Studies have shown that people almost never inquire why someone is on a registry. Instead they just assume the worst.
But asking might not help. The fact that a trivial offense can put you on the register means that an actual sexual criminal can say Yes I'm on the register; a cop caught me peeing outdoors, and people will likely believe it.
Stallman sees proprietary software as immoral (that's the word he uses). He sees it as the enemy, not as a rival, and he's not shy about it.
Personally I can see where he's coming from regarding the GPL. Copyleft is intended to be good for the long-term health of Free software, precisely because it shuts out proprietary software, i.e. You're welcome to our party, but you'll play by our rules - no walking out with our keg of beer.
unlike patents, the GPL doesn't have a sunset clause; this means that the information is tied to the will of the creators in perpetuity
Assuming indefinite copyrights, yes.
Sure, it can be abused by corporations, paedophiles, terrorists, etc.
I know you're kidding about the terrorists, but in seriousness, Free Software licences never pass judgement in this way, by definition (not to mention that terrorists are probably unconcerned with copyright laws, of course).
but if there are bright people who can see the value of what their predecessors did, they can continue to innovate under BSD and outcompete the predators for the good of all.
I take serious issue with for the good of all. A proprietary product is not necessarily for the good of all, even it is technically better than the original FOSS product. The GPL is the reason we use GNU/Linux rather than BSD. If Linux had been BSD licensed, it wouldn't have snowballed as it has. There's an 'opportunity cost' to BSD licensing, compared to GPL: software which might have been released as FOSS, is instead released as proprietary+closed-source. Not to mention that you lose all the other advantages of being FOSS, such as 'living forever', and, you know, the actual freedom to do as you want with it bit.
Predatory use of BSD code usually only lasts one generation, because once the code has been forked, the private code doesn't get the *continued* community contributions and analysis.
Why not? There's nothing to stop them maintaining a 'non-fork' whereby they continually rebase onto the latest version of the BSD-licensed codebase. Ubuntu do this with Debian.
I wonder what RMS would think of a more "business-friendly" license where a commercial entity selling software could take software that's publicly-available, modify it, and then distribute that to paying customers, but not back to the community, but where the license required them only to distribute the modified source code to those same customers, however the customers were not allowed to distribute it themselves.
Any kind of selective-treatment, for people or organisations is, in Free Software terms, a Bad Thing. (Well, with the exception of the actual owner - licensing decisions will always be theirs.)
If some game or program decides to run on windows I'm not going to make that a problem for myself.
I know I'm being pedantic, but yielding and installing Windows is hardly 'not making it a problem for yourself'. (Of course, boycotting Windows-only games also causes you a problem in gaming terms.)
In short, regardless of whether a particular institution or entity is engaged in an endeavor for commercial gain, so long as the act is in furtherance of the alleged infringer's legitimate business and is not solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry, the act does not qualify for the very narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense. Moreover, the profit or non-profit status of the user is not determinative.
If all the wine was gone we would need to wait for the next year's production. This is not going to come out all at once, so the vineyards that get it out first would essentially be able to set their own price (in a free market). If this price was high enough I imagine a majority of wine drinkers would simply wait until the market stablized.
That doesn't mean the demand hasn't gone up, though. People will be more inclined to buy bottles of wine. That means the demand has gone up. That market forces act such that the actual number of sales don't increase, is another matter.
As I understand it, there is a difference between broken windows and empty bottles of wine: in the case of wine, where is the opportunity cost?
It's clear that the baker who had to spend on window-repair might have needed that money for a new pot, but in the case of bottles of wine, the customer buys them willingly, not begrudgingly and out of necessity.
To put it another way: there's no opportunity cost when buying wine, but there is when paying for window-repairs.
Innovations and inventions from humans are naturally occurring. *
* just try giving a kid a couple boxes of Mindstorms and sit back
Kids' ideas aren't really 'naturally occurring', in the normal sense of the term. Even if they were, that doesn't mean that all ideas are 'naturally occurring'.
One can argue that invention and discovery are ultimately equivalent, but it doesn't follow that we should abolish the patent system completely.
I don't follow (though I'm not in any way well-informed regarding economics). If all the wine-bottle-owners of the world drank all the world's wine overnight, would that harm the economy? The wine-bottles had value, and are now gone, but the demand for them will surely increase.
Although its cores are weak, it has 8 of them (running on a faster RAM that PCs get) and while PC game developers might not care, console developers suddenly do.
