Further more, you still have to account for the fact that many companies have competition and sometimes a big trick to do something that's hidden away because you don't have the source is their upper hand for the moment.
Oh yes, I know that is the current reality. I'm arguing that we as a society have zero reason to permit it. You should not be able to have both a trade secret and a copyright on the same thing. If you manage to obtain the secret formula for Coke you can publish it because they opted to keep it secret instead of patent it or copyright it. Copyright is just an arbitrary contract between society (as expressed through our elected government) and creators. Part of the deal is that we get the content, and the innovation, in exchange for a limited monopoly. By allowing them to lock it up companies go kaput and take it with them to their graves.
> I think the only release that would be welcomed with open arms (no pun intended) would be a release that while paid for, still releases > the source code and rights to use and distribute it.
And just why would the source have to include redistribution rights? Commercial 'open source' software is a perfectly reasonable thing once you get past the mental blocks put up by a generation of commercial==closed thinking. Binaries are a technical artifact caused by compilers having a speed advantage over scripts. I say copyright should be adjusted to only allow a copyright on the actual created contect, i.e. source. Binaries should only be derived works like a translation of a book. Then you could fix bugs the vendor didn't care enough to bother with, port it, etc. But it would still be a copyrighted work and you couldn't give out copies anymore than you can pass out copies of Photoshop now. I'd like to live in a world of all free software. But until that day arrives a world where the commercial stuff came with a src.rpm would be almost a good.
> OS Software is good, proprietary software is good.
No, I do agree with RMS on that part. Closed software is ALWAYS bad. Sometimes I'm willing to compromise principles a bit and use it anyway but it is always bad. I would have a lot fewer problems with it though if when I bought a program a got the source. At least I wouldn't be totally tied to the whims of the vendor. If a bug were biting me hard enough I could fix it, when I upgraded the OS/hardware I could fix things myself if the vendor either was gone or had abandoned my version. I could even gang up with other users and distribute patches among ourselves. We couldn't redistribute the whole program because it is copyrighted by someone else but it would be better than the current situation.
Supplying the source would in no way diminish their 'intellectual property.' In fact, since Copyright is a trade between society and the content creator (as is patents) intended to enrich the larger society, I'd argue that the deal be clarified such that Source can be copyrighted but binaries can ONLY be derived works that can't carry an independent copyright. No source no copyright.
Again, they said they weren't about to give their product away for free! So, like it or not, there is a perception out there by vendors/providers that the Linux community not only is a small community and not likely to bring in big money, but they see the Linux community as cheap! Network trailer trash.
There is a lot of FUD among the commercial vendors, much of it probably being spread by a certain behemoth vendor and allies. Yes, many less clueful ones still think a Linux port has to be free, as if the GPL would taint their code or something. Others do subscribe to the belief that Linux users are either Free Software zealots who wouldn't pay regardless or are all a bunch of poor starving students. Some of us are hard nosed realists who refuse to be fooled again by being subject to the whims of vendors to the greatest extent possible. Some of us realize the Free stuff usually works a hell of a lot better than the piles of steaming crap vendors want to exchange a pile of cash for.
We just have to educate them. I will pay for software under very limited circumstances. If there is NO Free Software that can do the work I'll pay. If it isn't important (games) I'll pay. If it is going to process content I create it MUST write that in an open format, I won't be locked to a single vendor's whims. So I wouldn't buy Photoshop, even if Hell froze over and they ported it, unless I had an absolute requirement that The GIMP couldn't satisfy but since it writes many open formats I would buy it if I had to. Games are't a problem though. I really hated to see Loki go out, I did buy stuff from them.
At work we do the same thing. We have bought software before and will almost certainly buy it in the future. Just because I prefer Free Software doesn't mean we can refuse to computerize an operation just because there isn't a Free program available and we certainly don't have the man hours available to write an accounting system from scratch. That is just an example, yes there are some free offerings but none are anywhere ready yet. None can yet handle vital functions like payroll.
Yup, I also disagree with ESR's reasoning somewhat but agree that if you accept his reasoning his conclusion is perfectly rational and pro Free Software. But this is slashdot and for some reason there is a large contingent that loves to slag ESR so the editors are throwing a little raw meat out to get some pageviews on a slow Saturday.
