I thought they were the party that's big on censoring. I guess libel-cases don't push the "morality" button like pr0n does. Oh well good for you American's anyway.
Raises an interesting question, am I the only one who thinks we'd be better of as a world if the UN Bill of Rights was as absolute in it's protections as particular clauses in some of our constitutions (like the first in America for example) and ALL U.N. member states were REQUIRED to implement it as part of their own constitutions (and where no constitution exists as in Britain be required to create one and make said bill of rights the entirey there-off ?)
We live in a global world now, life, law-enforcement and even international relations would all become a great deal simpler if we could agree on a set of universal human rights and be quite sure that in every non-totalitarian state you may visit those rights WILL receive absolute protection ?
Linguistic dialects also become obsolete - but the writings in them do not. Even if purely for historic "this is how it used to be done" interest, source code (potentially at least) has intrinsic value far beyond it's practical re-usability, particularly in the academic sphere.
>I agree with everything else you wrote but the above. Some experiments have shown that a few outliers (read, poor drivers: too fast or disregard of others) can actually better the flow of traffic. One example: you have an intersection in complete deadlock; the asshole who drives on the sidewalk to escape can actually free a spot that will end the deadlock. If everybody follows the rules in this case, nobody comes out. There are other cases.
Except that if everybody scrupulously follows the rules, and the rules themselves can then be modeled based on the expectation of perfect behavior - then deadlocks can't happen in the first place.
The reality also is that the inverse of what you are saying is FAR more often the case. In my hometown there is on guaranteed 24 hour a day massive traffic jam. It happens on the offramp from one major road as it crosses over a highway. Two lanes, the left lane joins the highway in one direction and the right lane joins it in the other - but ALSO continuous for those who need to say on the main road. Obviously the righthand lane has far more traffic then since it feeds two roads. While it's understandable it would be slower, it is far worse than it ought to be and the reason: the selfish pricks who assume they have more reason for haste than anybody else - who drive in the left hand lane until the very last possible moment and then try to push into the right to jump the qeue, thus slowing everybody down far more than they otherwise would. The more it slows down, the more pricks push past the qeue the worse it gets.
Such patterns are common all over the world - selfish drivers generally make traffic problems much worse, not to mention the worst daily problems are usually caused by accidents - which you could (at least almost) entirely avoid with a system of driver-less cars.
The purpose of copyright is to contribute value to the public domain. It makes sense not to put a definition of value on say, a book or a painting. Why does it make sense ? Because often the value of these works aren't even RECOGNIZED until well after the copyright is expired and the creator long dead. We all know the Vincent Van Gogh type histories.
But when it comes to a functional work - it has a functional purpose, and since the REASON for copyright is to serve the public - it can be reasonably stated that you are NOT contributing to the public domain unless this functional purpose is MET by the software after the copyright expired. To this end, source code is essentially required in order to ensure that the functional value of the software IS in fact contributed to the public domain. Copyright does not exist to capitalize on works -it provides a MEANS of capitalization for the PURPOSE of providing the value of those works to the public at large (more specifically - to have more works' value available to the public). The value of software at copyright expiration is exclusively in the source code, not in the binary and contributing the binary would be no different from copyright never expiring.
How many great companies have been destroyed by bad mergers. The Activision/Blizzard merger has already caused one of the biggest PR disasters in the history of the gaming company we considered one of the best in the world before - not only to work at, but to deal with as a customer. The Zenimax/ID merger is rapidly destroying the soul of perhaps one of the most innovative companies in the history not only of gaming but of software as a whole. ID for their genre-redefining (and in at least one case CREATING) work ranks right up there with the original Sierra/Online as one of the companies that created the foundations on which the modern gaming industry was built.
I remember when John Carmack said of the reason for the first doom1 source release that he did it "because Linux gives me a woody"...
It's sad to see truly great companies get swallowed up into corporate hiveminds and lose the wonder that they once held for us.
And I see absolutely no USE for a 10-year old binary without source code. With source code you can base new programs on it, port it to new platforms and be able to read your data files from 10 years ago...
With source code you are actually enriching the public domain, without it - you're doing nothing of any value whatsoever. Whatever value binary-only software may have is definitely incredibly time-linked. Abandonware binaries have little or no use. The best you could hope for is to run them in an emulator - and that is hardly ideal in the best of cases. It's so much better to be able to take that code and port it to run natively on what you need now. Just consider that the vast majority of the software from the early 90's can now easily be run on smartphones that have more than enough screen estate and processing for them. Heck doom was ported to one of the early nokia smartphones years ago, and in it's day it was one of the most resource intensive games ever created.
If anything this is MORE true of applications than of games.
Thermodynamics is a model. It is really useful for predicting the behavior of matter under certain conditions. The universe as a whole is NOT one of those conditions. The model in thermodynamics specifically breaks down the moment there is enough mass in the system for gravity to exceed the repulsive "forces" between individual molecules.
The second law of thermodynamics does not predict how the universe will end (don't worry, Asimov made the same mistake once) because there is NOTHING in thermodynamics to account for gravity. Gravity on the small scale where themodynamics is designed to be used is such a weak force that it can be safely ignored. On the scale of universes and galaxies it exceeds the effects of thermodynamics. This is why our universe's history shows it becoming ever more clumpy and ordered rather than ever LESS clumpy and disordered. To imagine that one day it will all start to break down because that's what the second law predicts is just plain wrong - that can only happen if we somehow remove from the universe all the gravitons.