As I understand it, games still aren't that well parallelised. The lots-of-slow-cores architecture might be cheaper than few-fast-cores, though - maybe it's intended to pay off in the long run when games better utilise multicore.
You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console.
Let's not forget that console games generally cost quite a bit more than PC games, so in the long run, your gaming PC might make economic sense even ignoring all the extra stuff it can do. If you don't game very often then you might never reach this break-even point though, of course.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there's a reasonable chance that you'll have a desktop computer anyway, so the important comparison might not be between the price of a console and the price of a gaming PC (plus games for both), but between the price of a console and the price difference between a work PC and a gaming PC (again, plus games for both).
I'm thinking "security expert" in this case might not mean what you think it means...
If he wanted to have it both ways, he could've sold it on the black market 6 months ago, with a disclaimer saying I plan to tell Facebook about the exploit, in 6 months time.
Of course, if the buyer then actually uses the exploit, Facebook might discover and fix the problem ahead of time, which would be a problem.
I wonder if security researchers ever buy exploits on the black market, then write papers about them and disclose responsibly...
Slashdot Mirror
Studies have shown that people almost never inquire why someone is on a registry. Instead they just assume the worst.
But asking might not help. The fact that a trivial offense can put you on the register means that an actual sexual criminal can say Yes I'm on the register; a cop caught me peeing outdoors, and people will likely believe it.
Stallman sees proprietary software as immoral (that's the word he uses). He sees it as the enemy, not as a rival, and he's not shy about it.
Personally I can see where he's coming from regarding the GPL. Copyleft is intended to be good for the long-term health of Free software, precisely because it shuts out proprietary software, i.e. You're welcome to our party, but you'll play by our rules - no walking out with our keg of beer.
They don't know things like Java is much faster at object creation than C++
True, but don't forget the GC has to run some time. Faster allocation doesn't necessarily mean reduced overall time spent on memory-management.
or that it can optimize its performance at runtime based on usage (which C++ cannot do).
Also true, but profiling C++ compilers are out there.
They also think Java loads classes even if they are not used just because they are included in a reference jar file.
I've seen a similar misunderstanding regarding Java's import keyword.
unlike patents, the GPL doesn't have a sunset clause; this means that the information is tied to the will of the creators in perpetuity
Assuming indefinite copyrights, yes.
Sure, it can be abused by corporations, paedophiles, terrorists, etc.
I know you're kidding about the terrorists, but in seriousness, Free Software licences never pass judgement in this way, by definition (not to mention that terrorists are probably unconcerned with copyright laws, of course).
but if there are bright people who can see the value of what their predecessors did, they can continue to innovate under BSD and outcompete the predators for the good of all.
I take serious issue with for the good of all. A proprietary product is not necessarily for the good of all, even it is technically better than the original FOSS product. The GPL is the reason we use GNU/Linux rather than BSD. If Linux had been BSD licensed, it wouldn't have snowballed as it has. There's an 'opportunity cost' to BSD licensing, compared to GPL: software which might have been released as FOSS, is instead released as proprietary+closed-source. Not to mention that you lose all the other advantages of being FOSS, such as 'living forever', and, you know, the actual freedom to do as you want with it bit.
Predatory use of BSD code usually only lasts one generation, because once the code has been forked, the private code doesn't get the *continued* community contributions and analysis.
Why not? There's nothing to stop them maintaining a 'non-fork' whereby they continually rebase onto the latest version of the BSD-licensed codebase. Ubuntu do this with Debian.
Then again, I suppose Monsanto has grown past the point where consumer action is going to do anything ever.
Truly the monopolist's dream. Buy the government, and be big enough to be impossible to avoid.
I wonder what RMS would think of a more "business-friendly" license where a commercial entity selling software could take software that's publicly-available, modify it, and then distribute that to paying customers, but not back to the community, but where the license required them only to distribute the modified source code to those same customers, however the customers were not allowed to distribute it themselves.
Any kind of selective-treatment, for people or organisations is, in Free Software terms, a Bad Thing. (Well, with the exception of the actual owner - licensing decisions will always be theirs.)
You'd fail Debian's Chinese dissident test. You'd also fail to provide Stallman's Software Freedoms 2 and 3. The FSF probably wouldn't even consider it to be 'semifree'.
As for whether it would count as Open Source: not by the OSI's definition, no. You wouldn't even meet the first criterion.
If some game or program decides to run on windows I'm not going to make that a problem for myself.
