Wah... What the hell? The author of some code contacts the OpenBSD to communicate that copyright was infringed upon. The OpenBSD guys explode in a series of "zealot" name calling. I guess I can see some sense in privately contacting the OpenBSD dev. But on the other hand, it's in the OpenBSD development tree. Probably it's a good idea to tell people that it shouldn't be there.
Reading the initial email, I can't find any hint of malice. Just expressing the facts and offering to provide a license for the code. If this mailing list blows up because of something so unbelievably trivial, it doesn't seem like a fun place to hang out in. It's just weird.
But something else bothers me about the response too. It seems like the people there are *upset* that the original person informed them of the copyright infringement. I mean, nobody denied it. Everyone seems to agree there was an infringement. It just seems that some of the OpenBSD people think that the Linux people are assholes for choosing to license their code under the GPL... And apparently it's even worse to ask people not to infringe on that license.
That's just bizarre... It kind of makes you wonder who the zealots are... Personally, I'm kind of neutral on the subject. I like the GPL in some instances, I like other licenses in other instances. But, I just can't quite wrap my head around BSD guys (of all people) taking such a strange stance...
I can't run itunes on my computer (maybe it works under Wine? I haven't tried that).
But the more important issue is... I'm currently interested in Japanese bands and they don't seem to want to sell this to me in Canada. I would literally jump at the chance to buy music, DRM free, at $1.20 per song. Shipping the damn CD's into Canada costs me a mint. Luckily I can bundle it with my manga purchases, but I'm still looking at close to $30 for most CDs (each) to get it here.
So until Sony/BMG (the distributor that distributes most of the music I listen to) gets their head out of their ass, there's little I can do:-( Maybe if I pirate more music they will try to sell it to me (fat chance!) But if I continue to buy it the way I am, they will *never* try to sell it to me another way. Man... the record companies suck...
I pretty much agree with what you said (especially about the idea that I should be able to fork names).
On the other hand, I think RMS is right with respect to what he is trying to accomplish. This idea of introducing Free software to people before trying to get them to change operating systems is *exactly* (IMHO) what RMS has been trying to say with his "GNU/Linux" diatribes all these years. It's just that sometimes he isn't the best communicator.
Linux as an kernel is interesting. It's got some really strong points to it. But end users don't (and shouldn't) care about the kernel they are using. They care about their applications. GNU provided a user experience that is important. I've got a good shell, a decent C/C++ compiler, tons of shell utilities, etc, etc. GNU also provided a host of other important applications.
I believe RMS's point was that in order to promote Free software and Free software ideals, one will want to distinguish between the kernel and the user facing utilities. Back in the day, nearly all of a user's interaction with the computer was with GNU. These days that's not true at all. But it's still important (from a Free software evangelical position) to promote the *user experience* of Free software.
One *could* say, "Use Linux because Windows sucks". "Using Linux will reduce your TCO". Or whatever. But that totally misses the point to moving to a Free software system. A better (Free software reason) for using Linux is, "If you use Linux, you aren't bound by some moron's notion of how memory should be swapped. If you notice that your computer is swapping like crazy *even though you still have a gig of RAM free* you can probably convince someone to change it".
But really, I can't say that to a normal person. However if you say, "Imagine if your word processor corrupts your document. Imagine that you could walk up to a programmer friend and they could actually help you get your document back". With Free software, a person with normal programming skills is guaranteed to have everything they need to help themselves or a friend. With non-Free software you are at the not so tender mercy of the author (or the entity that controls the author).
The idea behind GNU was to create a completely Free computing user experience. They were doing it alone because, frankly, everyone else in the world thought they were nuts (and many still do). Now there are many individuals and groups that are devoted to creating a Free software experience. So, personally, I don't think "GNU/Linux" makes much sense any more. I like the idea of calling it "Ubuntu", "Fedora", "Debian", "Gentoo", etc. These are complete Free software experiences aimed at different types of people. These names focus on the correct aspect. Linux is just one small part of the equation. GNU is another small part of the equation. Mozilla is another. Apache is another. X is another. Gnome, KDE, etc, etc, etc... I could go on forever...
Please note that I don't use "open source" in this little diatribe. That's because open source is focused on the *pragmatism* of Free software. It's the "many eyes", "faster development", "better apps" argument of using Free software. These arguments may be true, but ultimately for the user I don't think it's a compelling argument. For instance, I could just say "My closed source product has the best programmers in the world. I spared no expense to get them. Therefore our code is better". It may be untrue, but how can a customer distinguish the difference.
Personally, I think the 4 basic freedoms are the most important thing. If I have an idea to improve my life that requires me to use the software in unanticipated ways, I'm not fucked. If I want to find out what my software is doing, I'm not fucked. If something goes wrong, I'm not fucked. If I have useful software and I want to help others with it, I'm not fucked. Without Free software, I am at the mercy of someone else (i.e., I might be, and probably will be fucked).
I just bought a Toshiba laptop recently (in Canada). Believe it or not my laptop was in a plastic bag with a EULA on it. I didn't keep the bag (I was keeping Windows for playing games anyway), and I don't remember exactly what it said. But basically I remember it saying that I had to agree to keep the software if I opened the bag. Kinda sucked.
Of course this is a Toshiba thing and not an MS thing, but unless you want to return the whole machine you're kind of stuck with the software they bundled with it:-(
"Evolution" of shorter lived animals is observable and repeatable. I.E., if we breed a whole bunch of fruit flies and then change the environment, the population of fruit flies changes in their characteristics. This has been done experimentally and observed in nature (I read a paper one time about populations of fruit flies that change characteristics due to volcanic eruptions. As the fruit flies are living in a volcanically active zone, they seem to change characteristics quickly).
Can the same be said for humans? Yes; observationally but not experimentally. Populations of people have "evolved" sicle-cell anemia in certain areas. It turns out that this disorder also gives you immunity to maleria. Populations of humans have been observed to go from a normal distrubution of sicle-cell anemia (quite rare) to virtually the entire population as maleria has been introduced.
Because we can observe these behaviours, we extrapolate that this is the "origin of a species" (Note: not "the" species). In otherwords, over time genetically similar populations drift apart due to different environmental pressures. It's a model.
Why is it a better model than "God did it"? Well, because it explains currently observed phenomena. And it predicts future actions. For instance, if we want to avoid bacteria becoming resistant to drugs, we had better not try to kill off all the bacteria with a single drug. That kind of thing. It's *useful*. "God did it", while it might be very simple, is completely useless (in this area).
I'm not saying that "God did it" isn't useful to you in a personal sense. I imagine that it is *very* useful to a great many people. Terrific. It just isn't particularly useful in science. This other "evolution model" is a great deal more useful. So we use it.
Does this mean that humans *actually* descended from apes? I don't have a clue. I don't really care either. That's was a long time ago (even if you might think it's only 6000 years, that's still longer ago than affects me). If I wanted to I'd even believe that God created man. But I'd *still* use the models that science creates.
To a good scientist, it shouldn't matter what they believe in. You could believe in the FSM. Doesn't matter. Science is about what works, not "truth". I observe something. Is it repeatable? Can I construct a model that predicts other things? Is it the simplest model that predicts the things I want to use?
That's science. Is light a wave or a particle? Yes. It depends on how I want to use it. Maybe light *is* a wave and a particle at the same time (in a way that I can't visualize). But basically, it doesn't matter what light *really* is. What matters is can I use my model to predict things that I can observe?
