Vinge is GOH at 2002 WorldCon
on
True Names
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Fans of Vinge (or the merely curious) may be interested to know that he will be the Pro Guest of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th annual World Science Fiction Convention, to be held this August (Aug 29 - Sep 2) in San José, CA, USA.
Memberships are a bit pricey at this point ($180 US), but include the right to nominate and vote for the Hugo awards (for those who were upset over Harry Potter's Hugo last year, this is your chance to help prevent a similar occurance this year).
The GPL is very different legally. It conditionally grants rights which you would not otherwise have under normal copyright laws. If you decide not to agree to its terms, then you are merely bound by normal copyright law, which is even more restrictive. And, for this reason, you are allowed to refuse to agree to the GPL. (Try that with a normal EULA!)
The GPL is not an END USER licence, because it has no implications for the end user. It only affects those who modify or distribute the software (and its restrictions only affect those who distribute it).
Since the alternative was to foot the bill for the ongoing incompetence at the DOI, damn right this doesn't bother me!
And you're right, it didn't have to happen, and I'm pissed off that it did happen. But I'm not pissed at the judge who had to deal with lying, incompetent bureaucrats. I'm pissed at the lying, incompetent bureaucrats who allowed the situation to escalate to this point.
It sounds to me like the potential for loss if those systems HADN'T been shut down COMPLETELY dwarfs any loss that might come from shutting them down so abruptly.
Better to shut down too much and risk millions than to leave too much open and risk billions.
If FreeBSD is something you should consider when considering linux distros, doesn't that make it a linux distro? In some contexts, I think the answer to this question is yes. But otherwise your comment is off-topic (and probably a troll), so I assume you must also claim that the answer is yes? -evil grin-
Anyway, I prefer OpenBSD for security and Debian for more general use. I know a number of people who bounce back and forth between Debian and FreeBSD, and who consider them to be extremely close in quality (as do I). In other words, I am a counterexample - and I know several others - to your claim "you'll never go back to Linux again."
Furthermore, while I personally think that FreeBSD is (with Debian and OpenBSD) one of the three best choices, I suspect that people who prefer Mandrake over Debian are unlikely to prefer FreeBSD. Maybe Darwin or BeOS, but probably not FreeBSD.
Not just "virii". Beat up on those people use "boxen" or "unices", when every Right-Thinking Red Blooded English speaking droid knows that the proper plurals are "boxes" and "unixes". People who deliberately (or not) misuse language with humorous intent should be shot! (Or subjected to folk music, if that's not too cruel and inhumane.) Humor is evil, and all humorists are probably terrorists.
And those people who use "on the gripping hand." Gaah! Aren't they aware that humans only have two hands? Those bastards! Take away their credit cards and force them to wear white after Labor Day!
While there are plenty of books that easily fit into one or the other category, there are also plenty of books that are almost impossible to distinguish. For example, Zelazny's Lord of Light , and Creatures of Light and Darkness. The former is usually called SF and the latter fantasy, but it's a fine distinction in either case, and the two books are more similar to each other than to much of anything else. Or there's Gene Wolfe's Torturer series -- the first won a World Fantasy Award, but the second made it clear that the series really was SF, and won a Nebula.
Steven Brust's Jhereg series is another where the jury is still out. It seems to be fantasy (although written in a more hard-boiled style than most fantasy), but there are hints here and there that it may turn out to be SF after all. After nine or ten books, it's still not clear. Other examples abound, as many authors seem to enjoy genre-bending.
And finally, as many other people have pointed out, the Hugo is not a science-fiction-only award. It is, and always has been, for science fiction and fantasy, and has been awarded to fantasy stories as far back as 1958.
Generally, the 'hard' in 'hard SF' refers to the science, not the fiction. Neuromancer, albeit a wonderfully written novel, has little or no science backing it. Note that Gibson had barely even seen a computer when he wrote the book. He got away with handwaving and plausible-sounding nonsense because he's a good writer.
