I am not a "citizen". You should probably be aware, that anybody who follows the rules of this nation and enters the U.S.A to live already has an I.D - and is required by law to keep it with them at all times.
I have one. A modern day version of the "green card". It took me two years to get it, I've been finger printed and digitally photographed twice. I spent $2000 dollars on a lawyer to handle the paper work. I had to create a LLC company to get a bank account b'c I didn't have an SSN whilst being processed. I also payed taxes twice on my foriegn incoming for a brief period ( I was employed by a UK company as a contractor, but had to pay taxes in the U.S too - without the right to vote - taxation without representation should mean something to anybody who didn't skip history class ). Oh, and it also cost me near on $1k in gubberment fees.
The immigration system is broken - but RealID is not the answer, as I say, there already is one. It's expensive, complicated but exists - and I'm engineer and couldn't even begin to figure out how to fake one of the resident alien cards.
On another note - It's legal B.S. that stops me from being a citizen ( I have to wait another 3 years before I can even apply ). Personally I consider myself to be an American ( not a English-American or other such **** ). I would happily stand in congress, renounce any claim to the U.K and pledge allegiance to the flag.
Immigration is full of crap - no idea what's going on - more and more rules. Please, everybody who can vote, see this for the issue it really is - gubberment creating chaos to create departments to emply friends.
Just build the goddamn fence already. No other crap, if America cannot enforce it's own borders, it stops being a nation - the founding fathers are watching ya'll - and they ain't happy!
Having other licenses don't help ( hell I can just make my own ) when "GPL" is such a pervasive ( and sometimes misleading ) term that it gets used by "default" and locks out commercial use.
I am NOT talking about taking somebody elses code and giving nothing back - I am talking about using OSS as a part of a complete system and recontributing all buxfixes - optimizations, ideas to that OSS code without giving away the rest of the product.
The alternative is to re-invent the OSS code too - so the community loses another pair of willing hands on a project - and I lose time rewriting something that's been done before.
This to me is OSS shooting itself in the foot. We've allowed a culture where GPL is the one-true-license, but GPL is increasingly a political statement of unworkable goals IMHO.
In the above case, it's the software ( or rather the functionality and user-interface ) which is the product differentiator. It's what sells our product over some other guys - the hardware is easily cloned. So we'd spend the time/effort/money to develop the product - and some guy in China makes the same thing next day without investment.
So no - we're not selling the software - but the system doesn't sell without it - and somebody has to write it - and if it was GPL'd we'd lose any innovation benefit.
As for the TiVO thing - I probably didn't explain myself very well - sure the customer has the right to do whatever he damn well pleases with something he paid for - no argument there. But the whole point of the product is to provide the end-user with functionality and keep the content owners wishes too - and for reasons similar to above - obviously they didn't want to provide the hardware and a reference software implementation, and let people bypass their buisiness.
Of course you can do what you like with your property, but the manufacturer is/should-be under no obligation to make is easy for you if they chose not to.
GPL2 and GPL3 just don't work for me in the embedded world. Desktop computing etc is a different matter (until some bright spark decides that anything produced whilst using an O/S is a derived product at least.)
Doesn't bother me too much either way - but I'm sure I'm not alone in that a fair portion of my paid time could be spent improving GPL projects - but not at the expense of making a living.
I think OSS needs to have a more commercially friendly face. Yes, unpaid guys working in their own time do some wonderful things - they also churn out a lot of trash ( look at how many dead or non functioning sourceforge projects you can find ). Paid people, tend to have to finish what they started, and do it well, or they quickly become unpaid people.
I also find it funny, that the same crowd who get really upset when somebody says "Microsoft Office" for "wordprocessor" and "IE" for "internet" - find it okay to promote a mindset which thinks "OSS" == "GPL". I bet there are lots of people who have GPLd code that didn't even read the GPL itself, just made an assumption.
