I did not think the GPL3 said "DRM is evil", just that you have to make available a way of removing the DRM if the user requests it. Is my understanding completely off, or can someone support me on that?
I hate the idea of people saying if you are going to use these tools you can't do this with it Well, that's exactly my complaint with DRM. You say this, and then complain that you aren't able to tell people "you have to get music with my DRM, you can't do what you want with it.". Seems a bit hypocritical. You want to use toolkits for what you want; when I get buy music, I want to listen to it where and when I want. Same principle. Why do you deserve more freedom than I?
But as I see it I give them freedom to choose to read DRM information where otherwise they cannot use it at all and give them a disadvantage. Much like giving people the freedom to choose to get a barcode tatooed on the back of their neck so they can get what they need, when otherwise they wouldn't be able to, eh? That's not really a freedom if you have no choice in the matter.
I think I'm more worried about what you just said than what RMS has ever said.
The article doesn't go much into it, but I once saw and spoke with one of the leading researchers into quantum information theory. He gave a fantastic seminar on how to send "instant signals". This is my poor memory trying to recall things over my head, so please correct me if I make a mistake, but I think this is the general principle:
You need quantum entangled particles so that their states are always related, and no matter how far apart, when you mess with one particle, the other one instantly changes state accordingly. Thus, you can send signals instantly to anywhere (theoretically) by this approach, manipulating a particle some place and having people elsewhere record the changes from its entangled twin.
The problem is that while its instant when you decide to do it, you first have to get half of the entangled particles to their destination (moon base or whatever) -- so it would be days, months or years until you transported the entangled particles elsewhere, and ONLY THEN could you actually instantly send signals to the moon, Pluto, etc.
It seems teleportation would have a similar constraint, based on the article. This isn't to say teleportation or instant communication is never going to work, but just that infrastructure would need to be well thought-out in advance, and that it isn't quite the "go anywhere, even if you haven't been there before" of sci-fi.
I am a graduate student in physics, and today some of my core courses (quantum mechanics!) got canceled last minute, despite protests from the dept and even college. The administration is filled with businessmen that only think of short-term monetary gains, and so we were one student short of their crazy enrollment requirements (actually not, but they suddenly decided not to include audit students in the count) and they refused to budge. To them, we weren't worth the money. Apparently the dean was told "The course is being canceled, deal with it, now get out of my office." I'm left struggling to find a course because the same thing happened to many graduate courses in mathematics, engineering, etc. I'll probably have to do an independent study, but that's hardly a replacement for a real quantum mechanics course. I feel like my degree program is slowly becoming meaningless because of these administrators. I'm seriously considering applying elsewhere and leaving next year over this nonsense. After all, what self-respecting student would want to come here once they hear about graduation requirements being canceled arbitrarily? All that tells me is that they aren't serious above giving me the education I signed up for.
If we want to improve science education in this country, we have to reverse that mentality. Unfortunately, I think too many people nowadays think with a quarterly spreadsheet instead of considering the long-term consequences of their decisions. They want to see immediately returns on investment in science, not realizing that isn't how it works. Research may be quiet for a few years then a sudden breakthrough; you can't quantize it on a business schedule. And just because you can't measure progress quarterly doesn't mean it isn't important to do. No one thought of cell phones when we were studying electromagnetic waves, etc., but I think people nowadays would argue cell phones were a great invention. Who knows what the future will hold from seemingly unimportant discoveries made today.
Documentation will be good, but the open source converter does not seem very useful if it converts to Office XML, which no one can implement anyway.
Unless this converter is so good that it gives us insight into how Office XML works... but then again, wasn't there discussion of patents on certain parts of the specification? Maybe it still can't be used safely by anyone but Microsoft, even if the source code is available...
Ah, so this political group isn't going to go anywhere, just in loops around the same old place as before.
Oh well, I can still hope he'll get rid of the ghosts...
That seems to be true of technology in general. It's new, not entirely understood by the general public, only the "kids" really use it a lot and the kids don't listen to us... perfect thing to scapegoat and sound like a hero for stopping! It's like the political equivalent of that statement (paraphrased) "Any sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic."... I propose "Any misunderstood technology seems like the root of all of our problems."
