And anyone who communicates with the Frito-Lay guy potentially has access to this information as well. Say, your competitors, or the tax guys ( you weren't laundering anything, were you?).
I only have a small retail outlet in an otherwise entertainment/technology business. My milage varies from the chain junk food store. I deal with the issue by buying my Frito-Lay supplies directly ( the capital outlay is minimal) and hauling them myself. No Frito-Lay rep ever sets foot in my store.
This also saves me from having to deal with him noting how much Wise product I have on my shelves.
You are incorrect. If you have a *right* to the source code it must be produced upon demand. As in having a right to your medical records. This is precisely the right the GPL provides.
The right to try to obtain it is a different right. You do not have a right to break into your doctor's office to obtain your records, even if there is no legal restriction to your possessing them. This is the situation the GPL is designed to prevent. It gives you a *right* to possession, rather than merely removing legal restrictions to possession.
Well the retail section of *my* store is only about 100 square feet, so they could just come in and look.:)
Still, your point is valid. I assume the data is encrypted and only the readers belonging to the store are set to decrypt.
Of course the way around that is for a disgruntled employee to "lose" his reader.
Of course, there aren't *any* disgruntled employees in retail. Are there?
Well, at least they're paid well enough that it wouldn't be worth it.
Oh, nevermind.
KFG
Protect your property
on
NYT on RFID Tags
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Until the moment you buy it the things in a store belong to them. Period. They can do anything they want with it, including tracking.
This is no different than putting a tracking device in your laptop or in your car. Or having a "Lost phone" beeper in your cordless.
As a store owner though I certainly wouldn't want a supplier being able to track my inventory without my permission, or perhaps even knowing about it. It isn't any of *their* business, per se. I can see where the large chains would find this useful though.
But in MY store, I put the tags on, if I bloody well feel like it.
As a customer the tags had better come off as soon as I buy the merchandise. From that moment on it's mine, not theirs. Note that that would be *before* I get to the exit.
Proponents of the GPL would prefer a world in which the source code is always physically available, the coder is free to modify it without restriction and all people are free to distribute it, also without restriction.
This can *only* be accomplished through some sort of law, i.e. intellectual property.
In fact, intellectual property law in the US was specifically designed to accomplish this goal.
Without such laws source code could simply be hoarded and unavailable forever.
Where the GPL differs from most other licenses is that it doesn't *assume* commercial gain. There is nothing innately commercial about intellectual property law. The belief that there is is a fundamental misconception. The GPL merely challenges the missconception of the *commercial* basis of itellectual property, not intellectual property itself.
The GPL embraces the concept of intellectual property law and uses it to forward the philosophical point of view that the *code* ( not the coder) should always be free.
If the GPL rejected the concept of intellectual property it would called "public domain."
The GPL is very much *not* the same as the public domain, since it forces contractual obligations. It can only do this because the code is *someone's intellectual property.* You use the code under license. Not right.
This is why we have BSD/GPL/Aritistic license religious wars.
The power of the GPL ( whether you think it's good or bad is up to you. Please note I'm only bringing up facts here, not making value judgements) is that with no concept of intellectual property you would have *no* rights to obtain source code. The GPL uses intellectual property law to force the code "free."
This is a pretty cool advancement of technology. It just goes to show that with a little development DNA computers might well move out of the realm of proof of concept into real world usable devices. ( If one assumes, without much justification I must admit, that students are "useful")
So if we make a beowulf cluster of students in a cascading sequence we can make a clock.
Actually, there is a lot of innovation going on, it just slips below the radar of those who insist they'll only use software just like the stuff on their Windows box.
Most Open Source(tm) software that been around for a while gets better, and then better some more, and then when it's best *stops dicking with it,* because it doesn't have to have new chrome added to it every year to sell the new version.
Here, I'll give you an example:
In the old days we had vi.
Now, after years of hard work we have vi improved: with bluing for extra whiteness.
Well, I don't think there's any question that worse is always more profitable, and in a profit driven setting will always come out on top.
