Ahh, yes. Interesting tactic. That means Open Source developers are generally exempt, but that distributions like Red Hat are not. I still don't like it.
One of the hallmarks of sociopaths is they think they have an absolute right to pick and choose how they act in the world without regard for laws which annoy them or they think are silly or unfair.
One of the hallmarks of a sociopath is implying that other people are by putting words in their mouth then telling people that anybody who feels that way is displaying one of the hallmarks of being a sociopath.
Oh, wait, I have no idea what I'm talking about and am just spewing vitriol in a pathetic attempt to make myself sound big and tough and make it seem like I have a real argument! Oops.
Perhaps the author of the article should instead complain about the way all these people make proprietary file formats and wonder how we got into the awful situation where we have to pay everybody and their brother in order to do a simple thing like listen to music on your computer. It seems to me that that's where the problem is. Patents and ridiculous companies who want their cake and eat it too by having their format be 'standard' while they still own all the rights to use it.
If those driver's were Open Source, this would've been fixed by now and the Samsung programmer's would've been taught a small lesson in how to program properly. As it is, they're probably sitting there saying to themselves "Why does anybody care? It works, doesn't it? We did just fine and all these idiots are just nitpickers, why don't THEY write the stupid driver!"
The problem with Windows is the development model, not the number of people writing code for it.
I also thought that was highly amusing. What on earth does he expect?
I'm starting to really dislike Linus. He's becoming arrogant in a way that's not very productive, and he doesn't really understand the moral issues surrounding software. The whole Bitkeeper debacle could've been avoided if Linus had a clue. Of course it resulted in people creating a number of high quality distributed version control systems that are better than Bitkeeper, but still...
Free Software is defeated just as much by Treacherous Computing as it is by people appropriating it and selling it. Sure you can hack your hardware, but in many cases this has been made illegal, and not many people can do this anyway. Totally against the spirit of Free Software all around. It messes with Freedom 0 in a really bad way.
I don't drive and have never even had a full driver's license (I'm 35). And it's not so important for either my microwave or my stove. I don't funnel a good 10% of my communication with others through those two devices.
It is semi-important for my car. And that would be a feature I'd look for. Especially if it had a mapping system. If my car drove itself, I would consider it just as vitally important as I do for a complex phone.
I see it as more Apple's problem than RMS'. If they don't like the GPLv3 then I will be happy to see their software fade into deserved obscurity as they can't muster the manpower to keep up with the rest of the Open Source community. Apple needs RMS more than RMS needs Apple, though I'm certain that RMS could care less that this was the case.
The iPhone is evil, and I will never own one until I have full control over the software on it. And if Apple doesn't want to give it to me, then I don't need to 'buy' their device, if you can be said to own something you can't even replace the software on.
This is definitely true. But even among the technically literate posts I would expect to see more posts about how the technique didn't work than about how it did, regardless of how good it actually was. It has also struck me that narrowing things down by IP address is only a mediocre way to go about this.
Then, perhaps instead of calling for an impartial "Does this technique have merit?" a more honest "I would like to know all the ways this technique doesn't work, and in order to build a good defense it would also be helpful if you would all play devil's advocate and tell me all the ways in which it does.". That would've left me scratching my head a little less.
Of course, well written summaries has never really been Slashdot's strong suite.
I'm basically trying to make the point that coming here and asking about the technical merits of a technique RIAA uses to identify its victims is almost as bad as going into a fundamentalist Christian forum and asking them what they think of evolution.
Hey, all you people who think the RIAA's tactics are really awful, please tell us what you think of the way they identify people to apply them to. Please, don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.
There is no such thing as human rights. That's just an idea. Someone made it up. At best, "human rights" can be considered a 'game rule' of the various blends of democracies that exist around the world. But none of these so-called rights actually exist in the physical world.
I'm going to have to go read my John Locke so I have some good arguments to borrow, but my general feeling is that your relativist arguments about this are a complete load of BS.
Certainly whether or not humans rights are protected or not depends on how much people are willing to stand up for an ideal, but I think the ideal itself has a firmer basis than the random opinions of a bunch of people. If might or majority opinion makes right, then we might as well tear up the constitution right now. Most people would prefer it not be adhered to.
In the U.S., rich people used their economic power to bribe congressmen to create the U.S. medical system.
I don't believe this is an accurate description of the current patchwork of local laws and employer sponsored insurance that we currently have.
And besides, what makes you think that's not exactly what will happen when Democrats start pushing for some kind of nationalized health care system? If you don't think that, you are seriously deluded. One of the chief reasons I do not support Hillary for president is the illegal smoky back room in which she crafted the Clinton health care initiative with the aid of all the major insurance companies.
