First, Darwin's theory was not widely denounced. It was accepted and championed by at least as many as denounced it. Second, you have some very serious misconceptions about evolution, and about science in general.
Evolution does not need to be proven. Repeatable observations are simply fact, and evolution has been observed. Mutation has been observed. Speciation has been witnessed in the lab. Evolution is simply a name for the observed facts, like gravity is a name for the observed fact that things fall.
Evolution is not a theory. The theory is called natural selection, and it explains the observed fact of evolution. But natural selection is also not a theory of origins. As far as natural selection is concerned, it doesn't matter if life came from primordial goo, was created by God, or got sneezed out by a giant space goat. Evolution only concerns itself with how life changed after it was formed.
Theories can never be proven, but that is unimportant. What is important is whether the theory makes useful predictions. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation has been shown to be incorrect, yet it still makes useful predictions. It makes them with less math than relativity, so it is the theory engineers use in most circumstances.
Natural selection makes useful predictions. For instance, it predicted the existence of a mechanism that has all the characteristics of DNA before DNA was ever discovered.
The real question about global warming is, does it make useful predictions? Turns out, it does. It is a useful theory, but not nearly in the same league as natural selection, which honestly has almost as much supporting evidence as does the theory of gravity.
According to wikipedia: a) Darwin died in 1882, and b) the fact that evolution occurs came to be accepted in his lifetime. The theory of natural selection as cause of this observed fact did not become overwhelmingly accepted until the 1930s, but it also wasn't widely denounced or ridiculed. It was debated, but that is simply because there wasn't enough evidence to prove it in the beginning. That's one reason I asked for modern examples.
There are an equal number of people who believe the world is flat. I guess there is no consensus about that, either. No, the great "Round World" debate is not over and done with as some would have you believe. Anyone who claims that "science" has proven the world is round completely fails to understand what science is about.
I'm aware of Svensmark. His proposed mechanism would have no effect on other planets, as they don't have clouds. Svensmark's theories are hotly debated, and recent evidence seems to show that there is no real correlation between cosmic ray flux and cloud formation. Of course, to global warming deniers, that is simply more evidence of a vast scientific conspiracy.
No, no, and no. Quantum physics and flight certainly weren't dismissed throughout the entire lifetimes of their respective discoverers. They didn't take a generation to catch on, let alone two. And string theory hasn't been embraced at all, at least not in the sense of it being shown to do anything useful. But it also hasn't been dismissed.
Of course it turns out that we CAN measure the effects of the solar cycle, and they aren't nearly enough to account for the changes in temperature on Earth. The solar cycle accounts for the changes in temperature on other planets, but not on Earth. Weird, huh? Almost like there's something different about Earth.
I think in the case of EULAs, though, people have an intuitive understanding that they can not, or should not be held to the terms of the EULA just because they click OK. They rightly think, "Well, I bought it, and they can't make me agree to anything after the fact, so I'm just going to click OK without bothering to read what they can't enforce."
Or it could just be that people are stupid and lazy and we are correct to feel smugly superior to them.
Another bad analogy. I would say, it is like two people giving away free hammers. One says, "You can use this hammer for anything you like, just mention my name." The other says, "You can use this hammer for anything you like, but if you redesign the hammer, you have to share the designs."
In a simple analysis, you could claim the second contract reduces the hammer user's freedom more. However, this is only counting negative freedoms, or freedom from interference. It is not counting the creation of positive freedoms, or freedom to do something.
You seem to be of the opinion that only negative freedoms count as freedom. And this is always the case in this debate, as I mentioned at the beginning of this thread. People who argue as you do always have a limited view of freedom, only counting freedom from, not freedom to.
Society operates by trading "freedom froms" for "freedom tos." A person alone in the world is perfectly free from restriction. But they aren't free to do as many things as a person living in a society. If trading freedom from restrictions for freedom to do more things weren't an attractive proposition that most people count as creating more freedom, most people wouldn't live in societies.
The GPL restricts your negative freedoms more than the BSD license. But it creates more positive freedoms.
I don't understand why you keep making the gift analogy. GPL isn't a gift, it is a commercial transaction, and if you don't like the price (the restrictions) then don't buy the product (don't distribute it.) The idea is really based on contract law, and contracts freely entered into by both parties can never be a restriction of freedom.
As an example, let me ask you this: is a society that restricts its members from killing one another more or less free than one that doesn't enforce such restrictions? By your definition of freedom, such a society is less free. But most people would agree that such a society is not a free society, because powerful people could use the threat of violence to coerce the less powerful without the threat of societal repercussions.
