Grandparent said that he believes that if it's given away freely, then it can't be stolen. So his argument doesn't say "it's okay to share it once it's stolen", his argument says that it's okay to share and nobody has to steal. If I buy the latest Metallica album (eugggh) I'm not stealing it from them. If I then offer you a copy of the MP3, then, says NoData, I'm not stealing anything, and neither are you. Feel free to try again, but your first try completely misses the point.
Because there's so much money to be had in space! I mean, with the asteroid mining, and I hear they've perfected a genetically-modified money tree that grows in microgravity and produces an extra abundance of $100s. Oh yeah, every launch some government makes is bringing in the moolah, even compared to the gojillion-dollar costs of launching in the first place. Right.
I really can't swallow that one. If an app and a plugin are dynamically linked, then they're two completely separate things, and can be designed separately and compiled separately. A plugin can be loaded by more than one app (just look at some emulators for Windows), and of course apps can load plugins from all different sources. The relation between an application and a plugin isn't any tighter than between an application and data in a particular file format. In fact, plugins are just that, except that the data is code and "API" takes the place of "file format".
Consider that it's possible for me to write a program, and publish it under the GPL, while also publishing a book, titled "The MyApplication Plugin Framework". Any developer out there should be able to write a plugin for MyApplication using this book as a reference, without ever seeing the application itself. This would clearly be a separate act of creation, and could not realistically be painted as a "derived work". As another poster has pointed out, the GPL says that it covers only "copying, distribution, and modification". Writing code to a given spec is none of these; neither is loading or linking a plugin. So where, in the case of a GPL app loading a non-GPL plugin, does the GPL ever have the scope to say anything?
I believe that if you judge by the text of the license itself, and not the FSF's "what do we think our license means" webpage, it's clear that it doesn't apply in this situation.
Nobody's ever had that kind of control over their products before. People think that software is so radically different that the publishers need to have the right to complete control over what you do to it, in order to "protect their rights" or something like that, but there's no logic to it. Nothing gives them the right to have any control over what you do with their bits after they sell them to you, unless you give them the control by agreeing to ridiculous licenses and accepting DRM.
Unfortunately, as the result of unprecedentedly good PR that plays the software companies as the oppressed victims combined with a lack of understanding of the technical issues, people are gladly giving up control.
I mean, who cares if our rights are "managed"? Rights are so 1780s, anyway!
No, not very much at all. Freenet is about persistent data storage, protection against censor ship, and reasonably hard deniability. Skype is about using p2p for efficient routing and firewall-busting. It's not about providing anonymity, and it's not about resisting a concerted attack (though of course it does its best to route around disruptions). It's just about slinging a lot of bits through a distributed network, resulting in a better user experience and lower costs for Skype Tech SA.
Unless you're working with the kind of show where the whole thing is written in advance, you're bound to end up with a situation where the writers really 'discover' who the characters are as they write. In TNG, the Picard of the first two seasons or so wasn't "really Picard"; he was more of a reasonable facsimile. This wasn't through any fault of Stewart's, but more because in the beginning there was only a vague outline of a character, but as the scripts started flowing, he grew backstory, and personality, and so now there was a precedent for how he's going to act or think in a given situation. Until you have that, the character is more of a 'type' than a person. And certainly that's not a phenomenon that's limited to TNG (or, within TNG, to Picard). My point is that a lot of character development is really more like writer development, and so when you judge a series, you really need to base your judgement on the parts where the actors and writers and producers actually had a clue what they were doing, and temporarily block continuity out of your mind. If you look at the worst parts, it's easy to say that anything sucks.
To reprise a previous post of mine more levelly -- DS9 had a rough beginning and an even rougher last few seasons (in my opinion), but I think they did some really solid work in the middle there. TNG had the same issue, except that it ended before it got a chance to fall apart really badly. I think ENT suffered at the beginning because the producers didn't really know what the hell it was, besides the next show that was going to make them money. But it looks like they've got things more under control now, and have a chance to do some quality work. That doesn't sound like the greatest time to scrap the project to me.
Whoops. Thinko there, forgot to convert bits to bytes. You can pack 616 digits into 2048 bits. There would, of course, have to be 8 of those to fill out a data-mode CD sector. If you wanted to use the whole sector as one block, it would hold 4932 digits, at an efficiency good enough that there's less than one bit wasted on the entire CD (and therefore you couldn't gain anything by using a different encoding anyway).
Right... that was my first thought -- why not just use a compact encoding? It would be more easily seekable, anyway. But then I realized that 2^a != 10^b (for any integer a and b), so there's bound to be some loss. But of course it's not so bad anyway. Blocks of 10 bits pack three digits, with a waste of 0.034 bits = 0.34%. The optimum block size (for numbers under 4k) seems to be 2136 bytes, but if you go for 2048 bytes for CD-reading convenience, you can pack 616 digits. You waste almost a third of a bit in every 2048, but it's probably not worth the extra complexity to go from 99.76% efficiency to 99.999989% efficiency.:)
Agreed. The first season or so was a little shaky, but as time went on, the writers and the actors hit their stride together. You could say the same for TNG. But things started to fall apart for Season 6, and Season 7 absolutely should not have happened.