I think this whole evolution vs. ID (creationism) debate has blown so far out of proportion that many feel it is now a science vs religion, or theism vs atheism debate. Basically, us vs. them, and you have to be one or the other, so if you aren't with us on any one opinion, you're against us. That's probably not a very realistic a view of the debate, but it seems to be a growing perception. Scientist = evolution = atheist, so teaching evolution is teaching atheism (which is false, but that seems to be the perception).
Well what if you could easily and legitimately earn all of that money? Then either (a) everyone would have the same ultra expensive weapons, and so it would be boring anyway, driving some of them to use cheats/hacks/exploits to get better stuff than available, or (b) the game keeps creating better and better stuff for sale that gets more and more expensive and people still use cheats/hacks/exploits to be able to say "I got that item first!".
To me, MMORPGs have little to do with following a great story; it's mostly about bragging rights with your friends. (Not that everyone feels this way, but I've met enough to realize its a "Look what I can do!" mentality among most of the people that use game exploits.)
And when bragging rights are involved, people will go to extremes to prove they are better than everyone else. You make it easier for new players to get lots of money, then these other guys will say that's for newbies and hack something else to prove their superiority. I doubt any game constructs will change human nature overnight.
I personally enjoyed many of the older Sim games; they tended to be very entertaining and original. I hope others, such as SimLife, SimEarth, etc., being nearly as old, will get open-sourced as well.
Re:Underwhelming
on
KDE 4.0 Is Out
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The problem with that is not everyone likes GNOME. I used it for several months on Fedora 3 or 4, and it was ok, but I was much more impressed with KDE. I thought KDE was very usable and well-thought-out; I could power my way through Konqueror, etc., and do all sorts of nifty things that wasn't possible in Nautilus, for instance. Some other post somewhere said you could use GNOME "with 512 MB", and that would certainly explain another factor; I had an older Pent 3 with 128 MB of RAM, and KDE still ran smoothly. And don't even get me started on how much more I love the configurability of KDE compared to GNOME.
However, I can definitely appreciate GNOME's appeal, even if I'm not as enthusiastic as you or others. I like KDE better, but it was certainly still a joy to use GNOME.
It's simply people with different preferences making what they think are the best decisions based on their preferences. GNOME has one philosophy, KDE another.
Anyway, this was a long post to say: please don't ever join the KDE devel team just to make it look more like GNOME. If I wanted GNOME, I would use it; I like KDE because of the very fact it is KDE. Likewise, I'll develop for KDE, won't complain about the parts of GNOME I don't enjoy, and leave GNOME the way you like it. Deal?
Slashdot Mirror
The article doesn't go much into it, but I once saw and spoke with one of the leading researchers into quantum information theory. He gave a fantastic seminar on how to send "instant signals". This is my poor memory trying to recall things over my head, so please correct me if I make a mistake, but I think this is the general principle:
You need quantum entangled particles so that their states are always related, and no matter how far apart, when you mess with one particle, the other one instantly changes state accordingly. Thus, you can send signals instantly to anywhere (theoretically) by this approach, manipulating a particle some place and having people elsewhere record the changes from its entangled twin.
The problem is that while its instant when you decide to do it, you first have to get half of the entangled particles to their destination (moon base or whatever) -- so it would be days, months or years until you transported the entangled particles elsewhere, and ONLY THEN could you actually instantly send signals to the moon, Pluto, etc.
It seems teleportation would have a similar constraint, based on the article. This isn't to say teleportation or instant communication is never going to work, but just that infrastructure would need to be well thought-out in advance, and that it isn't quite the "go anywhere, even if you haven't been there before" of sci-fi.
I am a graduate student in physics, and today some of my core courses (quantum mechanics!) got canceled last minute, despite protests from the dept and even college. The administration is filled with businessmen that only think of short-term monetary gains, and so we were one student short of their crazy enrollment requirements (actually not, but they suddenly decided not to include audit students in the count) and they refused to budge. To them, we weren't worth the money. Apparently the dean was told "The course is being canceled, deal with it, now get out of my office." I'm left struggling to find a course because the same thing happened to many graduate courses in mathematics, engineering, etc. I'll probably have to do an independent study, but that's hardly a replacement for a real quantum mechanics course. I feel like my degree program is slowly becoming meaningless because of these administrators. I'm seriously considering applying elsewhere and leaving next year over this nonsense. After all, what self-respecting student would want to come here once they hear about graduation requirements being canceled arbitrarily? All that tells me is that they aren't serious above giving me the education I signed up for.
