For some very very very very very loose definition of "Linux", FreeBSD *is* Linux! No, really. I saw an ad once for a vendor that was selling Linux distributions, and there was FreeBSD on the list of Linux distributions....
Heck, who am I to tell 'em different? I used to refer to Abiword as "my version of Word", as in, "My version of Word seems to have problems with your file, could you try resending as RTF?" Nobody ever questioned me (which just shows how overrated the notion of Word as a "standard" is).:)
Read the actual copyright notice on your CDs; most will explicitly prohibit even loaning the physical disc to anyone else.
Nope. Not only does that make no sense under the applicible laws, but I just spot-checked several, and none of them say that. Most just say, "unauthorized duplication is prohibited," while a few go on to mention that public performance, broadcast and rental or hire are also forbidden. None of them say that loans are forbidden.
(Actually, most of my CDs are legally redistributable concert recordings from bands that allow such things (mainly, in my case, Hot Tuna, the Radiators, Gov't Mule, They Might Be Giants, the Butthole Surfers and the Flaming Lips) as found at places like the Internet Archive, but I checked my more mainstream CDs, and none had the statement you claim.)
When the VCR first came on the market, most uses were infringing. Prerecorded tapes typically cost around $100, and there weren't any rental outlets. When the MPAA failed to get the technology banned, they did the smart thing, and adapted to it, and now it's a huge source of revenue for them, and most uses of the VCR are not infringing (although there's surely plenty of copyright infringement still occurring). What lesson can we learn from this? Well, if you're the RIAA, apparently none!
The solution is simple: you want Windows? The price will come out of your paycheck. You want a Windows app? Same thing. You have a problem with your Windows system? Did it crash again? Got a virus? Fix it yourself, or have the cost of fixing it by the IT dept. deducted from your paycheck. (I'm sure IT would love to be able to show some actual revenues for a change!):)
That's basically the stance a lot of semi-enlightened companies take WRT to Linux. (We provide Windows - if you want to run something else, you're on your own. It's your job to make sure you can do your job.) I'd really like to see that stance taken towards Windows for a change.
Yeah, I know, that's the part that puzzles me. They not only invented Unix, they invented its successor, and they don't use any of it? It's just sad.
Realistically speaking, though, Plan9 is pretty far behind when it comes to drivers. Or it was last time I looked. Still a pretty interesting system, though.
Prove to me that CD installations outnumber downloaded-but-not-installed.
What, in my house? I assure you I can easily prove that's true in my house. If you mean in general, then, no I can't prove it, nor did I mean to assert it (although I can see why you misinterpreted my post, and I apologize for the ambiguity).
there is only the vaguest of relations between downloads and installs, and nobody knows in which direction it's skewed.
Exactly my point. Original poster seemed to be assuming it could only be skewed in one direction. That assumption is wrong.
Download stats are utterly meaningless, and adding extra unknowns doesn't give you any more data.
Actually, in this case, the extra unknowns are important, because it means the data could be skewed in either direction. Without the information that installs can come from other sources, the number of downloads *could* be taken as an upper bound on the number of possible installs. That argument is the one I was trying (quite successfully, I think) to refute.
Sorry to confuse you - I do indeed agree with all you said.
Its not that further uncertainty makes the statistics more reliable - it's that the additional uncertainty undermines the claim that the numbers are "inflated" (see subject line). Indeed, in this house, we have one copy installed from the Debian repository, one copy installed from a Knoppix CD, one that's been installed from The Open CD, and possibly one from the FreeBSD archives (I'm not in charge of that machine). Which means that the numbers collected from the activity of this house are most definitely NOT inflated! Quite the opposite, in fact.
"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
Note that it doesn't say ANYTHING about using the software there! The GPL only affects your rights to modify or distribute the work. "YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ACCEPT THIS LICENSE!" How much more plain can it be?
Who said this bill has anything to do with *illegal* distribution? Knoppix includes several media files that come under free licenses (which makes them commercial, and therefore subject to this law, unlike, say, Grateful Dead concert recordings, which are also freely distributable, but only non-commercially). In one fell swoop, the distribution of Knoppix in California would seem to have been made illegal (unless you include your email address with each copy, which is clearly an unreasonable burden).