I tried to explain how your view of freedom is simplistic. All freedom involves taking away one form of freedom in order to grant a more valuable form of freedom. In society, all freedom is a contract between individuals. I don't want to get hit in the face. I enter into a contract that limits my freedom, in exchange for not being hit in the face. I now have freedom from being hit in the face, but I don't have the freedom to swing my arms wherever I like.
You are essentially ignoring millenia of philosophical discussion on negative and positive freedoms, and attempting to define freedom in your own terms. As long as you maintain a non standard definition of freedom, you can win the argument (in your own head, anyway) by simply saying, "no, you're wrong, that's not what freedom means." However, you won't get many educated people to agree with you.
Is this an IP law debate? I thought it was a GPL vs. BSD style license debate. Both of which rely on IP law. If you want to provide real freedom, release your source into the public domain. Any license relies on copyright law, and limits freedom. The debate isn't about whether to limit freedoms, as all licenses do that. It is about which freedoms to limit, in exchange for which benefits. If you don't like one license, use another. But no license can claim any kind of moral high ground.
Again, removes freedom from whom? From developers and distributors who wish to use the code without giving back. That increases freedom for end users. Freedom is always a trade off. The right not to be hit in the face entails giving up the right to swing your arms wherever you like.
Without copyright, the GPL would be redundant, as there would be no such thing as commercial software. Everyone would simply copy anything they like. Nobody could charge money for software at all.
I wasn't aware that whether something was right followed directly from whether it was legal.
It doesn't, but the issues you raise seem to be with the copyright system itself, not specifically with the GPL. Or maybe I am confused, because you also seem to want to retain the right to a government granted monopoly not only on your own creations, but on the creations of others. Without copyright, there is no BSD license, either. Everyone copies everything.
The author of the work decides. Without the GPL, everyone else has no rights to distribute or modify the work. The GPL gives rights, it does not take them away. Copyright is the mechanism that denies people the right to modify and distribute the works of others, not the GPL. The end users aren't permitted to decide the license because they did not create the work. The difference between physical and intellectual works is set in place by our constitution and our government, as a means to encourage the development and sharing of intellectual and artistic works. Baring any agreements to the contrary, end users have no rights to a work, so the GPL isn't removing anything. It is adding rights, but with stipulations, not taking away rights. And end users have more choice, because developers can't take without giving back. End users aren't developers.
What you are talking about is giving uninterested third party developers the right to modify and distribute the works of others for profit, without anything going to the original author. That isn't freedom, it's exploitation.
No, because they aren't gifts, and no one ever said they were. Thus the strings, which ensure more freedoms for end users. People who wish to extend and distribute the software receive a license to do so in exchange for a promise to share their work. This is a commercial exchange, not a gift.
The other licenses have strings as well, for instance, attribution. A gift wouldn't require attribution. These licenses also involve commercial exchange, even though the promises extracted in exchange for the license are less. The only real gift is putting it in the public domain.
The kid was his stepson, who asked to be tasered. The police are taught that tasers are perfectly safe. If a kid wants to do something stupid and potentially painful, but not permanently harmful, I let them. I see you are gobbling up the spin put out by your chosen sports team, I mean political party. You would do well to read more on the subject before posting and proving your ignorance.
You are jumping to conclusions that support your premise that she is a good VP candidate. You automatically assume she is telling the truth and that the trooper and his boss are lying, with no proof. The investigation of the trooper turned up a few bad decisions on his part, and some allegations by unnamed parties that he threatened Palin's father. That is all. What exactly makes him a thug, in your expert opinion? Your praise of this woman shows your bias, and overwhelming desire to believe in your party, nothing else.
Wrong, the GPL removes a few immoral choices from a small set of people (coders and software company owners) and increases choices for a larger set (end users.) And I think it's only a small set of people that hate RMS, the people who want to profit off the work of others without giving anything back.
I'm sorry, but the "I was unaware of what my staff was doing" excuse has to be the dumbest excuse ever. Evidence is unimportant, because only two possibilities exist. Either she knew what her staff was doing and approved, or she didn't know what her staff was doing, in which case, she is incompetent. A staffer has come forward and admitted that undue pressure was placed on the state troopers to fire the man. That staffer was then fired. It's the seriousness of the charges, AND the substance of the evidence.
Do you think his boss should have been fired for not firing him? Didn't think so. Do you think that investigations into police misconduct should begin because of a family vendetta, no matter what the outcome? Didn't think so.
Slashdot Mirror
First, Darwin's theory was not widely denounced. It was accepted and championed by at least as many as denounced it. Second, you have some very serious misconceptions about evolution, and about science in general.