For a much more hard take on some of the same themes, try Vernor Vinge's excellent novella, True Names.
The Hugo is not given by the publishers. It's a popularity contest, much like the/. polls (and about as scientific).
And if you don't like the results, ask yourself this: why didn't I register and vote?
Re:check other categories (short fiction, etc.)
on
Harry Potter Wins Hugo
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Ignoring the fact that several[1] of those novels barely qualify as SF (let alone "hard" SF), you're ignoring the other categories of Hugo, i.e. novella, short story, etc.
Some counterexamples:
1997 best novella: Blood of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin
1995 best original artwork: Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud
1991 best short story: Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson
1991 best dramatic presentation: Edward Scissorhands
1982 best novelette: Unicorn Variation by Roger Zelazny
1971 best novella: Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
1958 best short story: Or All the Seas with Oysters by Avram Davidson
And these are just a sampling of winners that I know to be fantasy. There are many more I suspect may be as well. True, there is a strong tendency to choose SF over fantasy for the Hugos, but it's never been a rule.
[1] To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, Hyperion, The Snow Queen, Dreamsnake, To Your Scattered Bodies Go and Lord of Light are all on the border between SF and Fantasy, and several other entries are clearly soft SF. Note that Larry Niven argues that all time travel tales are fantasy.
Is freedom. Commercial or non-commercial is irrelevent to the goal of providing freedom. If we wanted Debian to not be commercialized, then we'd say so, rather than going out of our way to make sure that you have the freedom to commercialize it if you want.
And, by the way, this is merely the latest in a list of commercial Debian-based systems. Not to mention all the individuals (like me) who have sold Debian-based solutions to people without bothering to make a separate system. I think your misplaced protests are a little late, as well as being way off-base.
/* ok, finished with the current line, so we */
linecounter++;
The best comments describe why, not what. And if you leave the code as part of the sentence, then it becomes far more jarring when the code is changed, adding an additional incentive to keep the comments up-to-date.
Well, lets see -- this is the first major xf86-4 binary package created *by* users *for* users[*], rather than being created by employees to meet a marketing checklist. This is, afaik, the first to provide a smooth upgrade path, rather than forcing you to do a system reinstall like RH usually does. (I know there were some ugly issues with upgrades, esp. around app-default files.)
But bottom line, it's a big deal because now you can use Xf86-4 without giving up all the advantages of Debian!;-)
cheers
[*] I felt like a part of the Debian project long before I ever joined officially. I never came *close* to feeling like a part of RH!:-)
The requirement to distribute modifications as separate patches is incompatible with the GPL. Troll, as I understand, added this because they were afraid of forking.
"What sort of header files did Netscape use when compiling the static version of Communicator?"
It doesn't matter, the license for libc allows use in proprietary systems, as long as you build them with GCC.
"One could argue that *any* GPLed X11 client is illegal"
The X11 license is compatible with the GPL (just as the draft of the QPL that Joseph Carter helped produce was). It allows sublicensing, and doesn't add any restrictions that aren't in the GPL.
The advice given in the GPL is to include a statement that your software can be redistributed under the terms of the GPL "either version 2 of the license, or (at your option) any later version."
Most people who publish GPL'd software have included this phrase, and therefore have implicitely given permission to RMS to update their licenses.
"It seems to me that Debian advocates believe that the reason for KDE's non-inclusion is a problem with the QPL"
Not at all -- the QPL is certainly a free license. The problem is is trying to mix it with the GPL when the two licenses are incompatible.
And it has nothing to do with morality: Netscape is certainly non-free, but you'll find it on Debian's archive site, along with lots of other non-free software. Because, unlike KDE, it's not actually illegal to distribute Netscape or those others.
I assume you mean make the GPL more compatible with the QPL. That idea has been discussed before, and might not be impossible. But unless and until it does happen (which is up to RMS), KDE remains illegal to redistribute.
It's certainly a not-unreasonable idea, IMO. The QPL is a free license, and Qt is part of Debian/main.