Modern physics don't have "forces" or even "energy" as you think of it, it has fundamental particles that influence the way matter interacts with space-time in various ways. Gravitons bend space time for example. Thermodynamics is really just simple Newtonian physics adapted to model the behavior of gases and liquids in particular circumstances, it is incredibly useful for doing that, BECAUSE it ignores those aspects of the universe which on the scale of a tank full of gas simply doesn't have a sufficient measurable impact to actually affect the outcome. But when you talk about the scale of planets... then gravity and other factors become not only measurable but EXCEED the forces thermodynamics looks at. There is still thermodynamics INSIDE Jupiter, but it will never cause the planet to slowly leech gas until it doesn't exist anymore because the gravity is stronger than their molecular repelling force.
What causes suns to die is the nuclear power running out, that's another whole different kettle of fish.
Always remember that written right INTO the laws of thermodynamic (and sadly usually not taught) is the qualification that it ONLY applies to a CLOSED system. Where no energy or matter can either enter or leave. Planets and stars are not a closed system. The universe as a whole could possibly be described as one - but frankly we can't even prove that (we have NO idea what lies outside our lightcone and according to current theories we never CAN know - but that doesn't mean there ISN'T something there) Even if we assume it's a closed system - it's still a HUGE closed system, it has gravity. The big bang started us off pretty damn entropic -a lot of basic matter scattered fairly uniformly over the universe... we did NOT do what the second law predicted and smooth out the few lumps and end up stable. On the contrary - the universe has gotten more and more lumpy over time.
> Note that I don't actually believe that there is anything too complex to model theoretically
To do an accurate theoretical model you need absolutely accurate initial starting data and a fully known dynamic. Systems are described as chaotic when the sheer amount of initial data makes it even theoretically impossible to determine it all (because quite literally you cannot instaneously measure ALL the values). It gets more complex, some things change if you measure them and some things cannot be known if other things are (as Heisenberg showed with the location and speed of electrons) - so getting accurate initial data is in some cases not even theoretically possible.
Accurate ENOUGH for immediate purposes is about the best we can do - but that makes a very clear prediction horizon beyond which our models fail - because frankly what we couldn't get right in initial data has built up beyond our ability to handle.
That's all bad enough - and it's why we have no idea which side of the sun Pluto will be in a 10 billion years - we simply CANNOT get even a Newtonian simplified model of the solar system started with sufficiently accurate initial data to get it.
Generally - we can work around the worst of initial-data issues on a limited scale by deliberate course-graining. Provided we push the prediction horizon past what we need to know right now, we're okay, we know we can't go much further and even what we get now may be wrong but at least it's generally reliable. BTW. The prediction horizon for weather is about 4 days and we USUALLY Get the 4th day wrong (go check the weekly forecasts on Monday a few times and see how often they adjust Thursday before we get to it).
Now all this makes science pretty tough already... and that's not the worst part. The WORST part is that the REALLY complex stuff have emergent dynamics. Thats fancy mathematics-speak for - the system changes it's own rules as it runs. Fundamental to the very CONCEPT of an emergent dynamic is that it cannot be predicted even theoretically. If we know the starting conditions perfectly, and exactly what the initial dynamic is - we still can't predict beyond step 2 because in step one the rules that govern HOW we get between steps has changed along with the system and the NEW rules are now determining what step 3 will be.
Emergent dynamics aren't random and they make perfect sense... in RETROSPECT. We can always see HOW the rules changed and even WHY they changed THAT way. But to predict it upfront is literally a violation of the laws of mathematics. We can guess of course, but not even an educated guess has any merrit there. Some of the most interesting examples of emergent dynamics is things like history. History is governed by clear patterns and rules - but it often violates them, sometimes it completely alters them, balances of power shift in directions never before seen and this changes the way the entire system happens and how the local interacts with the global. Economics are quite at times emergent and evolution is entirely emergent.
One biologist (sorry, I forgot the name but I'll look it up if you really insist) described evolution as "always expanding into the adjacent possible". Except there is no way to predict how long it will take before that adjacent possible phase space is filled, which creature will get there first, will it be the most successful and how exactly will it do so. We can see how it happened afterward: some creatures started covering their eggs in shells so they didn't have to lay them in water. This was an expansion into the adjacent possible and immediately set the stage for the evolution of egg-eaters. Every change changes the system, changes the rules. Egg-eating would not be a viable survival trait BEFORE there eggs, and was probably unpreventable afterward... but of course since evolution ALSO depends on a degree of random interference - it may not happen, or it could not happen for such a long time that no OTHER means of giving birth ever had an edge. So mammals
>First you'll have to tell us how much mass this one has lost. I don't think "sickly" is a measure of mass.
Yes it is ! It's the one Cosmo makes women think they need to be to be attractive. Of course they get confused and call it a "weight" but very few people ever get that right anyway (despite it being 3rd grade science) so I think we can safely assume they MEANT mass.
Windows used to be praised for it's simplicity. The last few years microsoft has had to add power all the time - real power tools. Powershell and the like because users didn't WANT simple in the long run.
I said in my very post that the simplified-product approach always sells best IN THE SHORT TERM. the entire smartphone MARKET is still in it's infancy. We won't see users beginning to demand more power and customizability yet because most of them are overwhelmed even by the simplified stuff.
The problem with the apple approach is - it gives you a very flat initial learning curve, but as soon as your needs expand (which happens BY DEFAULT - people get better and less nervous around new technology and start seeing things they wish they could do) - the curve goes up VERY sharply, often all the way to 90 degrees. That is to say - it simply CANNOT be done.
You need category two from then on. The second variety has a high initial learning curve, once you round it however, it becomes flat, and no matter how complex your needs, it's ALWAYS simple to add the small skill you need on top.