You can get your product to market faster, and with fewer up front development costs, get a foothold in the market ahead of the competition and then punt.
How do you think Microsoft got where they are? They were always considered the cheaper alternative, although a "toy" OS.
But "real" OS's cost a lot of money. DOS and Windows were cheap and at least got things done, even if they didn't get them done "right."
There's nothing wrong with inventing hammers, but while you're working on it you still use a rock to drive nails, rather than giving up building houses.
(And no, don't ask me where we got the nails from if we don't have hammers, and I guess we use trained beavers to mill and cut the lumber. Look, just leave me alone, it was a *metaphor,* OK?)
And, of course, Linux isn't being used anywhere in "real life."
I wonder who people who say such things think are tending all the Apache servers running on Linux?
One of the so called reasons for Windows having a lower TCO is because of the *shortage* of trained personel, who can thus demand higher wages.
It looks to me as if MS is arguing that schools should be staying up all night training students in the use of Linux, or they are doing them a public disservice by training them for lower paying jobs in a glutted market.
There will always be people willing and able to pay $500 for a garden spade.
Since this is the case there will always be people willing to make a good living by selling it to them.
The failure is in the perception of the people, not the $20 spade.
Cost *is* a valid feature to consider. People educated in the idea of *value* can inherently make better choices for themselves and for whomever they are responsible for/to.
Between the years 1993 and 1997 my own small business, with only three computers, spent several thousand hard earned dollars on Windows software.
From 1998 when I switched entirely to Linux our total software cost has been $0 ( I was given a copy of Linux For Dummies with Red Hat 5.2 as a gift).
No additional expenditures have been needed because of making the switch,
Nor has, at any time, any "privation" of functionality ever been felt.
Indeed I've been able to greatly expand functionality because software previously out of my reach on a cost/benifit basis is now readily available, at will.
Others may debate TCO all they want. I know Linux is free.
And freeing, because now all license issues have been slaughtered on a wholesale basis. Compliance is part of the TCO.
I'll make this offer to any school. I will come in for a few days and show you how you can do what I have done, and I'll do it at *half* the rate you're paying your MS person. I'll even train the poor sod if you'd like.
And plenty of them are not. For those that are not I provide what I can in whatever services they need.
And as I have noted elsewhere in this thread Walmart provides new computers with Linux already installed and our local used store will install Linux for $2.
The digital divide is about *access.* Just as one might be literate but without the means to provide oneself with the written material one needs to be effective.
You are also falling into the trap of believing that the poor, necessarily, have limited computer experience.
My volunteer activities have disabused me of this notion. It is not necessarily the case.
Poor means without money. It does not mean without intelligence, skills or experience and I've had the pleasure of converse with many an engineer, physicist, university trained musician or poet who has, for one reason or another, fallen on hard times.
I have been there myself, which is one of the reasons I volunteer my serives, *even* when I myself am in a period of experiencing those hard times.
This is how I live even when I have money well beyond anything I can think of to do with it. Perhaps it was "the way I was raised," although I tend not to think so. In me such living has always seemed to be an innate part of my philosohphy of life, independant of the philosophies of my family. To me it "just makes sense," and always has.
What's more, if I can make a chair for $5, and enjoy making the chair, I fail to see the logic of endenturing myself to someone else doing something I hate so that I can purchase a chair for $50 that's wholely inferiour to the one I can make. And yet I'm in deep danger of being regarded as a "ne'er do well" if I so behave.
I must note, however, that it requires those few square feet of land or the sunny window.
In the forest these are free for the taking and building. In the city they must be aquired with money. If one has no money. ..
"Many of the poor are trapped in a culture of dependance."
That's what I said.
If are living in a hunter-gatherer community and you are hungry you go fishing.
If you are trapped in public housing you have to find someone to endenture yourself to who will trade you money for tending to *their* needs.
While this provides a certain illusion of independence it isn't at all the same thing, and of necessity requires that someone take your servitude before you can eat.
How many people do you personally employ? If the answer is "none" you may be the source of the problem yourself.