Truth is in the realm of religion. Since I can't prove that anything other than I exist (and I can't even understand the nature of my own existance), everything else is just faith. Maybe you believe there are *actually* particles called electrons circling particles in a nucleus. But that's just faith -- a religion. I personally believe that it's probably something a lot different than that. But the electron thing is a handy way for my human brain to visualize it in a useful way. It doesn't matter what it *actually* is (from a science perspective). I doubt we even have the capacity to understand what the Universe *actually* is.
If you allow your religious beliefs (even your religious beliefs in science) to get in the way of usefully predicting phenomena, you have left the realm of science. Even the best scientist does this occasionally. It's human nature. But a good scientist should be aware of this and continually strive to discover what's useful over what they believe to be true.
Why are people fat? It completely kills me when I hear this question. It isn't a mystery. As others have mentioned, it's plain physics/chemistry. Your body turns excess calories into fat. If you don't have enough calories to maintain your expenditure, some of this fat will be used (along with some protein from your muscles). Crazy diets are just not necessary.
You add up the calories that go into your mouth, you subtract the calories that you burn during the day. If the result is positive, you make fat. If the result is negative, you burn fat.
Metabolism is a stupidly ridiculous argument. Do some people have a "higher metabolism" than others? In other words, do some people burn more energy (are more inefficient) when they are resting than others? Probably. But it's clearly not enough to really make any difference at all.
Let's say the average male adult eats 2200 calories per day. That corresponds to.63 of a pound if it were all to be converted to fat. Most people maintain their weight at this level. So if you had a magical metabolism where you burned *no* energy, the most you could put on in a year is about 230 pounds. As we might imagine, nobody gains that much weight on such a diet (phew, the laws of thermodynamics are upheld again).
I know several obese people. Honestly, they don't gain weight all that quickly. But let's say someone was gaining 100 lbs per year (really crazy). This corresponds to about 960 calories per day. Let's say that the person had a completely *normal* metabolism. This would mean that they were eating 3160 calories per day.
1 can of coke is 136 calories. 1 doughnut is 250 calories. 1 50g bad (small bag) of Dorritos is 262 calories. A 58g serving of ice cream is 125 calories. 1 large order of fries at Macdonald's is 573 calories.
So let's say you have a perfectly good diet, but you supplement it with a can of coke and a doughnut at 10 o'clock. You have a Macdonald's lunch -- just the burger would be a decent sized lunch for an average person, but you get a large fries and a coke with it. You have a bag of dorritos at 3:00. You have a small serving of ice cream for desert.
Grand total of extra calories: 1482 calories. Woah... by this, if you had an *average* metabolism, you'd be gaining about 150 lbs per year. And I've seen people eat waaaaay more than this on a daily basis. They think their metabolism is "slow", but in reality it's going a mile a minute.
Personally, I'm not a "calorie counting" kind of guy. When I notice that I'm gaining some weight, I just cut back on the obvious stuff (fat has 3 times the calories per weight than carbs -- hence the crazy numbers on the fries). And I up my excercise. Running 3 miles a day burns *at least* 300 calories a day (probably closer to 500 since your body has to repair the damage you did to it). And if you really *do* have a "slow" metabolism, running 3 miles a day (less than half an hour) improves your metabolism by about *25%*. Managing the rest with diet is easy (actually, when I'm running that much I have to work to just maintain my weight).
Anybody who is on/. and is overweight has no excuse. All the numbers are available on the internet. You just have to crunch them (what more can a geek ask for).
I'm not sure I read your comment right, but if I did I just can't agree with you.
There are lots of places where you can legally use open source and Free software in a closed source environment. To cut that out of your arsenal is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Of course it depends on the license and what you are willing to give up. But as previous posters have said, you can use public domain software anywhere. You can use BSD licensed software almost everywhere as long as you don't mind telling people that's what it is. You can use LGPL software as long as you don't mind distributing the source for the LGPL software. You can use GPL software as long as you don't mind distributing the source for the GPL software and you have a good separation between the GPL software and your closed sourced software.
I've worked primarily in closed source companies. I should be clear that I think such business practices are stupid. They hurt the customer and they hurt the competitiveness of the company using them. I can't tell you the number of times I've spent a company's money writing features that help achieve lock in without giving the user anything in return (or even make the customer's experience worse). I think that's dumb. It pisses off the customer and wastes money.
Management (and legal) tend to have this idea that they *must* "control" the market otherwise they will lose. They optimize their strategies into tricking customers into locking-in rather than focusing on executing better than their competition. A typical closed source software company does speculative development, spending money up front and then trying to sell what they have already built to customers. In such a company, R&D makes up 10-15% of costs while Management, Sales/Marketing and legal make up the other 85-90%. *This* is why they get freaked out over using open source or Free software.
Their entire focus is on bamboozling and coercing their customers. Saving even 25% of R&D costs (4-6% of total expenses) is not worth it if they have even a small chance of "losing control" of their market. They basically don't care if the solution will be better. Even an "advertising" clause is usually unacceptable since it shows the user that the company's precious "IP" is actually partially derived from something that anyone can acquire at zero cost. It destroys the illusion that one *must* buy from that proprietary company.
It's strange to be a Free software advocate working in the "closed software" world. I've mostly spent my time just trying to understand what makes "closed software" tick. In the end, these companies are trying to win the lottery (and if they already have, they are trying to turn the lottery into their own private mint that churns out tonnes of cash on demand). They spend money up front and are looking for a return down the other side. Generally speaking they aren't particularly interested in "building a business" -- i.e. creating a stable revenue flow and making a living off of it.
Especially with small companies, there is a need to generate some "worth" in the non-people aspects of a company. After investing $2-10 million up front, they are looking to sell the company (not the software) for $100 million to $1 billion. You can't sell a team of people for that kind of money (or so they think -- in other industries people pay significantly more for a portfolio of satisfied customers). "Owning" all the non-people assets of the company is paramount to their strategy. Using open source or Free software to reduce costs is not an attractive position for them.
However, I've noticed as more and more "up front payment" companies have started to chip away at the "back end payment" companies' market. Instead of selling software as a "fait accompli product", these "up front payment" people sell customization to an organization. They offer the customer more choice at the same price. Slowly, this business model is starting to make an impact (although the potential market
I haven't really looked into what they are doing specifically, so I can't really comment on that stuff. But I've done some work in neural networks (actually 15 years ago -- I'm sure the state of the art has completely past me by;-) ).
If you are interested in the field of AI with neural like computing, your best bet is to learn a huge amount of math. Really you can't understand anything without knowing at least 2nd year linear algebra. That's if you just want to basically understand what's going on. If you actually want to contribute, you're going to need a math degree.
This might sound like I'm discouraging you. I'm not. I just want you to understand what you're up against. You can definitely do some toy problems with neural network packages out there. You don't really need to understand what you are doing. But if you actually want to contribute, you don't really start here. You've got to do your basics and get your math chops up.
As for what you should read... Get some basic undergrad linear algebra books. A google search gave me this link:
Which looks like it will pretty much give you everything you need for the basics of neural networks (without the neural network part;-) ) You're also going to need some basic calculus. A quick search didn't show me any introductory free books online, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. However, calculus is used for everything which means you should be able to find used books almost for free...
Once you've got that down (and maybe you already do if you've got a math or CS degree), you can start reading some basic neural network material. The wikipedia entry for perceptron:
seems pretty good and should give you a start on how neural networks (very, very simple ones) work. It gets surprisingly complicated from there:-) There are some decent introductory texts (aimed at grad students) on the subject, but I'm afraid I'm well out of the loop now.