I actually tend to agree. That's why I had trouble deciding where to put it. Windows was definitely started in category one, but has been gradually shifting ever more towards category two. The interesting thing is - the fact that Microsoft has had to do so in order to please their customers is strong evidence of the point I'm trying to make.
All fair and well - but the second half of my post had nothing to do with that - it was a neutral assessment of apple's position vis-a-vis MOST people.
With a nick like Macs4All would you like to guess how much your post impressed me ? You clearly weren't going to give objective consideration to my points.
>Yeah, right. That's why EVERY phone manufacturer has been bending over backwards to copy it. Funny, the one most accused of that is android and it stands out for differing on iphones most CRUCIAL design decision. Locked down UI, strictly controlled app-market and absolute control over the code. The differentiator is being exactly EVERYTHING that apple has NEVER been in their entire history.
>How long does something have to last before you no longer consider it a "fad"? You realize that something like 85% of all iphones sold are sold in one country ? It's a fad, and a local one. Across the rest of the world Nokia and Google are getting the bulk of the smartphone sales. In South Africa where I live iphones are ONLY bought by the people who already have macs. The most popular smartphone by far is the blackberry.
>You and all of about 15,000 other people WORLDWIDE. That number isn't even statistically significant to a company like Apple How long has android been around ? Less than a year really. It is now the platform of choice for very nearly EVERY handset manufacturer outside apple. There are some exceptions left but they all had platforms before. Android has the potential to drive smartphone prices down to commodity levels and it's already begun to do so. The more the price difference grows - the more apple will lose, the low end androids will still compete for features (if not speed) and the high-ends will ever more start to outdo it. It's already more feature rich by the simple expedient of not making rules about what features users are allowed to have. What will happen in another year ?
>BTW, have fun with your Android apps and their propensity to expose user data That doesn't affect me - first part of my post, my android is running a customized version already, and I'm busy hacking the OS code to make some more customizations I want. Nothing fancy - but certainly cool. As on my PC - I refuse to install any apps on my phone for which I cannot get the code under a free license -and the number is growing FAST. I'm planning to add to it. Where will you get Linux level code-audits in the apple world ? EVER ?
>Yeah, that's REAL freedom, alright. Google wants an app off (or even ON!) your phone, and POOF!
If I HAD to choose, I would choose the company that removes MALWARE with TROJANS over the one that censors their market prior to the fact based on morals I do not share. I didn't particularly like that myself, I think a popup informing users that the app should be removed, why and having a button to do so would be a better way to do it - but it's STILL better than the controlled appmarket apple runs.
I'm not a doctor - but as I understand it - at least some of the venom is actually attacking the brain and spinal cord - so yeah, the brain literally IS making much of the pain itself. Consider that painkillers don't work for migraine's either (by themselves anyway). I have found aspirine to work for mine - but only because I NEVER use it for anything else and I personally suspect the reason it works is not the narcotic effect but that it reduces bloodpressure - which reduces the pressure in the arterial bulges that cause migraines in the first place.
>It kind of bugs me when there's a fairly common problem, and it gets swept up all out of proportion in one particular case. YMMV.
Is it though ? I've never had it on my HTC desire. Assuming every phone has a bad spot where you can reduce signal - okay, I'll bite it makes sense that it would be the case. But that doesn't mean it's the same problem. Apple's problem is they built the phone so that, that bad spot is in an area where the phone is held by LOTS of people ALL the time. Most notably it is directly where most left-handed people will hold the phone making them particularly impacted (and raising the question: did apple not test the device with any left handed users - they ARE 25% odd of the worlds population after all).
Apple's video is unclear here - I can't be utterly sure - but it looks to me like those other phones have to be held quite weirdly to hit the spot. Almost as if the phone designers had made a point to keep the antenna's sensitive areas away from where the user's hand will typically be. Apple on the other hand put it where it directly affects 25% of all people all the time and a significant number of the rest on a regular basis.
If that's the case then this problem IS an apple fault and was NOT overblown.
>What more, realistically, do you expect them to do?
I for one expect them to produce free software or no software and until they day they do - I will never buy any of their products. By the same taken I do not buy (or otherwise obtain or use) anything made by Microsoft or Adobe (indeed - my computers do NOT have flash installed). Gimme the code, lemme hack it - you may win me over.
More importantly - iphone is a fad. There are two major schools of thought in UI design. School 1 is - make it impossible for hte user to do something wrong. In practise it means removing features, disabling options and preventing customization. Advantage: low initial learning curve. Disadvantage: it sucks - very very soon - specifically the very first time you ever want to do something the designer didn't think you would want to.
The other school of thought is: make everything as customizable as possible, maybe even up to and including the very source code but at least offer every option you can think off. Disadvantage: marginally higher initial learning curve (which basically goes away if you ship with sane defaults and smart initial autoconfigs though). Advantage: tool remains usable even as the user's needs get more specialised and advanced. The user can adapt the workflow to his personal style rather than the otehr way around leading to a more intuitive final result (because people are unique -there is NOTHING beyond a nipple that's intuitive to more than one person).
Things that try approach one: Apple OSX, Windows (mostly), Gnome (I will never forgive them for removing the option for ANYBODY to do double-sided printing because "too many people would never need that"), Iphone, MS-Paint Things that try approach two: KDE, Android, Google (in general), Linux (below the desktop level), gimp and photoshop*
Software of the second variety tend to fall behind in the short term then gradually surpass and exceed the popularity of the first variety - because it's simply a much better model. As Torvalds said - if you treat your users like idiots, very soon only idiots are your users.
*Note that for this second part of the post I was rating popularity and long-term success of these schools of thought and not considering issues of software freedom. Those issues are still highest priority for me, but I couldn't fairly compare the real-world success of the models if I left OUT the proprietary software.