I think ESR is wrong because most people aren't ever going to notice the 64bit transition, at least nothing like the 16-32 bit horrors of the 1990s. Both Linux (almost flawlessly on RH based distros and fairly useable on Debian ones) and Windows have made it all but unnoticable whether one is using 32 or 64 bit apps for 90+% of users and uses. Only those who need to malloc gigs need concern themselves.
But even ignoring all that we might want to consider compromising enough to capture desktop share. It wouldn't be unprecedented, GNU itself was developed on closed platforms because ALL platforms were closed, and after all the FSF is still wanking with HURD.
It isn't the 64 bit barrier we need to worry about, it is the ability to play multimedia content, which ESR also is concerned about, that is a real problem. We CAN'T write and distribute Free Software for most of that stuff because of patents. Yes I hate them as much as the next geek (and had the consistency to launch a big "Fuck you" to Tivo over yesterday's patent troll by them) but until we can change the rules of the game we are mostly stuck with them. Yes [I] can go get mplayer and most of [YOU] can get it, but corporate america isn't going to take a lawyer bumrush from the MPAA/Franhaufer/etc over the issue. And newbies are being put through a horrible rite of passage when they try to join us.
> I'm more concerned about what this means for projects like MythTV...
That was also my first reaction. But my second one was the beginning of a great anger against Slashdot for the spin they put on the story.
Tivo is acting as a patent troll, exactly the same as any other patent troll. So why was this story spun as a good thing? Why wasn't this story carried with the same moral outrage against the evils of the US patent system as, for example, Rambus? Or the Amazon one click patent? Lets be consistent here and leave the Tivo fanboi slavish devotion behind. Fuck TIVO!
> One would think that in 30 years and so many billion miles, it must be *VERY* lucky to have avoided > any obstacles in its path?
> Can anyone explain?
Ok. Since you apparently skipped science class I'll keep it simple.
Well first off, space is big. Really really big. Mindbogglingly big. And second it is almost entirely empty. So the odds of it hitting anything is pretty much zilch, especially out where it is now.
> Sure the civil war eroded the inaugural charter, and it didn't solve the problem of why a member of a union has no right to terminate > their membership. I won't say that the arrangement ought be 'right to work' style where they can dissolve without any notice. Obviously > when you reach that style of union there are a lot of things to take care of a la divorce. What the war did was create an unlivable, > unsustainable situation.
What an idiot. The War of Northern Agression might be many things, and by my choice for a name I'm hinting where my loyalties are at, but it did solve an otherwise unsolvable problem. And considering the South has failed to Rise Again in about a century and a half now I'd say it was quite sustainable as a solution.
Just take a look at the positions each side held and tell me how any peaceful solution was possible.
North: We must have the taxes we get from the South to fund the government, after all the South is the only part of the country generating exports while we must import most everything. Our Christian Fundamentalists have decided that slavery is WRONG and they are too important a voting block for us to ignore. We don't have the votes to amend the Constituition but this is so important we are going to do it anyway. In light of the above, allowing the Confederacy to leave is not on the table.
South: You bastards are taxing us to death to fund capital improvements in the North with your laws forcing most of our trade to move through Northern ports. The slavery issue was addressed eighty years ago when we all signed on to this Constituition that you guys seem hellbent on violating every time Congress comes into session. It is easy for you Yankees to get all moralistic, not having all that many slaves anymore, but you are asking us to commit economic suicide. You know you don't have the votes to amend it so you are just ignoring the rules and using your slight majority to ram stuff down our throats that are clearly unconstituitional. So screw you guys we are outta here.
> There are a lot of examples of conflicts where there were brief periods of outright war and many longer periods of minor > warfare, which is exactly the current situation with terrorism.
Exactly. And that isn't peace either. And many times more people die from 'minor warfare' than would have died had it been allowed to come to a conclusion and end naturally.
For example, take the Middle East's big open sore. No negotiated settlement is possible so long as one side's position is that until they 'regain' every inch of Israel the War isn't over. So accept them at their word, take the leash off Israel and allow the war to run to it's conclusion. Either way we would then have peace. Either they would exterminate the Jews (unlikely) or finally be forced, not into yet another hudna, but into a full surrender. One where all the current incorrigble leaders could be removed, the madrassas could be reformed to prevent the poison from seeping into the next generation, etc. What we had instead was a thousand people killed and NOTHING solved, it will all begin again in a year or three when Hezbellah regains strength.
> > Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem.
> Iraq.
Wrong. Iraq wasn't the problem, Saddam and the Baath Party were the problem. And I'd say they are both pretty much solved with Saddam in prison and likely to be executed and Baath Party a sad remnant. We were not at war with the general population in Iraq after all.
But of course, like so often in the real world, many answers are also new questions. Removing Saddam unleased a lot of pent up violence, which has been encouraged by just about everybody. Start with Iran, then Syria, Al Queda, Hezbellah, and last but certainly not least in the cast of villans must be included the US Democratic Party.
> Well, sorry, you can't. Vietnam was another huge fucking mistake made by people such as yourself who believe that enough violence thrown > at a problem will solve anything.
Again you are wrong. You are correct to conflate Vietnam and post Saddam Iraq though since both have similar causes. Both are attempts to solve internal problems via external means and are/were thus doomed to fail. In both conflicts the enemy (correctly) perceived the US as hopelessly divided, with sizable factions ready and willing to wage a propaganda war on their behalf for their own political purposes. Believing (again correctly) that while they could not hope to win on the battlefield that they could create enough news events for their erstwhile allies to win on the US political front, thus securing victory. The solution to this is fairly obvious so I won't belabor the point.
> I strive every day to make bug-free code, but I realize it's unrealistic to expect I'll ever get there. > It doesn't make the ideal any less important or valuable.
Big difference being that pacifism only works if each and every person on the planet (AND any alien races that wander by) adopts pacifism. But each and every intermediate step between current reality and utopia makes matters worse and lowers the odds of actually attaining your goal. On the other hand, removing bugs from code makes the code better with no side effects (other than accidentally introducing a new bug with the patch) so fewer bugs are preferrable to more bugs, while working towards the eventual goal of zero bugs.
Personally I think anyone renouncing violence (one good place for the line being failure to submit to selective service) should be prohibited from voting. Think about it, Government is nothing but an attempt to attain a monopoly on the use of force and then use that monopoly to force the subjects of said government to do things they would not do without the threat of violence. Things like surrender half (or more) of the product of their labor. If you claim to be a real pacifist ANY vote other than for the instant abolition of the State is expressing a desire to use (or threaten with) the force of Government on someone so you really aren't a pacifist anyway so you should join me in my call.
But being a hypocrite you won't. Truth is you love violence, just as long as the right people are inflicting suffering on your enemies. And as long as you don't have to get your hands dirty so you can avert your eyes and pretend it isn't happening and at any rate YOU aren't doing it. But you are. If you eat a hamburger you are killing cows, same as if you did it yourself. And if you vote for some Republicrat who violates his oath of office and steals someone's labor against their will to fund AIDS research/welfare/farm subsidy/etc. you are pro violence. When government threatens to fine/imprision/whatever someone for putting up a billboard too close to election day, what else is it but a threat of violence against anyone rocking the incumbent boat? Ok, you are on the 'correct/non-violent' side of the issues I threw out at random? Bet there are others you ARE on the violent side of, care to refute me?
Getting the mental defectives off the voter registration rolls would be a major win. And yes pacifism is a mental defect. If nothing else it reveals a profound lack of reasoning skills and probably a deep seated suicidal self hatred. Note I'm talking about pacifism here, not the sane belief that intelligent, rational self interested people can almost always work out their problems in a peaceful way. But to believe that the world is currently populated solely with that sort of enlightened folk is delusional at best.
> at least they are doing something to curb war and destruction you war mongering fucknuckles.
You say that like violence and war are bad things. All things being equal I think we can all agree that a peaceful solution to a problem is better than a violent one. But all things are not equal and all problems do not have peaceful solutions. And for the fucktard who said "Violence doesn't solve anything." I have just one question:
Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem. You might not like the solution, but violence does solve problems. Just look at American history and count how many times violence solved the problem of the day. Start with the colonies dispute with the King of England.