The last company SCO/Caldera sued was MS, and in that case, they were able to find evidence of fraud, extortion and out-and-out theft pretty much everywhere they looked. MS is a company with no morals or ethics. So, I think SCO probably figured that IBM was cut from the same cloth, and it pretty much didn't matter what they said, because soon enough they'd have all sorts of evidence of all of IBM's wrongdoings. The problem is that IBM isn't the same kind of company, so now they're stuck.
The jade package in Debian is "James Clark's DSSSL Engine", and it's been there since 1997, and has copyright dates going back to 1994, so I think James has precedence over both you and this company.
I doubt if James would mind that your quite different project has the same name, but he might have some interest in an upstart company threatening people who use the name, and might be willing to work with you on dealing with their threats. His home page is at http://www.jclark.com/ (and the jade project page is at http://www.jclark.com/jade/).
You're asking a reasonable question, but the flip side to your question is, how do you figure out when a company is changing for the better? And the answer is, you ask around. There's enough people out there that either a) have throwaway systems that they're happy to install test software on, or b) run secure enough systems that they're confident they can handle any attempt Real might make to "take over" the system. (As a Debian user and Debian developer, I'm in the latter camp.)
I've been Real-free for years, but when I saw a report on the Theora website that Realplayer was now supporting Ogg Theora, I decided I had to check it out, just to see. Sure enough, they've changed. I didn't (don't) trust Real, but I trust the Ogg folks enough that I was willing to take another look. So now the question becomes, who will you trust to tell you that they (Real) have made major positive changes?
According to TFA, The Internet Archive has had over a million users download Grateful Dead concerts alone. And while the Dead are their most popular download, they have over 14,000 concerts by over 600 other bands. They also mention Furthurnet in TFA, and while they don't specify the number of users, it's also heavily GD oriented, and has a much wider selection of bands (the Archive lacks Phish, Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, and They Might Be Giants, just to mention a couple of the more obvious options), so chances are high that there's even more people there.
So there you go, two popular services (by your definition) with 100% legal files. I suspect that bt.etree.org is up there too (and it's also 100% legal).
So much for your premise. Now, as for your argument, that was soundly rejected by the courts in the Betamax case. The percentage of legal use is NOT a factor. What is a factor is there be "substantial" legal use. If there were only 100 people total driving on your road, the 5 non-dealers might not have much of an argument, but if there were 10,000 people driving on your road, 500 non-dealers might well be considered substantial.
And finally, with all those rich drug dealers driving down that road, it's going to be a pretty promising spot to offer services - restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, record stores, etc. Which will make the road more appealing to the general public. And pretty soon, you're down to 80% drug dealers. Then 65%. Then 40%. Then what? That's pretty much what ended up happening with the video recorder. At the time of the lawsuit, the majority of uses probably were infriging. Now, however, while it's still a popular tool for copyright infringement, the majority of uses are probably playing tapes from the local rental store, which is a huge revenue stream for the very people who claimed it was going to bankrupt them.
I may be prejudiced, because I've known Roland since, well, since the day he was born. But on the other hand, I can say that about a lot of people, but none of the others have their names on so much of the software I use daily. In fact, very few people as unknown as Roland have their names on so much of the software I use daily.:)
While RMS has been the very-visible leader and statesman of the FSF and the GNU Project, Roland has quietly been one of their most prolific coders and best project leaders. Very good nomination, IMO.
Not that I object to the nomination of Russ, who's done a lot more than that, but his contributions to a support list for a decidedly NOT open source MTA is hardly a good justification for calling him an unsung hero of open source!
If we were limited to picking just one unsung hero, I'd probably vote for Roland McGrath over Russ, but since nobody said I had to vote for just one, I'll happily give Russ a vote too.:)
"SF should open minds by promoting science and scientific thinking [...] It cannot be done if one talks about magicians."
SF should do all that, but mostly it doesn't (Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything, roughly speaking, is crap). But the point you seem to be missing is that it can be done by talking about magicians! All you need for science is a universe with a consistent, logical, and testable set of rules. They don't have to be the rules of our universe; they just have to be rules that can be inferred with the scientific method, and then you've got a basis for science.