Apple and the iPhone is firmly wedged in the former camp - it's a wonderful short-term strategy but the only POSSIBLE outcome in the medium to long term is that it WILL come back to bite them in the ass and iphone will, like mac, become relegated to a tiny minority of the market who are either too fanboiyish to consider something else - or fits the apple demographic so perfectly that none of the million things it cannot (ever) do is something they really need.
So - if apple ever wants my custom - they will need to change that model AND make their software FSF level free. Till then I'll use my customized android thanks - it's a free as I can get right now. Even if they don't care about me, the design model if not changed will still end up destroying the market share they have. This is just the first step - Jobs is learning that the iphone has moved way outside the fanboi world - real users don't just "do what king Jobs says they should". It's going to be very interesting for Apple from here on in.
>>that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.
>Writing as someone who also had malaria (P.falciparum and vivax simultaneously), I'd like to correct this because it's simply not true. Not in any way, shape or form. And I had the most dangerous form you can get.
Right, so did I. In fact, I got it in Nigeria. Neither of us however have DIED of it. I doubt you went through the final stage symptoms because htey are invariable fatal - I didn't either. But what you list are the symptoms that happen in successfull treatments. Can you even IMAGINE a fever so high your skin actually burns to the touch. Severe delerium. Heart palpitations and a continuous and incredibly intense burning sensation over your entire skin so it feels as if you're being cooked from the inside out (which is not entirely inaccurate). Many people do NOT enter a coma, the vast majority drift in and out of consciousness and consider the coma's the best bit. As per numerous diaries on how it feels by people who did subsequently die from it. No pain killers have ANY effect, up to and including morphine - and nothing short of a chemically induced full-on coma relieves the pain at all.
When you die... I imagine you must feel incredibly grateful to have it all over with.
>Which is to say, yes, deadly, yes, you don't want to get it, but no, not the most painful way to shake off this mortal coil. Not even close. I could think of so many worse ways to go.
Okay. I said ONE OF the most painful ways in nature. First I never claimed it was THE most painful, and secondly I SPECIFICALLY restricted it to natural deaths. Burning to death doesn't count. Very few diseases have such an extended and incredibly torturous gestation. One thing I can instantly think of that's likely to match it is a black widow bite. Because it's one of the strongest nerve toxins it attacks the nerve endings causing massive full-body pain at whatever the highest level is your brain can register. Every pain nerve ending is firing off "oh-shit" alarms like you can't believe. This isn't what happens to MOST people but it can happen in the most severe cases. Other neurotoxins can, in the right conditions create similar effects a well but as far as I know none are known to be as bad as black widow in a full-blown effect. But only 5% of UNTREATED Black Widow bites are fatal. With treatment you have a 100% survival rate (excepting of course edge cases like the very elderly). You recover in a day or so however. With malaria, today - if you are in final stage symptoms you know the pain won't stop until you die. There's not even HOPE to keep you going. Treated malaria never GETS to those stages.
Unless you've actually seen it happen - you don't know what you're talking about.
I have to say I rather agree with the logic. Either way I DID try to make the point that even if it DOES lead to a population explosion, despite much of Africa being overpopulated that is no reason to withhold it. There are better ways to deal with overpopulation anyway. The fact is that more and more African countries are resuming use of DDT (illicitely) and actively lobbying to have it unbanned because it was the only thing that ever seemed to work. Of course, it only worked for a short while and then we got DDT resistent malaria that was even worse - and this was on TOP of DDT's other major problems... but politicians aren't known for long term thinking. If you can reduce the fatality rate until well into your next term - you've secured at least 2 re-elections.
Mammal most likely to explode would be the one who has the largest population in Malaria regions already, is most susceptible to infection and has the highest mortality rate from infection.
That would be human beings.
Whether or not a further homo sapien population explosion in Africa is something you consider a good or a bad thing may be debated by some (batshit insane) people. Personally though, I reckon this is one case where advocating population control through birth control is probably better than advocating it through mass infections by a parasite that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.
PS. Writing as somebody who has actually HAD malaria. Fortunate enough not to have had a resistant strain. I live in Africa (though I no longer live in a Malaria region, I grew up in one).
I would further say that the rarity of these cases are why they even persist. Those licenses are used only in a few rare cases and I don't think they represent a major issue. In most cases you WOULD send your changes to the original project anyway unless you had a very important reason to create a fork (perhaps the original project shut down, or were changing license - I once forked a program of my own after the company I worked for insisted on making the next version non-free. I quit my job and used the last free version to base a new free project on, as it happened my project still exists while nobody has even heard of the old one in several years - this is usually what happens). But these licenses DO interfere with one of the core freedoms the FSF demand. The right to distribute changes yourself- and there ARE times when you need to. More-over those licenses would prevent you from using parts of this code to write something else from.
Frankly - I am surprised they were approved as I'm not sure they actually meet the OSD requirements, but that's not my call to make.
Ultimately though these cases are quite sufficiently rare that I can understand why Stallman says "The difference between the movements are philosophical and not practical". Nearly all the time that's right, the rare exceptions are quite insufficient to make it a good idea to refuse to cooperate on projects, or for somebody who believes in free software to refuse to use a program because it's author prefers open-source.
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I thought they were the party that's big on censoring. I guess libel-cases don't push the "morality" button like pr0n does. Oh well good for you American's anyway.
Raises an interesting question, am I the only one who thinks we'd be better of as a world if the UN Bill of Rights was as absolute in it's protections as particular clauses in some of our constitutions (like the first in America for example) and ALL U.N. member states were REQUIRED to implement it as part of their own constitutions (and where no constitution exists as in Britain be required to create one and make said bill of rights the entirey there-off ?)
