I've been looking for a list of governments, universities or school districts that have a policy of using open source or open standards, or at least evaluating them impartially. Many places use windows because that's what everyone uses and that's all they know. If nobody is doing this I am willing to maintain such a list. Contact kmcclary@cuug.ab.ca
The problem is that many people have bought the corporate line that this is about protecting artists and don't see where this is heading:
In the future oue home computers, TVs, radios, VCR's and game players will "converge" into a single type of "appliance". This will be a sealed box contining proprietary technology owned by a consortium of media and software corporations. It will be remotely controlled over the net and users will have limited control through a dumbed-down interface. It will be a crime to open the box or publish information about its inner workings. At first this will not affect our ability to access or publish content. But soon the corporations will complain about independent publishers distributing material that is unsuitable for their customers or just plain competes with their own stuff. Why should they allow others freeload on their technology? So they will find ways to effectively control content. Perhaps they will make it so by default you can only access their encrypted content and make it very inconvenient for most people to change the default. (Just edit a few configuration files with vi, sorry, documentation not included.) --------------------------------- "You must reinstall Windows[OK]" -W98 alert box.
When can I buy the book And will it have the source included?
This might not be a good idea, at least under US law:
The Copyright Act, Title 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2), provides that:
[n]o person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that:
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Notice that it says: "offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic" but then in (C) it says it must be "marketed" to violate the law. According to my dictionary "market" means "offer for sale". Posting information on a personal website is not "marketing" in any sense or usage of the word that I'm aware of. But printing it in a book and selling it might be.
How about finding some legal eagles to interview about this stuff, especially the international jurisdiction aspects?
I liked the part in Red where they were building windmills to power electric heaters to warm the planet up. Also, IIRC, he had them taking printers and paper to Mars.
Actually it's amazing how many people are willing to provide free support for M$ products. Some will even write lenghty docs explaining how if right-click doesn't work in IE it might be caused by uninstalling "Space Dingbats" or whatever. Where would BG be today without the tireless efforts of all these selfless souls? ------------------ No hex please, we're users.
The only thing wrong with the GPL is the very thing which makes it work; the clause which specifies that you may not GPL your work and subsequently go out and sublicense it.
Translation: Sorry, kids--You cant make money off it, even if you built it all from scratch, top to bottom.
I don't read it that way. The "you" in the GPL is the licensee. The restrictions on "you" don't apply to the copyright owner.
The same code can be licensed to different people under different terms. I think there are examples where companies have GPL'd code that continues to be included in their proprietary products.
In his essay, "Why Software Should Not Have Owners," Richard Stallman actually encourages employees to integrate GPLed code into the company's product, so as to force it to release all of its source code.
You mean this?: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
I think they should be required to sell Windows for the same wholesale (for quantities of 1000 or more, say) price to anyone and should not be allowed to have separate OEM and boxed versions or special OEM license terms. The OS and computer should be distinct products.
My home computer has no more stuff in it than a laptop but it has a heavy bulky steel case just to accomodate a few chips on separate boards (not to mention a rat's nest of ribbon cables). This is not a big issue since it is connected to an even bigger and heavier monitor. But when LCD monitors become affordable I will be looking for a much lighter and more compact computer. I should be able to simply unplug my printer and network connection and carry the computer off to another room or to the cottage for the weekend. I envisage it being like an oversize laptop. I will not want a conventional tower case unless I absolutely need those ISA or PCI slots.
"Now i'm wondering, what do you do in a power failure? You have a huge, several thousand year old meat pack in your lab freezer, and it begins to defrost......."
In Khatanga it probably gets a bit colder because you don't have the heat from the light bulbs. My globe shows 4 places closer to the pole, 3 nearby in Russia & Thule Greenland.
But the amazing thing about these frozen mammoths is that there must have been a fairly mild climate to produce enough veggies to keep them going. Then it got much colder so suddenly that they didn't rot or get eaten by scavengers - and stayed that way since.
---------------------------------------- Do you want to restart your computer now?