Things can get pretty harried math-wise once you start getting into learning algorithms. That's because you are basically trying to do a minimization with *a lot* of variables. It's not surprising that most of the innovative algorithms actually come from physics (well, in my day anyway... probably things have changed...) since when they are modeling stuff they tend to need to do the same thing. This is where you get into the scary math with multiple variate calculus and stuff... Way out of my league (I suck at math...)
Of course there are other forms of AI. But if you are trying to model the way the brain works, you need lots of math...
For me, I just want someone to preinstall *a* distro, check to see that all the hardware is working and then ship it to me. This is better than me sending it back if I find something that doesn't work. For me, it doesn't mean that I necessarily want all configurations to support linux. I just want linux available preinstalled (and tested) on the configurations that do. This saves me time (and therefore money) figuring it out for myself.
However, having said that, I don't care what distro they pick. Once they have demonstrated that it works in *one* distro, I can reinstall another distro knowing that *somehow* I will be able to get it working (even if it doesn't come working out of the box).
In the past I've tried to get local computer builders to do this for me, but they want to charge several hundred dollars for it. That's too expensive for me. I don't begrudge them wanting to charge so much if it's a one-off deal (well, actually I do -- they claim it will support Linux with "no problems" but won't spend 15 minutes installing the damn thing at a reasonable price -- but that's a different issue altogether). But the benefit for Dell doing something like this is that it might be possible to reduce the cost due to the volume involved (depending on if there *really* is demand for this...)
I guess that's the thing... It's worth something to me to have someone else do the research to know what will work and to demonstrate that it does. But it's only worth about $50-$100 (to me). Otherwise I'll deal with it (knowing that the risk of non-working parts is rapidly diminishing these days). If Dell did this for me at a reasonable price, I would almost certainly buy my next box from Dell (although that's probably about 2 years away at the moment).
Perhaps my response is not so different from responses you've had before. But for what it's worth...
Yes, there is a lack of good football management games for Linux. I really don't know why. It's not like they are hard to write. Bygfoot is definitely improving, though. It isn't as good as the games you mentioned, but it is improving all the time. What is needed is for people to *play the games* and make constructive comments. Not, "This isn't the same as X", but "What about a feature like this". I haven't really talked to the Bygfoot guys (I only have so much attention span for that kind of game), but they seem like nice guys. I'm sure that active discussion will lead to an improved game.
There is a similar answer to your hardware issue. SNES9X runs SNES stuff as good as I can imagine. But I realize you want to use a specific piece of hardware (I suppose because that's what you've got lieing around). However you don't seem to have even *tried* to get it set up. Personally I don't know if it will work either. Maybe it will take you all day. Or maybe it's impossible right now. So help people to help you. Try to get it working. Ask questions. Impress developers with your sincerity. There's bound to be someone with the same interests that has the skill to do it. Just excite them enough to want to do the work.
Really, that's how volunteer organization works. If that's not good for you, you can always just pay someone to do what you want. But I'll tell you it's not necessary. Just good old enthusiasm and kind words will be enough.
What probably won't work is moaning that "it's not good enough". That doesn't really encourage anyone.
Mind you, I really don't care if you use Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, or Plan 9. I'm quite happy to completely ignore you. I expect that most people are. And I don't really care about any of the things that you mentioned. Probably most people also don't care (which is why they haven't been done yet). But I do know that *some* people care. And, frankly, you could be doing a lot better for those guys -- and yourself!
Well, I can feel for the defending lawyer, but the NAT discussion didn't quite succeed IMHO. The expert claims that the fact that the Kazaa packet had the public IP address means that the computer wasn't behind NAT. But the lawyer counters with a paper describing how Kazaa (since version 2.0) uses a technique to determine it's public IP address in order to get around certain NAT problems.
This should have been the killer point. I completely trashes the expert's claim of expertness on the protocol. However, the wording was just too confusing for most people to really understand. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not quite sure what could have been done better, but if possible I certainly wouldn't leave it like this.
In fact, I'd be surprised if Kazaa would operate at all behind NAT if it couldn't determine it's public IP address (although I admit that I don't know why the IP address is there if not to tell other nodes how to route replies). A good question would have been "Have you ever seen anything other than a public IP address in a Kazaa packet?"
If there is another opportunity it would be a good idea to nail this point home. Really, if the expert can't understand how a p2p program defeats NAT by discovering it's public IP address, then he isn't much of an expert. And if you show that having the public IP in the Kazaa packet does *not* mean it was installed on the computer containing the NIC assigned the address, then really they have no information at all...
Nonesense! In reality we've outsourced our zealots to India and Cuba.
Although why the GP has a problem talking to people named "Abdule" is beyond me. All you have to do is install the proper localization packages and everyone you talk to is either Steve or Mary.
You're falling into a common misunderstanding about Free software.
With Free software, you *still own the copyright* to your work. If you want to put it in terms of IP (a term that I don't particularly like), you own the IP to your work. So there is *no* common ownership. It is not socialist in the least.
In most countries (probably all, but I don't know for sure), you can not own an idea. The term "Intellectual Property" refers to a monopoly granted by the state for certain things. In the case of copyright, it's a monopoly on making a copy. In the case of a patent, it is a monopoly to use or build a device. In the case of trademark, it is a monopoly to use a picture, phrase or name in a certain context.
You can own these monopolies. You can not own source code. Or rather, you can own the disk that the software resides on, but you can not own the code itself. It's not an ownable thing. All you can own is the IP (right to make copies, right to use the "software device" or right to use a name). Free software doesn't restrict your ownership of this IP.
Now if you want to talk about the GPL (most Free software is licensed under the GPL), there are some conventions. If you want to use software *that I own the copyright to", and that I have licensed under the GPL, you must agree to certain conditions. The conditions are spelled out in the GPL. This is the compensation I get for allowing you to make a copy of the software for which *I own the copyright* (Please make special note of the fact that *I own the copyright*).
Since *I own the copyright*, you have no right to use the code unless I agree. This is fundamental in the working of the GPL (and most other Free software licenses). Now, for the most part, I can ask for anything I want as compensation for letting you make a copy of that code. It's up to you to decide if you think it's worth it. Just because I ask for something that benefits others as well as myself, doesn't make it socialist. Or communist.
In fact, if you read http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/ti emans.html you can see how asking for the things that the GPL asks for can give me a considerable competative advantage against my competitors. In the world of Free software, allowing others to make copies of code that I own the copyright to gives me advantages. The more people that use and modify the software, the stronger my position in the market becomes.
Ideally, I would like to make the software ubiquitous. The more people that use the software, the more work there is to do on the software. Generally I can't keep up with the demand for more features (if you've worked in a proprietary software shop you realize that you can *never* keep up with feature demand, no matter how big you are). So allowing (and even encouraging) others to fill in the gaps doesn't weaken me. It only strengthens me. As Tiemann's article states, all the benefits tend toward the maintainer.
Not only does Free software not encourage community ownership, any business that uses Free software as their core asset uses IP ownership heavily to protect their investment. In fact, in order to succeed, I *must* make sure that others who modify the software make their changes available (ultimately) to me. Otherwise I can't win business to support *their* changes. Not only that, but branding is unbelievably important (witness the "Firefox" spats -- with *very* good reason). You must control your trademark IP.
