Re:The GPL has much bigger problems than this.
on
Hole in GNU GPL?
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· Score: 2
In particular, it's doubtful that "copyleft" is in any way enforceable. Which is a good thing; the GPL is harmful and was designed explicitly to harm programmers.
You've got to be kidding me. I wonder why it was written by an incredibly brilliant and well respected programmer, then. I don't agree with RMS on a lot of points, but the GPL was most certainly not designed to harm programmers. If you write a program, you can choose to release it under the GPL. Or you could sell the binaries. I don't care. If you take someone else's code that's copyrighted to them and released under the GPL and modify it, and then plan to distribute it, you must also release under the GPL. Why? Because the work you created includes portions which explicitly forbid distribution without all the source. It is your choice to go this route. You could also reimpliment whatever the original author did by yourself and not release it. I don't see how the GPL harms programmers. It's not forced upon anyone. Programmers choose to use the GPL, in the cases of both original and derived works. Your entire point is rediculous, and not backed up in any way by facts. Please enlighten me as to how the GPL could actually cause harm to a programmer.
It doesn't matter. You can charge any ammount of money you want for your binaries, distribution media, etc. All the GPL requires is that you make the source code available for free or for the cost of shipping.
Well, I think there's even more to it than that. Suppose everyone has "sense transmittors" plunked into their brains and is on a big wireless network. Want to know what it smells like in San Francisco one morning? No problem. Want to know what the weather is like outside, don't turn on the weather report, just feel what someone outside is feeling. Always wanted to know what it would be like to screw your neighbors wife...err....nevermind.
Yeah, last I heard they were doing that until they can get more telescope time. They've also released newer versions of the client which do some more checking on older data.
That's why I like to run SETI@Home. With an encryption challenge, you know it's gonna break eventually, it's just a matter of permutation. SETI is much more exciting (and worthwhile) IMHO. For those of you who don't know, SETI@Home uses the Arecibo radio telescope to look for extraterrestrials. Work units are sent to people running the client which checks for things like gaussian curve spikes and other abnormalities. Also, they have clients for just about every platform you can think of.
Kinda, but not really. The Matrix creates a reality for everyone. There is no actual reality at all, i.e., there is no one universal Matrix, just the inputs being fed into everyone's head. IF Neo dodges a bunch of bullets due to his abnormal powers, and doesn't die, then the Matrix is forced to accept that he dodged them, because otherwise he would be dead. Thus, by manipulating his own spoon-fed "reality," he is propogating his changes to other members of the reality...kinda like Usenet.:)
You sound pretty bitter to me. This is not the result of philosophy or philosophers, you had a crappy professor. Unfortunately, the world is full of crappy everything. My professor does not grade on wether or not he agrees with you (I, too, have quantitative evidence of this) but how well you present your argument. I think a great deal of how much you enjoy and learn from a course has to do with the professor, but the rest has to do with the student.
Let's face it, it doesn't even make sense. What, was he supposed to have had some sort of psychic power over the computer? He wasn't hacking into the system in any way we'd recognize; the fact that the world was computer simulated in no way explained Neo's ability to break the rules at will.
Here's my interpretation. The big-ass computer controlls what everyone perceives via the direct wire into the brain. Neo, along with some other people in The Oracle's house, has such a strong mind that he is able to override what the computer is inputting into him, thus changing the reality for himself. When Morpheus is explaining The Matrix to Neo, he mentions that "A body cannot exist without a mind. If your mind is killed in the Matrix, your body dies, too" (paraphrasing). The idea being that if you have the power to manipulate the perceptions being fed to you, you can, say, dodge two dozen bullets at supersonic speed.:)
If you need a movie to understand some concepts, it might be a good idea NOT to study philosophy...