"Poor" in many areas simply means having no money. The poor may own their own home built by their own hands. It may even be equal to the home of the richest guy in town, who eats no better, but has a TV and electricity to run it on.
"The rich are different from you and me."
"Yes, they have more money."
Poor in the city means destitution, where one may well find oneself in prison for catching a fish without having aquired the requisite permission (available by paying a *fee*) from the Parks Dept.
I have a 486 and a Mac, both of which were given to me as being "worthless." Every trash day sees a new crop of perfectly functional PII's sitting by the curbside.
If you wish to buy, the second hand tech store three blocks from public housing in my city has PIII's lined up for $175, wiht monitor. For an extra *2* bucks they'll install Red Hat or Mandrake for you.
This isn't necessarily a good deal though, since the Walmart is selling new Linux systems for as little as 200 bucks. That's cheaper than a 19" TV.
Sure, *you* might think of PC's as being multithousand dollar items, but that's your bias. It isn't the case.
Slashdot Mirror
More than that. The shelf space would be *rented* by the store to the "supplier" for a fixed fee plus a percentage.
This is probably how bakery goods are already handled in your local supermarket.
KFG
And anyone who communicates with the Frito-Lay guy potentially has access to this information as well. Say, your competitors, or the tax guys ( you weren't laundering anything, were you?).
I only have a small retail outlet in an otherwise entertainment/technology business. My milage varies from the chain junk food store. I deal with the issue by buying my Frito-Lay supplies directly ( the capital outlay is minimal) and hauling them myself. No Frito-Lay rep ever sets foot in my store.
This also saves me from having to deal with him noting how much Wise product I have on my shelves.
It's none of his business.
KFG
I never said I agreed with this implimentation.
If the tag don't come off when I buy it, I don't buy it.
If as the store owner I'm not in total control of the tags and their uses, I don't allow them in my store.
If they force it on me in some manner, I'll just go back to being a street singer, I was poorer, but happier, then anyway.
KFG
You are incorrect. If you have a *right* to the source code it must be produced upon demand. As in having a right to your medical records. This is precisely the right the GPL provides.
The right to try to obtain it is a different right. You do not have a right to break into your doctor's office to obtain your records, even if there is no legal restriction to your possessing them. This is the situation the GPL is designed to prevent. It gives you a *right* to possession, rather than merely removing legal restrictions to possession.
KFG
Well the retail section of *my* store is only about 100 square feet, so they could just come in and look. :)
Still, your point is valid. I assume the data is encrypted and only the readers belonging to the store are set to decrypt.
Of course the way around that is for a disgruntled employee to "lose" his reader.
Of course, there aren't *any* disgruntled employees in retail. Are there?
Well, at least they're paid well enough that it wouldn't be worth it.
Oh, nevermind.
KFG
Until the moment you buy it the things in a store belong to them. Period. They can do anything they want with it, including tracking.
This is no different than putting a tracking device in your laptop or in your car. Or having a "Lost phone" beeper in your cordless.
As a store owner though I certainly wouldn't want a supplier being able to track my inventory without my permission, or perhaps even knowing about it. It isn't any of *their* business, per se. I can see where the large chains would find this useful though.
But in MY store, I put the tags on, if I bloody well feel like it.
As a customer the tags had better come off as soon as I buy the merchandise. From that moment on it's mine, not theirs. Note that that would be *before* I get to the exit.
KFG
You are incorrect.
Proponents of the GPL would prefer a world in which the source code is always physically available, the coder is free to modify it without restriction and all people are free to distribute it, also without restriction.
This can *only* be accomplished through some sort of law, i.e. intellectual property.
In fact, intellectual property law in the US was specifically designed to accomplish this goal.
Without such laws source code could simply be hoarded and unavailable forever.
Where the GPL differs from most other licenses is that it doesn't *assume* commercial gain. There is nothing innately commercial about intellectual property law. The belief that there is is a fundamental misconception. The GPL merely challenges the missconception of the *commercial* basis of itellectual property, not intellectual property itself.