We live in a global world now, life, law-enforcement and even international relations would all become a great deal simpler if we could agree on a set of universal human rights and be quite sure that in every non-totalitarian state you may visit those rights WILL receive absolute protection ?
Linguistic dialects also become obsolete - but the writings in them do not. Even if purely for historic "this is how it used to be done" interest, source code (potentially at least) has intrinsic value far beyond it's practical re-usability, particularly in the academic sphere.
>I agree with everything else you wrote but the above. Some experiments have shown that a few outliers (read, poor drivers: too fast or disregard of others) can actually better the flow of traffic. One example: you have an intersection in complete deadlock; the asshole who drives on the sidewalk to escape can actually free a spot that will end the deadlock. If everybody follows the rules in this case, nobody comes out. There are other cases.
Except that if everybody scrupulously follows the rules, and the rules themselves can then be modeled based on the expectation of perfect behavior - then deadlocks can't happen in the first place.
The reality also is that the inverse of what you are saying is FAR more often the case. In my hometown there is on guaranteed 24 hour a day massive traffic jam. It happens on the offramp from one major road as it crosses over a highway. Two lanes, the left lane joins the highway in one direction and the right lane joins it in the other - but ALSO continuous for those who need to say on the main road.
Obviously the righthand lane has far more traffic then since it feeds two roads. While it's understandable it would be slower, it is far worse than it ought to be and the reason: the selfish pricks who assume they have more reason for haste than anybody else - who drive in the left hand lane until the very last possible moment and then try to push into the right to jump the qeue, thus slowing everybody down far more than they otherwise would.
The more it slows down, the more pricks push past the qeue the worse it gets.
Such patterns are common all over the world - selfish drivers generally make traffic problems much worse, not to mention the worst daily problems are usually caused by accidents - which you could (at least almost) entirely avoid with a system of driver-less cars.
Aaah yes and that is the general norm right ?
How long until there isn't a computer left in the world that can run it ? 20 years ? 40 years ?
Public domain is supposed to be there for ever.
Only source code is forever.
And ? your point is ?
Does that mean we should allow people to guarantee the ABSENSE of value instead ?
Falacy: does not follow.
Yeah sure, because reinventing the wheel is comparable to reusing it.
The purpose of copyright is to contribute value to the public domain. It makes sense not to put a definition of value on say, a book or a painting. Why does it make sense ? Because often the value of these works aren't even RECOGNIZED until well after the copyright is expired and the creator long dead. We all know the Vincent Van Gogh type histories.
But when it comes to a functional work - it has a functional purpose, and since the REASON for copyright is to serve the public - it can be reasonably stated that you are NOT contributing to the public domain unless this functional purpose is MET by the software after the copyright expired.
To this end, source code is essentially required in order to ensure that the functional value of the software IS in fact contributed to the public domain. Copyright does not exist to capitalize on works -it provides a MEANS of capitalization for the PURPOSE of providing the value of those works to the public at large (more specifically - to have more works' value available to the public). The value of software at copyright expiration is exclusively in the source code, not in the binary and contributing the binary would be no different from copyright never expiring.
How many great companies have been destroyed by bad mergers.
The Activision/Blizzard merger has already caused one of the biggest PR disasters in the history of the gaming company we considered one of the best in the world before - not only to work at, but to deal with as a customer. The Zenimax/ID merger is rapidly destroying the soul of perhaps one of the most innovative companies in the history not only of gaming but of software as a whole. ID for their genre-redefining (and in at least one case CREATING) work ranks right up there with the original Sierra/Online as one of the companies that created the foundations on which the modern gaming industry was built.
I remember when John Carmack said of the reason for the first doom1 source release that he did it "because Linux gives me a woody"...
It's sad to see truly great companies get swallowed up into corporate hiveminds and lose the wonder that they once held for us.
And I see absolutely no USE for a 10-year old binary without source code. With source code you can base new programs on it, port it to new platforms and be able to read your data files from 10 years ago...
With source code you are actually enriching the public domain, without it - you're doing nothing of any value whatsoever. Whatever value binary-only software may have is definitely incredibly time-linked. Abandonware binaries have little or no use. The best you could hope for is to run them in an emulator - and that is hardly ideal in the best of cases. It's so much better to be able to take that code and port it to run natively on what you need now.
Just consider that the vast majority of the software from the early 90's can now easily be run on smartphones that have more than enough screen estate and processing for them. Heck doom was ported to one of the early nokia smartphones years ago, and in it's day it was one of the most resource intensive games ever created.
If anything this is MORE true of applications than of games.
More-over ID typically releases their source code under the GPL - so it's actually USEFUL.
This is why there are still doom ports for every platform known to man, and quake ports and Q3A...
You fail at understanding science.
Thermodynamics is a model. It is really useful for predicting the behavior of matter under certain conditions. The universe as a whole is NOT one of those conditions.
The model in thermodynamics specifically breaks down the moment there is enough mass in the system for gravity to exceed the repulsive "forces" between individual molecules.
The second law of thermodynamics does not predict how the universe will end (don't worry, Asimov made the same mistake once) because there is NOTHING in thermodynamics to account for gravity. Gravity on the small scale where themodynamics is designed to be used is such a weak force that it can be safely ignored.
On the scale of universes and galaxies it exceeds the effects of thermodynamics. This is why our universe's history shows it becoming ever more clumpy and ordered rather than ever LESS clumpy and disordered.
To imagine that one day it will all start to break down because that's what the second law predicts is just plain wrong - that can only happen if we somehow remove from the universe all the gravitons.