Oh puhleeeze. Leave that kind of thinking up to people who want to philosophize all their lives. Right now I'm taking an ethics course - not because I want to be an ethicist (I'm a CS major) and it's not even required for my degree, I'm taking it because Ethics is a little interesting to me. Now, my professor often gives us examples from his own life and the lives of famous people to give us somewhere to start from in understanding ethical theories. (Figuring out all the differences and similarities between Kantian ethics and Moral Relativism is a little harder than just digesting a textbook.) Examples from art are also given - i.e. what ethical rationalizations are used by Huckleberry Finn at the climax of the novel? What modern-day issues are brought up and reconciled in Frankenstein? Using stories from popular culture is a great way to educate. All good stories have conflict, and all good conflicts bring moral decisions into play. We identify with a story when it presents us with a ethical choice similar to a choice we may have to make in our own lives. So, to conclude this rant, using pop culture folklore to teach concepts is an excellent idea, and an important one. Of course, only time will tell if this professor does it well or responsibly.
After seeing The Matrix I went and saw another somewhat cool movie, The Thirteenth Floor. For those of you who don't know - it's about scientists who invent a directly neural-linked VR system. What one of the scientists doesn't realize is that he is merely a character in someone else's giant VR world. To me, this raises some other interesting philosophical questions.
Can a computer program ever possibly be self aware?
Can a computer program never know the true nature of its environment?
Can a computer program, if it is aware, believe something that's not true?
Are we sophisticated computer programs in some highly advanced person's VR simulation, given a comparitively stupid set of AI routines and abstracted environment calls to satisfy Des Cartes's I think, therefore, I am proof of existence?
And, tying in with some of the stuff from The Matrix
Is there such a thing as Free Will?
How do we know there aren't in fact, an infinite number of nested realities?
What if our entire universe is actually a subatomic particle in another universe?
Well, the last one doesn't have much to do with either film, but I've always wondered about that since I was very, very little.
Philosophy is the science of asking everything and answering nothing. - Me
You've misunderstood the entire nature of free society. Government services such as E911 centers and hospitals have a social contract that says they will help people who need emergency medical care. Your comparison of a UDP to racism does not hold water. If I discriminate against a black person, I am refusing service to that person based on something they are not in control of, and, as any education person will tell you, something that does not have bearing on their character or other traits over which they excercise control. Usenet is a meritocracy; the penalty enacted upon @Home is a result of their failure to correct things under their control. Yes, this does prevent their users from accessing usenet. No, their users are not guaranteed a fundamental human right to access Usenet. Users who require access to Usenet should understand that their provider is incompotent and is unable to provide that access, and subscribe to another ISP.
Indeed. And also remember, that, to quote your own argument, no one is harmed by a DOS attack. So, friedo, obviously you will not complain if I mount a prolonged and sustained DOS attack on you because I disagree with somethin gposted by ANOTHER user of your ISP, right?
This argument is rediculous. If you do a DOS attack on a network you are hurting that network by saturating its pipes. A DOS attack is just that, an attack against someone else's network and equipment. A UDP is a refusal to accept messages originating from someone else's network. A UDP applies to the networks refusing to accept messages, not to the network they are originating from. Agreed, the users of the UDP'ed network suffer, but in America, that's why we have the ability to choose which ISP we go with. A good ISP wouldn't get UDP'ed.
Yes, it is perfectly legal. Remember, no one is being harmed by a UDP. No equipment is being broken or hurt, nothing is being stolen, etc. People are just refusing to propogate messages coming from home.com on their own networks. News admins have no contractual agreement to propogate someone else's messages, just as I have no contractual agreement to do business with, say, a restaurant whose food I don't like.
Weird Al always gets permission from artists when he parodies their songs. In the case of Amish Paradise, his evil record producer told him that he had gotten permission, when, in fact, Coolio said he didn't like the idea. Thus, when Weird Al went ahead and did it, Coolio got a bit pissed off. It's a damn funny song, though.:)
What amuses me so much about this case is that it seems the DVD CA doesn't even recognize the fact that the DeCSS effort is good for business!. It simply allows people on an otherwise non-supported platform to watch their movies. They've already purchased DVD drives manufactured by DVD CA members, and they've already purchased movies made by them as well. Further, with DeCSS technology now available, they will continue to buy those products, and people who otherwise wouldn't have will start. It's still very difficult to actually copy DVD's, as you need very expensive burning gear to do so. (AFAIK, regular DVD-RAM burners won't do.) Man, lawyers are dumb:)
Sue for what? Usenet works like this: "Hey, I'll post the articles from your server on mine if you post my articles on yours." By refusing to accept articles from a host, you are in NO WAY breaking any law or hurting that host. Their equipment is not touched, their connections are left intact. What you propose is like saying Pizza Hut should sue me because I refuse to eat there. Give me a break.