You have to think about this issue a little more.
KFG
You're essentially correct, except for one thing, which I pointed out in my original post.
Even though if there were no intellectual property code could not be copyrighted it could still be treated as a trade secret.
In other words, you could release binary only software.
It's actually the restriction of access to the source code that the GPL was really formulated to prevent.
And thus, the GPL is innately a function of, and entirely depends upon, the concept of intellectual property.
I'll say it one more time. It is the *code* that the GPL frees.
KFG
The GPL embraces the concept of intellectual property law and uses it to forward the philosophical point of view that the *code* ( not the coder) should always be free.
If the GPL rejected the concept of intellectual property it would called "public domain."
The GPL is very much *not* the same as the public domain, since it forces contractual obligations. It can only do this because the code is *someone's intellectual property.* You use the code under license. Not right.
This is why we have BSD/GPL/Aritistic license religious wars.
The power of the GPL ( whether you think it's good or bad is up to you. Please note I'm only bringing up facts here, not making value judgements) is that with no concept of intellectual property you would have *no* rights to obtain source code. The GPL uses intellectual property law to force the code "free."
KFG
This is a pretty cool advancement of technology. It just goes to show that with a little development DNA computers might well move out of the realm of proof of concept into real world usable devices. ( If one assumes, without much justification I must admit, that students are "useful")
So if we make a beowulf cluster of students in a cascading sequence we can make a clock.
Or a pretty weird party.
KFG
Actually, there is a lot of innovation going on, it just slips below the radar of those who insist they'll only use software just like the stuff on their Windows box.
Most Open Source(tm) software that been around for a while gets better, and then better some more, and then when it's best *stops dicking with it,* because it doesn't have to have new chrome added to it every year to sell the new version.
Here, I'll give you an example:
In the old days we had vi.
Now, after years of hard work we have vi improved: with bluing for extra whiteness.
See how it works?
KFG
The way I figure it ya gotta go with your talents.
KFG
I don't have a .wav of my mother's voice. I have a .wav that's my mother.
.
You see, one day she picked the phone up from the acoustic coupler when it was online, and when she held it to her ear. .
Oh, wait. I just remembered. That wasn't my mother. That was Lori Singer. My mom's fine.
Nevermind.
KFG
Sorry, but you're off on the wrong track.
Hammer beats Blade. Blade Beats Paper.
And so we have paperless publishing.
KFG
Today we're computing with Denatured Alcohol.
When will the madness end?
KFG
Well, I don't think there's any question that worse is always more profitable, and in a profit driven setting will always come out on top.
You can get your product to market faster, and with fewer up front development costs, get a foothold in the market ahead of the competition and then punt.
How do you think Microsoft got where they are? They were always considered the cheaper alternative, although a "toy" OS.
But "real" OS's cost a lot of money. DOS and Windows were cheap and at least got things done, even if they didn't get them done "right."
There's nothing wrong with inventing hammers, but while you're working on it you still use a rock to drive nails, rather than giving up building houses.
(And no, don't ask me where we got the nails from if we don't have hammers, and I guess we use trained beavers to mill and cut the lumber. Look, just leave me alone, it was a *metaphor,* OK?)
KFG
And, of course, Linux isn't being used anywhere in "real life."
I wonder who people who say such things think are tending all the Apache servers running on Linux?
One of the so called reasons for Windows having a lower TCO is because of the *shortage* of trained personel, who can thus demand higher wages.
It looks to me as if MS is arguing that schools should be staying up all night training students in the use of Linux, or they are doing them a public disservice by training them for lower paying jobs in a glutted market.
But maybe that's just me.
KFG
There will always be people willing and able to pay $500 for a garden spade.
Since this is the case there will always be people willing to make a good living by selling it to them.
The failure is in the perception of the people, not the $20 spade.
Cost *is* a valid feature to consider. People educated in the idea of *value* can inherently make better choices for themselves and for whomever they are responsible for/to.
Where do we educate people?
AHA!