Pure commercialism, and the exploitation of OSS, is definately worth fighting against - but not by going so far the other way as GPL ( I hesitate to use the word communist, but it comes close ).
This kind of view IMHO is detrimental to OSS. There are markets ( such as the one I am in ) where software itself has almost no intrinsic or marketable value- but the software is what sells an end-to-end system.
Many managers I've dealt with see no difference between OSS and GPL - and we cannot use GPL. Making all our code available as "derivative" would kill us. Which is why I and my team frequently find ourselves re-inventing something that exists under GPL to keep the rest of our codebase secure ( otherwise we'd go out of buisiness ). I would much rather have my team spend N weeks optimizing and fixing bugs in "GPL'd piece of code A" - and put those changes on a publically available server - and notify owner - than to spend the time reinventing.
I've always seen the spirit of free software to be "use this code - give us back your changes". But when it turns into "use this code - we own everything else you do too" it's getting silly.
Let's face it - the Linux kernel and it's driver subsystem provides the ability to receive user input and draw on the screen. There are a whole bunch of people out there who would quite happily tell anyone who'll listen that if I write a E-POS terminal for Linux - I have to release the code because it's functionality is "derived" from the kernel.
I call bull-****.
And as for telling a company live TiVO that their DVR must function as a PC is just ridiculous.
Service companies ( IBM, Redhat et al ) can use GPL within a buisiness model - but all the other companies who would love to help are being kept out of the game by the GPL.
----Hear that sound?? - now you know what karma sounds like burning;-)
Sorry but it's true. Income tax made it possible for a personage to be a "Career Politician". Rather than people giving their time - seperate from making a living - to serving - politics is now run ( both parties ) on people whose sole purpose for being is to KEEP THEIR JOB. You keep you job in politics by getting re-elected, and for almost any useful office nowadays - you get elected based on how much money you spend.
Net result : Politicians will take any money they can get their hands on - even the "ethical ones" - because to do otherwise would be like quitting their job.
I read a 10-20 year old fiction book a while back ( think it was David Eddings ) - and it had a wonderful piece on how some republic government operated. People were picked at random to service public office - and when they did so, everything they owned was put into trust. If the govenment makes a profit ( tax rates are fixed ) they get some money back - otherwise they go broke;-) ( Oh - and once elected, they are put under armed guard so they cannot run away from duty! ) Almost sounds good;-)
And I've written to my AL "representative" ( I quote the word, since I'm a legal permanent resident, pay my taxes but can't vote! Can you say "Taxation without Representation" ??? )
Or at least that's how I see it. I admit I haven't been able to MMO for a couple of years since moving out to the back of beyond in and not having broadband - I'm not sure I miss it.
See, I enjoy the role-play. I used to do the old "sitting in a darkened room" roleplay games - the entire attraction is playing the ROLE ( I know, repeating the concept, but it seems to me that lately the 'RP' has vanished from 'RPG' ).
The problem that I see online, is that most of the players I've come across in various games don't want to role-play. Casting all your actions, speech, aparent persona into a specific character, starts to get a little boring with conversations like.
ME: "Wither goest thou' ? Mayhap we may share our experiences on the road ahead, that better aware, we mayest travel in safety?"
To be honest, I had fun with Oblivion ( tho found it's replay value to be very limited, even with the expansions ). True, there were times when I couldn't do what I ( my avatar ) would of wanted - but it beat the hell out of MMO. ( And I *liked* both KOTORs - okay not perfect, KOTOR2 was a little unpolished in areas but still more fun, even on replay, than MMO ever gave me ).
This, I think, is possibly the market for RPG - I suspect there are still plenty of us 'RP' gamers left ( now over 25 or 40 with our own money ) who will always pay for good stories, plenty of personal character scope, and no kids playing other characters;-)
-- still waiting for KOTOR3...... ( on Linux would be nice;-p )
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I am not a "citizen". You should probably be aware, that anybody who follows the rules of this nation and enters the U.S.A to live already has an I.D - and is required by law to keep it with them at all times.