As it turns out, patents are counter productive to Free software. This is why Free software advocates want to abolish software patents.
So I hope in some way that helps you understand how Free software is not in the least socialist. It is as capitalist as they come. Every Free software author (and even user) can become an entrepeneur and build a business. It encourages the free market more than proprietary software does. Although, I suppose if we *really* wanted to encourage the free market we would abolish *all* IP laws since monopolies are inherently counter to supporting a free market.
I wish this were the case. But I know for a fact that the government *is* working on new copyright legislation. I don't know when it will be tabled, though. If they are going to get it in before the next election, they are going to have to get their skates on, but it is actively being worked on.
I agree that the government has more pressing problems. But this doesn't stop the machinery. Even so, I've been surprised that it has gotten as much attention as it has. The industry that relies on copyright is incredibly small in Canada. If you remove the software industry it's actually laughably small (much less than 1% of GDP). It just goes to show what a little lobbying can do.
I'd like to see what the reaction would be. It might surprise many Americans, but there is a fair amount of anti-american sentiment here north of the 49. I know we seem friendly and all, but really we're just polite. (Note: I like American's just fine... well all the ones that aren't the president... and a few others...)
I believe all this "Canadians are dirty rotten thieves" stuff the "IP proponents" are pulling is due to the fact that the current government is working on revising our copyright law. I suspect that they are trying to pressure the Canadian government into getting their way.
It might even be at the behest of the government who seems to be intent on listening to only one side (guess who?). The Conservatives campaigned partially on "repairing the damage that the liberals did to US - Canada relations" (not that most Americans pay much attention to Canada anyway...) The copyright reforms are likely to be very unpopular no matter what's in them. If they say, "Oh we need to crack down to keep our relations happy with the Americans", maybe they think that will smooth things over.
If that's the case, I think they are terribly misguided. Canadians have always had a low tolerance to being stepped on by the elephant that is the US. We have a chip on our shoulders. In fact, one of the defining principles of being a Canadian is that "We aren't American". For some people, that's their only definition of being Canadian.
Pressure from the US to do *anything* to our laws will likely doom that idea, whether it be good or bad. Hence it would be nice to see what happens if the above characterization would be on the front page of the local newspapers...
I have to admit that I tend to stay away from discussions of animal products. For most of the past 5 years I have been vegan. Some people think I'm an animal rights activist for some reason. But really, I don't see animal products fitting into a sustainable lifestyle. Lately I've begun to eat some animal products, though. I started to realize that taking an extreme position made me look like a loony (whether I am or not -- jury's still out;-) ). Now I simply eat vegan at home, and eat whatever is easy when I'm not. I don't tell people that I have any special dietary requirements. But when they come over to my place and realize that I only ever serve vegan food, they usually figure it out. But I have helped a few people to enjoy eating veggie from time to time. And I figure that getting 10 people to eat veggie once a week is better than me eating veggie every day.
I guess the reason I posted is sort of to tell people that you can cut back on some things and still be happy. In fact, when you take something out of your life it is always replaced by something else. That other thing may be just as good, or even better. For instance, I love taking the bus. It's very relaxing compared to struggling with rush hour traffic. Not having a car means that I can't run around and to everything on a whim. But that means that my life is much more calm and predictable. I have to cook for myself, too. But that saves me money and I've found that my cooking is better than the restaurants I might go to.
OK, I haven't been without my car for very long, but I've been slowly trying to move towards a more sustainable lifestyle for many years now. Doing so seems to have forced me out of the rat race to a certain degree, and while I miss some things, in the end I'm happier.
I don't think we need to make big plans to change the whole world. Such a task would be virtually impossible. I just think that we need to show people that they can be happy (even *happier*) with less. If some people try it and like it, maybe others will too. If enough people enjoy it, then the culture will shift of its own accord.
Of course not everyone will agree. But that's OK.:-)
I understand what you are saying, but I think you've missed one very important issue.
If you want to reduce your energy usage, it makes sense to actually look at the impact each of these things has towards energy usage. I did this and was surprised by the result.
Yes, taking an airplane is unbelievably wasteful. We should all avoid it if at all possible. But the biggest ones in my life (in order) are:
1) Car. And this is with a TDI Golf. I got rid of it last week. 2) Heat. Sigh... this one is hard to fix. I'd like to get a ground source heat pump. But I can't afford the $10,000 it will cost right now. After I've saved up some from not driving a car it should be a sinch, though. Since last year though I've turned down the thermostat in the winter 2 degrees and disabled the AC (everything under 40C is tolerable anyway -- over 40C, I wear a wet T-shirt and it seems to help). 3) Dryer. Air drying clothes isn't actually too painful for me, so why the heck not? 4) Imported food. I live in a cold climate so the grocery stores are full of imported food. But local food is sooo much tastier. I'm trying to improve my diet by only buying local. I've found the easiest way is to contact local organic farmers. Strangely it appears to be cheaper than buying the crap in the grocery store anyway. 5) Electric lights. I've switched over to compact flourescent. I'm also trying to make sure that I only have 1 or 2 lights on in the house at any one time at night.
So far these measures seem to have reduced my personal energy usage to about 1/3 of what it was before. And I don't seem to be unhappy because of it. I *did* have to change my lifestyle. But not in a bad way. Reducing the crap that I buy (packaging, electronic goodies that I don't actually need, etc, etc) should have a positive influence as well.
Trust me... These are *small* measures that will only be difficult for the first few weeks. True, some people need a car. But *most* people don't (there are far more people in cities than not). But even people who must have a car can reduce *a lot* in other ways. Hell, if you are in the country, you can buy your own windmill. That's something I can't do in the city.
Please ask the question again if you get cancer and survive for more than a year. If you work for a small company and get health insurance at a group rate, please ask if any of the people in your group get cancer and survive for more than a year.
The problem with health insurance is that it only seems to insure you if you are relatively healthy. Get a bad (expensive) illness that drags out for a while and see what happens to your "insurance".
I agree with this advice, but maybe I'll put a bit of a spin on it. Writing Free software doesn't *have* to be done as a hobby. You can make good money from it. As an older person (geez, as a 40 year old, 50 doesn't really sound so much older anymore:-P ), you probably have some decent business experience. I would leverage this experience. And if you have some financial security, there's no reason you can't just take some risk and start working for yourself.
Many people are confused about how to start a business around Free software. The very best resource I've found is this short chapter written by Michael Tiemann:
This is from the guy (along with 2 buddies) that turned a $6,000 investment into $600 million of Redhat Stock. Not only that, but he somehow managed to get an executive position there as well. Along the way, they made their fair share of money (by the end of their first year they had sold $725,000 in contracts). IIRC, Cygnus was pulling in about $32 million a quarter when Redhat bought them.
My favorite quote: He's discussing using the GNU manifesto as a business plan. "if everybody thinks it's a great idea, it probably is, and if nobody thinks it will work, I'll have no competition!". As it turns out, I think he was right on both accounts. In fact, I'm still hard pressed to name more than a handful of companies who operate in the way that Cygnus did. So much opportunity wasted...
Slashdot Mirror
Wah... What the hell? The author of some code contacts the OpenBSD to communicate that copyright was infringed upon. The OpenBSD guys explode in a series of "zealot" name calling. I guess I can see some sense in privately contacting the OpenBSD dev. But on the other hand, it's in the OpenBSD development tree. Probably it's a good idea to tell people that it shouldn't be there.