KFG
Those same businesses you're war chalking may well have old PII's and PIII's they're ready to scrap.
Rather than having them end up in a landfill somewhere perhaps they could be persuded to donate them. Even better than having to spend $200 American.
KFG
Between the years 1993 and 1997 my own small business, with only three computers, spent several thousand hard earned dollars on Windows software.
From 1998 when I switched entirely to Linux our total software cost has been $0 ( I was given a copy of Linux For Dummies with Red Hat 5.2 as a gift).
No additional expenditures have been needed because of making the switch,
Nor has, at any time, any "privation" of functionality ever been felt.
Indeed I've been able to greatly expand functionality because software previously out of my reach on a cost/benifit basis is now readily available, at will.
Others may debate TCO all they want. I know Linux is free.
And freeing, because now all license issues have been slaughtered on a wholesale basis. Compliance is part of the TCO.
I'll make this offer to any school. I will come in for a few days and show you how you can do what I have done, and I'll do it at *half* the rate you're paying your MS person. I'll even train the poor sod if you'd like.
KFG
And plenty of them are not. For those that are not I provide what I can in whatever services they need.
And as I have noted elsewhere in this thread Walmart provides new computers with Linux already installed and our local used store will install Linux for $2.
The digital divide is about *access.* Just as one might be literate but without the means to provide oneself with the written material one needs to be effective.
KFG
And that is why I volunteer my time.
You are also falling into the trap of believing that the poor, necessarily, have limited computer experience.
My volunteer activities have disabused me of this notion. It is not necessarily the case.
Poor means without money. It does not mean without intelligence, skills or experience and I've had the pleasure of converse with many an engineer, physicist, university trained musician or poet who has, for one reason or another, fallen on hard times.
I have been there myself, which is one of the reasons I volunteer my serives, *even* when I myself am in a period of experiencing those hard times.
"We're all in this together kid." -Tuttle
KFG
This is how I live even when I have money well beyond anything I can think of to do with it. Perhaps it was "the way I was raised," although I tend not to think so. In me such living has always seemed to be an innate part of my philosohphy of life, independant of the philosophies of my family. To me it "just makes sense," and always has.
.
What's more, if I can make a chair for $5, and enjoy making the chair, I fail to see the logic of endenturing myself to someone else doing something I hate so that I can purchase a chair for $50 that's wholely inferiour to the one I can make. And yet I'm in deep danger of being regarded as a "ne'er do well" if I so behave.
I must note, however, that it requires those few square feet of land or the sunny window.
In the forest these are free for the taking and building. In the city they must be aquired with money. If one has no money. .
KFG
"Many of the poor are trapped in a culture of dependance."
That's what I said.
If are living in a hunter-gatherer community and you are hungry you go fishing.
If you are trapped in public housing you have to find someone to endenture yourself to who will trade you money for tending to *their* needs.
While this provides a certain illusion of independence it isn't at all the same thing, and of necessity requires that someone take your servitude before you can eat.
How many people do you personally employ? If the answer is "none" you may be the source of the problem yourself.
"Poor" in many areas simply means having no money. The poor may own their own home built by their own hands. It may even be equal to the home of the richest guy in town, who eats no better, but has a TV and electricity to run it on.
"The rich are different from you and me."
"Yes, they have more money."
Poor in the city means destitution, where one may well find oneself in prison for catching a fish without having aquired the requisite permission (available by paying a *fee*) from the Parks Dept.
Just think of that as "public housing."
KFG
I have a 486 and a Mac, both of which were given to me as being "worthless." Every trash day sees a new crop of perfectly functional PII's sitting by the curbside.
If you wish to buy, the second hand tech store three blocks from public housing in my city has PIII's lined up for $175, wiht monitor. For an extra *2* bucks they'll install Red Hat or Mandrake for you.
This isn't necessarily a good deal though, since the Walmart is selling new Linux systems for as little as 200 bucks. That's cheaper than a 19" TV.
Sure, *you* might think of PC's as being multithousand dollar items, but that's your bias. It isn't the case.
KFG