Only because other people respect that ownership. Slavery has been the norm for most of human history. It was abandoned because people (like Locke) fought to change the conceptual agreement that it was possible to own another person. [ And the reason that fight was won was probably related to other changes in society, that made slavery an economically inferior means of production. ]
Is it now considered "bashing" to be wary about people who claim to speak on behalf of God? I know political correctness has gone rampant in the US, but I had no idea it was so insane. If people speak for God I can't argue with them, as God's authority clearly superseeds mine. That leads to all kind of nonsense (like 9/11) which scares me. My apologies if that hurts your sensitivity.
> Inherent: existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute
Lots of people live separated from the rights we talk about. And as the article shows, even for those who do enjoy them there is no guarantee for them being permanent. So they cannot be inherent by that definition.
> You have to claim and stand up for your rights. You. Not somebody else.
Unless I'm a lot stronger than than everybody else, I cannot unilaterally create any rights. Rights require some kind of consensus. The way rights are created and maintained, is by building that consensus. Even organizations like RIAA and MPAA needs to buy the support of politicians and to some degree the population at large for all the new rights they create for themselves (in the form of DRM and more).
And I am not letting you deprive me of my right to acknowledge the people who created the rights I enjoy today. They are the result of a long struggle to change the hearts and minds of the people, and to shape a society where they can exist. They way we can best honor them is to work to maintain the consensus and the society where they can exist, not by leaning back in an illusion than they are in any way permanent or inseparable from us.
> I know personal responsibility s not in vogue these days, but it is really something that we > should not abandon so readily.
Why are you then so willing to do it, talking about inherent rights, abandoning your responsibility for their creation and maintenance?
> The ability to claim that your rights are somehow "inherent", and not granted by some > government body or other person?
No, that is not what the subject line says. That is a different discussion, but if you insist:
The rights Americans have, they have because *people* before them fought for them, and they only have them as long as people are continuously willing to fight for them. They are not written down in your genes, or whatever else you may define being "inherent" as.
Bush didn't tell lies about the weapons of mass destruction. I lie is when you say something you know is wrong, and at the time nobody knew what Saddam had done with the WMD's he was known to have possessed (and used) earlier, and "destroyed them without telling the world" was not a popular guess.
Bush did lie about the war against Iraq being connected to Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein was exactly one of those US inserted puppet dictators that had generated a huge resentment against US and fertilized the ground for Al-Qaeda. Nobody in the Bush administration did at any time suspect a connection between the arch enemies of Hussein and bin Laden. They were stupid, but not that stupid. That part was a deliberate lie.
Of course now Al-Qaeda and the Baath loyalist are allied in Iraq.
This always scares me. I have never meet this guy myself, only people who claim to speak on his behalf. And disagreeing with God never seems to be an option with those people.
As far as *I* can see, all the right we have, we have solely because other people choose to respect those rights. This seems to indicate that the rights are given by people, not by any god. The set of rights formulated (or was the formulation also godly inspired?) by the US founding fathers seems to me to be one of the best such bill of rights out there. I think the Americans should be proud of them, and fight for these rights to be respected.
Of course I could be wrong, and the rights are really are God given. In that case, fighting for them should be unnecessary. Just lean back and wait for the lightening bolts to hit those people who violate them.
No, what you describe is the difference between the non-copyleft and copyleft free software licenses. You will find plenty of supporters for copyleft licenses in the open source camp.
I guess more tech companies might place offices in the county if they know they aren't the only one there. With more companies in the area, it will also be easier to attract qualified employees to work there.
- The free software philosophers believe that sharing is good for society, and to promote it they share some cool technology.
- The open source philosophers believe that cool technology is good for society, and to promote it they share some cool technology.
Most contributers don't care about what is good for society, they just have some cool technology they want to share. So they subtleties of free software vs open source really is irrelevant to most contributers.
Whether cool technology is a means to promote sharing (free software), or whether sharing is a means to create cool technology (open source), probably has some implications for what kind of society we want to build. But not for those who just want to share cool technology.
If the Wikipedia articles in your area of expertise were of low quality, filled with anti-Microsoft spin, and clearly violated Wikipedia policies, would you accept money from Microsoft to clean them up. The mandate would be to correct technical mistakes, and make the articles follow Wikipedia policies.
In other words, being paid to do something you would gladly do for free, if you had the time?
Someone below 30 please respond and disprove my assertion. And for bonus, please explain how all your non-geek friends below 30 also read comics. I love comics, and don't want to be right in my claim that the art form for practical purposes is dead among the young generation in the US.