In fact, rigorous scientific fantasy (as opposed to sheer fantasy with SF trappings like Star Wars) has two benefits: it shows that science is a general purpose tool, not just a set of rules we've uncovered about our own universe, and it exposes people to scientific thinking who would ordinarily turn up their noses at science fiction.
That aside, I have to confess that it does bug me a little when a pure fantasy story (e.g. Harry Potter) wins the Hugo. Still, I think it's years too late to change the rules at this point, so I'm just hoping that a science fiction novel will win the World Fantasy Award one of these days[*]!:)
In the mean time, I think the Locus Awards are better awards overall. The Hugo may be better known, but the Hugo voters seem to be a weird and insular crowd. The Locus awards seem to have a much broader base of voters, and best of all, have separate categories for Best SF and Best Fantasy!:)
[*] In fact, the World Fantasy Award in 1981 was given to Gene Wolfe's _Shadow of the Torturer_, which did turn out to be SF, although it wasn't completely clear until its sequels appeared.
It's easy to show that fantasy and SF are distinct if you cherry-pick your examples (LoTR), but can you give us a definition of one genre or the other that can be applied to any arbitrary work to decide whether it fits into one or the other categories? I contend you can't.
My standard example is two Zelazny novels: _Lord of Light_ and _Creatures of Light and Darkness_. Both are tales of wars between gods of ancient pantheons (Hindu in the former, Egyptian in the latter). However, in the first, the "gods" are explained as being psychically gifted humans who have managed to take over a lost colony, and who vigorously suppress all use of technology among the colonists, and reserve it for themselves, so they can appear more godlike to their subjects. Their technology is not particularly advanced (airplanes, lasers, telephones) except for the mind-transfer machine that they use to provide "reincarnation" for themselves and the more favored of their subjects. By contrast, in the latter novel, no attempt is made at all to explain these "gods", but the story is full of standard SF elements - spaceships and interstellar travel, computers, cyborgs, etc. I've seen people argue for hours about whether and how either of these books should be categorized.
Magic, Dragons and Castles? How about Psionics, Dragons and Castles? How about Anne McAffrey's Pern series, where the dragons are actually alien creatures native to the planet, and the humans live in castles because they've lost the technology they used to come to the planet? Scientific Methodology? How about Randall Garrett's stories of Lord D'Arcy, whose research magicians are bound by laws as rigorous and scientific as anything propounded by Newton or Einstein, even though they don't happen to apply in our universe.
Asimov, Lem, Dick, Heinlein, Clarke? Aside from Lem (who I'm not too familiar with) and perhaps Dick (whose stuff was considered so outrageous that some people questioned whether any of it could be called SF), there isn't a writer there who hasn't written both SF and Fantasy, and occasionally, the hard-to-classify story on the boundaries between the genres (e.g. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God).
By the 1950s, it was clear that the writers were going to treat any attempt to define the boundaries between SF and Fantasy as a challenge. You're fighting a battle that was lost half a century ago, and citing as authorities the very people who carried the other side to victory. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic" -- A. Clarke.
Myself, like you, I generally prefer SF, insofar as I can distinguish it, but beyond that, I also prefer the rigorous logic and internal consistency of a Lord D'Arcy fantasy over the psuedo-scientific babble of most Hollywood SF. Anyway, Bujold is primarily a science fiction writer, so I find it hard to complain too much when her fantasy novel wins the Hugo.:)
From my/usr/share/doc/mozilla-browser/copyright file:
"Some files in this source package are under the Netscape Public License. Others, under the Mozilla Public license, and just to confuse you even more, some are dual licensed MPL/GPL."
Also see the Mozilla Relicensing FAQ. The ulimate goal is to have all of the code (except some external libraries with permissive licenses, like libjpeg or libpng) to be triple-licensed under the MPL, GPL and LGPL.
(A) distributing any dissemination technology capable of substantial noninfringing uses knowing that it can be used for infringing purposes, so long as that technology is not designed to be used for infringing purposes;
So BitTorrent is still okay, although the other P2P clients are in a little more shady of a situation.