Modern physics don't have "forces" or even "energy" as you think of it, it has fundamental particles that influence the way matter interacts with space-time in various ways. Gravitons bend space time for example.
Thermodynamics is really just simple Newtonian physics adapted to model the behavior of gases and liquids in particular circumstances, it is incredibly useful for doing that, BECAUSE it ignores those aspects of the universe which on the scale of a tank full of gas simply doesn't have a sufficient measurable impact to actually affect the outcome.
But when you talk about the scale of planets... then gravity and other factors become not only measurable but EXCEED the forces thermodynamics looks at. There is still thermodynamics INSIDE Jupiter, but it will never cause the planet to slowly leech gas until it doesn't exist anymore because the gravity is stronger than their molecular repelling force.
What causes suns to die is the nuclear power running out, that's another whole different kettle of fish.
Always remember that written right INTO the laws of thermodynamic (and sadly usually not taught) is the qualification that it ONLY applies to a CLOSED system. Where no energy or matter can either enter or leave.
Planets and stars are not a closed system. The universe as a whole could possibly be described as one - but frankly we can't even prove that (we have NO idea what lies outside our lightcone and according to current theories we never CAN know - but that doesn't mean there ISN'T something there)
Even if we assume it's a closed system - it's still a HUGE closed system, it has gravity. The big bang started us off pretty damn entropic -a lot of basic matter scattered fairly uniformly over the universe... we did NOT do what the second law predicted and smooth out the few lumps and end up stable. On the contrary - the universe has gotten more and more lumpy over time.
Thank you for you time.
> Note that I don't actually believe that there is anything too complex to model theoretically
To do an accurate theoretical model you need absolutely accurate initial starting data and a fully known dynamic. Systems are described as chaotic when the sheer amount of initial data makes it even theoretically impossible to determine it all (because quite literally you cannot instaneously measure ALL the values).
It gets more complex, some things change if you measure them and some things cannot be known if other things are (as Heisenberg showed with the location and speed of electrons) - so getting accurate initial data is in some cases not even theoretically possible.
Accurate ENOUGH for immediate purposes is about the best we can do - but that makes a very clear prediction horizon beyond which our models fail - because frankly what we couldn't get right in initial data has built up beyond our ability to handle.
That's all bad enough - and it's why we have no idea which side of the sun Pluto will be in a 10 billion years - we simply CANNOT get even a Newtonian simplified model of the solar system started with sufficiently accurate initial data to get it.
Generally - we can work around the worst of initial-data issues on a limited scale by deliberate course-graining. Provided we push the prediction horizon past what we need to know right now, we're okay, we know we can't go much further and even what we get now may be wrong but at least it's generally reliable.
BTW. The prediction horizon for weather is about 4 days and we USUALLY Get the 4th day wrong (go check the weekly forecasts on Monday a few times and see how often they adjust Thursday before we get to it).
Now all this makes science pretty tough already... and that's not the worst part. The WORST part is that the REALLY complex stuff have emergent dynamics. Thats fancy mathematics-speak for - the system changes it's own rules as it runs. Fundamental to the very CONCEPT of an emergent dynamic is that it cannot be predicted even theoretically.
If we know the starting conditions perfectly, and exactly what the initial dynamic is - we still can't predict beyond step 2 because in step one the rules that govern HOW we get between steps has changed along with the system and the NEW rules are now determining what step 3 will be.
Emergent dynamics aren't random and they make perfect sense... in RETROSPECT. We can always see HOW the rules changed and even WHY they changed THAT way. But to predict it upfront is literally a violation of the laws of mathematics. We can guess of course, but not even an educated guess has any merrit there.
Some of the most interesting examples of emergent dynamics is things like history. History is governed by clear patterns and rules - but it often violates them, sometimes it completely alters them, balances of power shift in directions never before seen and this changes the way the entire system happens and how the local interacts with the global.
Economics are quite at times emergent and evolution is entirely emergent.
One biologist (sorry, I forgot the name but I'll look it up if you really insist) described evolution as "always expanding into the adjacent possible". Except there is no way to predict how long it will take before that adjacent possible phase space is filled, which creature will get there first, will it be the most successful and how exactly will it do so.
We can see how it happened afterward: some creatures started covering their eggs in shells so they didn't have to lay them in water. This was an expansion into the adjacent possible and immediately set the stage for the evolution of egg-eaters. Every change changes the system, changes the rules.
Egg-eating would not be a viable survival trait BEFORE there eggs, and was probably unpreventable afterward... but of course since evolution ALSO depends on a degree of random interference - it may not happen, or it could not happen for such a long time that no OTHER means of giving birth ever had an edge. So mammals
>First you'll have to tell us how much mass this one has lost. I don't think "sickly" is a measure of mass.
Yes it is ! It's the one Cosmo makes women think they need to be to be attractive. Of course they get confused and call it a "weight" but very few people ever get that right anyway (despite it being 3rd grade science) so I think we can safely assume they MEANT mass.
Windows used to be praised for it's simplicity. The last few years microsoft has had to add power all the time - real power tools. Powershell and the like because users didn't WANT simple in the long run.
I said in my very post that the simplified-product approach always sells best IN THE SHORT TERM. the entire smartphone MARKET is still in it's infancy. We won't see users beginning to demand more power and customizability yet because most of them are overwhelmed even by the simplified stuff.
The problem with the apple approach is - it gives you a very flat initial learning curve, but as soon as your needs expand (which happens BY DEFAULT - people get better and less nervous around new technology and start seeing things they wish they could do) - the curve goes up VERY sharply, often all the way to 90 degrees.
That is to say - it simply CANNOT be done.
You need category two from then on. The second variety has a high initial learning curve, once you round it however, it becomes flat, and no matter how complex your needs, it's ALWAYS simple to add the small skill you need on top.