Apparently, someone in Microsoft got the idea to "pay some outsider to make corrections to Wikipedia pages we care about", *and* got internal funding for it.
If you have ever worked in a moderately sized organization, you will know how difficult it is to get anything slightly unusual through the bureaucracy. Yet a clearly outside-the-box proposal like this apparently got through. Presumably, it is even encouraged. That would never have happened in any of the organizations I worked in, except maybe for the small 3 employee upstart.
> Today, there is no reason - utterly none at all - to pay for music.
Uh? If I like the work, I want to compensate the artist for it. I'm certainly willing to pay for what I can get for free, and I do that today (I have no unauthorized copies of music, movies or software). I just feel like an idiot every time I pay for an inferior product than what I can get for free. It does not help that I know that some of those money go to add campaigns especially designed to insult me. And other money go to harassment suits against kids and elderly people, some of whom haven't even made any unauthorized copies. And some to lobbying for a continued erosion of the rights of the public.
Like everybody else here, I thought it was strange to give up the cross-platform independence of, in particular, the Free Standards name.
However, it might not be so bad. Other systems are free to support "Linux standards". It might even be both closer to reality and good for a marketing perspective. At least the proprietary Unixen are increasingly sold as "a better Linux".
And it is worth remembering that Linux itself started of openly implementing Unix standards, not just the "neutral" Posix, but also the Open Groups Unix98 set of specifications (which was basically SysVR4). Whenever there wasn't a very good reason to do otherwise, Linux would follow Unix98.
I assume other organizations can take a similar stance towards the Linux Foundation.
I thought nobody under 30 read comics anymore, especially in the US. And that the only way comics got a wide recognition these days were through movie and television adaption.
A data center can run close to 100% utility, and can (and will) be optimized for processing power per watt.
A PC will run way below peak capacity most of the time, and will typically be optimized for all kinds of things, like peak processing power per dollar initial investment. Running cost will rarely be a factor.
In the best case, the data centers will mean orders of magnitude decrease in power consumption for computing, if people start investing in PC's just powerful enough to run a web browser, and delegate everything heavy to the data centers.
In the worst case, if people keep PC's capable of the same peak performance, the increase in power consumption will be orders of magnitude smaller than the current consumption.
Thus, in the worst case we are not significantly worse of than without the data centers. In the best case, we are orders of magnitude better off.
Does anyone who follow the Linux kernel know whether there are contributions from Google?
Rather than just assuming that because there isn't a "Google Linux for Datacenters" distribution, that they don't contribute back to the kernel developers.
Google is a founding member of OSDL (where Linus works), so I would guess they do contribute. See here for a list of free software organizations where Google is formally involved.
The Open Source Definition was an attempt to formalize the requirements of free software, and any difference between the lists of open source licenses and free software licenses are due to nuances in interpretation, rather than anything substantial.
There is a philosophical difference between the main advocates of "free software" and "open source", it just doesn't matter for the majority of developers who just want to share something cool they have done. From my own days as a free software project leader, I'd estimate that for every developer discussing the ethical implication of various licenses on the net, there are 99 who couldn't care less about the license, and would even contribute their code to proprietary project if that had been necessary to make it available to others. [Of course, for every developer discussing the various licenses, there are also 99 non-developers with the mistaken belief that their opinions matter. ]
In conclusion, stop trying to create an artificial ridge between free software and open source when it isn't there or doesn't matter, depending on your point of view. It is 99% overlap, the remaining 1% is just enough for ESR and RMS to stand alone and feel important.
> But even though I am a little weak in math, I think that 2 real numbers contain more information > than a single real number.
One real number and two real numbers can both encode infinite information, and the same "size" infinite, Aleph-one.
However, I would be really surprised if quantum mechanics allowed us to store a real number in the energy of a photon, I'd assume some discretization taking place, making it Aleph-zero instead. And relativity would bound the amount of energy we can store to at most the one found in our light cone, make it finite.
Slashdot Mirror
> We own our selves.
Only because other people respect that ownership. Slavery has been the norm for most of human history. It was abandoned because people (like Locke) fought to change the conceptual agreement that it was possible to own another person. [ And the reason that fight was won was probably related to other changes in society, that made slavery an economically inferior means of production. ]
Is it now considered "bashing" to be wary about people who claim to speak on behalf of God? I know political correctness has gone rampant in the US, but I had no idea it was so insane. If people speak for God I can't argue with them, as God's authority clearly superseeds mine. That leads to all kind of nonsense (like 9/11) which scares me. My apologies if that hurts your sensitivity.
