idea succeed?
First, I know it's only an example you've given (lit., "exempli gratia"), but the "societal" factors as you call it -- more political, really, but let's compromise on socio-political -- are not an exclusively "Right Wing" threat. The modern Left holds many central beliefs contrary to the integration of technology and biology, especially concerning human biology, for instance the primogeniture of society over the individual and (partially by extension) the malleable, ahistorical understanding of the human mind (a notion commonly referred to as "tabula rasa"). Under this view, attempting to "improve" or in any way alter humans as conscious beings by improving or altering us as biological beings will seem either immoral or, more likely, futile. This mostly to point out that limiting factors for the progress in your field don't come exclusively from conservative ideology.
In general there seems to be a growing trend in intellectual/ethicist circles toward acknowledging the massive (though far from exclusive) importance of our evolutionary past, which in simple political terms is more or less centrist or apolitical, though could be interpreted as slightly "right wing" (more libertarian or classical liberal than conservative), which suitably allows you scientists to carry forth your apolitical and almost-amoral research, leaving as the likely culprit for "most likely to impede the progress of biology-integrated computing" common economical factors: what innovations will ultimately create the most value, and therefore what innovations will proximately be most likely to succeed (in getting funded, in getting researched, etc.). And if you take exception to my "almost-amoral" comment (which you shouldn't), I mean it compared to people who spend their lives sweating over the ones and zeroes of right and wrong -- not that you value ethical behaviour any less than they do, only that you likely (likely) pay less attention to the nuances of what makes ethical behaviour ethical; my guess is you probably subscribe to a simplistic (and ages-old and approximately, though probably not absolutely right) axiom like the biblical (new and old testament) reciprocating Golden Rule or the commission-of-harm-avoiding Hippocratic Oath -- good on you.
* And perhaps the hottest issue of all: Is there anything inherently wrong with pursuing this avenue? What may be some of the consequences?
There are numerous criteria for wrongness, and in the case that you mean moral wrongness there are numerous defensible moral systems. Also, if you mean specifically moral wrongness, most moral systems taken into consideration not just consequences of actions, but the intents behind them as well (brick-in-the-head obvious example, Western legal tradition's distinction between premeditated and non-premeditated murder, or either of those and accidental homicide) -- if you meant to imply the connection I've understood between inherent wrongness and consequences.
I don't see anything one could construe as inherently wrong with the research you propose, if you don't believe in God or make intuitive essentialist ascriptions to the human form or subscribe to the aforementioned primogeniture of society over the individual and all that entails. In other words, assuming of course otherwise ethical behaviour, if you're a modern freedom-loving humanist (or, in the trivial case if you're a nihilist), it seems to me there's no basis for having qualms about the philosophical nature of what you're doing -- but it's healthy of you to be wary of slipping into less-than-savoury situations, and to constantly question yourself to defend against aforementioned slipping and to ameliorate yourself -- no doubt the skeptical scientist in you.
"Be sure to evaluate the bird-hand/bush ratio."
Look at the SCO website, and read the graphic in the middle of the page -- "Relax/Worry Free Software." How very telling (or at least amusing).
I am a very busy
... if you have time to post on Slashdot at all, you can't possibly be that busy....
Well you must be, if you don't even have time to read over your Slashdot posts!
But, uh, that does get me thinking
Doesn't that seem a little hi?
That strikes me as more of a big hello.
This won't really help the situation any. No band will play the bar circuit forever, there's simply not enough money, fanbase, circulation, etc., and even musicians have to eat (and support families, etc.). For most of them, it's a chance to have fun, pay some of the bills, and ultimately, get heard and make a record. What happens then? They sign a contract with the record company you've been trying to avoid, and your choice is now to buy the CD from a retail store, or not at all. You'll be in an endless cycle of listening to up-and-coming bands as they work on their routine, always leaving them off once they hit the big-time. Yes, not all bands aim for million-dollar deals, stadiums, world tours, etc., but as I said before, no band is going to keep playing local bars forever, no matter how much hometown/non-label support you can drum up.
Of course, there's no reason one HAS to sign with a big label, as a musician. Sure they've got the distribution channels, marketing, etc. -- but if your complaint is that the music industry is run by cartel, then you'd better be ready to innovate the business practices, and not just make good music. There's no law against starting your own label, and while it's a difficult challenge, it's the only legitimate way, working within the system, to obsolete the cartels.
Canadian (back) bacon IS real bacon, and it's even better than your run-of-the-mill tripe (oh ho)
A suggestion for Slashdotters: even if you're not in the market for a notebook, call around your local computer shops, and ask them if they sell laptops with Linux installed. If they do, see if you'd still be charged the MS tax, ask questions, keep them talking a while.
A meatspace version of slashdotting, and perhaps when the managers look at the meatspace version of their referrer logs, some will start selling Linux on laptops.
YOU were that guy! I just about wet my pants laughing...
well, no, not really.
Don't worry (yeh yeh, TM)... if this gets out of hand, patents will stop being respected. No need to worry our little panties off that this spells the end of the internet!
Hi, I think that's a most fascinating topic (and you also seem to have some fascinating insights). I'd be quite interested in reading your thesis, if possible, and/or discussing the issue with you. Would you mind sending me an e-mail, abortme@hotmail.com? I think this is really a significant and fundamental philosophical inquiry.
Thanks,
K.