Reading the initial email, I can't find any hint of malice. Just expressing the facts and offering to provide a license for the code. If this mailing list blows up because of something so unbelievably trivial, it doesn't seem like a fun place to hang out in. It's just weird.
But something else bothers me about the response too. It seems like the people there are *upset* that the original person informed them of the copyright infringement. I mean, nobody denied it. Everyone seems to agree there was an infringement. It just seems that some of the OpenBSD people think that the Linux people are assholes for choosing to license their code under the GPL... And apparently it's even worse to ask people not to infringe on that license.
That's just bizarre... It kind of makes you wonder who the zealots are... Personally, I'm kind of neutral on the subject. I like the GPL in some instances, I like other licenses in other instances. But, I just can't quite wrap my head around BSD guys (of all people) taking such a strange stance...
Azureus rates my ISP #1 in the way it treats it's :-P
e _bad_for_BT
customers
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/ISPs_that_ar
I will be switching as soon as possible...
I definitely would... except...
:-( Maybe if I pirate more music they will try to sell it to me (fat chance!) But if I continue to buy it the way I am, they will *never* try to sell it to me another way. Man... the record companies suck...
I can't run itunes on my computer (maybe it works under Wine? I haven't tried that).
But the more important issue is... I'm currently interested in Japanese bands and they don't seem to want to sell this to me in Canada. I would literally jump at the chance to buy music, DRM free, at $1.20 per song. Shipping the damn CD's into Canada costs me a mint. Luckily I can bundle it with my manga purchases, but I'm still looking at close to $30 for most CDs (each) to get it here.
So until Sony/BMG (the distributor that distributes most of the music I listen to) gets their head out of their ass, there's little I can do
I pretty much agree with what you said (especially about the idea that I should be able to fork names).
On the other hand, I think RMS is right with respect to what he is trying to accomplish. This idea of introducing Free software to people before trying to get them to change operating systems is *exactly* (IMHO) what RMS has been trying to say with his "GNU/Linux" diatribes all these years. It's just that sometimes he isn't the best communicator.
Linux as an kernel is interesting. It's got some really strong points to it. But end users don't (and shouldn't) care about the kernel they are using. They care about their applications. GNU provided a user experience that is important. I've got a good shell, a decent C/C++ compiler, tons of shell utilities, etc, etc. GNU also provided a host of other important applications.
I believe RMS's point was that in order to promote Free software and Free software ideals, one will want to distinguish between the kernel and the user facing utilities. Back in the day, nearly all of a user's interaction with the computer was with GNU. These days that's not true at all. But it's still important (from a Free software evangelical position) to promote the *user experience* of Free software.
One *could* say, "Use Linux because Windows sucks". "Using Linux will reduce your TCO". Or whatever. But that totally misses the point to moving to a Free software system. A better (Free software reason) for using Linux is, "If you use Linux, you aren't bound by some moron's notion of how memory should be swapped. If you notice that your computer is swapping like crazy *even though you still have a gig of RAM free* you can probably convince someone to change it".
But really, I can't say that to a normal person. However if you say, "Imagine if your word processor corrupts your document. Imagine that you could walk up to a programmer friend and they could actually help you get your document back". With Free software, a person with normal programming skills is guaranteed to have everything they need to help themselves or a friend. With non-Free software you are at the not so tender mercy of the author (or the entity that controls the author).
The idea behind GNU was to create a completely Free computing user experience. They were doing it alone because, frankly, everyone else in the world thought they were nuts (and many still do). Now there are many individuals and groups that are devoted to creating a Free software experience. So, personally, I don't think "GNU/Linux" makes much sense any more. I like the idea of calling it "Ubuntu", "Fedora", "Debian", "Gentoo", etc. These are complete Free software experiences aimed at different types of people. These names focus on the correct aspect. Linux is just one small part of the equation. GNU is another small part of the equation. Mozilla is another. Apache is another. X is another. Gnome, KDE, etc, etc, etc... I could go on forever...
Please note that I don't use "open source" in this little diatribe. That's because open source is focused on the *pragmatism* of Free software. It's the "many eyes", "faster development", "better apps" argument of using Free software. These arguments may be true, but ultimately for the user I don't think it's a compelling argument. For instance, I could just say "My closed source product has the best programmers in the world. I spared no expense to get them. Therefore our code is better". It may be untrue, but how can a customer distinguish the difference.
Personally, I think the 4 basic freedoms are the most important thing. If I have an idea to improve my life that requires me to use the software in unanticipated ways, I'm not fucked. If I want to find out what my software is doing, I'm not fucked. If something goes wrong, I'm not fucked. If I have useful software and I want to help others with it, I'm not fucked. Without Free software, I am at the mercy of someone else (i.e., I might be, and probably will be fucked).
I just bought a Toshiba laptop recently (in Canada). Believe it or not my laptop was in a plastic bag with a EULA on it. I didn't keep the bag (I was keeping Windows for playing games anyway), and I don't remember exactly what it said. But basically I remember it saying that I had to agree to keep the software if I opened the bag. Kinda sucked.
:-(
Of course this is a Toshiba thing and not an MS thing, but unless you want to return the whole machine you're kind of stuck with the software they bundled with it
Most likely none of the readers here will ever see a woman in real life
There. Fixed that for you.
"Evolution" of shorter lived animals is observable and repeatable. I.E., if we breed a whole bunch of fruit flies and then change the environment, the population of fruit flies changes in their characteristics. This has been done experimentally and observed in nature (I read a paper one time about populations of fruit flies that change characteristics due to volcanic eruptions. As the fruit flies are living in a volcanically active zone, they seem to change characteristics quickly).
Can the same be said for humans? Yes; observationally but not experimentally. Populations of people have "evolved" sicle-cell anemia in certain areas. It turns out that this disorder also gives you immunity to maleria. Populations of humans have been observed to go from a normal distrubution of sicle-cell anemia (quite rare) to virtually the entire population as maleria has been introduced.
Because we can observe these behaviours, we extrapolate that this is the "origin of a species" (Note: not "the" species). In otherwords, over time genetically similar populations drift apart due to different environmental pressures. It's a model.
Why is it a better model than "God did it"? Well, because it explains currently observed phenomena. And it predicts future actions. For instance, if we want to avoid bacteria becoming resistant to drugs, we had better not try to kill off all the bacteria with a single drug. That kind of thing. It's *useful*. "God did it", while it might be very simple, is completely useless (in this area).
I'm not saying that "God did it" isn't useful to you in a personal sense. I imagine that it is *very* useful to a great many people. Terrific. It just isn't particularly useful in science. This other "evolution model" is a great deal more useful. So we use it.
Does this mean that humans *actually* descended from apes? I don't have a clue. I don't really care either. That's was a long time ago (even if you might think it's only 6000 years, that's still longer ago than affects me). If I wanted to I'd even believe that God created man. But I'd *still* use the models that science creates.
Because they are useful.
To a good scientist, it shouldn't matter what they believe in. You could believe in the FSM. Doesn't matter. Science is about what works, not "truth". I observe something. Is it repeatable? Can I construct a model that predicts other things? Is it the simplest model that predicts the things I want to use?
That's science. Is light a wave or a particle? Yes. It depends on how I want to use it. Maybe light *is* a wave and a particle at the same time (in a way that I can't visualize). But basically, it doesn't matter what light *really* is. What matters is can I use my model to predict things that I can observe?