We talked and pleaded our case until we were blue in the face. In the end though, we stopped talking and started shooting and the problem was solved. Then about eighty years later we had a big dispute about federal vs states' rights with abolition vs slavery all muddled in the middle. Again the problem festered for years until violence resolved the problem. (Personally I think it was resolved the wrong way but again in that they destroyed the principles the Republic was based upon in the effort to preserve it, but opinions are like assholes in that everybody has one.) They solved the problem though and it hasn't recurred in over a century so I think we can all agree it is pretty much solved.
Nazi problem? Solved with lots of ultra violence, on both sides of the argument.
Imperial Japan? Solved with even more ultra violence, culminating is a really big spasm of overkill. But it solved the problem.
The only major foreign policy dispute of the 20th century solved with little (if you can discount the dozens of 'brush wars' like Vietnam) violence was the Cold War, it was solved by the speaking of but a single sentence. Of course the struggle to get the right person in the right place to speak it was a major undertaking. Which proves words aren't totally useless.
And actually, I firmly believe the current GWOT could be solved in a similar fashion. But it probably won't, instead culminating in another few years in a global spasm of violence that will make WWII and the mass graves of Communism pale in comparison. And since the War will begin at a time and place of the barbarian's choice our only hope is that they miscalculate and believe they can win a little too early.
> I think ALL sources are "good" sources -- but I also believe they all suffer from bias.
No, some sources are worthless. A biased source is useful, even Al Manar or Al Jezera is useful in as much as they present a direct line of communications to the terrorists. CNN or the NTY is useful because they will reliably give you the Democratic Party line. Fox gives the Republican position. But if Reuters can't fix this problem fast they become useless. Fiction mixed with news isn't worth squat. Beyond the two doctored photos this same asshat has been caught staging pictures. If we can't even assume a photo has any relationship with the caption there isn't a point. And if they are this sloppy with pictures, which any competent editor should have KNOWN was faked, can we trust the text stories they are passing over their wire?
Their problem is they have been caught allowing Hizbollah to submit propaganda into their service. I know I'll be branded all sort of nasty things for what I'm about to say but the only solution is to avoid allowing muslim/arab reporters from submitting GWOT stories, assign Europeans/Asians/etc. instead. Certainly ban any Lebanese stringer from covering the war inside Lebanon on the grounds there ain't no way to seperate out who is and isn't Hizbollah.
Nope, Playboy airbrushes the hell (well Photoshop nowadays I assume) out their models. Been doing it for decades. If you want the 'real deal' you have to move on down to the sleezier mags.
> First off Ubuntu is not an end-to-end solution as you describe
You are correct that Ubuntu, alone, is unimpressive. But Ubuntu + Debian will become unstoppable in another year unless someone does something about it. Witness the reponse of Novell with OpenSUSE and even the attempt to open up whatever the heck Lindows is calling themselves this week. They see the threat and are doing something about it. What is Red Hat's plan?
Compare and contrast the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian with Fedora and anyone else. Yes Fedora can be made usable if you plug in the redilly available stuff sitting at Dag and Livna. But you aren't allowed to mention those in any official Fedora materials. Yes, the RHEL rebuilds can satisfy the needs of the small scale production environment. But because Fedora, despite the official pronouncements to the contrary, is still just a beta program for RHEL an official link to one of them as an answer to a potential Fedora user's question about longterm supported versions isn't possible.
> Ubuntu get way too much credit....
Whether us old hands like it doesn't really matter. I liked RH's way enough to respin RHEL instead of switching distros, so that should tell ya where I come down on the issue. But I see a bandwagon effect getting rolling that is going to reshape the landscape. Ubuntu is easy enough to install now and will only get better. Yes it still has issues, but then so does Fedora. Ubuntu has a massive PR campaign behind it. Plus it seems to be getting the sort of zealots that a year ago were Gentoo's natural growth medium AND they are picking off most of the 'end user' crowd. To me that spells tipping point, if not already then soon.
I suspect the major reason the word "Ubuntu" is on everyone's lips these days is they are the last piece in a complete stack. Debian has always had the hearts and minds of a lot of serious developers but had a justified reputation as 'not for mortals.' Ubuntu completed the sequence. Unstable is where the developers live, Testing is where it settles down, Stable is for servers and now Ubuntu gives access to end users and desktop deployments. Especially with the LTS series the Debian world now offers a total end to end solution.