Hmm, that's the most problematic clause of the draft law to me. "[D]esigned to be used for infringing purposes" is pretty vague. And if there's anything we should have learned from the DMCA mess, it's that if a law can be misinterpreted, it will.
Is Bittorrent really in the clear? Wouldn't you need to subpoena the designers and seize all their design notes and working drafts to determine whether they actually had infringing purposes in mind? I mean, it's easy to say you didn't, but can you prove you didn't in a court of law? Where does the burden of proof lie?
The problem the proponents of this bill face is that if they allow truly neutral technology, then all the existing networks will suddenly claim to be neutral (and will probably be able to make a pretty good case of it), while if they disallow truly neutral technology, they're going to be butting heads with all the big tech companies, who are resolutely neutral.
The danger I see is the copyright conglomerates cherry-picking their early cases to set unfortunate precedents, and then using those to go after selected neutrals, like BT (or even FTP). So, first they go after, say, Kazaam (or whatever it's called), and it's obvious to a jury that it's mostly used for infringement, so the jury decides they're guilty. Now they've got a precedent: most use is infringing is admissible as evidence that the technology was designed to be used for infringing, and voila, they can sue the authors of BT.
Don't laugh, this is basically the strategy they used with DeCSS. First they went after 2600, clearly a bunch of "evil hackers", and won, essentially, because 2600 was "clearly" a bunch of "evil hackers". Then, armed with the ridiculous precedent from that case, they were able to shut down a bunch of other DeCSS distributors.
What this law needs is more clarity. Unfortunately, more clarity would defeat the entire purpose of the drafters of this law, so they'll fight tooth-and-nail to avoid adding any more clarity. They want it to be vague and weasel-worded; they are depending on it being vague and weasel-worded.
Yes, IBM could have bought out SCO the day the lawsuit was started, and, in fact, they would have spent less to buy the company at that point than they've probably spent on legal fees in the case so far. But it's more than just the precedent involved here. SCO is claiming that IBM violated their contracts, and stole SCO's "intellectual property". They've threatened IBM's reputation and smeared their good name.
It may shock some of the cynics here, who think that businesses only ever care about maximizing the profit on each nickel that flies by, but IBM actually cares about their reputation. They care about it for good, solid business reasons, but they still care. They know something that MS has yet to learn - if your customers (and partners) feel they can trust you, they're going to be a lot more willing to do a lot more business with you. SCO has accused IBM of being untrustworthy, and that's not something IBM will take lying down.
This kind of thinking has got to be completely alien to Darl and Ralph, who are probably still in shock that their "buy me, buy me!" scheme didn't work. They may well have studied the odds, and found that IBM only fights a certain percentage of nuisance lawsuits (chosen at random), and figured their chances were pretty good. I don't think they realized that this was a case that IBM would never roll over for, because that kind of thinking (ethical) is not something they're equipped for.
It may not be on the top 100 list, but my sister-in-law was raised by Jehovah's Witnesses, and she was definitely forbidden to read Narnia. (She wasn't forbidden to read Harry Potter, but that's only because it didn't exist yet.) So, at least some Christaholics are consistent about these things.
BTW, my sister-in-law would like me to pass along a magic word: "disfellowshipped". She says this word will make the aforementioned brand of god-peddlers flee in horror and not return. I haven't tested it personally, but it's gotta be worth a shot!:)
I don't have a problem with Xbox. MS makes perfectly good toys. The problem is when they try to market their toys as general-purpose desktop systems, or worse yet, as enterprise-ready server systems, that's when I have a problem with them!
If MS would just stick to competing with Fisher-Price and Mattel, I'd never say a word against 'em!:)
No, even RMS agrees that the kernel is just called Linux. If you say, "the Linux kernel", or use the term "Linux" to refer specifically to the kernel, you won't hear a word of complaint from him, because that is the correct nomenclature.
Slashdot Mirror
For some very very very very very loose definition of "Linux", FreeBSD *is* Linux! No, really. I saw an ad once for a vendor that was selling Linux distributions, and there was FreeBSD on the list of Linux distributions....