There still seems to be a lot of misunderstanding here.
a) Debian provides a lot of non-free software (e.g. Netscape). KDE is not excluded because it's non-free. It's excluded because, as far as we can tell, the combination of licenses results in a contradiction that forbids us (or anyone) from distributing KDE.
b) We don't hate KDE. Many people in Debian have tried very hard to get this situation resolved, because we want to distribute KDE. I, personally, would be ecstatic if the situation were solved.
c) This is not about politics or philosophy. We are not willing to break the law, which seems to be what distributing KDE entails at this point. Unlike commercial distributors, we are an all-volunteer group, and can't afford to risk the chance of a lawsuit.
The recent $3000 offer to KDE to fix their license problems went unclaimed. See this article on www.teamlinux.de for more on this.
Since Corel is based on Debian, and supports Debian's amazing tools, like apt, it should be easy enough to configure the system to grab Gnome off of Debian's own servers. Should be about as painless as the Corel install.
And believe you me, you will like the result better than you like Red Hat!! (Warning, as a member of the Debian project, I may be accused of some minor bias here...:-)
> And then again, the only Marvel character that got a decent film was Blade.
Actually, the Dr. Strange movie was pretty good. I'd never seen it until recently, when it was on TV and the TV reviewer gave it three stars (out of a possible four), which suprised me, but when I watched it, I had to agree.
I suspect that the main reason that nobody ever saw the Dr. Strange movie is that all the attention went to another movie released the same year -- a little number you might have heard of called Star Wars.:)
But a Sam Raimi Spiderman certainly has the potential to be the best Marvel-character-based movie yet!
Unless you're foolish enough to be using a proprietary OS, in which case you had no guarantees of privacy to start with. IMO, so-called "privacy advocates" who complain about the chip id simply lack any clue.
That said, my first AMD was also a 386/40, and I've never looked back. Is Intel still in business?:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Fans of Vinge (or the merely curious) may be interested to know that he will be the Pro Guest of Honor at ConJosé, the 60th annual World Science Fiction Convention, to be held this August (Aug 29 - Sep 2) in San José, CA, USA.
Memberships are a bit pricey at this point ($180 US), but include the right to nominate and vote for the Hugo awards (for those who were upset over Harry Potter's Hugo last year, this is your chance to help prevent a similar occurance this year).
Maybe I'll see some of you there. Cheers.
The GPL is very different legally. It conditionally grants rights which you would not otherwise have under normal copyright laws. If you decide not to agree to its terms, then you are merely bound by normal copyright law, which is even more restrictive. And, for this reason, you are allowed to refuse to agree to the GPL. (Try that with a normal EULA!)
The GPL is not an END USER licence, because it has no implications for the end user. It only affects those who modify or distribute the software (and its restrictions only affect those who distribute it).
Since the alternative was to foot the bill for the ongoing incompetence at the DOI, damn right this doesn't bother me!
And you're right, it didn't have to happen, and I'm pissed off that it did happen. But I'm not pissed at the judge who had to deal with lying, incompetent bureaucrats. I'm pissed at the lying, incompetent bureaucrats who allowed the situation to escalate to this point.
It sounds to me like the potential for loss if those systems HADN'T been shut down COMPLETELY dwarfs any loss that might come from shutting them down so abruptly.
Better to shut down too much and risk millions than to leave too much open and risk billions.
If FreeBSD is something you should consider when considering linux distros, doesn't that make it a linux distro? In some contexts, I think the answer to this question is yes. But otherwise your comment is off-topic (and probably a troll), so I assume you must also claim that the answer is yes? -evil grin-
:p ;)
Anyway, I prefer OpenBSD for security and Debian for more general use. I know a number of people who bounce back and forth between Debian and FreeBSD, and who consider them to be extremely close in quality (as do I). In other words, I am a counterexample - and I know several others - to your claim "you'll never go back to Linux again."