Compare to RedHat's stack. Rawhide maps to unstable, only less stable. More accurate would be the Fedora Test releases compare to Unstable. Fedora roughly maps to Testing and RHEL to Stable except it is only available bundled with a service contract. It is probably safe to say few developers develop on rawhide, from what I see on the mailing lists at least, most appear to use Fedora and add some packages from Rawhide/Dag/livna/etc. For the corporate world RHEL is worth every penny, as the RedHat financial statements attest. But you guys don't have anything to offer in the vast space between the deveopers and the major site installs.
When you dropped RHL I grabbed the RHEL source and started White Box, since joined by at least three more rebuild projects. However a new user understands none of that, only seeing Red Hat's offerings, which has nothing for them. They see Fedora Core, which has an expiration date not much longer than milk. Installing a new OS is traumatic enough, the thought of being forced to do it twice a year is right out, especially if they actually do it once and fight the war to get a working system. (drivers, media support, etc) And if they do invest the time to learn linux the Fedora way, unless they work at a site that is a candidate for RHEL there isn't any place to use that knowledge in the real world. Hint: Most of the Linux machines in production use aren't candidates for RHEL. Try selling management on a RHEL support contract that costs more ANNUALLY than an NT license for a file/print server. Critical web server, yes. Oracle server, no problem. But most places start smaller.
Compare to Ubuntu. Most users DO know Ubuntu is Debian based. But unlike Debian, Ubuntu compromised Free Software principles enough to make it fairly easy to get a working machine. So a new user can get going fairly easy and they aren't told they MUST upgrade annually, semi-annually preferred. And once they learn, Ubuntu LTS can be used for real work and it is only a small hop to Debian for a server or Sid to participate in development.
> For the record, any political contributions we make go to PACs. We figure that the money will be better distributed > to the candidates that actually support our positions, than if we gave to the national parties.
God damn! It just makes my day to see someone else with a political clue here at slashdot! I don't care if your preferred PACs are moveon.org, CPAC or the NRA, just the fact you have figured that out puts you miles ahead of 90% of the general population and apparently about 99% of slashdot useful idiots.
PACs are the big equalizer between US and the monied interests. Sure Exxon can give a candidate a pile of cash, so can the alternative energy companies, the other oil companies, the car companies. But so can Greenpeace. I don't particularly like Greenpeace, but recognize they give political voice to a large number of people who would be raging in the wilderness otherwise. Personally I'd rather they be in the game fighting for what they believe instead of assembling pipebombs. Same for the NRA, and remember WE already HAVE GUNS but content ourselves with donating money and plinking! Because that is what it comes down too, our form of government works because most people realize they have a shot at bringing about change through peaceful means instead of going all Hezbullah on us, which is why we only have a few really fringe nutjobs (ELF a few pro-life types and one Tim Mcveigh are about the extent of the homegrown type in the last few decades) blowing crap up. Outlaw PACs and lobbying and I'd really hate to see how bloody the current war of words between NARAL and the Pro-Life camp would get.
Which is why I'm really not looking forward to the next presidential election cycle. Hopefully something will shake up the landscape before then. Because while I'm a lifelong Republican I follow Heinlein's law. I will vote for a dunderhead of my party vs a genius of the party opposing, but I won't vote for someone outright harmful to our form of Government or who exhibits a gross moral defect. Most Democrats are terrified of Hillary Clinton and are praying for someone else to emerge, and I agree. But our side seems hellbent on nominating John McCain, primary sponsor of McCain Feingold and thus failing the 'harmful to our form of Government' test. If the Repubs hold Congress in the fall and appear likely to repeat in '08 I might have to vote for Hillary on the "she won't get anything from a Republican Congress while McCain would." argument.
> Why use the acronyms if you're just going to waste further space by defining them?
Or better, use the acronym and make it a link to definition. Use the Web for the original purpose. Or better, use some of the new junk to a good purpose and make acronym do a little yellow popup when the mouse hovers over them.
> So what I want to know is this: what part of "no law" did the legislatures not understand?