This is getting a bit off-topic but I've had this problem for a while: I believe the applet code below is the standard way of doing animation in Java with buffering to eliminate flicker. When viewed with Netscape 4.51 or 4.07 on a celeron 400 with Redhat 5.2 using a large window in hi-res modes it slows X to a crawl and hangs X. I had to put a warning on my Solar System model:
http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~kmcclary/
after getting a complaint from a guy who had lost work in open X applications.
setPriority doesn't help. Any workarounds or suggestions? (Sorry, pasting this in has killed the indentation and "less-than" signs don't show.)
import java.awt.*; import java.applet.*; //Text message moves diagonally across screen //Draws rectangle to indicate size of applet public class CrashNN extends Applet{ int mesgpos; public void init(){ new BusyThread(this).start(); } /************ Begin Standard ANTI-FLICKER CODE***/ private Image offScreenImage; private Dimension offScreenSize; private Graphics offScreenGraphics; public final void update (Graphics g) { Dimension d = getSize(); if((offScreenImage == null)||(d.width != offScreenSize.width)|| (d.height != offScreenSize.height)) { offScreenImage = createImage(d.width, d.height); offScreenSize = d; offScreenGraphics = offScreenImage.getGraphics(); } offScreenGraphics.clearRect(0, 0, d.width, d.height); paint(offScreenGraphics); g.drawImage(offScreenImage, 0, 0, null); } /******** End ANTI-FLICKER CODE ***************/ public void paint(Graphics g){ g.drawString("CrashNN", mesgpos, mesgpos); Dimension dd = getSize(); g.drawRect(2,2,dd.width - 9, dd.height - 9);//show size of applet } } class BusyThread extends Thread{ CrashNN aa; public BusyThread(CrashNN a){ aa= a; } public void run(){ //Just to be nice, lower this thread's priority //so it can't interfere with other processing going on. // Thread.currentThread().setPriority(Thread.MIN_PRIO RITY); while (true){ for(int i = 10; i 100; i++){ for(int j = 1; j 1000; j++);//number crunching goes here try{ sleep(30); }catch(InterruptedException e){} aa.mesgpos = i; aa.repaint(); } } } }
Fragmentation occured in commercial unix because of competitive pressures to differentiate products and lock in customers. This does not happen in the free software world because everyone can take advantage of the best technical solutions available. But if Corel and other companies have long periods of closed development and testing they may come out with variants that are difficult to reconcile. Maybe Wordperfect will work best with Corel Linux and M$ Word will work best with M$ Linux. Ugh.
"2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
......
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. "
Can this be read as "all third parties except third party contract beta-testers" ?
-------------
Also I'm wondering what the heck section 4 means:
" 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.... "
It sounds like a company could permanently lose the right to do anything with a GPL'd program if there was any slip-up in complying with the license. And presumably anyone who contributed code would be able to apply for an injunction.
Seems a bit extreme to me.
-------------------
Witty comment about the need to beta-test software licenses.
This is neither patent nor copyright, "bad law" ?
on
Who Owns The Database?
·
· Score: 1
I dimly recall following a discussion of the earilar bill on misc.int-property, so I guess I'm an expert.
IIRC the US constitution explicitly gives Congress authority to make patent & copyright law but this is neither - it's based on a different part of the constitution (regulation of interstate commerce ? ).
It doesn't work like patents or copyrights, it's a whole new can of worms.
One lawyer posted at length on why it is "bad law". Apparently "bad law" means law that will make a lot of lawyers filthy rich.
This memorandum has nothing to do with child porn.
on
Three on Munich
·
· Score: 1
I don't think there will be a classification for child porn or a button on the filter software you can click to view child porn (or other illegal things ) .
The proposed rating system is only concerned with things that are perfectly legal (in western countries, anyway ).
Child porn will continue to be dealt with by existing criminal laws. A "voluntary" self-rating system will not be much of an additional deterrent to pornographers.
So why do the proponents of this scheme always talk about child porn? (I don't mean to imply that jflynn is a proponent)
This is a problem if people use proprietary data formats that can only be read by proprietary software that runs on proprietary OS's that are no longer supported on modern hardware. If anyone is dumb enough to do that I probably don't want to read their stuff anyway. Even dumber people may archive on physical media that can't be read by newer hardware. I guess their only hope is to put their old tapes and disks into cryogenic storage in case future gererations can somehow revive them.
But I can't imagine that future computers will be incapable of running Linux or emulating it. Given that, they can access anything you can read on your Linux box today.
As to the cost, my home hard drive can hold the equivalent of $1 million worth of printed academic journals ( and of course my next one will hold $10 million worth). If these materials were freely distributable in digital form they could be archived in thousands of places around the world at a fraction of the cost of keeping them on paper at the few elite universities that can still afford a comphrehensive collection.
But academics are an amazingly conservative bunch. As long as taxpayers keep giving them a blank cheque they will keep squandering resources on obsolete information technology.