Truth is in the realm of religion. Since I can't prove that anything other than I exist (and I can't even understand the nature of my own existance), everything else is just faith. Maybe you believe there are *actually* particles called electrons circling particles in a nucleus. But that's just faith -- a religion. I personally believe that it's probably something a lot different than that. But the electron thing is a handy way for my human brain to visualize it in a useful way. It doesn't matter what it *actually* is (from a science perspective). I doubt we even have the capacity to understand what the Universe *actually* is.
If you allow your religious beliefs (even your religious beliefs in science) to get in the way of usefully predicting phenomena, you have left the realm of science. Even the best scientist does this occasionally. It's human nature. But a good scientist should be aware of this and continually strive to discover what's useful over what they believe to be true.
Why are people fat? It completely kills me when I hear this question. It isn't a mystery. As others have mentioned, it's plain physics/chemistry. Your body turns excess calories into fat. If you don't have enough calories to maintain your expenditure, some of this fat will be used (along with some protein from your
.63 of a pound if it were all to be converted to fat. Most people maintain their weight at this level. So if you had a magical metabolism where you burned *no* energy, the most you could put on in a year is about 230 pounds. As we might imagine, nobody gains that much weight on such a diet (phew, the laws of thermodynamics are upheld again).
/. and is overweight has no excuse. All the numbers are available on the internet. You just have to crunch them (what more can a geek ask for).
muscles). Crazy diets are just not necessary.
You add up the calories that go into your mouth, you subtract the calories that you burn during the day. If the result is positive, you make fat. If the result is negative, you burn fat.
Metabolism is a stupidly ridiculous argument. Do some people have a "higher metabolism" than others? In other words, do some people burn more energy (are more inefficient) when they are resting than others? Probably. But it's clearly not enough to really make any difference at all.
Let's say the average male adult eats 2200 calories per day. That corresponds to
I know several obese people. Honestly, they don't gain weight all that quickly. But let's say someone was gaining 100 lbs per year (really crazy). This corresponds to about 960 calories per day. Let's say that the person had a completely *normal* metabolism. This would mean that they were eating 3160 calories per day.
1 can of coke is 136 calories. 1 doughnut is 250 calories. 1 50g bad (small bag) of Dorritos is 262 calories. A 58g serving of ice cream is 125 calories. 1 large order of fries at Macdonald's is 573 calories.
So let's say you have a perfectly good diet, but you supplement it with a can of coke and a doughnut at 10 o'clock. You have a Macdonald's lunch -- just the burger would be a decent sized lunch for an average person, but you get a large fries and a coke with it. You have a bag of dorritos at 3:00. You have a small serving of ice cream for desert.
Grand total of extra calories: 1482 calories. Woah... by this, if you had an *average* metabolism, you'd be gaining about 150 lbs per year. And I've seen people eat waaaaay more than this on a daily basis. They think their metabolism is "slow", but in reality it's going a mile a minute.
Personally, I'm not a "calorie counting" kind of guy. When I notice that I'm gaining some weight, I just cut back on the obvious stuff (fat has 3 times the calories per weight than carbs -- hence the crazy numbers on the fries). And I up my excercise. Running 3 miles a day burns *at least* 300 calories a day (probably closer to 500 since your body has to repair the damage you did to it). And if you really *do* have a "slow" metabolism, running 3 miles a day (less than half an hour) improves your metabolism by about *25%*. Managing the rest with diet is easy (actually, when I'm running that much I have to work to just maintain my weight).
Anybody who is on
I'm not sure I read your comment right, but if I did I just can't agree with you.
There are lots of places where you can legally use open source and Free software in a closed source environment. To cut that out of your arsenal is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Of course it depends on the license and what you are willing to give up. But as previous posters have said, you can use public domain software anywhere. You can use BSD licensed software almost everywhere as long as you don't mind telling people that's what it is. You can use LGPL software as long as you don't mind distributing the source for the LGPL software. You can use GPL software as long as you don't mind distributing the source for the GPL software and you have a good separation between the GPL software and your closed sourced software.
I've worked primarily in closed source companies. I should be clear that I think such business practices are stupid. They hurt the customer and they hurt the competitiveness of the company using them. I can't tell you the number of times I've spent a company's money writing features that help achieve lock in without giving the user anything in return (or even make the customer's experience worse). I think that's dumb. It pisses off the customer and wastes money.
Management (and legal) tend to have this idea that they *must* "control" the market otherwise they will lose. They optimize their strategies into tricking customers into locking-in rather than focusing on executing better than their competition. A typical closed source software company does speculative development, spending money up front and then trying to sell what they have already built to customers. In such a company, R&D makes up 10-15% of costs while Management, Sales/Marketing and legal make up the other 85-90%. *This* is why they get freaked out over using open source or Free software.
Their entire focus is on bamboozling and coercing their customers. Saving even 25% of R&D costs (4-6% of total expenses) is not worth it if they have even a small chance of "losing control" of their market. They basically don't care if the solution will be better. Even an "advertising" clause is usually unacceptable since it shows the user that the company's precious "IP" is actually partially derived from something that anyone can acquire at zero cost. It destroys the illusion that one *must* buy from that proprietary company.
It's strange to be a Free software advocate working in the "closed software" world. I've mostly spent my time just trying to understand what makes "closed software" tick. In the end, these companies are trying to win the lottery (and if they already have, they are trying to turn the lottery into their own private mint that churns out tonnes of cash on demand). They spend money up front and are looking for a return down the other side. Generally speaking they aren't particularly interested in "building a business" -- i.e. creating a stable revenue flow and making a living off of it.
Especially with small companies, there is a need to generate some "worth" in the non-people aspects of a company. After investing $2-10 million up front, they are looking to sell the company (not the software) for $100 million to $1 billion. You can't sell a team of people for that kind of money (or so they think -- in other industries people pay significantly more for a portfolio of satisfied customers). "Owning" all the non-people assets of the company is paramount to their strategy. Using open source or Free software to reduce costs is not an attractive position for them.
However, I've noticed as more and more "up front payment" companies have started to chip away at the "back end payment" companies' market. Instead of selling software as a "fait accompli product", these "up front payment" people sell customization to an organization. They offer the customer more choice at the same price. Slowly, this business model is starting to make an impact (although the potential market
I haven't really looked into what they are doing specifically, so I can't really comment on that stuff. But I've done some work in neural networks (actually 15 years ago -- I'm sure the state of the art has completely past me by ;-) ).
;-) ) You're also going to need some basic calculus. A quick search didn't show me any introductory free books online, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. However, calculus is used for everything which means you should be able to find used books almost for free...
:-) There are some decent introductory texts (aimed at grad students) on the subject, but I'm afraid I'm well out of the loop now.
If you are interested in the field of AI with neural like computing, your best bet is to learn a huge amount of math. Really you can't understand anything without knowing at least 2nd year linear algebra. That's if you just want to basically understand what's going on. If you actually want to contribute, you're going to need a math degree.
This might sound like I'm discouraging you. I'm not. I just want you to understand what you're up against. You can definitely do some toy problems with neural network packages out there. You don't really need to understand what you are doing. But if you actually want to contribute, you don't really start here. You've got to do your basics and get your math chops up.