> Inherent: existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute
Lots of people live separated from the rights we talk about. And as the article shows, even for those who do enjoy them there is no guarantee for them being permanent. So they cannot be inherent by that definition.
> You have to claim and stand up for your rights. You. Not somebody else.
Unless I'm a lot stronger than than everybody else, I cannot unilaterally create any rights. Rights require some kind of consensus. The way rights are created and maintained, is by building that consensus. Even organizations like RIAA and MPAA needs to buy the support of politicians and to some degree the population at large for all the new rights they create for themselves (in the form of DRM and more).
And I am not letting you deprive me of my right to acknowledge the people who created the rights I enjoy today. They are the result of a long struggle to change the hearts and minds of the people, and to shape a society where they can exist. They way we can best honor them is to work to maintain the consensus and the society where they can exist, not by leaning back in an illusion than they are in any way permanent or inseparable from us.
> I know personal responsibility s not in vogue these days, but it is really something that we
> should not abandon so readily.
Why are you then so willing to do it, talking about inherent rights, abandoning your responsibility for their creation and maintenance?
>> This always scares me.
> What?
What does the subject line say?
> The ability to claim that your rights are somehow "inherent", and not granted by some
> government body or other person?
No, that is not what the subject line says. That is a different discussion, but if you insist:
The rights Americans have, they have because *people* before them fought for them, and they only have them as long as people are continuously willing to fight for them. They are not written down in your genes, or whatever else you may define being "inherent" as.
Bush didn't tell lies about the weapons of mass destruction. I lie is when you say something you know is wrong, and at the time nobody knew what Saddam had done with the WMD's he was known to have possessed (and used) earlier, and "destroyed them without telling the world" was not a popular guess.
Bush did lie about the war against Iraq being connected to Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein was exactly one of those US inserted puppet dictators that had generated a huge resentment against US and fertilized the ground for Al-Qaeda. Nobody in the Bush administration did at any time suspect a connection between the arch enemies of Hussein and bin Laden. They were stupid, but not that stupid. That part was a deliberate lie.
Of course now Al-Qaeda and the Baath loyalist are allied in Iraq.
So, in no case, will a politician ever be hold responsible for his actions by the voters.
Rock vs. scisors: The people beats the government: Hmm, guess so with revolutions and all.
Scissors vs. paper: Government beats the constitution: Seems to happen a lot, I'll grant you that.
Paper vs. rock: The constitution beats the people: Now what is that about?
This always scares me. I have never meet this guy myself, only people who claim to speak on his behalf. And disagreeing with God never seems to be an option with those people.
As far as *I* can see, all the right we have, we have solely because other people choose to respect those rights. This seems to indicate that the rights are given by people, not by any god. The set of rights formulated (or was the formulation also godly inspired?) by the US founding fathers seems to me to be one of the best such bill of rights out there. I think the Americans should be proud of them, and fight for these rights to be respected.
Of course I could be wrong, and the rights are really are God given. In that case, fighting for them should be unnecessary. Just lean back and wait for the lightening bolts to hit those people who violate them.
> These kids have never moved, never had a choice about where they live and are still much fatter.
Doesn't really mean anything, as habits with regard to eating and exercise tend to be inherited.
Apparently SUSE is replacing the existing Red Hat installations at Wal-Mart.
No, what you describe is the difference between the non-copyleft and copyleft free software licenses. You will find plenty of supporters for copyleft licenses in the open source camp.
But send enough of them, and they are definitely considered spam.
I'd be surprised if the California anti-spam laws were formulated in terms of emails, rather then "electronic messages" or something similar.
The UCE spammers will need some way to send them money. That makes them vulnerable.
If that is really the best plan to combat spam, all hope is lost.
I guess more tech companies might place offices in the county if they know they aren't the only one there. With more companies in the area, it will also be easier to attract qualified employees to work there.
It is a little stronger than that.
- The free software philosophers believe that sharing is good for society, and to promote it they share some cool technology.
- The open source philosophers believe that cool technology is good for society, and to promote it they share some cool technology.
Most contributers don't care about what is good for society, they just have some cool technology they want to share. So they subtleties of free software vs open source really is irrelevant to most contributers.
Whether cool technology is a means to promote sharing (free software), or whether sharing is a means to create cool technology (open source), probably has some implications for what kind of society we want to build. But not for those who just want to share cool technology.