It's expensive to terminate fiber and to lay cable but for long runs of many-fiber cable the bulk of the cost is the cable itself - about $500/fiber/km. A cable halfway around the world (20,000 km) would cost $10 million/fiber. At 1.6 terabits each fiber can carry 25 million 64 kbps phone connections. Assuming a cable lifetime of 10 years that's $0.04 per year, right?
"Why would the US gov blow its wad on leaking confidential data to contractors to give them an advantage? The best part of having a secret is keeping it"
Intelligence gathering is like collecting baseball cards: you acquire a lot of stuff you're not interested in but you keep it for "traders".
How many movies have you seen where the hero calls an old freind in Xcorp or CIA for some crucial bit of info? The conversation ends with "I owe ya one, buddy".
I have trouble with the statement: """"""""""""" Borenstein argues that the volunteerist, gift-economy ethos underlying the open-source development model is an outgrowth of the traditional academic approach to information """"""""""""" Most academic info is jealously gaurded Intellectual Property. I would love to have access to the lecture notes of grad courses at Princeton or CalTech. Is there much academic info that is GPL'ed ?
Companies spend billions mailing out bills, statements and reports that could be sent electronically at a fraction of the cost.
Do you think this will change gradually over a decade or could it happen much faster?
For example suppose someone offered an incentive program where you got $0.25 credited to your ISP account for each item you accepted electronically instead of by mail.
This could take away a big part of the postal system's bread and butter revenue in a short time. It would be forced to raise rates and/or cut services which would drive away more customers.
Suppose intellectual property laws were abolished tomorrow. According to your reasoning Intel would stop innovating and go on selling the same old PII's forever.
Of course, if they did that, AMD & Cyrix would eat them for breakfast.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been looking for a list of governments, universities or school districts that have a policy of using open source or open standards, or at least evaluating them impartially.
Many places use windows because that's what everyone uses and that's all they know.
If nobody is doing this I am willing to maintain such a list.
Contact
kmcclary@cuug.ab.ca
The problem is that many people have bought the corporate line that this is about protecting artists and don't see where this is heading:
In the future oue home computers, TVs, radios, VCR's and game players will "converge" into a single type of "appliance". This will be a sealed box contining proprietary technology owned by a consortium of media and software corporations. It will be remotely controlled over the net and users will have limited control through a dumbed-down interface. It will be a crime to open the box or publish information about its inner workings. At first this will not affect our ability to access or publish content. But soon the corporations will complain about independent publishers distributing material that is unsuitable for their customers or just plain competes with their own stuff. Why should they allow others freeload on their technology? So they will find ways to effectively control content. Perhaps they will make it so by default you can only access their encrypted content and make it very inconvenient for most people to change the default. (Just edit a few configuration files with vi, sorry, documentation not included.)
---------------------------------
"You must reinstall Windows[OK]"
-W98 alert box.
This might not be a good idea, at least under US law:
The Copyright Act, Title 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2), provides that:
[n]o person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that:
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
Notice that it says: "offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic" but then in (C) it says it must be "marketed" to violate the law. According to my dictionary "market" means "offer for sale". Posting information on a personal website is not "marketing" in any sense or usage of the word that I'm aware of. But printing it in a book and selling it might be.
How about finding some legal eagles to interview about this stuff, especially the international jurisdiction aspects?
I liked the part in Red where they were building windmills to power electric heaters to warm the planet up. Also, IIRC, he had them taking printers and paper to Mars.
Actually it's amazing how many people are willing to provide free support for M$ products. Some will even write lenghty docs explaining how if right-click doesn't work in IE it might be caused by uninstalling "Space Dingbats" or whatever.
Where would BG be today without the tireless efforts of all these selfless souls?
------------------
No hex please, we're users.
The only thing wrong with the GPL is the very thing which makes it work; the clause which specifies that you may not GPL your work
and subsequently go out and sublicense it.
Translation: Sorry, kids--You cant make money off it, even if you built it all from scratch, top to bottom.
I don't read it that way. The "you" in the GPL is the licensee. The restrictions on "you" don't apply to the copyright owner.
The same code can be licensed to different people under different terms. I think there are examples where companies have GPL'd code that continues to be included in their proprietary products.
In his essay, "Why Software Should Not Have Owners,"
Richard Stallman actually encourages employees to integrate GPLed code into the company's product,
so as to force it to release all of its source code.
You mean this?:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html
I don't see where he says anything like that.
I think they should be required to sell Windows for the same wholesale (for quantities of 1000 or more, say) price to anyone and should not be allowed to have separate OEM and boxed versions or special OEM license terms. The OS and computer should be distinct products.