As for what you should read... Get some basic undergrad linear algebra books. A google search gave me this link:
http://joshua.smcvt.edu/linearalgebra/
Which looks like it will pretty much give you everything you need for the basics of neural networks (without the neural network part
Once you've got that down (and maybe you already do if you've got a math or CS degree), you can start reading some basic neural network material. The wikipedia entry for perceptron:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron
seems pretty good and should give you a start on how neural networks (very, very simple ones) work. It gets surprisingly complicated from there
Things can get pretty harried math-wise once you start getting into learning algorithms. That's because you are basically trying to do a minimization with *a lot* of variables. It's not surprising that most of the innovative algorithms actually come from physics (well, in my day anyway... probably things have changed...) since when they are modeling stuff they tend to need to do the same thing. This is where you get into the scary math with multiple variate calculus and stuff... Way out of my league (I suck at math...)
Of course there are other forms of AI. But if you are trying to model the way the brain works, you need lots of math...
For me, I just want someone to preinstall *a* distro, check to see that all the hardware is working and then ship it to me. This is better than me sending it back if I find something that doesn't work. For me, it doesn't mean that I necessarily want all configurations to support linux. I just want linux available preinstalled (and tested) on the configurations that do. This saves me time (and therefore money) figuring it out for myself.
However, having said that, I don't care what distro they pick. Once they have demonstrated that it works in *one* distro, I can reinstall another distro knowing that *somehow* I will be able to get it working (even if it doesn't come working out of the box).
In the past I've tried to get local computer builders to do this for me, but they want to charge several hundred dollars for it. That's too expensive for me. I don't begrudge them wanting to charge so much if it's a one-off deal (well, actually I do -- they claim it will support Linux with "no problems" but won't spend 15 minutes installing the damn thing at a reasonable price -- but that's a different issue altogether). But the benefit for Dell doing something like this is that it might be possible to reduce the cost due to the volume involved (depending on if there *really* is demand for this...)
I guess that's the thing... It's worth something to me to have someone else do the research to know what will work and to demonstrate that it does. But it's only worth about $50-$100 (to me). Otherwise I'll deal with it (knowing that the risk of non-working parts is rapidly diminishing these days). If Dell did this for me at a reasonable price, I would almost certainly buy my next box from Dell (although that's probably about 2 years away at the moment).
Perhaps my response is not so different from responses you've had before. But for what it's worth...
Yes, there is a lack of good football management games for Linux. I really don't know why. It's not like they are hard to write. Bygfoot is definitely improving, though. It isn't as good as the games you mentioned, but it is improving all the time. What is needed is for people to *play the games* and make constructive comments. Not, "This isn't the same as X", but "What about a feature like this". I haven't really talked to the Bygfoot guys (I only have so much attention span for that kind of game), but they seem like nice guys. I'm sure that active discussion will lead to an improved game.
There is a similar answer to your hardware issue. SNES9X runs SNES stuff as good as I can imagine. But I realize you want to use a specific piece of hardware (I suppose because that's what you've got lieing around). However you don't seem to have even *tried* to get it set up. Personally I don't know if it will work either. Maybe it will take you all day. Or maybe it's impossible right now. So help people to help you. Try to get it working. Ask questions. Impress developers with your sincerity. There's bound to be someone with the same interests that has the skill to do it. Just excite them enough to want to do the work.
Really, that's how volunteer organization works. If that's not good for you, you can always just pay someone to do what you want. But I'll tell you it's not necessary. Just good old enthusiasm and kind words will be enough.
What probably won't work is moaning that "it's not good enough". That doesn't really encourage anyone.
Mind you, I really don't care if you use Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, or Plan 9. I'm quite happy to completely ignore you. I expect that most people are. And I don't really care about any of the things that you mentioned. Probably most people also don't care (which is why they haven't been done yet). But I do know that *some* people care. And, frankly, you could be doing a lot better for those guys -- and yourself!
Well, I can feel for the defending lawyer, but the NAT discussion didn't quite succeed IMHO. The expert claims that the fact that the Kazaa packet had the public IP address means that the computer wasn't behind NAT. But the lawyer counters with a paper describing how Kazaa (since version 2.0) uses a technique to determine it's public IP address in order to get around certain NAT problems.
This should have been the killer point. I completely trashes the expert's claim of expertness on the protocol. However, the wording was just too confusing for most people to really understand. I'm not a lawyer so I'm not quite sure what could have been done better, but if possible I certainly wouldn't leave it like this.
In fact, I'd be surprised if Kazaa would operate at all behind NAT if it couldn't determine it's public IP address (although I admit that I don't know why the IP address is there if not to tell other nodes how to route replies). A good question would have been "Have you ever seen anything other than a public IP address
in a Kazaa packet?"
If there is another opportunity it would be a good idea to nail this point home. Really, if the expert can't understand how a p2p program defeats NAT by discovering it's public IP address, then he isn't much of an expert. And if you show that having the public IP in the Kazaa packet does *not* mean it was installed on the computer containing the NIC assigned the address, then really they have no information at all...
Nonesense! In reality we've outsourced our zealots to India and Cuba.
Although why the GP has a problem talking to people named "Abdule" is beyond me. All you have to do is install the proper localization packages and everyone you talk to is either Steve or Mary.
You're falling into a common misunderstanding about Free software.
i emans.html you can see how asking for the things that the GPL asks for can give me a considerable competative advantage against my competitors. In the world of Free software, allowing others to make copies of code that I own the copyright to gives me advantages. The more people that use and modify the software, the stronger my position in the market becomes.
With Free software, you *still own the copyright* to your work. If you want to put it in terms of IP (a term that I don't particularly like), you own the IP to your work. So there is *no* common ownership. It is not socialist in the least.
In most countries (probably all, but I don't know for sure), you can not own an idea. The term "Intellectual Property" refers to a monopoly granted by the state for certain things. In the case of copyright, it's a monopoly on making a copy. In the case of a patent, it is a monopoly to use or build a device. In the case of trademark, it is a monopoly to use a picture, phrase or name in a certain context.
You can own these monopolies. You can not own source code. Or rather, you can own the disk that the software resides on, but you can not own the code itself. It's not an ownable thing. All you can own is the IP (right to make copies, right to use the "software device" or right to use a name). Free software doesn't restrict your ownership of this IP.
Now if you want to talk about the GPL (most Free software is licensed under the GPL), there are some conventions. If you want to use software *that I own the copyright to", and that I have licensed under the GPL, you must agree to certain conditions. The conditions are spelled out in the GPL. This is the compensation I get for allowing you to make a copy of the software for which *I own the copyright* (Please make special note of the fact that *I own the copyright*).
Since *I own the copyright*, you have no right to use the code unless I agree. This is fundamental in the working of the GPL (and most other Free software licenses). Now, for the most part, I can ask for anything I want as compensation for letting you make a copy of that code. It's up to you to decide if you think it's worth it. Just because I ask for something that benefits others as well as myself, doesn't make it socialist. Or communist.
In fact, if you read http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/t
Ideally, I would like to make the software ubiquitous. The more people that use the software, the more work there is to do on the software. Generally I can't keep up with the demand for more features (if you've worked in a proprietary software shop you realize that you can *never* keep up with feature demand, no matter how big you are). So allowing (and even encouraging) others to fill in the gaps doesn't weaken me. It only strengthens me. As Tiemann's article states, all the benefits tend toward the maintainer.
Not only does Free software not encourage community ownership, any business that uses Free software as their core asset uses IP ownership heavily to protect their investment. In fact, in order to succeed, I *must* make sure that others who modify the software make their changes available (ultimately) to me. Otherwise I can't win business to support *their* changes. Not only that, but branding is unbelievably important (witness the "Firefox" spats -- with *very* good reason). You must control your trademark IP.