You're saying that DS9 had more than five good seasons? I really don't think I can agree, there. As to Enterprise, it's had its ups and downs, but I don't think it's time to leave it for dead just yet.
Yabbut -- there's a fundamental difference between ignorance and stupidity. Signing up for AOL is a display of ignorance. Staying with AOL for any length of time is a display of stupidity.
But anyway, I'm not especially concerned with the loss of a bunch of AOLers from Usenet; I'm concerned about the precedent. I've often wondered why any ISP bothers anymore, when such a small portion of users actually use Usenet, and the greatest portion of the content (by byte, which is what counts if you're an ISP) is either illegal or spam. I know that there's more to it than that, but it doesn't seem to make any sense from a business perspective.
Not by the definition of IQ, or by the definition of people, but by the definition of the sort of average used, which is of course the median -- best summed up as the point that 50% of people fall below:)
1. But it's certainly possible for one system to be "more unknown" than another. For instance, when it's posted on slashdot and nobody's heard of it before a couple weeks ago.
2. Technicality: as evidenced by the word itself, a cryptosystem is a system. That is to say, an algorithm (or algorithms), the programs running the algorithm, and the behavior of the users running the program. PGP exists at all of these levels. It combines algorithms (ElGamal, DSA, and lots of other good stuff), applications (the gpg app itself, as well as any number of mailer plugins), and conventions for using them (Keysigning get-togethers, Mixmaster remailers, and whatever else). So if you take a somewhat expanded view of the term PGP, I'd say that it certainly does qualify as a cryptosystem.
Though of course, for a tachyon to have real relativistic mass, it would have to have an imaginary rest mass (by m = m_0 / gamma; when v > c, (v/c)^2 > 1, so sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2) is imaginary. And even then, it takes a good imagination (no pun intended) to see how they could have any effect on anything, what with how they're gone before they even arrive.
A great illustration of why you should never, as part of a "movement", try to redefine a term. All it does is set you up for ridicule and horrible, horrible failure.:)
Slashdot Mirror
You're not paying attention.
Grandparent said that he believes that if it's given away freely, then it can't be stolen. So his argument doesn't say "it's okay to share it once it's stolen", his argument says that it's okay to share and nobody has to steal. If I buy the latest Metallica album (eugggh) I'm not stealing it from them. If I then offer you a copy of the MP3, then, says NoData, I'm not stealing anything, and neither are you. Feel free to try again, but your first try completely misses the point.
C++ and Java, and sometimes C. Lousy teaching languages, but they're usually accompanied by lousy teaching anyway.
The corollary being that addition doesn't always commute:
:)
(50 - 1) + 1 = 50
(50 + 1) - 1 = 49
So you're really better off not caring
Because there's so much money to be had in space! I mean, with the asteroid mining, and I hear they've perfected a genetically-modified money tree that grows in microgravity and produces an extra abundance of $100s. Oh yeah, every launch some government makes is bringing in the moolah, even compared to the gojillion-dollar costs of launching in the first place. Right.
I really can't swallow that one. If an app and a plugin are dynamically linked, then they're two completely separate things, and can be designed separately and compiled separately. A plugin can be loaded by more than one app (just look at some emulators for Windows), and of course apps can load plugins from all different sources. The relation between an application and a plugin isn't any tighter than between an application and data in a particular file format. In fact, plugins are just that, except that the data is code and "API" takes the place of "file format".
Consider that it's possible for me to write a program, and publish it under the GPL, while also publishing a book, titled "The MyApplication Plugin Framework". Any developer out there should be able to write a plugin for MyApplication using this book as a reference, without ever seeing the application itself. This would clearly be a separate act of creation, and could not realistically be painted as a "derived work". As another poster has pointed out, the GPL says that it covers only "copying, distribution, and modification". Writing code to a given spec is none of these; neither is loading or linking a plugin. So where, in the case of a GPL app loading a non-GPL plugin, does the GPL ever have the scope to say anything?
I believe that if you judge by the text of the license itself, and not the FSF's "what do we think our license means" webpage, it's clear that it doesn't apply in this situation.
Nobody's ever had that kind of control over their products before. People think that software is so radically different that the publishers need to have the right to complete control over what you do to it, in order to "protect their rights" or something like that, but there's no logic to it. Nothing gives them the right to have any control over what you do with their bits after they sell them to you, unless you give them the control by agreeing to ridiculous licenses and accepting DRM.
Unfortunately, as the result of unprecedentedly good PR that plays the software companies as the oppressed victims combined with a lack of understanding of the technical issues, people are gladly giving up control.
I mean, who cares if our rights are "managed"? Rights are so 1780s, anyway!
Or maybe they just expect it to be simpler and more reliable. That's a major consideration when you're dealing with things like aircraft carriers.
Hrm... make it simpler and more reliable by eliminating Steam. Someone get Valve on the phone, I've got an idea!