My home computer has no more stuff in it than a laptop but it has a heavy bulky steel case just to accomodate a few chips on separate boards (not to mention a rat's nest of ribbon cables). This is not a big issue since it is connected to an even bigger and heavier monitor.
But when LCD monitors become affordable I will be looking for a much lighter and more compact computer. I should be able to simply unplug my printer and network connection and carry the computer off to another room or to the cottage for the weekend. I envisage it being like an oversize laptop. I will not want a conventional tower case unless I absolutely need those ISA or PCI slots.
"Now i'm wondering, what do you do in a power failure? You have a huge, several thousand year old meat pack in your lab freezer, and it begins to defrost......."
In Khatanga it probably gets a bit colder
because you don't have the heat from the light
bulbs. My globe shows 4 places closer to the
pole, 3 nearby in Russia & Thule Greenland.
But the amazing thing about these frozen
mammoths is that there must have been a fairly
mild climate to produce enough veggies to keep
them going. Then it got much colder so suddenly
that they didn't rot or get eaten by scavengers
- and stayed that way since.
----------------------------------------
Do you want to restart your computer now?
Here is the US definition of infringement:
http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/271.html
Note the distinction between a "patented
invention" in (a) and a "component" in (c)
and the use of the word "material".
Interestingly, it appears to me that the
greatest risk of liability would be from
section (f) relating to exporting.
Here is the US definition of infringement:
http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/271.html
Note the distinction between a "patented
invention" in (a) and a "component" in (c)
and the use of the word "material".
Interestingly, it appears to me that the
greatest risk of liability would be from
section (f) relating to exporting.
This is getting a bit off-topic but I've had
/************ Begin Standard ANTI-FLICKER CODE***/
/******** End ANTI-FLICKER CODE ***************/ //show size of applet
//Just to be nice, lower this thread's priority
//so it can't interfere with other processing going on.
// Thread.currentThread().setPriority(Thread.MIN_PRIO RITY); //number crunching goes here
this problem for a while:
I believe the applet code below is the standard
way of doing animation in Java with buffering
to eliminate flicker.
When viewed with Netscape 4.51 or 4.07 on
a celeron 400 with Redhat 5.2 using a large
window in hi-res modes it slows X to a crawl
and hangs X.
I had to put a warning on my Solar System
model:
http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~kmcclary/
after getting a complaint from a guy who had
lost work in open X applications.
setPriority doesn't help.
Any workarounds or suggestions?
(Sorry, pasting this in has killed the indentation and "less-than" signs don't show.)
import java.awt.*;
import java.applet.*;
//Text message moves diagonally across screen
//Draws rectangle to indicate size of applet
public class CrashNN extends Applet{
int mesgpos;
public void init(){
new BusyThread(this).start();
}
private Image offScreenImage;
private Dimension offScreenSize;
private Graphics offScreenGraphics;
public final void update (Graphics g) {
Dimension d = getSize();
if((offScreenImage == null)||(d.width != offScreenSize.width)||
(d.height != offScreenSize.height)) {
offScreenImage = createImage(d.width, d.height);
offScreenSize = d;
offScreenGraphics = offScreenImage.getGraphics();
}
offScreenGraphics.clearRect(0, 0, d.width, d.height);
paint(offScreenGraphics);
g.drawImage(offScreenImage, 0, 0, null);
}
public void paint(Graphics g){
g.drawString("CrashNN", mesgpos, mesgpos);
Dimension dd = getSize();
g.drawRect(2,2,dd.width - 9, dd.height - 9);
}
}
class BusyThread extends Thread{
CrashNN aa;
public BusyThread(CrashNN a){
aa= a;
}
public void run(){
while (true){
for(int i = 10; i 100; i++){
for(int j = 1; j 1000; j++);
try{
sleep(30);
}catch(InterruptedException e){}
aa.mesgpos = i;
aa.repaint();
}
}
}
}
Fragmentation occured in commercial unix because
of competitive pressures to differentiate
products and lock in customers.
This does not happen in the free software
world because everyone can take advantage of
the best technical solutions available.
But if Corel and other companies have long
periods of closed development and testing
they may come out with variants that are
difficult to reconcile.
Maybe Wordperfect will work best with
Corel Linux and M$ Word will work best
with M$ Linux. Ugh.
"2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy
... "
and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these
conditions:
......
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the
Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. "
Can this be read as "all third parties except
third party contract beta-testers" ?
-------------
Also I'm wondering what the heck section 4 means:
" 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any
attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights
under this License.