That's a really excellent book on software engineering. One of the best ever written. And while I think that formula is fairly accurate I also think there have been advances in techniques for writing software that allow you to get away with much thinner communications channels in many cases.
For example, someone here mentioned that the kernel was really several different largely independent software projects. And while I think this is something of an oversimplification, I also think it's true.
As another example or idea... I've noticed that relational databases (though I think (being a ReiserFS fan) that they are slightly evil) allow many developers to code to the database spec without having to talk to eachother that much. As long as the database schema is designed well and documented a bit you can count on it not changing radically and base your code around it. This greatly reduces communications overhead.
I see, just because you turned well, you want others to suffer? It is your f*ckin health, for christ's sake! It affects your basic human right to live!!! There is something wrong with your country, if you let even 1/3 of the stuff on that movie happen to real people. And I know it is so, because I have friends there.
There is no basic human right to live. There is a basic human right to not have things taken away from you by violence, but that's not the same thing at all.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I do not doubt that the US health care system is really awful in many respects. The solution of socialized medicine does not necessarily follow from this observation though.
Who's liberty is taken when you pay taxes? Like the ones for public schools, libraries, roads? Why don't everyone just pave their own damned piece of road, and let everyone else suffer the consequences!
Taxes are collected through threat of violence. This threat is a quiet threat that is not usually overtly stated, but it is there all the same.
For the most part, my tax money is thoroughly and completely wasted. The government is generally extremely inefficient at turning tax money into useful services. This is because government is inherently more interested in the interests of wealthy and powerful people than it is in the interests of individuals. The more resources government has at it's command, the more it will cater to the interests of the wealthy and powerful because they have more to gain by influencing it.
So really, your solution of using tax money and funneling it through the government to somehow come out as a raised health care standard for most people is doomed by a flaw in your premises.
What will result is that poor people may (or may not, likely not in our country since we're not Canada) see an increase in health care quality. Middle and upper middle class people are likely to see a marked decline. The very rich will see no change at all.
So, you want to use the healthcare system to contribute to the shrinking middle class.
IMHO, IE6 was comparable to Netscape 4. It was faster, but had way more security holes. Compared to Mozilla and definitely compared to Firefox it's a poor browser.
Microsoft's definition of 'good enough' takes into account their ability to bully their competition. If IE had been a really awful browser, it wouldn't matter that they'd given it away. It had to be just good enough that they could get away with strong-arming everybody into including it in the default install and dropping Netscape.
In my experience, the more resources a company has, the worse their products are. At least in the software arena. Something about a large company completely stifles the kind of creativity it takes to make good products.
When all kinds of vendors were marketing fake cheese as cheese, the dairy industry got together and made up the 'Real' mark. I don't see this as anything different. I'm really happy with the 'Real' mark for dairy products, and I'm similarly happy with that sort of a mark for software products. If nobody decides that Open Source means something in particular, soon it won't mean anything at all and will be a completely useless word as applied to software.
Today it happens to be the irritating and not hugely awful problem of badgeware. Tomorrow it will be some vendor that attacks something more fundamental like free redistribution.
So, I'm happy the Open Source Initiative has taken this stand. It's the right thing to do. It's easier to monitor the reputation of one organization than it is to monitor the reputation of thousands. So we can all decide for ourselves if the OSI suddenly decides to refuse the use of the trademark to random companies that really are Open Source.
One way of looking at this is thinking of the people who want to treat traffic specially as fighting a world in which they no longer control what applications their network is used for. For the most part, these are the current 'property owners'.
Currently the Internet (despite being huge) is not actually quite big enough to matter to them because they still control all uses of the network for the application they have traditionally provided which is voice connectivity and/or video content distribution. But this is changing, and that's why they want to start differentiating.
Personally, network neutrality makes me really uncomfortable. What I would like to see is an end to the monopoly situation that makes differentiated service really dangerous to the freedom of the Internet. I think that would do far more than any government regulation while allowing for a more flexible network infrastructure.
I was thinking the same thing. To some approximation, the fight against excessive copyright and patent protection is a subset of the fight against corruption. But there is a veneer of rational seeming arguments surrounding ridiculously strong copyright and patent protection that make it a trickier fight in some ways because some of the proponents are actually honest. Honestly mistaken, but honest all the same.