As it turns out, patents are counter productive to Free software. This is why Free software advocates want to abolish software patents.
So I hope in some way that helps you understand how Free software is not in the least socialist. It is as capitalist as they come. Every Free software author (and even user) can become an entrepeneur and build a business. It encourages the free market more than proprietary software does. Although, I suppose if we *really* wanted to encourage the free market we would abolish *all* IP laws since monopolies are inherently counter to supporting a free market.
I wish this were the case. But I know for a fact that the government *is* working on new copyright legislation. I don't know when it will be tabled, though. If they are going to get it in before the next election, they are going to have to get their skates on, but it is actively being worked on.
I agree that the government has more pressing problems. But this doesn't stop the machinery. Even so, I've been surprised that it has gotten as much attention as it has. The industry that relies on copyright is incredibly small in Canada. If you remove the software industry it's actually laughably small (much less than 1% of GDP). It just goes to show what a little lobbying can do.
I'd like to see what the reaction would be. It might surprise many Americans, but there is a fair amount of anti-american sentiment here north of the 49. I know we seem friendly and all, but really we're just polite. (Note: I like American's just fine... well all the ones that aren't the president... and a few others...)
I believe all this "Canadians are dirty rotten thieves" stuff the "IP proponents" are pulling is due to the fact that the current government is working on revising our copyright law. I suspect that they are trying to pressure the Canadian government into getting their way.
It might even be at the behest of the government who seems to be intent on listening to only one side (guess who?). The Conservatives campaigned partially on "repairing the damage that the liberals did to US - Canada relations" (not that most Americans pay much attention to Canada anyway...) The copyright reforms are likely to be very unpopular no matter what's in them. If they say, "Oh we need to crack down to keep our relations happy with the Americans", maybe they think that will smooth things over.
If that's the case, I think they are terribly misguided. Canadians have always had a low tolerance to being stepped on by the elephant that is the US. We have a chip on our shoulders. In fact, one of the defining principles of being a Canadian is that "We aren't American". For some people, that's their only definition of being Canadian.
Pressure from the US to do *anything* to our laws will likely doom that idea, whether it be good or bad. Hence it would be nice to see what happens if the above characterization would be on the front page of the local newspapers...
No the saddest part is that people modded it up to +5 without asking any questions.
I have to admit that I tend to stay away from discussions of animal products. For most of the past 5 years I have been vegan. Some people think I'm an animal rights activist for some reason. But really, I don't see animal products fitting into a sustainable lifestyle. Lately I've begun to eat some animal products, though. I started to realize that taking an extreme position made me look like a loony (whether I am or not -- jury's still out ;-) ). Now I simply eat vegan at home, and eat whatever is easy when I'm not. I don't tell people that I have any special dietary requirements. But when they come over to my place and realize that I only ever serve vegan food, they usually figure it out. But I have helped a few people to enjoy eating veggie from time to time. And I figure that getting 10 people to eat veggie once a week is better than me eating veggie every day.
:-)
I guess the reason I posted is sort of to tell people that you can cut back on some things and still be happy. In fact, when you take something out of your life it is always replaced by something else. That other thing may be just as good, or even better. For instance, I love taking the bus. It's very relaxing compared to struggling with rush hour traffic. Not having a car means that I can't run around and to everything on a whim. But that means that my life is much more calm and predictable. I have to cook for myself, too. But that saves me money and I've found that my cooking is better than the restaurants I might go to.
OK, I haven't been without my car for very long, but I've been slowly trying to move towards a more sustainable lifestyle for many years now. Doing so seems to have forced me out of the rat race to a certain degree, and while I miss some things, in the end I'm happier.
I don't think we need to make big plans to change the whole world. Such a task would be virtually impossible. I just think that we need to show people that they can be happy (even *happier*) with less. If some people try it and like it, maybe others will too. If enough people enjoy it, then the culture will shift of its own accord.
Of course not everyone will agree. But that's OK.
I understand what you are saying, but I think you've missed one very important issue.
If you want to reduce your energy usage, it makes sense to actually look at the impact each of these things has towards energy usage. I did this and was surprised by the result.
Yes, taking an airplane is unbelievably wasteful. We should all avoid it if at all possible. But the biggest ones in my life (in order) are:
1) Car. And this is with a TDI Golf. I got rid of it last week.
2) Heat. Sigh... this one is hard to fix. I'd like to get a ground source heat pump. But I can't afford the $10,000 it will cost right now. After I've saved up some from not driving a car it should be a sinch, though. Since last year though I've turned down the thermostat in the winter 2 degrees and disabled the AC (everything under 40C is tolerable
anyway -- over 40C, I wear a wet T-shirt and it seems to help).
3) Dryer. Air drying clothes isn't actually too painful for me, so why the heck not?
4) Imported food. I live in a cold climate so the grocery stores are full of imported food. But local food is sooo much tastier. I'm trying to improve my diet by only buying local. I've found the easiest way is to contact local organic farmers. Strangely it appears to be cheaper than buying the crap in the grocery store anyway.
5) Electric lights. I've switched over to compact flourescent. I'm also trying to make sure that I only have 1 or 2 lights on in the house at any one time at night.
So far these measures seem to have reduced my personal energy usage to about 1/3 of what it was before. And I don't seem to be unhappy because of it. I *did* have to change my lifestyle. But not in a bad way. Reducing the crap that I buy (packaging, electronic goodies that I don't actually need, etc, etc) should have a positive influence as well.
Trust me... These are *small* measures that will only be difficult for the first few weeks. True, some people need a car. But *most* people don't (there are far more people in cities than not). But even people who must have a car can reduce *a lot* in other ways. Hell, if you are in the country, you can buy your own windmill. That's something I can't do in the city.
Please ask the question again if you get cancer and survive for more than a year. If you work for a small company and get health insurance at a group rate, please ask if any of the people in your group get cancer and survive for more than a year.
The problem with health insurance is that it only seems to insure you if you are relatively healthy. Get a bad (expensive) illness that drags out for a while and see what happens to your "insurance".
I agree with this advice, but maybe I'll put a bit of a spin on it. Writing Free software doesn't *have* to be done as a hobby. You can make good money from it. As an older person (geez, as a 40 year old, 50 doesn't really sound so much older anymore :-P ), you probably have some decent business experience. I would leverage this experience. And if you have some financial security, there's no reason you can't just take some risk and start working for yourself.
i emans.html
Many people are confused about how to start a business around Free software. The very best resource I've found is this short chapter written by Michael Tiemann:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/t
This is from the guy (along with 2 buddies) that turned a $6,000 investment into $600 million of Redhat Stock. Not only that, but he somehow managed to get an executive position there as well. Along the way, they made their fair share of money (by the end of their first year they had sold $725,000 in contracts). IIRC, Cygnus was pulling in about $32 million a quarter when Redhat bought them.
My favorite quote: He's discussing using the GNU manifesto as a business plan. "if everybody thinks it's a great idea, it probably is, and if nobody thinks it will work, I'll have no competition!". As it turns out, I think he was right on both accounts. In fact, I'm still hard pressed to name more than a handful of companies who operate in the way that Cygnus did. So much opportunity wasted...
SCO Executives vs IBM Lawyers in a battle royal. A no lose situation for the spectator! I like it :-)
PS: Canada is my #1 favorite foreign country, I love to meet Canadians who come to the USA, and I always enjoy visiting Canada.
:-(
That's too bad... It's getting harder and harder to visit the USA