I actually tend to agree. That's why I had trouble deciding where to put it. Windows was definitely started in category one, but has been gradually shifting ever more towards category two. The interesting thing is - the fact that Microsoft has had to do so in order to please their customers is strong evidence of the point I'm trying to make.
All fair and well - but the second half of my post had nothing to do with that - it was a neutral assessment of apple's position vis-a-vis MOST people.
With a nick like Macs4All would you like to guess how much your post impressed me ? You clearly weren't going to give objective consideration to my points.
>Yeah, right. That's why EVERY phone manufacturer has been bending over backwards to copy it.
Funny, the one most accused of that is android and it stands out for differing on iphones most CRUCIAL design decision. Locked down UI, strictly controlled app-market and absolute control over the code. The differentiator is being exactly EVERYTHING that apple has NEVER been in their entire history.
>How long does something have to last before you no longer consider it a "fad"?
You realize that something like 85% of all iphones sold are sold in one country ? It's a fad, and a local one. Across the rest of the world Nokia and Google are getting the bulk of the smartphone sales. In South Africa where I live iphones are ONLY bought by the people who already have macs. The most popular smartphone by far is the blackberry.
>You and all of about 15,000 other people WORLDWIDE. That number isn't even statistically significant to a company like Apple
How long has android been around ? Less than a year really. It is now the platform of choice for very nearly EVERY handset manufacturer outside apple. There are some exceptions left but they all had platforms before. Android has the potential to drive smartphone prices down to commodity levels and it's already begun to do so. The more the price difference grows - the more apple will lose, the low end androids will still compete for features (if not speed) and the high-ends will ever more start to outdo it. It's already more feature rich by the simple expedient of not making rules about what features users are allowed to have. What will happen in another year ?
>BTW, have fun with your Android apps and their propensity to expose user data
That doesn't affect me - first part of my post, my android is running a customized version already, and I'm busy hacking the OS code to make some more customizations I want. Nothing fancy - but certainly cool. As on my PC - I refuse to install any apps on my phone for which I cannot get the code under a free license -and the number is growing FAST. I'm planning to add to it. Where will you get Linux level code-audits in the apple world ? EVER ?
>Yeah, that's REAL freedom, alright. Google wants an app off (or even ON!) your phone, and POOF!
If I HAD to choose, I would choose the company that removes MALWARE with TROJANS over the one that censors their market prior to the fact based on morals I do not share. I didn't particularly like that myself, I think a popup informing users that the app should be removed, why and having a button to do so would be a better way to do it - but it's STILL better than the controlled appmarket apple runs.
I'm not a doctor - but as I understand it - at least some of the venom is actually attacking the brain and spinal cord - so yeah, the brain literally IS making much of the pain itself. Consider that painkillers don't work for migraine's either (by themselves anyway). I have found aspirine to work for mine - but only because I NEVER use it for anything else and I personally suspect the reason it works is not the narcotic effect but that it reduces bloodpressure - which reduces the pressure in the arterial bulges that cause migraines in the first place.
>It kind of bugs me when there's a fairly common problem, and it gets swept up all out of proportion in one particular case. YMMV.
Is it though ? I've never had it on my HTC desire. Assuming every phone has a bad spot where you can reduce signal - okay, I'll bite it makes sense that it would be the case. But that doesn't mean it's the same problem. Apple's problem is they built the phone so that, that bad spot is in an area where the phone is held by LOTS of people ALL the time. Most notably it is directly where most left-handed people will hold the phone making them particularly impacted (and raising the question: did apple not test the device with any left handed users - they ARE 25% odd of the worlds population after all).
Apple's video is unclear here - I can't be utterly sure - but it looks to me like those other phones have to be held quite weirdly to hit the spot. Almost as if the phone designers had made a point to keep the antenna's sensitive areas away from where the user's hand will typically be. Apple on the other hand put it where it directly affects 25% of all people all the time and a significant number of the rest on a regular basis.
If that's the case then this problem IS an apple fault and was NOT overblown.
>What more, realistically, do you expect them to do?
I for one expect them to produce free software or no software and until they day they do - I will never buy any of their products. By the same taken I do not buy (or otherwise obtain or use) anything made by Microsoft or Adobe (indeed - my computers do NOT have flash installed).
Gimme the code, lemme hack it - you may win me over.
More importantly - iphone is a fad. There are two major schools of thought in UI design. School 1 is - make it impossible for hte user to do something wrong. In practise it means removing features, disabling options and preventing customization. Advantage: low initial learning curve. Disadvantage: it sucks - very very soon - specifically the very first time you ever want to do something the designer didn't think you would want to.
The other school of thought is: make everything as customizable as possible, maybe even up to and including the very source code but at least offer every option you can think off. Disadvantage: marginally higher initial learning curve (which basically goes away if you ship with sane defaults and smart initial autoconfigs though). Advantage: tool remains usable even as the user's needs get more specialised and advanced. The user can adapt the workflow to his personal style rather than the otehr way around leading to a more intuitive final result (because people are unique -there is NOTHING beyond a nipple that's intuitive to more than one person).
Things that try approach one: Apple OSX, Windows (mostly), Gnome (I will never forgive them for removing the option for ANYBODY to do double-sided printing because "too many people would never need that"), Iphone, MS-Paint
Things that try approach two: KDE, Android, Google (in general), Linux (below the desktop level), gimp and photoshop*
Software of the second variety tend to fall behind in the short term then gradually surpass and exceed the popularity of the first variety - because it's simply a much better model.
As Torvalds said - if you treat your users like idiots, very soon only idiots are your users.