Furthermore, while I personally think that FreeBSD is (with Debian and OpenBSD) one of the three best choices, I suspect that people who prefer Mandrake over Debian are unlikely to prefer FreeBSD. Maybe Darwin or BeOS, but probably not FreeBSD.
Plan9 rules, OK?
Not just "virii". Beat up on those people use "boxen" or "unices", when every Right-Thinking Red Blooded English speaking droid knows that the proper plurals are "boxes" and "unixes". People who deliberately (or not) misuse language with humorous intent should be shot! (Or subjected to folk music, if that's not too cruel and inhumane.) Humor is evil, and all humorists are probably terrorists.
And those people who use "on the gripping hand." Gaah! Aren't they aware that humans only have two hands? Those bastards! Take away their credit cards and force them to wear white after Labor Day!
While there are plenty of books that easily fit into one or the other category, there are also plenty of books that are almost impossible to distinguish. For example, Zelazny's Lord of Light , and Creatures of Light and Darkness. The former is usually called SF and the latter fantasy, but it's a fine distinction in either case, and the two books are more similar to each other than to much of anything else. Or there's Gene Wolfe's Torturer series -- the first won a World Fantasy Award, but the second made it clear that the series really was SF, and won a Nebula.
Steven Brust's Jhereg series is another where the jury is still out. It seems to be fantasy (although written in a more hard-boiled style than most fantasy), but there are hints here and there that it may turn out to be SF after all. After nine or ten books, it's still not clear. Other examples abound, as many authors seem to enjoy genre-bending.
And finally, as many other people have pointed out, the Hugo is not a science-fiction-only award. It is, and always has been, for science fiction and fantasy, and has been awarded to fantasy stories as far back as 1958.
The Hugo is for SF or fantasy. Grisham doesn't write in either genre, and therefore doesn't qualify.
> but I had always gotten the impression that Hugos were for hard Sci-Fi...am i wrong?
Yes, you are wrong.
The previous winners for best novel are all (arguably) science fiction, but fantasy stories have won Hugos as far back as 1958.
Generally, the 'hard' in 'hard SF' refers to the science, not the fiction. Neuromancer, albeit a wonderfully written novel, has little or no science backing it. Note that Gibson had barely even seen a computer when he wrote the book. He got away with handwaving and plausible-sounding nonsense because he's a good writer.
For a much more hard take on some of the same themes, try Vernor Vinge's excellent novella, True Names.
The Hugo is not given by the publishers. It's a popularity contest, much like the /. polls (and about as scientific).
And if you don't like the results, ask yourself this: why didn't I register and vote?
Ignoring the fact that several[1] of those novels barely qualify as SF (let alone "hard" SF), you're ignoring the other categories of Hugo, i.e. novella, short story, etc.
Some counterexamples:
1997 best novella: Blood of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin
1995 best original artwork: Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud
1991 best short story: Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson
1991 best dramatic presentation: Edward Scissorhands
1982 best novelette: Unicorn Variation by Roger Zelazny
1971 best novella: Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
1958 best short story: Or All the Seas with Oysters by Avram Davidson
And these are just a sampling of winners that I know to be fantasy. There are many more I suspect may be as well. True, there is a strong tendency to choose SF over fantasy for the Hugos, but it's never been a rule.
[1] To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, Hyperion, The Snow Queen, Dreamsnake, To Your Scattered Bodies Go and Lord of Light are all on the border between SF and Fantasy, and several other entries are clearly soft SF. Note that Larry Niven argues that all time travel tales are fantasy.
You're assuming that the machine which runs the client isn't firewalled and blocked off.
Is freedom. Commercial or non-commercial is irrelevent to the goal of providing freedom. If we wanted Debian to not be commercialized, then we'd say so, rather than going out of our way to make sure that you have the freedom to commercialize it if you want.
And, by the way, this is merely the latest in a list of commercial Debian-based systems. Not to mention all the individuals (like me) who have sold Debian-based solutions to people without bothering to make a separate system. I think your misplaced protests are a little late, as well as being way off-base.
cheers
Better yet, make the comments flow with the code:
/* ok, finished with the current line, so we */
linecounter++;
The best comments describe why, not what. And if you leave the code as part of the sentence, then it becomes far more jarring when the code is changed, adding an additional incentive to keep the comments up-to-date.