Evolution does not need to be proven. Repeatable observations are simply fact, and evolution has been observed. Mutation has been observed. Speciation has been witnessed in the lab. Evolution is simply a name for the observed facts, like gravity is a name for the observed fact that things fall.
Evolution is not a theory. The theory is called natural selection, and it explains the observed fact of evolution. But natural selection is also not a theory of origins. As far as natural selection is concerned, it doesn't matter if life came from primordial goo, was created by God, or got sneezed out by a giant space goat. Evolution only concerns itself with how life changed after it was formed.
Theories can never be proven, but that is unimportant. What is important is whether the theory makes useful predictions. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation has been shown to be incorrect, yet it still makes useful predictions. It makes them with less math than relativity, so it is the theory engineers use in most circumstances.
Natural selection makes useful predictions. For instance, it predicted the existence of a mechanism that has all the characteristics of DNA before DNA was ever discovered.
The real question about global warming is, does it make useful predictions? Turns out, it does. It is a useful theory, but not nearly in the same league as natural selection, which honestly has almost as much supporting evidence as does the theory of gravity.
According to wikipedia: a) Darwin died in 1882, and b) the fact that evolution occurs came to be accepted in his lifetime. The theory of natural selection as cause of this observed fact did not become overwhelmingly accepted until the 1930s, but it also wasn't widely denounced or ridiculed. It was debated, but that is simply because there wasn't enough evidence to prove it in the beginning. That's one reason I asked for modern examples.
There are an equal number of people who believe the world is flat. I guess there is no consensus about that, either. No, the great "Round World" debate is not over and done with as some would have you believe. Anyone who claims that "science" has proven the world is round completely fails to understand what science is about.
So all those examples are of theories that were laughed at or dismissed for at least one generation? Really?
Here is some recent evidence against Svensmark's theory:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7327393.stm
http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/h844264320314105/
I'm aware of Svensmark. His proposed mechanism would have no effect on other planets, as they don't have clouds. Svensmark's theories are hotly debated, and recent evidence seems to show that there is no real correlation between cosmic ray flux and cloud formation. Of course, to global warming deniers, that is simply more evidence of a vast scientific conspiracy.
No, no, and no. Quantum physics and flight certainly weren't dismissed throughout the entire lifetimes of their respective discoverers. They didn't take a generation to catch on, let alone two. And string theory hasn't been embraced at all, at least not in the sense of it being shown to do anything useful. But it also hasn't been dismissed.
Of course it turns out that we CAN measure the effects of the solar cycle, and they aren't nearly enough to account for the changes in temperature on Earth. The solar cycle accounts for the changes in temperature on other planets, but not on Earth. Weird, huh? Almost like there's something different about Earth.
It's not unusual for major groundbreaking work to be dismissed during the lifetime of the discoverer and only embraced one or two generations later.
Can you give some examples from the last 100 years?
I think in the case of EULAs, though, people have an intuitive understanding that they can not, or should not be held to the terms of the EULA just because they click OK. They rightly think, "Well, I bought it, and they can't make me agree to anything after the fact, so I'm just going to click OK without bothering to read what they can't enforce."
Or it could just be that people are stupid and lazy and we are correct to feel smugly superior to them.
Another bad analogy. I would say, it is like two people giving away free hammers. One says, "You can use this hammer for anything you like, just mention my name." The other says, "You can use this hammer for anything you like, but if you redesign the hammer, you have to share the designs."
In a simple analysis, you could claim the second contract reduces the hammer user's freedom more. However, this is only counting negative freedoms, or freedom from interference. It is not counting the creation of positive freedoms, or freedom to do something.
You seem to be of the opinion that only negative freedoms count as freedom. And this is always the case in this debate, as I mentioned at the beginning of this thread. People who argue as you do always have a limited view of freedom, only counting freedom from, not freedom to.
Society operates by trading "freedom froms" for "freedom tos." A person alone in the world is perfectly free from restriction. But they aren't free to do as many things as a person living in a society. If trading freedom from restrictions for freedom to do more things weren't an attractive proposition that most people count as creating more freedom, most people wouldn't live in societies.
The GPL restricts your negative freedoms more than the BSD license. But it creates more positive freedoms.
I don't understand why you keep making the gift analogy. GPL isn't a gift, it is a commercial transaction, and if you don't like the price (the restrictions) then don't buy the product (don't distribute it.) The idea is really based on contract law, and contracts freely entered into by both parties can never be a restriction of freedom.
As an example, let me ask you this: is a society that restricts its members from killing one another more or less free than one that doesn't enforce such restrictions? By your definition of freedom, such a society is less free. But most people would agree that such a society is not a free society, because powerful people could use the threat of violence to coerce the less powerful without the threat of societal repercussions.