:)
Heck, who am I to tell 'em different? I used to refer to Abiword as "my version of Word", as in, "My version of Word seems to have problems with your file, could you try resending as RTF?" Nobody ever questioned me (which just shows how overrated the notion of Word as a "standard" is).
Read the actual copyright notice on your CDs; most will explicitly prohibit even loaning the physical disc to anyone else.
Nope. Not only does that make no sense under the applicible laws, but I just spot-checked several, and none of them say that. Most just say, "unauthorized duplication is prohibited," while a few go on to mention that public performance, broadcast and rental or hire are also forbidden. None of them say that loans are forbidden.
(Actually, most of my CDs are legally redistributable concert recordings from bands that allow such things (mainly, in my case, Hot Tuna, the Radiators, Gov't Mule, They Might Be Giants, the Butthole Surfers and the Flaming Lips) as found at places like the Internet Archive, but I checked my more mainstream CDs, and none had the statement you claim.)
When the VCR first came on the market, most uses were infringing. Prerecorded tapes typically cost around $100, and there weren't any rental outlets. When the MPAA failed to get the technology banned, they did the smart thing, and adapted to it, and now it's a huge source of revenue for them, and most uses of the VCR are not infringing (although there's surely plenty of copyright infringement still occurring). What lesson can we learn from this? Well, if you're the RIAA, apparently none!
The solution is simple: you want Windows? The price will come out of your paycheck. You want a Windows app? Same thing. You have a problem with your Windows system? Did it crash again? Got a virus? Fix it yourself, or have the cost of fixing it by the IT dept. deducted from your paycheck. (I'm sure IT would love to be able to show some actual revenues for a change!) :)
That's basically the stance a lot of semi-enlightened companies take WRT to Linux. (We provide Windows - if you want to run something else, you're on your own. It's your job to make sure you can do your job.) I'd really like to see that stance taken towards Windows for a change.
Yeah, I know, that's the part that puzzles me. They not only invented Unix, they invented its successor, and they don't use any of it? It's just sad.
Realistically speaking, though, Plan9 is pretty far behind when it comes to drivers. Or it was last time I looked. Still a pretty interesting system, though.
Prove to me that CD installations outnumber downloaded-but-not-installed.
What, in my house? I assure you I can easily prove that's true in my house. If you mean in general, then, no I can't prove it, nor did I mean to assert it (although I can see why you misinterpreted my post, and I apologize for the ambiguity).
there is only the vaguest of relations between downloads and installs, and nobody knows in which direction it's skewed.
Exactly my point. Original poster seemed to be assuming it could only be skewed in one direction. That assumption is wrong.
Download stats are utterly meaningless, and adding extra unknowns doesn't give you any more data.
Actually, in this case, the extra unknowns are important, because it means the data could be skewed in either direction. Without the information that installs can come from other sources, the number of downloads *could* be taken as an upper bound on the number of possible installs. That argument is the one I was trying (quite successfully, I think) to refute.
Sorry to confuse you - I do indeed agree with all you said.
cheers
Its not that further uncertainty makes the statistics more reliable - it's that the additional uncertainty undermines the claim that the numbers are "inflated" (see subject line). Indeed, in this house, we have one copy installed from the Debian repository, one copy installed from a Knoppix CD, one that's been installed from The Open CD, and possibly one from the FreeBSD archives (I'm not in charge of that machine). Which means that the numbers collected from the activity of this house are most definitely NOT inflated! Quite the opposite, in fact.
"5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License."
Note that it doesn't say ANYTHING about using the software there! The GPL only affects your rights to modify or distribute the work. "YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ACCEPT THIS LICENSE!" How much more plain can it be?
Who said this bill has anything to do with *illegal* distribution? Knoppix includes several media files that come under free licenses (which makes them commercial, and therefore subject to this law, unlike, say, Grateful Dead concert recordings, which are also freely distributable, but only non-commercially). In one fell swoop, the distribution of Knoppix in California would seem to have been made illegal (unless you include your email address with each copy, which is clearly an unreasonable burden).