Not really - lava lamps work by convection. The bulb at the bottom heats up the goo, which rises, away from the source of heat. When it cools off, it goes back down. The liquid in which the goo is suspended is designed so that it is just slightly less dense than cool goo and more dense that hot goo.
I consider myself proficient at GNU/Linux. Looking at what you need for level one certification daunts me.:-/ I have a lot to learn.
Agreed. I hope these new certs will give people an idea of what skill sets a person has when they say they are proficient with Linux. I've been learning by trial and error for a couple years, but I still don't know half of the things on that test. I mostly learn Linux on a as-needed basis, meaning, when I need to do something, that's when I learn how to do it. I think these tests will give me some direction in learning a broader, more general skill set that can be applied in more places....for $100.00 (and probably $30-40 for a book) it sounds like a good deal to me.
Because Linus only holds the trademark in the United States. I could register the trademark "foobar" for my business in the US, but there really isn't anything to stop a company in any other country from doing the same thing, unless I go around and register "foobar" with every trademark office in the world.
So, let me get this straight. Just because a smart person commits a crime, it's not a crime? I don't particularly agree with the way his prosecution went or the conditions to which he was exposed, but the dude is a criminal, genius or not. Criminals deserve to go to jail.
While MadTV wasn't that great, I thought the animated Spy vs. Spy cartoons were some of the most excellent animations I had ever seen. They would have me laughing for literally hours. I'm not a MAD connesour(sp?), was Martin responsible for Spy vs. Spy?
Chinese is easier than Latin. No concept of tense, very few pronouns, extremely consistent, modular grammar. Of course, learning those 5,000 or so characters can prove to be a little difficult.:)
The Apple ][ was perhaps the single most revolutionary computer in history. With the recent comeback Apple has made into the consumer PC market, do you see similar innovations in Apple's future? Do you think that Apple currently has the skill and mindset to totally reinvent the personal computer again?
I read an article a while back in either Popular Photography or PHOTO graphic about a guy who simply set up 40 or so regular 35mm SLR cameras on tripods in a circle, and had them all synched to a radio shudder release. Dude does his super-duper karate kick, all the shutters go off at once. Fill in the "in-between" with a good morph program, and key in the background over the chroma-blue painted camera bodies. Has anyone else heard of this? It seems a simpler way to do it than threading film through a giant array of lenses.
Slashdot Mirror
You've got to be kidding me. I wonder why it was written by an incredibly brilliant and well respected programmer, then. I don't agree with RMS on a lot of points, but the GPL was most certainly not designed to harm programmers. If you write a program, you can choose to release it under the GPL. Or you could sell the binaries. I don't care. If you take someone else's code that's copyrighted to them and released under the GPL and modify it, and then plan to distribute it, you must also release under the GPL. Why? Because the work you created includes portions which explicitly forbid distribution without all the source. It is your choice to go this route. You could also reimpliment whatever the original author did by yourself and not release it. I don't see how the GPL harms programmers. It's not forced upon anyone. Programmers choose to use the GPL, in the cases of both original and derived works. Your entire point is rediculous, and not backed up in any way by facts. Please enlighten me as to how the GPL could actually cause harm to a programmer.
It doesn't matter. You can charge any ammount of money you want for your binaries, distribution media, etc. All the GPL requires is that you make the source code available for free or for the cost of shipping.
Well, I think there's even more to it than that. Suppose everyone has "sense transmittors" plunked into their brains and is on a big wireless network. Want to know what it smells like in San Francisco one morning? No problem. Want to know what the weather is like outside, don't turn on the weather report, just feel what someone outside is feeling. Always wanted to know what it would be like to screw your neighbors wife...err....nevermind.