I tried to explain how your view of freedom is simplistic. All freedom involves taking away one form of freedom in order to grant a more valuable form of freedom. In society, all freedom is a contract between individuals. I don't want to get hit in the face. I enter into a contract that limits my freedom, in exchange for not being hit in the face. I now have freedom from being hit in the face, but I don't have the freedom to swing my arms wherever I like.
You are essentially ignoring millenia of philosophical discussion on negative and positive freedoms, and attempting to define freedom in your own terms. As long as you maintain a non standard definition of freedom, you can win the argument (in your own head, anyway) by simply saying, "no, you're wrong, that's not what freedom means." However, you won't get many educated people to agree with you.
Is this an IP law debate? I thought it was a GPL vs. BSD style license debate. Both of which rely on IP law. If you want to provide real freedom, release your source into the public domain. Any license relies on copyright law, and limits freedom. The debate isn't about whether to limit freedoms, as all licenses do that. It is about which freedoms to limit, in exchange for which benefits. If you don't like one license, use another. But no license can claim any kind of moral high ground.
Again, removes freedom from whom? From developers and distributors who wish to use the code without giving back. That increases freedom for end users. Freedom is always a trade off. The right not to be hit in the face entails giving up the right to swing your arms wherever you like.
Without copyright, the GPL would be redundant, as there would be no such thing as commercial software. Everyone would simply copy anything they like. Nobody could charge money for software at all.
I wasn't aware that whether something was right followed directly from whether it was legal.
It doesn't, but the issues you raise seem to be with the copyright system itself, not specifically with the GPL. Or maybe I am confused, because you also seem to want to retain the right to a government granted monopoly not only on your own creations, but on the creations of others. Without copyright, there is no BSD license, either. Everyone copies everything.
So which is it?
The author of the work decides. Without the GPL, everyone else has no rights to distribute or modify the work. The GPL gives rights, it does not take them away. Copyright is the mechanism that denies people the right to modify and distribute the works of others, not the GPL. The end users aren't permitted to decide the license because they did not create the work. The difference between physical and intellectual works is set in place by our constitution and our government, as a means to encourage the development and sharing of intellectual and artistic works. Baring any agreements to the contrary, end users have no rights to a work, so the GPL isn't removing anything. It is adding rights, but with stipulations, not taking away rights. And end users have more choice, because developers can't take without giving back. End users aren't developers.
What you are talking about is giving uninterested third party developers the right to modify and distribute the works of others for profit, without anything going to the original author. That isn't freedom, it's exploitation.
The GPL doesn't remove freedom, copyright does. The GPL gives it back, with stipulations. You're barking up the wrong tree.
No, because they aren't gifts, and no one ever said they were. Thus the strings, which ensure more freedoms for end users. People who wish to extend and distribute the software receive a license to do so in exchange for a promise to share their work. This is a commercial exchange, not a gift.
The other licenses have strings as well, for instance, attribution. A gift wouldn't require attribution. These licenses also involve commercial exchange, even though the promises extracted in exchange for the license are less. The only real gift is putting it in the public domain.
The kid was his stepson, who asked to be tasered. The police are taught that tasers are perfectly safe. If a kid wants to do something stupid and potentially painful, but not permanently harmful, I let them. I see you are gobbling up the spin put out by your chosen sports team, I mean political party. You would do well to read more on the subject before posting and proving your ignorance.
You are jumping to conclusions that support your premise that she is a good VP candidate. You automatically assume she is telling the truth and that the trooper and his boss are lying, with no proof. The investigation of the trooper turned up a few bad decisions on his part, and some allegations by unnamed parties that he threatened Palin's father. That is all. What exactly makes him a thug, in your expert opinion? Your praise of this woman shows your bias, and overwhelming desire to believe in your party, nothing else.
Wrong, the GPL removes a few immoral choices from a small set of people (coders and software company owners) and increases choices for a larger set (end users.) And I think it's only a small set of people that hate RMS, the people who want to profit off the work of others without giving anything back.
I'm sorry, but the "I was unaware of what my staff was doing" excuse has to be the dumbest excuse ever. Evidence is unimportant, because only two possibilities exist. Either she knew what her staff was doing and approved, or she didn't know what her staff was doing, in which case, she is incompetent. A staffer has come forward and admitted that undue pressure was placed on the state troopers to fire the man. That staffer was then fired. It's the seriousness of the charges, AND the substance of the evidence.
Do you think his boss should have been fired for not firing him? Didn't think so. Do you think that investigations into police misconduct should begin because of a family vendetta, no matter what the outcome? Didn't think so.