The last company SCO/Caldera sued was MS, and in that case, they were able to find evidence of fraud, extortion and out-and-out theft pretty much everywhere they looked. MS is a company with no morals or ethics. So, I think SCO probably figured that IBM was cut from the same cloth, and it pretty much didn't matter what they said, because soon enough they'd have all sorts of evidence of all of IBM's wrongdoings. The problem is that IBM isn't the same kind of company, so now they're stuck.
The jade package in Debian is "James Clark's DSSSL Engine", and it's been there since 1997, and has copyright dates going back to 1994, so I think James has precedence over both you and this company.
I doubt if James would mind that your quite different project has the same name, but he might have some interest in an upstart company threatening people who use the name, and might be willing to work with you on dealing with their threats. His home page is at http://www.jclark.com/ (and the jade project page is at http://www.jclark.com/jade/).
You're asking a reasonable question, but the flip side to your question is, how do you figure out when a company is changing for the better? And the answer is, you ask around. There's enough people out there that either a) have throwaway systems that they're happy to install test software on, or b) run secure enough systems that they're confident they can handle any attempt Real might make to "take over" the system. (As a Debian user and Debian developer, I'm in the latter camp.)
I've been Real-free for years, but when I saw a report on the Theora website that Realplayer was now supporting Ogg Theora, I decided I had to check it out, just to see. Sure enough, they've changed. I didn't (don't) trust Real, but I trust the Ogg folks enough that I was willing to take another look. So now the question becomes, who will you trust to tell you that they (Real) have made major positive changes?
According to TFA, The Internet Archive has had over a million users download Grateful Dead concerts alone. And while the Dead are their most popular download, they have over 14,000 concerts by over 600 other bands. They also mention Furthurnet in TFA, and while they don't specify the number of users, it's also heavily GD oriented, and has a much wider selection of bands (the Archive lacks Phish, Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, and They Might Be Giants, just to mention a couple of the more obvious options), so chances are high that there's even more people there.
So there you go, two popular services (by your definition) with 100% legal files. I suspect that bt.etree.org is up there too (and it's also 100% legal).
So much for your premise. Now, as for your argument, that was soundly rejected by the courts in the Betamax case. The percentage of legal use is NOT a factor. What is a factor is there be "substantial" legal use. If there were only 100 people total driving on your road, the 5 non-dealers might not have much of an argument, but if there were 10,000 people driving on your road, 500 non-dealers might well be considered substantial.
And finally, with all those rich drug dealers driving down that road, it's going to be a pretty promising spot to offer services - restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, record stores, etc. Which will make the road more appealing to the general public. And pretty soon, you're down to 80% drug dealers. Then 65%. Then 40%. Then what? That's pretty much what ended up happening with the video recorder. At the time of the lawsuit, the majority of uses probably were infriging. Now, however, while it's still a popular tool for copyright infringement, the majority of uses are probably playing tapes from the local rental store, which is a huge revenue stream for the very people who claimed it was going to bankrupt them.
No, what's good is that a bunch of right bastards (the RIAA) are going to be forced to fight for the side of good (challenging the patent).
I may be prejudiced, because I've known Roland since, well, since the day he was born. But on the other hand, I can say that about a lot of people, but none of the others have their names on so much of the software I use daily. In fact, very few people as unknown as Roland have their names on so much of the software I use daily. :)
While RMS has been the very-visible leader and statesman of the FSF and the GNU Project, Roland has quietly been one of their most prolific coders and best project leaders. Very good nomination, IMO.
Not that I object to the nomination of Russ, who's done a lot more than that, but his contributions to a support list for a decidedly NOT open source MTA is hardly a good justification for calling him an unsung hero of open source!
:)
If we were limited to picking just one unsung hero, I'd probably vote for Roland McGrath over Russ, but since nobody said I had to vote for just one, I'll happily give Russ a vote too.
"SF should open minds by promoting science and scientific thinking [...] It cannot be done if one talks about magicians."
:)
:)
SF should do all that, but mostly it doesn't (Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything, roughly speaking, is crap). But the point you seem to be missing is that it can be done by talking about magicians! All you need for science is a universe with a consistent, logical, and testable set of rules. They don't have to be the rules of our universe; they just have to be rules that can be inferred with the scientific method, and then you've got a basis for science.