I just realized that most people don't know what IE is either. It's just the thing they click on to get to the Internet. I don't know why Steve Jobs mentioned that browser in his talk either then if your logic makes any sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, yes. Interesting tactic. That means Open Source developers are generally exempt, but that distributions like Red Hat are not. I still don't like it.
One of the hallmarks of a sociopath is implying that other people are by putting words in their mouth then telling people that anybody who feels that way is displaying one of the hallmarks of being a sociopath.
Oh, wait, I have no idea what I'm talking about and am just spewing vitriol in a pathetic attempt to make myself sound big and tough and make it seem like I have a real argument! Oops.
Perhaps the author of the article should instead complain about the way all these people make proprietary file formats and wonder how we got into the awful situation where we have to pay everybody and their brother in order to do a simple thing like listen to music on your computer. It seems to me that that's where the problem is. Patents and ridiculous companies who want their cake and eat it too by having their format be 'standard' while they still own all the rights to use it.
If those driver's were Open Source, this would've been fixed by now and the Samsung programmer's would've been taught a small lesson in how to program properly. As it is, they're probably sitting there saying to themselves "Why does anybody care? It works, doesn't it? We did just fine and all these idiots are just nitpickers, why don't THEY write the stupid driver!"
The problem with Windows is the development model, not the number of people writing code for it.
I also thought that was highly amusing. What on earth does he expect?
I'm starting to really dislike Linus. He's becoming arrogant in a way that's not very productive, and he doesn't really understand the moral issues surrounding software. The whole Bitkeeper debacle could've been avoided if Linus had a clue. Of course it resulted in people creating a number of high quality distributed version control systems that are better than Bitkeeper, but still...
Free Software is defeated just as much by Treacherous Computing as it is by people appropriating it and selling it. Sure you can hack your hardware, but in many cases this has been made illegal, and not many people can do this anyway. Totally against the spirit of Free Software all around. It messes with Freedom 0 in a really bad way.
I don't drive and have never even had a full driver's license (I'm 35). And it's not so important for either my microwave or my stove. I don't funnel a good 10% of my communication with others through those two devices.
It is semi-important for my car. And that would be a feature I'd look for. Especially if it had a mapping system. If my car drove itself, I would consider it just as vitally important as I do for a complex phone.
I see it as more Apple's problem than RMS'. If they don't like the GPLv3 then I will be happy to see their software fade into deserved obscurity as they can't muster the manpower to keep up with the rest of the Open Source community. Apple needs RMS more than RMS needs Apple, though I'm certain that RMS could care less that this was the case.
The iPhone is evil, and I will never own one until I have full control over the software on it. And if Apple doesn't want to give it to me, then I don't need to 'buy' their device, if you can be said to own something you can't even replace the software on.
This is definitely true. But even among the technically literate posts I would expect to see more posts about how the technique didn't work than about how it did, regardless of how good it actually was. It has also struck me that narrowing things down by IP address is only a mediocre way to go about this.
Then, perhaps instead of calling for an impartial "Does this technique have merit?" a more honest "I would like to know all the ways this technique doesn't work, and in order to build a good defense it would also be helpful if you would all play devil's advocate and tell me all the ways in which it does.". That would've left me scratching my head a little less.
Of course, well written summaries has never really been Slashdot's strong suite.
I'm basically trying to make the point that coming here and asking about the technical merits of a technique RIAA uses to identify its victims is almost as bad as going into a fundamentalist Christian forum and asking them what they think of evolution.
Hey, all you people who think the RIAA's tactics are really awful, please tell us what you think of the way they identify people to apply them to. Please, don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.
I'm going to have to go read my John Locke so I have some good arguments to borrow, but my general feeling is that your relativist arguments about this are a complete load of BS.
Certainly whether or not humans rights are protected or not depends on how much people are willing to stand up for an ideal, but I think the ideal itself has a firmer basis than the random opinions of a bunch of people. If might or majority opinion makes right, then we might as well tear up the constitution right now. Most people would prefer it not be adhered to.
I don't believe this is an accurate description of the current patchwork of local laws and employer sponsored insurance that we currently have.
And besides, what makes you think that's not exactly what will happen when Democrats start pushing for some kind of nationalized health care system? If you don't think that, you are seriously deluded. One of the chief reasons I do not support Hillary for president is the illegal smoky back room in which she crafted the Clinton health care initiative with the aid of all the major insurance companies.
That's a really excellent book on software engineering. One of the best ever written. And while I think that formula is fairly accurate I also think there have been advances in techniques for writing software that allow you to get away with much thinner communications channels in many cases.
For example, someone here mentioned that the kernel was really several different largely independent software projects. And while I think this is something of an oversimplification, I also think it's true.