Yeah, last I heard they were doing that until they can get more telescope time. They've also released newer versions of the client which do some more checking on older data.
That's why I like to run SETI@Home. With an encryption challenge, you know it's gonna break eventually, it's just a matter of permutation. SETI is much more exciting (and worthwhile) IMHO. For those of you who don't know, SETI@Home uses the Arecibo radio telescope to look for extraterrestrials. Work units are sent to people running the client which checks for things like gaussian curve spikes and other abnormalities. Also, they have clients for just about every platform you can think of.
Kinda, but not really. The Matrix creates a reality for everyone. There is no actual reality at all, i.e., there is no one universal Matrix, just the inputs being fed into everyone's head. IF Neo dodges a bunch of bullets due to his abnormal powers, and doesn't die, then the Matrix is forced to accept that he dodged them, because otherwise he would be dead. Thus, by manipulating his own spoon-fed "reality," he is propogating his changes to other members of the reality...kinda like Usenet. :)
You sound pretty bitter to me. This is not the result of philosophy or philosophers, you had a crappy professor. Unfortunately, the world is full of crappy everything. My professor does not grade on wether or not he agrees with you (I, too, have quantitative evidence of this) but how well you present your argument. I think a great deal of how much you enjoy and learn from a course has to do with the professor, but the rest has to do with the student.
Here's my interpretation. The big-ass computer controlls what everyone perceives via the direct wire into the brain. Neo, along with some other people in The Oracle's house, has such a strong mind that he is able to override what the computer is inputting into him, thus changing the reality for himself. When Morpheus is explaining The Matrix to Neo, he mentions that "A body cannot exist without a mind. If your mind is killed in the Matrix, your body dies, too" (paraphrasing). The idea being that if you have the power to manipulate the perceptions being fed to you, you can, say, dodge two dozen bullets at supersonic speed. :)
Oh puhleeeze. Leave that kind of thinking up to people who want to philosophize all their lives. Right now I'm taking an ethics course - not because I want to be an ethicist (I'm a CS major) and it's not even required for my degree, I'm taking it because Ethics is a little interesting to me. Now, my professor often gives us examples from his own life and the lives of famous people to give us somewhere to start from in understanding ethical theories. (Figuring out all the differences and similarities between Kantian ethics and Moral Relativism is a little harder than just digesting a textbook.) Examples from art are also given - i.e. what ethical rationalizations are used by Huckleberry Finn at the climax of the novel? What modern-day issues are brought up and reconciled in Frankenstein? Using stories from popular culture is a great way to educate. All good stories have conflict, and all good conflicts bring moral decisions into play. We identify with a story when it presents us with a ethical choice similar to a choice we may have to make in our own lives. So, to conclude this rant, using pop culture folklore to teach concepts is an excellent idea, and an important one. Of course, only time will tell if this professor does it well or responsibly.
After seeing The Matrix I went and saw another somewhat cool movie, The Thirteenth Floor. For those of you who don't know - it's about scientists who invent a directly neural-linked VR system. What one of the scientists doesn't realize is that he is merely a character in someone else's giant VR world. To me, this raises some other interesting philosophical questions.
And, tying in with some of the stuff from The Matrix
Well, the last one doesn't have much to do with either film, but I've always wondered about that since I was very, very little.
Philosophy is the science of asking everything and answering nothing. - Me
Well thanks, that's the best compliment I've had so far today...I think. :)
You've misunderstood the entire nature of free society. Government services such as E911 centers and hospitals have a social contract that says they will help people who need emergency medical care. Your comparison of a UDP to racism does not hold water. If I discriminate against a black person, I am refusing service to that person based on something they are not in control of, and, as any education person will tell you, something that does not have bearing on their character or other traits over which they excercise control. Usenet is a meritocracy; the penalty enacted upon @Home is a result of their failure to correct things under their control. Yes, this does prevent their users from accessing usenet. No, their users are not guaranteed a fundamental human right to access Usenet. Users who require access to Usenet should understand that their provider is incompotent and is unable to provide that access, and subscribe to another ISP.