In fact, rigorous scientific fantasy (as opposed to sheer fantasy with SF trappings like Star Wars) has two benefits: it shows that science is a general purpose tool, not just a set of rules we've uncovered about our own universe, and it exposes people to scientific thinking who would ordinarily turn up their noses at science fiction.
That aside, I have to confess that it does bug me a little when a pure fantasy story (e.g. Harry Potter) wins the Hugo. Still, I think it's years too late to change the rules at this point, so I'm just hoping that a science fiction novel will win the World Fantasy Award one of these days[*]!
In the mean time, I think the Locus Awards are better awards overall. The Hugo may be better known, but the Hugo voters seem to be a weird and insular crowd. The Locus awards seem to have a much broader base of voters, and best of all, have separate categories for Best SF and Best Fantasy!
[*] In fact, the World Fantasy Award in 1981 was given to Gene Wolfe's _Shadow of the Torturer_, which did turn out to be SF, although it wasn't completely clear until its sequels appeared.
It's easy to show that fantasy and SF are distinct if you cherry-pick your examples (LoTR), but can you give us a definition of one genre or the other that can be applied to any arbitrary work to decide whether it fits into one or the other categories? I contend you can't.
:)
My standard example is two Zelazny novels: _Lord of Light_ and _Creatures of Light and Darkness_. Both are tales of wars between gods of ancient pantheons (Hindu in the former, Egyptian in the latter). However, in the first, the "gods" are explained as being psychically gifted humans who have managed to take over a lost colony, and who vigorously suppress all use of technology among the colonists, and reserve it for themselves, so they can appear more godlike to their subjects. Their technology is not particularly advanced (airplanes, lasers, telephones) except for the mind-transfer machine that they use to provide "reincarnation" for themselves and the more favored of their subjects. By contrast, in the latter novel, no attempt is made at all to explain these "gods", but the story is full of standard SF elements - spaceships and interstellar travel, computers, cyborgs, etc. I've seen people argue for hours about whether and how either of these books should be categorized.
Magic, Dragons and Castles? How about Psionics, Dragons and Castles? How about Anne McAffrey's Pern series, where the dragons are actually alien creatures native to the planet, and the humans live in castles because they've lost the technology they used to come to the planet? Scientific Methodology? How about Randall Garrett's stories of Lord D'Arcy, whose research magicians are bound by laws as rigorous and scientific as anything propounded by Newton or Einstein, even though they don't happen to apply in our universe.
Asimov, Lem, Dick, Heinlein, Clarke? Aside from Lem (who I'm not too familiar with) and perhaps Dick (whose stuff was considered so outrageous that some people questioned whether any of it could be called SF), there isn't a writer there who hasn't written both SF and Fantasy, and occasionally, the hard-to-classify story on the boundaries between the genres (e.g. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God).
By the 1950s, it was clear that the writers were going to treat any attempt to define the boundaries between SF and Fantasy as a challenge. You're fighting a battle that was lost half a century ago, and citing as authorities the very people who carried the other side to victory. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic" -- A. Clarke.
Myself, like you, I generally prefer SF, insofar as I can distinguish it, but beyond that, I also prefer the rigorous logic and internal consistency of a Lord D'Arcy fantasy over the psuedo-scientific babble of most Hollywood SF. Anyway, Bujold is primarily a science fiction writer, so I find it hard to complain too much when her fantasy novel wins the Hugo.
From my /usr/share/doc/mozilla-browser/copyright file:
"Some files in this source package are under the Netscape Public License. Others, under the Mozilla Public license, and just to confuse you even more, some are dual licensed MPL/GPL."
Also see the Mozilla Relicensing FAQ. The ulimate goal is to have all of the code (except some external libraries with permissive licenses, like libjpeg or libpng) to be triple-licensed under the MPL, GPL and LGPL.
Multiplying by 10 would yield 0.20 ("zero point twenty")
:p
Adding 1.8 would yield 1.10 ("one point ten")
Version numbers aren't decimals, y'know.