As another example or idea... I've noticed that relational databases (though I think (being a ReiserFS fan) that they are slightly evil) allow many developers to code to the database spec without having to talk to eachother that much. As long as the database schema is designed well and documented a bit you can count on it not changing radically and base your code around it. This greatly reduces communications overhead.
I see, just because you turned well, you want others to suffer? It is your f*ckin health, for christ's sake! It affects your basic human right to live!!! There is something wrong with your country, if you let even 1/3 of the stuff on that movie happen to real people. And I know it is so, because I have friends there.
There is no basic human right to live. There is a basic human right to not have things taken away from you by violence, but that's not the same thing at all.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I do not doubt that the US health care system is really awful in many respects. The solution of socialized medicine does not necessarily follow from this observation though.
Who's liberty is taken when you pay taxes? Like the ones for public schools, libraries, roads? Why don't everyone just pave their own damned piece of road, and let everyone else suffer the consequences!
Taxes are collected through threat of violence. This threat is a quiet threat that is not usually overtly stated, but it is there all the same.
For the most part, my tax money is thoroughly and completely wasted. The government is generally extremely inefficient at turning tax money into useful services. This is because government is inherently more interested in the interests of wealthy and powerful people than it is in the interests of individuals. The more resources government has at it's command, the more it will cater to the interests of the wealthy and powerful because they have more to gain by influencing it.
So really, your solution of using tax money and funneling it through the government to somehow come out as a raised health care standard for most people is doomed by a flaw in your premises.
What will result is that poor people may (or may not, likely not in our country since we're not Canada) see an increase in health care quality. Middle and upper middle class people are likely to see a marked decline. The very rich will see no change at all.
So, you want to use the healthcare system to contribute to the shrinking middle class.
IMHO, IE6 was comparable to Netscape 4. It was faster, but had way more security holes. Compared to Mozilla and definitely compared to Firefox it's a poor browser.
Microsoft's definition of 'good enough' takes into account their ability to bully their competition. If IE had been a really awful browser, it wouldn't matter that they'd given it away. It had to be just good enough that they could get away with strong-arming everybody into including it in the default install and dropping Netscape.
In my experience, the more resources a company has, the worse their products are. At least in the software arena. Something about a large company completely stifles the kind of creativity it takes to make good products.
When all kinds of vendors were marketing fake cheese as cheese, the dairy industry got together and made up the 'Real' mark. I don't see this as anything different. I'm really happy with the 'Real' mark for dairy products, and I'm similarly happy with that sort of a mark for software products. If nobody decides that Open Source means something in particular, soon it won't mean anything at all and will be a completely useless word as applied to software.
Today it happens to be the irritating and not hugely awful problem of badgeware. Tomorrow it will be some vendor that attacks something more fundamental like free redistribution.
So, I'm happy the Open Source Initiative has taken this stand. It's the right thing to do. It's easier to monitor the reputation of one organization than it is to monitor the reputation of thousands. So we can all decide for ourselves if the OSI suddenly decides to refuse the use of the trademark to random companies that really are Open Source.
One way of looking at this is thinking of the people who want to treat traffic specially as fighting a world in which they no longer control what applications their network is used for. For the most part, these are the current 'property owners'.
Currently the Internet (despite being huge) is not actually quite big enough to matter to them because they still control all uses of the network for the application they have traditionally provided which is voice connectivity and/or video content distribution. But this is changing, and that's why they want to start differentiating.
Personally, network neutrality makes me really uncomfortable. What I would like to see is an end to the monopoly situation that makes differentiated service really dangerous to the freedom of the Internet. I think that would do far more than any government regulation while allowing for a more flexible network infrastructure.
*rolls eyes* Oh yes Mr. psychoanalyst, you sure have me dead to rights.
That's what I get for posting an idea too quickly. What I meant to say was "Most people don't even know what IE is either."
Members of the propertied class generally feel they have the most to lose from change. Freedom inevitably brings change.
I was thinking the same thing. To some approximation, the fight against excessive copyright and patent protection is a subset of the fight against corruption. But there is a veneer of rational seeming arguments surrounding ridiculously strong copyright and patent protection that make it a trickier fight in some ways because some of the proponents are actually honest. Honestly mistaken, but honest all the same.
I just realized that most people don't know what IE is either. It's just the thing they click on to get to the Internet. I don't know why Steve Jobs mentioned that browser in his talk either then if your logic makes any sense.
Most people don't know what Safari is either. It's market share is even less than Firefox's.