Perhaps you can point me to the part that says there are one set of laws for thee and me and another set (subset actually) that apply to the NYT. It cuts both ways, Congress shall make NO law, period. No special favors and no special restrictions. America is a classless society before the law, Presidents and Congressmen are equal to Journalists who are equal to Professors who are equal to the lowliest homeless bum. If the lowliest bum can be convicted of Obstruction of Justice for tipping of a dope dealer of a bust he heard about in exchange for a rock of crack cocaine then Judith Miller should be facing Obstruction of Justice charges for tipping off terrorists of an impending bust in exchange her awards.
Yes I know it doesn't really work that way in practice, the most Ms. Miller faces is loss of her phone records, Cynthia McKinney wasn't indicted for a crime any of us would be in prison for, Rep Kennedy crashes into the barrier in front of Congress and only has to go to rehab, etc. etc. But that is the ideal we should all be striving for. Everyone is equal before the law. Unless you wish to argue that nobody should ever be compelled to testify and that conspiracy laws should be stricken from the lawbooks for everyone, then Ms. Miller must be compelled to either testify or face conspiracy charges. (Can't do both, 5th Amendment forbids it.)
> The NYT was against revealing sources in both cases.
Ah, but there is more to the story my politically uneducated friend. The special prosocutor in the 'Plamegate' tempest in a teapot was appointed to appease the howls of outrage pouring forth daily from.... wait for it..... the editorial page of the New York Times.
And now that it is all over we can make a reasonably accurate guess why they stonewalled the turnover of Ms. Miller's records. Because they knew what was in her records, and therefore knew they wouldn't harm Chimpy; thus quietly turning them over would have brought the 'scandal' to an end a good year sooner and that wasn't in their interest.
Time to face it. Bush drew a line in the sand and said you are either with us or with the terrorists. The moonbats didn't need two full seconds to decide which side of the line they were going to stand on, and while at first it was more a case of simply being on the opposite side from Chimpy, they are starting to realize that Bush was right, and once on the side of the terrorists they might as well start swingin for their team. After all it was an easy enough slide, almost all of the left/msm are pro PLO and anti-semitic (even the jews in the media tend towards the left winger self hating jew variety), they hate America and western civilization with a passion equal to UBL himself although for totally different reasons and have zero moral restraints. Most of them spent the 60s through early 90s fighting passionately against the West in the service of the Soviets and when it comes to insane evil is UBL and Irans mad mullahs really worse masters/allies than the heirs of Stalin?
> Then upon reading the story -- it's the same reporter!?!
Hypocrisy isn't something the NYT worries about. If investigating a leak might hurt Chimpy McBushHitler (or Dick "Halliburton" Cheney) they are all for it. If Chimpy is the one wanting to know who leaked stuff they are against it. Just that simple. And if all this stuff helps the terrorists who the hell cares, the War is just a fevered raving of Chimpy and they wouldn't be trying to blow us up if Kerry had been elected.
> The 1st Amendment is for *everybody*, not just reporters.
Preach it! Reporters are Citizens, same as thee and me. Any other setup requires some government agency licensing reporters and "Press" organizations and anyone who doesn't think that is a bigger perversion of the idea embodied in the 1st Amendment than McCain Fiengold ain't on the same planet I'm sitting on.
No, reporters are Citizens, just like us 'little people in flyover country' and they are subject to the same laws as we are. If I tipped off a terrorist organization that the feds were about to sieze their assets I'd be in a "Pound me in the Ass Federal Prison" now. Which is exactly where the NYT reporters should be. Whether they should have their phone records seized is a no brainer and in a sane world they would be heaving a huge sigh of relief that was all that was happening to them.
> Consider how the original Star Wars got to be the highest grossing movie of it's time. > It spent over a year in theaters.
Star Wars spent a year in theaters because it was still making theater owners MONEY. But mostly because the rules were different then, theater owners decided what they would run and how long they would run it. That is no longer true. Big movie studios get commitments months in advance from the big theater chains for x number of screens for y number of days. So even if a movie is still pulling enough coin to justify keeping it playing another couple of weeks they have already committed the screen to the next piece of crap coming down the pipeline so the movie moves on down the road to the second run theater and from there to pay per view and dvd because those contracts were also signed before the film opened, leaving no room to reap those extra profits from a hit.