Well, when you boil water, it certainly does get agitated, and it does have a tendency to move in little circular cells...
No, not very much at all. Freenet is about persistent data storage, protection against censor ship, and reasonably hard deniability. Skype is about using p2p for efficient routing and firewall-busting. It's not about providing anonymity, and it's not about resisting a concerted attack (though of course it does its best to route around disruptions). It's just about slinging a lot of bits through a distributed network, resulting in a better user experience and lower costs for Skype Tech SA.
True. But it's rarely done, or at least rarely done well.
Thank you!
Unless you're working with the kind of show where the whole thing is written in advance, you're bound to end up with a situation where the writers really 'discover' who the characters are as they write. In TNG, the Picard of the first two seasons or so wasn't "really Picard"; he was more of a reasonable facsimile. This wasn't through any fault of Stewart's, but more because in the beginning there was only a vague outline of a character, but as the scripts started flowing, he grew backstory, and personality, and so now there was a precedent for how he's going to act or think in a given situation. Until you have that, the character is more of a 'type' than a person. And certainly that's not a phenomenon that's limited to TNG (or, within TNG, to Picard). My point is that a lot of character development is really more like writer development, and so when you judge a series, you really need to base your judgement on the parts where the actors and writers and producers actually had a clue what they were doing, and temporarily block continuity out of your mind. If you look at the worst parts, it's easy to say that anything sucks.
To reprise a previous post of mine more levelly -- DS9 had a rough beginning and an even rougher last few seasons (in my opinion), but I think they did some really solid work in the middle there. TNG had the same issue, except that it ended before it got a chance to fall apart really badly. I think ENT suffered at the beginning because the producers didn't really know what the hell it was, besides the next show that was going to make them money. But it looks like they've got things more under control now, and have a chance to do some quality work. That doesn't sound like the greatest time to scrap the project to me.
a couple years old? I'm sure I've seen it before, and I'm pretty sure it was on slashdot.
Whoops. Thinko there, forgot to convert bits to bytes. You can pack 616 digits into 2048 bits. There would, of course, have to be 8 of those to fill out a data-mode CD sector. If you wanted to use the whole sector as one block, it would hold 4932 digits, at an efficiency good enough that there's less than one bit wasted on the entire CD (and therefore you couldn't gain anything by using a different encoding anyway).
Right... that was my first thought -- why not just use a compact encoding? It would be more easily seekable, anyway. But then I realized that 2^a != 10^b (for any integer a and b), so there's bound to be some loss. But of course it's not so bad anyway. Blocks of 10 bits pack three digits, with a waste of 0.034 bits = 0.34%. The optimum block size (for numbers under 4k) seems to be 2136 bytes, but if you go for 2048 bytes for CD-reading convenience, you can pack 616 digits. You waste almost a third of a bit in every 2048, but it's probably not worth the extra complexity to go from 99.76% efficiency to 99.999989% efficiency. :)
Agreed. The first season or so was a little shaky, but as time went on, the writers and the actors hit their stride together. You could say the same for TNG. But things started to fall apart for Season 6, and Season 7 absolutely should not have happened.
You're saying that DS9 had more than five good seasons? I really don't think I can agree, there. As to Enterprise, it's had its ups and downs, but I don't think it's time to leave it for dead just yet.
But anyway, I'm not especially concerned with the loss of a bunch of AOLers from Usenet; I'm concerned about the precedent. I've often wondered why any ISP bothers anymore, when such a small portion of users actually use Usenet, and the greatest portion of the content (by byte, which is what counts if you're an ISP) is either illegal or spam. I know that there's more to it than that, but it doesn't seem to make any sense from a business perspective.
Not by the definition of IQ, or by the definition of people, but by the definition of the sort of average used, which is of course the median -- best summed up as the point that 50% of people fall below :)
1. But it's certainly possible for one system to be "more unknown" than another. For instance, when it's posted on slashdot and nobody's heard of it before a couple weeks ago.
2. Technicality: as evidenced by the word itself, a cryptosystem is a system. That is to say, an algorithm (or algorithms), the programs running the algorithm, and the behavior of the users running the program. PGP exists at all of these levels. It combines algorithms (ElGamal, DSA, and lots of other good stuff), applications (the gpg app itself, as well as any number of mailer plugins), and conventions for using them (Keysigning get-togethers, Mixmaster remailers, and whatever else). So if you take a somewhat expanded view of the term PGP, I'd say that it certainly does qualify as a cryptosystem.
On further examination, make that negative imaginary rest mass.
Though of course, for a tachyon to have real relativistic mass, it would have to have an imaginary rest mass (by m = m_0 / gamma; when v > c, (v/c)^2 > 1, so sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2) is imaginary. And even then, it takes a good imagination (no pun intended) to see how they could have any effect on anything, what with how they're gone before they even arrive.
Sweet Zombie Jesus!
A spelling lesson targeted at Canadians! I like it!
A great illustration of why you should never, as part of a "movement", try to redefine a term. All it does is set you up for ridicule and horrible, horrible failure. :)