If the Wikipedia articles in your area of expertise were of low quality, filled with anti-Microsoft spin, and clearly violated Wikipedia policies, would you accept money from Microsoft to clean them up. The mandate would be to correct technical mistakes, and make the articles follow Wikipedia policies.
In other words, being paid to do something you would gladly do for free, if you had the time?
Someone below 30 please respond and disprove my assertion. And for bonus, please explain how all your non-geek friends below 30 also read comics. I love comics, and don't want to be right in my claim that the art form for practical purposes is dead among the young generation in the US.
Apparently, someone in Microsoft got the idea to "pay some outsider to make corrections to Wikipedia pages we care about", *and* got internal funding for it.
If you have ever worked in a moderately sized organization, you will know how difficult it is to get anything slightly unusual through the bureaucracy. Yet a clearly outside-the-box proposal like this apparently got through. Presumably, it is even encouraged. That would never have happened in any of the organizations I worked in, except maybe for the small 3 employee upstart.
> Today, there is no reason - utterly none at all - to pay for music.
Uh? If I like the work, I want to compensate the artist for it. I'm certainly willing to pay for what I can get for free, and I do that today (I have no unauthorized copies of music, movies or software). I just feel like an idiot every time I pay for an inferior product than what I can get for free. It does not help that I know that some of those money go to add campaigns especially designed to insult me. And other money go to harassment suits against kids and elderly people, some of whom haven't even made any unauthorized copies. And some to lobbying for a continued erosion of the rights of the public.
Like everybody else here, I thought it was strange to give up the cross-platform independence of, in particular, the Free Standards name.
However, it might not be so bad. Other systems are free to support "Linux standards". It might even be both closer to reality and good for a marketing perspective. At least the proprietary Unixen are increasingly sold as "a better Linux".
And it is worth remembering that Linux itself started of openly implementing Unix standards, not just the "neutral" Posix, but also the Open Groups Unix98 set of specifications (which was basically SysVR4). Whenever there wasn't a very good reason to do otherwise, Linux would follow Unix98.
I assume other organizations can take a similar stance towards the Linux Foundation.
I thought nobody under 30 read comics anymore, especially in the US. And that the only way comics got a wide recognition these days were through movie and television adaption.
A data center can run close to 100% utility, and can (and will) be optimized for processing power per watt.
A PC will run way below peak capacity most of the time, and will typically be optimized for all kinds of things, like peak processing power per dollar initial investment. Running cost will rarely be a factor.
In the best case, the data centers will mean orders of magnitude decrease in power consumption for computing, if people start investing in PC's just powerful enough to run a web browser, and delegate everything heavy to the data centers.
In the worst case, if people keep PC's capable of the same peak performance, the increase in power consumption will be orders of magnitude smaller than the current consumption.
Thus, in the worst case we are not significantly worse of than without the data centers. In the best case, we are orders of magnitude better off.
Does anyone who follow the Linux kernel know whether there are contributions from Google?
Rather than just assuming that because there isn't a "Google Linux for Datacenters" distribution, that they don't contribute back to the kernel developers.
Google is a founding member of OSDL (where Linus works), so I would guess they do contribute. See here for a list of free software organizations where Google is formally involved.
The Open Source Definition was an attempt to formalize the requirements of free software, and any difference between the lists of open source licenses and free software licenses are due to nuances in interpretation, rather than anything substantial.
There is a philosophical difference between the main advocates of "free software" and "open source", it just doesn't matter for the majority of developers who just want to share something cool they have done. From my own days as a free software project leader, I'd estimate that for every developer discussing the ethical implication of various licenses on the net, there are 99 who couldn't care less about the license, and would even contribute their code to proprietary project if that had been necessary to make it available to others. [Of course, for every developer discussing the various licenses, there are also 99 non-developers with the mistaken belief that their opinions matter. ]
In conclusion, stop trying to create an artificial ridge between free software and open source when it isn't there or doesn't matter, depending on your point of view. It is 99% overlap, the remaining 1% is just enough for ESR and RMS to stand alone and feel important.
> But even though I am a little weak in math, I think that 2 real numbers contain more information
> than a single real number.
One real number and two real numbers can both encode infinite information, and the same "size" infinite, Aleph-one.
However, I would be really surprised if quantum mechanics allowed us to store a real number in the energy of a photon, I'd assume some discretization taking place, making it Aleph-zero instead. And relativity would bound the amount of energy we can store to at most the one found in our light cone, make it finite.