If we want to improve science education in this country, we have to reverse that mentality. Unfortunately, I think too many people nowadays think with a quarterly spreadsheet instead of considering the long-term consequences of their decisions. They want to see immediately returns on investment in science, not realizing that isn't how it works. Research may be quiet for a few years then a sudden breakthrough; you can't quantize it on a business schedule. And just because you can't measure progress quarterly doesn't mean it isn't important to do. No one thought of cell phones when we were studying electromagnetic waves, etc., but I think people nowadays would argue cell phones were a great invention. Who knows what the future will hold from seemingly unimportant discoveries made today.
Documentation will be good, but the open source converter does not seem very useful if it converts to Office XML, which no one can implement anyway. Unless this converter is so good that it gives us insight into how Office XML works... but then again, wasn't there discussion of patents on certain parts of the specification? Maybe it still can't be used safely by anyone but Microsoft, even if the source code is available...
Ah, so this political group isn't going to go anywhere, just in loops around the same old place as before. Oh well, I can still hope he'll get rid of the ghosts...
That seems to be true of technology in general. It's new, not entirely understood by the general public, only the "kids" really use it a lot and the kids don't listen to us... perfect thing to scapegoat and sound like a hero for stopping! It's like the political equivalent of that statement (paraphrased) "Any sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic." ... I propose "Any misunderstood technology seems like the root of all of our problems."
I think this whole evolution vs. ID (creationism) debate has blown so far out of proportion that many feel it is now a science vs religion, or theism vs atheism debate. Basically, us vs. them, and you have to be one or the other, so if you aren't with us on any one opinion, you're against us. That's probably not a very realistic a view of the debate, but it seems to be a growing perception. Scientist = evolution = atheist, so teaching evolution is teaching atheism (which is false, but that seems to be the perception).
Well what if you could easily and legitimately earn all of that money? Then either (a) everyone would have the same ultra expensive weapons, and so it would be boring anyway, driving some of them to use cheats/hacks/exploits to get better stuff than available, or (b) the game keeps creating better and better stuff for sale that gets more and more expensive and people still use cheats/hacks/exploits to be able to say "I got that item first!".
To me, MMORPGs have little to do with following a great story; it's mostly about bragging rights with your friends. (Not that everyone feels this way, but I've met enough to realize its a "Look what I can do!" mentality among most of the people that use game exploits.)
And when bragging rights are involved, people will go to extremes to prove they are better than everyone else. You make it easier for new players to get lots of money, then these other guys will say that's for newbies and hack something else to prove their superiority. I doubt any game constructs will change human nature overnight.
I personally enjoyed many of the older Sim games; they tended to be very entertaining and original. I hope others, such as SimLife, SimEarth, etc., being nearly as old, will get open-sourced as well.
The problem with that is not everyone likes GNOME. I used it for several months on Fedora 3 or 4, and it was ok, but I was much more impressed with KDE. I thought KDE was very usable and well-thought-out; I could power my way through Konqueror, etc., and do all sorts of nifty things that wasn't possible in Nautilus, for instance. Some other post somewhere said you could use GNOME "with 512 MB", and that would certainly explain another factor; I had an older Pent 3 with 128 MB of RAM, and KDE still ran smoothly. And don't even get me started on how much more I love the configurability of KDE compared to GNOME. However, I can definitely appreciate GNOME's appeal, even if I'm not as enthusiastic as you or others. I like KDE better, but it was certainly still a joy to use GNOME. It's simply people with different preferences making what they think are the best decisions based on their preferences. GNOME has one philosophy, KDE another. Anyway, this was a long post to say: please don't ever join the KDE devel team just to make it look more like GNOME. If I wanted GNOME, I would use it; I like KDE because of the very fact it is KDE. Likewise, I'll develop for KDE, won't complain about the parts of GNOME I don't enjoy, and leave GNOME the way you like it. Deal?