I have one. A modern day version of the "green card". It took me two years to get it, I've been finger printed and digitally photographed twice. I spent $2000 dollars on a lawyer to handle the paper work. I had to create a LLC company to get a bank account b'c I didn't have an SSN whilst being processed. I also payed taxes twice on my foriegn incoming for a brief period ( I was employed by a UK company as a contractor, but had to pay taxes in the U.S too - without the right to vote - taxation without representation should mean something to anybody who didn't skip history class ). Oh, and it also cost me near on $1k in gubberment fees.
The immigration system is broken - but RealID is not the answer, as I say, there already is one. It's expensive, complicated but exists - and I'm engineer and couldn't even begin to figure out how to fake one of the resident alien cards.
On another note - It's legal B.S. that stops me from being a citizen ( I have to wait another 3 years before I can even apply ). Personally I consider myself to be an American ( not a English-American or other such **** ). I would happily stand in congress, renounce any claim to the U.K and pledge allegiance to the flag.
Immigration is full of crap - no idea what's going on - more and more rules. Please, everybody who can vote, see this for the issue it really is - gubberment creating chaos to create departments to emply friends.
Just build the goddamn fence already. No other crap, if America cannot enforce it's own borders, it stops being a nation - the founding fathers are watching ya'll - and they ain't happy!
Having other licenses don't help ( hell I can just make my own ) when "GPL" is such a pervasive ( and sometimes misleading ) term that it gets used by "default" and locks out commercial use.
I am NOT talking about taking somebody elses code and giving nothing back - I am talking about using OSS as a part of a complete system and recontributing all buxfixes - optimizations, ideas to that OSS code without giving away the rest of the product.
The alternative is to re-invent the OSS code too - so the community loses another pair of willing hands on a project - and I lose time rewriting something that's been done before.
This to me is OSS shooting itself in the foot. We've allowed a culture where GPL is the one-true-license, but GPL is increasingly a political statement of unworkable goals IMHO.
In the above case, it's the software ( or rather the functionality and user-interface ) which is the product differentiator. It's what sells our product over some other guys - the hardware is easily cloned. So we'd spend the time/effort/money to develop the product - and some guy in China makes the same thing next day without investment.
So no - we're not selling the software - but the system doesn't sell without it - and somebody has to write it - and if it was GPL'd we'd lose any innovation benefit.
As for the TiVO thing - I probably didn't explain myself very well - sure the customer has the right to do whatever he damn well pleases with something he paid for - no argument there. But the whole point of the product is to provide the end-user with functionality and keep the content owners wishes too - and for reasons similar to above - obviously they didn't want to provide the hardware and a reference software implementation, and let people bypass their buisiness.
Of course you can do what you like with your property, but the manufacturer is/should-be under no obligation to make is easy for you if they chose not to.
GPL2 and GPL3 just don't work for me in the embedded world. Desktop computing etc is a different matter (until some bright spark decides that anything produced whilst using an O/S is a derived product at least.)
Doesn't bother me too much either way - but I'm sure I'm not alone in that a fair portion of my paid time could be spent improving GPL projects - but not at the expense of making a living.
I think OSS needs to have a more commercially friendly face. Yes, unpaid guys working in their own time do some wonderful things - they also churn out a lot of trash ( look at how many dead or non functioning sourceforge projects you can find ). Paid people, tend to have to finish what they started, and do it well, or they quickly become unpaid people.
I also find it funny, that the same crowd who get really upset when somebody says "Microsoft Office" for "wordprocessor" and "IE" for "internet" - find it okay to promote a mindset which thinks "OSS" == "GPL". I bet there are lots of people who have GPLd code that didn't even read the GPL itself, just made an assumption.
Pure commercialism, and the exploitation of OSS, is definately worth fighting against - but not by going so far the other way as GPL ( I hesitate to use the word communist, but it comes close ).