(A) distributing any dissemination technology capable of substantial noninfringing uses knowing that it can be used for infringing purposes, so long as that technology is not designed to be used for infringing purposes;
So BitTorrent is still okay, although the other P2P clients are in a little more shady of a situation.
Hmm, that's the most problematic clause of the draft law to me. "[D]esigned to be used for infringing purposes" is pretty vague. And if there's anything we should have learned from the DMCA mess, it's that if a law can be misinterpreted, it will.
Is Bittorrent really in the clear? Wouldn't you need to subpoena the designers and seize all their design notes and working drafts to determine whether they actually had infringing purposes in mind? I mean, it's easy to say you didn't, but can you prove you didn't in a court of law? Where does the burden of proof lie?
The problem the proponents of this bill face is that if they allow truly neutral technology, then all the existing networks will suddenly claim to be neutral (and will probably be able to make a pretty good case of it), while if they disallow truly neutral technology, they're going to be butting heads with all the big tech companies, who are resolutely neutral.
The danger I see is the copyright conglomerates cherry-picking their early cases to set unfortunate precedents, and then using those to go after selected neutrals, like BT (or even FTP). So, first they go after, say, Kazaam (or whatever it's called), and it's obvious to a jury that it's mostly used for infringement, so the jury decides they're guilty. Now they've got a precedent: most use is infringing is admissible as evidence that the technology was designed to be used for infringing, and voila, they can sue the authors of BT.
Don't laugh, this is basically the strategy they used with DeCSS. First they went after 2600, clearly a bunch of "evil hackers", and won, essentially, because 2600 was "clearly" a bunch of "evil hackers". Then, armed with the ridiculous precedent from that case, they were able to shut down a bunch of other DeCSS distributors.
What this law needs is more clarity. Unfortunately, more clarity would defeat the entire purpose of the drafters of this law, so they'll fight tooth-and-nail to avoid adding any more clarity. They want it to be vague and weasel-worded; they are depending on it being vague and weasel-worded.
Yes, IBM could have bought out SCO the day the lawsuit was started, and, in fact, they would have spent less to buy the company at that point than they've probably spent on legal fees in the case so far. But it's more than just the precedent involved here. SCO is claiming that IBM violated their contracts, and stole SCO's "intellectual property". They've threatened IBM's reputation and smeared their good name.
It may shock some of the cynics here, who think that businesses only ever care about maximizing the profit on each nickel that flies by, but IBM actually cares about their reputation. They care about it for good, solid business reasons, but they still care. They know something that MS has yet to learn - if your customers (and partners) feel they can trust you, they're going to be a lot more willing to do a lot more business with you. SCO has accused IBM of being untrustworthy, and that's not something IBM will take lying down.
This kind of thinking has got to be completely alien to Darl and Ralph, who are probably still in shock that their "buy me, buy me!" scheme didn't work. They may well have studied the odds, and found that IBM only fights a certain percentage of nuisance lawsuits (chosen at random), and figured their chances were pretty good. I don't think they realized that this was a case that IBM would never roll over for, because that kind of thinking (ethical) is not something they're equipped for.
It may not be on the top 100 list, but my sister-in-law was raised by Jehovah's Witnesses, and she was definitely forbidden to read Narnia. (She wasn't forbidden to read Harry Potter, but that's only because it didn't exist yet.) So, at least some Christaholics are consistent about these things.
:)
BTW, my sister-in-law would like me to pass along a magic word: "disfellowshipped". She says this word will make the aforementioned brand of god-peddlers flee in horror and not return. I haven't tested it personally, but it's gotta be worth a shot!
I don't have a problem with Xbox. MS makes perfectly good toys. The problem is when they try to market their toys as general-purpose desktop systems, or worse yet, as enterprise-ready server systems, that's when I have a problem with them!
:)
If MS would just stick to competing with Fisher-Price and Mattel, I'd never say a word against 'em!
Here's a Sci-Fi Channel review of a book of Star Trek Origami. My brother owns this book (he's an origami geek); it's definitely cool.
No, even RMS agrees that the kernel is just called Linux. If you say, "the Linux kernel", or use the term "Linux" to refer specifically to the kernel, you won't hear a word of complaint from him, because that is the correct nomenclature.