This argument is rediculous. If you do a DOS attack on a network you are hurting that network by saturating its pipes. A DOS attack is just that, an attack against someone else's network and equipment. A UDP is a refusal to accept messages originating from someone else's network. A UDP applies to the networks refusing to accept messages, not to the network they are originating from. Agreed, the users of the UDP'ed network suffer, but in America, that's why we have the ability to choose which ISP we go with. A good ISP wouldn't get UDP'ed.
Yes, it is perfectly legal. Remember, no one is being harmed by a UDP. No equipment is being broken or hurt, nothing is being stolen, etc. People are just refusing to propogate messages coming from home.com on their own networks. News admins have no contractual agreement to propogate someone else's messages, just as I have no contractual agreement to do business with, say, a restaurant whose food I don't like.
Weird Al always gets permission from artists when he parodies their songs. In the case of Amish Paradise, his evil record producer told him that he had gotten permission, when, in fact, Coolio said he didn't like the idea. Thus, when Weird Al went ahead and did it, Coolio got a bit pissed off. It's a damn funny song, though. :)
What amuses me so much about this case is that it seems the DVD CA doesn't even recognize the fact that the DeCSS effort is good for business! . It simply allows people on an otherwise non-supported platform to watch their movies. They've already purchased DVD drives manufactured by DVD CA members, and they've already purchased movies made by them as well. Further, with DeCSS technology now available, they will continue to buy those products, and people who otherwise wouldn't have will start. It's still very difficult to actually copy DVD's, as you need very expensive burning gear to do so. (AFAIK, regular DVD-RAM burners won't do.) Man, lawyers are dumb :)
Sue for what? Usenet works like this: "Hey, I'll post the articles from your server on mine if you post my articles on yours." By refusing to accept articles from a host, you are in NO WAY breaking any law or hurting that host. Their equipment is not touched, their connections are left intact. What you propose is like saying Pizza Hut should sue me because I refuse to eat there. Give me a break.
Not really - lava lamps work by convection. The bulb at the bottom heats up the goo, which rises, away from the source of heat. When it cools off, it goes back down. The liquid in which the goo is suspended is designed so that it is just slightly less dense than cool goo and more dense that hot goo.
Agreed. I hope these new certs will give people an idea of what skill sets a person has when they say they are proficient with Linux. I've been learning by trial and error for a couple years, but I still don't know half of the things on that test. I mostly learn Linux on a as-needed basis, meaning, when I need to do something, that's when I learn how to do it. I think these tests will give me some direction in learning a broader, more general skill set that can be applied in more places....for $100.00 (and probably $30-40 for a book) it sounds like a good deal to me.
Because Linus only holds the trademark in the United States. I could register the trademark "foobar" for my business in the US, but there really isn't anything to stop a company in any other country from doing the same thing, unless I go around and register "foobar" with every trademark office in the world.
So, let me get this straight. Just because a smart person commits a crime, it's not a crime? I don't particularly agree with the way his prosecution went or the conditions to which he was exposed, but the dude is a criminal, genius or not. Criminals deserve to go to jail.
While MadTV wasn't that great, I thought the animated Spy vs. Spy cartoons were some of the most excellent animations I had ever seen. They would have me laughing for literally hours. I'm not a MAD connesour(sp?), was Martin responsible for Spy vs. Spy?
Chinese is easier than Latin. No concept of tense, very few pronouns, extremely consistent, modular grammar. Of course, learning those 5,000 or so characters can prove to be a little difficult. :)
The Apple ][ was perhaps the single most revolutionary computer in history. With the recent comeback Apple has made into the consumer PC market, do you see similar innovations in Apple's future? Do you think that Apple currently has the skill and mindset to totally reinvent the personal computer again?
I read an article a while back in either Popular Photography or PHOTO graphic about a guy who simply set up 40 or so regular 35mm SLR cameras on tripods in a circle, and had them all synched to a radio shudder release. Dude does his super-duper karate kick, all the shutters go off at once. Fill in the "in-between" with a good morph program, and key in the background over the chroma-blue painted camera bodies. Has anyone else heard of this? It seems a simpler way to do it than threading film through a giant array of lenses.