*Note that for this second part of the post I was rating popularity and long-term success of these schools of thought and not considering issues of software freedom. Those issues are still highest priority for me, but I couldn't fairly compare the real-world success of the models if I left OUT the proprietary software.
Apple and the iPhone is firmly wedged in the former camp - it's a wonderful short-term strategy but the only POSSIBLE outcome in the medium to long term is that it WILL come back to bite them in the ass and iphone will, like mac, become relegated to a tiny minority of the market who are either too fanboiyish to consider something else - or fits the apple demographic so perfectly that none of the million things it cannot (ever) do is something they really need.
So - if apple ever wants my custom - they will need to change that model AND make their software FSF level free. Till then I'll use my customized android thanks - it's a free as I can get right now. Even if they don't care about me, the design model if not changed will still end up destroying the market share they have. This is just the first step - Jobs is learning that the iphone has moved way outside the fanboi world - real users don't just "do what king Jobs says they should".
It's going to be very interesting for Apple from here on in.
Yes you're right, I meant mosquitoes.
>>that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.
>Writing as someone who also had malaria (P.falciparum and vivax simultaneously), I'd like to correct this because it's simply not true. Not in any way, shape or form. And I had the most dangerous form you can get.
Right, so did I. In fact, I got it in Nigeria. Neither of us however have DIED of it. I doubt you went through the final stage symptoms because htey are invariable fatal - I didn't either. But what you list are the symptoms that happen in successfull treatments.
Can you even IMAGINE a fever so high your skin actually burns to the touch. Severe delerium. Heart palpitations and a continuous and incredibly intense burning sensation over your entire skin so it feels as if you're being cooked from the inside out (which is not entirely inaccurate).
Many people do NOT enter a coma, the vast majority drift in and out of consciousness and consider the coma's the best bit. As per numerous diaries on how it feels by people who did subsequently die from it. No pain killers have ANY effect, up to and including morphine - and nothing short of a chemically induced full-on coma relieves the pain at all.
When you die... I imagine you must feel incredibly grateful to have it all over with.
>Which is to say, yes, deadly, yes, you don't want to get it, but no, not the most painful way to shake off this mortal coil. Not even close. I could think of so many worse ways to go.
Okay. I said ONE OF the most painful ways in nature. First I never claimed it was THE most painful, and secondly I SPECIFICALLY restricted it to natural deaths. Burning to death doesn't count. Very few diseases have such an extended and incredibly torturous gestation.
One thing I can instantly think of that's likely to match it is a black widow bite. Because it's one of the strongest nerve toxins it attacks the nerve endings causing massive full-body pain at whatever the highest level is your brain can register. Every pain nerve ending is firing off "oh-shit" alarms like you can't believe. This isn't what happens to MOST people but it can happen in the most severe cases. Other neurotoxins can, in the right conditions create similar effects a well but as far as I know none are known to be as bad as black widow in a full-blown effect.
But only 5% of UNTREATED Black Widow bites are fatal. With treatment you have a 100% survival rate (excepting of course edge cases like the very elderly). You recover in a day or so however.
With malaria, today - if you are in final stage symptoms you know the pain won't stop until you die. There's not even HOPE to keep you going. Treated malaria never GETS to those stages.
Unless you've actually seen it happen - you don't know what you're talking about.
I have to say I rather agree with the logic. Either way I DID try to make the point that even if it DOES lead to a population explosion, despite much of Africa being overpopulated that is no reason to withhold it.
There are better ways to deal with overpopulation anyway. The fact is that more and more African countries are resuming use of DDT (illicitely) and actively lobbying to have it unbanned because it was the only thing that ever seemed to work. Of course, it only worked for a short while and then we got DDT resistent malaria that was even worse - and this was on TOP of DDT's other major problems... but politicians aren't known for long term thinking.
If you can reduce the fatality rate until well into your next term - you've secured at least 2 re-elections.
Mammal most likely to explode would be the one who has the largest population in Malaria regions already, is most susceptible to infection and has the highest mortality rate from infection.
That would be human beings.
Whether or not a further homo sapien population explosion in Africa is something you consider a good or a bad thing may be debated by some (batshit insane) people. Personally though, I reckon this is one case where advocating population control through birth control is probably better than advocating it through mass infections by a parasite that causes perhaps one of the most painful deaths in nature.
PS. Writing as somebody who has actually HAD malaria. Fortunate enough not to have had a resistant strain. I live in Africa (though I no longer live in a Malaria region, I grew up in one).
>So, differences do exist in practice.
This is, however, an incredibly rare situation. In fact my choice of words was a direct quote from Richard Stallman's article on the subject: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
I would further say that the rarity of these cases are why they even persist. Those licenses are used only in a few rare cases and I don't think they represent a major issue. In most cases you WOULD send your changes to the original project anyway unless you had a very important reason to create a fork (perhaps the original project shut down, or were changing license - I once forked a program of my own after the company I worked for insisted on making the next version non-free. I quit my job and used the last free version to base a new free project on, as it happened my project still exists while nobody has even heard of the old one in several years - this is usually what happens).
But these licenses DO interfere with one of the core freedoms the FSF demand. The right to distribute changes yourself- and there ARE times when you need to. More-over those licenses would prevent you from using parts of this code to write something else from.
Frankly - I am surprised they were approved as I'm not sure they actually meet the OSD requirements, but that's not my call to make.
Ultimately though these cases are quite sufficiently rare that I can understand why Stallman says "The difference between the movements are philosophical and not practical". Nearly all the time that's right, the rare exceptions are quite insufficient to make it a good idea to refuse to cooperate on projects, or for somebody who believes in free software to refuse to use a program because it's author prefers open-source.