This kind of view IMHO is detrimental to OSS. There are markets ( such as the one I am in ) where software itself has almost no intrinsic or marketable value- but the software is what sells an end-to-end system.
;-)
Many managers I've dealt with see no difference between OSS and GPL - and we cannot use GPL. Making all our code available as "derivative" would kill us. Which is why I and my team frequently find ourselves re-inventing something that exists under GPL to keep the rest of our codebase secure ( otherwise we'd go out of buisiness ). I would much rather have my team spend N weeks optimizing and fixing bugs in "GPL'd piece of code A" - and put those changes on a publically available server - and notify owner - than to spend the time reinventing.
I've always seen the spirit of free software to be "use this code - give us back your changes". But when it turns into "use this code - we own everything else you do too" it's getting silly.
Let's face it - the Linux kernel and it's driver subsystem provides the ability to receive user input and draw on the screen. There are a whole bunch of people out there who would quite happily tell anyone who'll listen that if I write a E-POS terminal for Linux - I have to release the code because it's functionality is "derived" from the kernel.
I call bull-****.
And as for telling a company live TiVO that their DVR must function as a PC is just ridiculous.
Service companies ( IBM, Redhat et al ) can use GPL within a buisiness model - but all the other companies who would love to help are being kept out of the game by the GPL.
----Hear that sound?? - now you know what karma sounds like burning
Sorry but it's true. Income tax made it possible for a personage to be a "Career Politician". Rather than people giving their time - seperate from making a living - to serving - politics is now run ( both parties ) on people whose sole purpose for being is to KEEP THEIR JOB. You keep you job in politics by getting re-elected, and for almost any useful office nowadays - you get elected based on how much money you spend. Net result : Politicians will take any money they can get their hands on - even the "ethical ones" - because to do otherwise would be like quitting their job. I read a 10-20 year old fiction book a while back ( think it was David Eddings ) - and it had a wonderful piece on how some republic government operated. People were picked at random to service public office - and when they did so, everything they owned was put into trust. If the govenment makes a profit ( tax rates are fixed ) they get some money back - otherwise they go broke ;-) ( Oh - and once elected, they are put under armed guard so they cannot run away from duty! ) Almost sounds good ;-)
And I've written to my AL "representative" ( I quote the word, since I'm a legal permanent resident, pay my taxes but can't vote! Can you say "Taxation without Representation" ??? )
Or at least that's how I see it. I admit I haven't been able to MMO for a couple of years since moving out to the back of beyond in and not having broadband - I'm not sure I miss it.
;-)
...... ( on Linux would be nice ;-p )
See, I enjoy the role-play. I used to do the old "sitting in a darkened room" roleplay games - the entire attraction is playing the ROLE ( I know, repeating the concept, but it seems to me that lately the 'RP' has vanished from 'RPG' ).
The problem that I see online, is that most of the players I've come across in various games don't want to role-play. Casting all your actions, speech, aparent persona into a specific character, starts to get a little boring with conversations like.
ME: "Wither goest thou' ? Mayhap we may share our experiences on the road ahead, that better aware, we mayest travel in safety?"
SomeIdiot: "Dude - LOL - I'm l33t - gonna pown you!!!!!! SUX0RZ"
To be honest, I had fun with Oblivion ( tho found it's replay value to be very limited, even with the expansions ). True, there were times when I couldn't do what I ( my avatar ) would of wanted - but it beat the hell out of MMO. ( And I *liked* both KOTORs - okay not perfect, KOTOR2 was a little unpolished in areas but still more fun, even on replay, than MMO ever gave me ).
This, I think, is possibly the market for RPG - I suspect there are still plenty of us 'RP' gamers left ( now over 25 or 40 with our own money ) who will always pay for good stories, plenty of personal character scope, and no kids playing other characters
-- still waiting for KOTOR3