Well, lets see -- this is the first major xf86-4 binary package created *by* users *for* users[*], rather than being created by employees to meet a marketing checklist. This is, afaik, the first to provide a smooth upgrade path, rather than forcing you to do a system reinstall like RH usually does. (I know there were some ugly issues with upgrades, esp. around app-default files.)
;-)
:-)
But bottom line, it's a big deal because now you can use Xf86-4 without giving up all the advantages of Debian!
cheers
[*] I felt like a part of the Debian project long before I ever joined officially. I never came *close* to feeling like a part of RH!
The requirement to distribute modifications as separate patches is incompatible with the GPL. Troll, as I understand, added this because they were afraid of forking.
"What sort of header files did Netscape use when compiling the static version of Communicator?"
It doesn't matter, the license for libc allows use in proprietary systems, as long as you build them with GCC.
"One could argue that *any* GPLed X11 client is illegal"
The X11 license is compatible with the GPL (just as the draft of the QPL that Joseph Carter helped produce was). It allows sublicensing, and doesn't add any restrictions that aren't in the GPL.
The advice given in the GPL is to include a statement that your software can be redistributed under the terms of the GPL "either version 2 of the license, or (at your option) any later version."
Most people who publish GPL'd software have included this phrase, and therefore have implicitely given permission to RMS to update their licenses.
"It seems to me that Debian advocates believe that the reason for KDE's non-inclusion is a problem with the QPL"
Not at all -- the QPL is certainly a free license. The problem is is trying to mix it with the GPL when the two licenses are incompatible.
And it has nothing to do with morality: Netscape is certainly non-free, but you'll find it on Debian's archive site, along with lots of other non-free software. Because, unlike KDE, it's not actually illegal to distribute Netscape or those others.
I assume you mean make the GPL more compatible with the QPL. That idea has been discussed before, and might not be impossible. But unless and until it does happen (which is up to RMS), KDE remains illegal to redistribute.
It's certainly a not-unreasonable idea, IMO. The QPL is a free license, and Qt is part of Debian/main.
There still seems to be a lot of misunderstanding here.
a) Debian provides a lot of non-free software (e.g. Netscape). KDE is not excluded because it's non-free. It's excluded because, as far as we can tell, the combination of licenses results in a contradiction that forbids us (or anyone) from distributing KDE.
b) We don't hate KDE. Many people in Debian have tried very hard to get this situation resolved, because we want to distribute KDE. I, personally, would be ecstatic if the situation were solved.
c) This is not about politics or philosophy. We are not willing to break the law, which seems to be what distributing KDE entails at this point. Unlike commercial distributors, we are an all-volunteer group, and can't afford to risk the chance of a lawsuit.
The recent $3000 offer to KDE to fix their license problems went unclaimed. See this article on www.teamlinux.de for more on this.
And believe you me, you will like the result better than you like Red Hat!! (Warning, as a member of the Debian project, I may be accused of some minor bias here...:-)
> And then again, the only Marvel character that got a decent film was Blade.
:)
Actually, the Dr. Strange movie was pretty good. I'd never seen it until recently, when it was on TV and the TV reviewer gave it three stars (out of a possible four), which suprised me, but when I watched it, I had to agree.
I suspect that the main reason that nobody ever saw the Dr. Strange movie is that all the attention went to another movie released the same year -- a little number you might have heard of called Star Wars.
But a Sam Raimi Spiderman certainly has the potential to be the best Marvel-character-based movie yet!
Unless you're foolish enough to be using a proprietary OS, in which case you had no guarantees of privacy to start with. IMO, so-called "privacy advocates" who complain about the chip id simply lack any clue.
:-)
That said, my first AMD was also a 386/40, and I've never looked back. Is Intel still in business?