I know I'm being pedantic, but yielding and installing Windows is hardly 'not making it a problem for yourself'. (Of course, boycotting Windows-only games also causes you a problem in gaming terms.)
In short, regardless of whether a particular institution or entity is engaged in an endeavor for commercial gain, so long as the act is in furtherance of the alleged infringer's legitimate business and is not solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry, the act does not qualify for the very narrow and strictly limited experimental use defense. Moreover, the profit or non-profit status of the user is not determinative.
(Source)
(My quote counts as fair-use, right?)
the wine was made specifically for the purpose of being drunk
Not necessarily. If you buy the good stuff, you can enjoy it even in moderation.
Sustainability implies goodness? I don't think so.
Seconded.
I see nothing to indicate Oracle's patents are an issue for PostGRES.
If all the wine was gone we would need to wait for the next year's production. This is not going to come out all at once, so the vineyards that get it out first would essentially be able to set their own price (in a free market). If this price was high enough I imagine a majority of wine drinkers would simply wait until the market stablized.
That doesn't mean the demand hasn't gone up, though. People will be more inclined to buy bottles of wine. That means the demand has gone up. That market forces act such that the actual number of sales don't increase, is another matter.
Also, obligatory xkcd.
As I understand it, there is a difference between broken windows and empty bottles of wine: in the case of wine, where is the opportunity cost?
It's clear that the baker who had to spend on window-repair might have needed that money for a new pot, but in the case of bottles of wine, the customer buys them willingly, not begrudgingly and out of necessity.
To put it another way: there's no opportunity cost when buying wine, but there is when paying for window-repairs.
Innovations and inventions from humans are naturally occurring. * * just try giving a kid a couple boxes of Mindstorms and sit back
Kids' ideas aren't really 'naturally occurring', in the normal sense of the term. Even if they were, that doesn't mean that all ideas are 'naturally occurring'.
One can argue that invention and discovery are ultimately equivalent, but it doesn't follow that we should abolish the patent system completely.
And to watch this video, you'll be needing Flash, the shining example of why to be hesitant to depend on closed-source software.
Is the codec patent-encumbered, for additional irony? Can't tell, only the black-box knows.
Isn't it time for Slashdot's video-playing to get with the times?
I don't follow (though I'm not in any way well-informed regarding economics). If all the wine-bottle-owners of the world drank all the world's wine overnight, would that harm the economy? The wine-bottles had value, and are now gone, but the demand for them will surely increase.
Good call.
"The sky" isn't just the physical sky. The lyric is a metaphor.
Indeed, but the point is that you can't is a statement of defiance rather than an assertion of impossibility.
Always struck me an odd line. Imprisonment must surely count as taking the sky from someone.
Name-calling and ad-populum don't help you. Anyway:
On the contrary, I don't have a problem.
Yeah? Then why:
I'm an Nvidia man, and I always will be
Regarding the drivers: I've not had any problems on my Windows 7 64 bit. Haven't tried Linux on that machine though, so I can't comment there.
Although its cores are weak, it has 8 of them (running on a faster RAM that PCs get) and while PC game developers might not care, console developers suddenly do.
As I understand it, games still aren't that well parallelised. The lots-of-slow-cores architecture might be cheaper than few-fast-cores, though - maybe it's intended to pay off in the long run when games better utilise multicore.
You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console.
Let's not forget that console games generally cost quite a bit more than PC games, so in the long run, your gaming PC might make economic sense even ignoring all the extra stuff it can do. If you don't game very often then you might never reach this break-even point though, of course.
The other thing to bear in mind is that there's a reasonable chance that you'll have a desktop computer anyway, so the important comparison might not be between the price of a console and the price of a gaming PC (plus games for both), but between the price of a console and the price difference between a work PC and a gaming PC (again, plus games for both).
I was with you up until
in the hope of PC gaming making a comeback
As far as I can tell, PC gaming is doing just fine.
Sorry. I'm an Nvidia man, and I always will be.
Apology accepted. Accepting you have a problem is the first step out of fanboyism.
I'm thinking "security expert" in this case might not mean what you think it means...
If he wanted to have it both ways, he could've sold it on the black market 6 months ago, with a disclaimer saying I plan to tell Facebook about the exploit, in 6 months time.
Of course, if the buyer then actually uses the exploit, Facebook might discover and fix the problem ahead of time, which would be a problem.
I wonder if security researchers ever buy exploits on the black market, then write papers about them and disclose responsibly...
Aha, an excuse! Copyright-infringement time! - every 'pirate' ever