It sounds like a company could permanently lose
the right to do anything with a GPL'd program
if there was any slip-up in complying with the
license. And presumably anyone who contributed
code would be able to apply for an injunction.
Seems a bit extreme to me.
-------------------
Witty comment about the need to beta-test software licenses.
I dimly recall following a discussion of the
earilar bill on misc.int-property, so I
guess I'm an expert.
IIRC the US constitution explicitly gives
Congress authority to make patent & copyright law
but this is neither - it's based on a different
part of the constitution (regulation of interstate
commerce ? ).
It doesn't work like patents or copyrights,
it's a whole new can of worms.
One lawyer posted at length on why it is
"bad law".
Apparently "bad law" means law that will make
a lot of lawyers filthy rich.
I don't think there will be a classification
for child porn or a button on the filter
software you can click to view child porn
(or other illegal things ) .
The proposed rating system is only concerned
with things that are perfectly legal
(in western countries, anyway ).
Child porn will continue to be dealt with by
existing criminal laws.
A "voluntary" self-rating system will not
be much of an additional
deterrent to pornographers.
So why do the proponents of this scheme
always talk about child porn?
(I don't mean to imply that jflynn is a proponent)
Just kidding of course. No reasonable objective
person would believe that.
But I get to keep the 1-900 charges if any
SUKRs call, right?
What if it only said $10000 or $100 ?
How unbelieveable does it have to be?
If this sets a legal precedent it opens
a world of opportunity for scam artists.
This is a problem if people use proprietary
data formats that can only be read by
proprietary software that runs on proprietary
OS's that are no longer supported on modern
hardware. If anyone is dumb enough to do
that I probably don't want to read their
stuff anyway. Even dumber people may
archive on physical media that can't be
read by newer hardware. I guess their only
hope is to put their old tapes and disks
into cryogenic storage in case future
gererations can somehow revive them.
But I can't imagine that future
computers will be incapable of running
Linux or emulating it. Given that, they can
access anything you can read on your
Linux box today.
As to the cost, my home hard drive can
hold the equivalent of $1 million worth of
printed academic journals ( and of course
my next one will hold $10 million worth).
If these materials were freely distributable
in digital form they could be archived in
thousands of places around the world at a
fraction of the cost of keeping them on
paper at the few elite universities that
can still afford a comphrehensive collection.
But academics are an amazingly
conservative bunch. As long as taxpayers
keep giving them a blank cheque they
will keep squandering resources on
obsolete information technology.
It's expensive to terminate fiber and to lay cable
but for long runs of many-fiber cable the bulk of
the cost is the cable itself - about $500/fiber/km. A cable halfway around the world
(20,000 km) would cost $10 million/fiber.
At 1.6 terabits each fiber can carry 25 million
64 kbps phone connections. Assuming a cable lifetime of 10 years that's $0.04 per year, right?
weave asks:
"Why would the US gov blow its wad on leaking confidential data to contractors to give
them an advantage? The best part of having a secret is keeping it"
Intelligence gathering is like collecting
baseball cards: you acquire a lot of stuff
you're not interested in but you keep
it for "traders".
How many movies have you seen where the
hero calls an old freind in Xcorp or CIA for some
crucial bit of info? The conversation ends
with "I owe ya one, buddy".
Only happens in fiction?
Several people have pointed out errors
or made suggestions on how this could be
written better.
It is released under an "Open Source Media Copy Policy" which would seem to allow anyone
to rewrite it.
Keith
I have trouble with the statement:
"""""""""""""
Borenstein argues that the volunteerist, gift-economy ethos
underlying the open-source development model is an outgrowth of
the traditional academic approach to information
"""""""""""""
Most academic info is jealously gaurded Intellectual Property.
I would love to have access to the lecture notes
of grad courses at Princeton or CalTech.
Is there much academic info that is GPL'ed ?
"I bet post will be obsolete by 2010"
Companies spend billions mailing out bills,
statements and reports that could be sent
electronically at a fraction of the cost.
Do you think this will change gradually over
a decade or could it happen much faster?
For example suppose someone offered an incentive
program where you got $0.25 credited to your
ISP account for each item you accepted
electronically instead of by mail.
This could take away a big part of the postal system's bread and butter revenue in a short time.
It would be forced to raise rates and/or cut services which would drive away more customers.
Suppose intellectual property laws were abolished
tomorrow. According to your reasoning Intel
would stop innovating and go on selling
the same old PII's forever.
Of course, if they did that, AMD & Cyrix would
eat them for breakfast.