And the studios are in no mood to change things because they bullied the theaters into giving up almost all of the take for the first two weeks of release and living off the concession stand. So studios go all out to front load the bulk of the box office into those two weeks and don't really care about the rest of the run, because if it didn't do good those first two weekends they are boned. So big blockbusters with big brand name stars and a recycled but market tested story set in an established franchise with big advertising campaigns to get people to go on the opening weekend. And of course another bonus is when (not if) the movie sucks they already have most of the audience banked before the word of mouth gets out.
> good taste means that, while we require a hint of the human capacity for evil to understand why the villian > is the villian, we aren't really interested in wallowing in the evil. Lynch/Tarentino will always have their > fan base,
And sometimes the writer shoots straight over the heads of most of the audience. Take Tarentino and Pulp Fiction. The DVD has a reprint of a review in the booklet. It was clear the reviewer was far too sophisticated to get the meaning either so don't feel bad, you have lots of company. I suspect Tarentino laughed his ass off when the reviews came in. If one takes a little time to ponder the film it really isn't too hard to figure out so I won't spoil it here, only suggest you rent it, watch it again and then ponder a few minutes. One hint: straighten out the timeline and it gets a lot easier to see. It really is a slap the forehead kind of thing.
> The same could be said about the early American and Soviet space programs - they really needed the experience the Germans had.
But of course! Keep in mind the reason "Our German scientists were so much better than Russia's German scientists" though. Their distribution was not random. Being 'rocket scientists' in both senses of the term they understood Germany was losing and made every effort to be captured by American or British forces instead of the Russians.
In other words, they wanted to be here building rockets for US instead of slaving away for the Soviet Empire.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes, I know that is the current reality. I'm arguing that we as a society have zero reason to permit it. You should not be able to have both a trade secret and a copyright on the same thing. If you manage to obtain the secret formula for Coke you can publish it because they opted to keep it secret instead of patent it or copyright it. Copyright is just an arbitrary contract between society (as expressed through our elected government) and creators. Part of the deal is that we get the content, and the innovation, in exchange for a limited monopoly. By allowing them to lock it up companies go kaput and take it with them to their graves.
> I think the only release that would be welcomed with open arms (no pun intended) would be a release that while paid for, still releases
> the source code and rights to use and distribute it.
And just why would the source have to include redistribution rights? Commercial 'open source' software is a perfectly reasonable thing once you get past the mental blocks put up by a generation of commercial==closed thinking. Binaries are a technical artifact caused by compilers having a speed advantage over scripts. I say copyright should be adjusted to only allow a copyright on the actual created contect, i.e. source. Binaries should only be derived works like a translation of a book. Then you could fix bugs the vendor didn't care enough to bother with, port it, etc. But it would still be a copyrighted work and you couldn't give out copies anymore than you can pass out copies of Photoshop now. I'd like to live in a world of all free software. But until that day arrives a world where the commercial stuff came with a src.rpm would be almost a good.
> OS Software is good, proprietary software is good.
No, I do agree with RMS on that part. Closed software is ALWAYS bad. Sometimes I'm willing to compromise principles a bit and use it anyway but it is always bad. I would have a lot fewer problems with it though if when I bought a program a got the source. At least I wouldn't be totally tied to the whims of the vendor. If a bug were biting me hard enough I could fix it, when I upgraded the OS/hardware I could fix things myself if the vendor either was gone or had abandoned my version. I could even gang up with other users and distribute patches among ourselves. We couldn't redistribute the whole program because it is copyrighted by someone else but it would be better than the current situation.
Supplying the source would in no way diminish their 'intellectual property.' In fact, since Copyright is a trade between society and the content creator (as is patents) intended to enrich the larger society, I'd argue that the deal be clarified such that Source can be copyrighted but binaries can ONLY be derived works that can't carry an independent copyright. No source no copyright.
There is a lot of FUD among the commercial vendors, much of it probably being spread by a certain behemoth vendor and allies. Yes, many less clueful ones still think a Linux port has to be free, as if the GPL would taint their code or something. Others do subscribe to the belief that Linux users are either Free Software zealots who wouldn't pay regardless or are all a bunch of poor starving students. Some of us are hard nosed realists who refuse to be fooled again by being subject to the whims of vendors to the greatest extent possible. Some of us realize the Free stuff usually works a hell of a lot better than the piles of steaming crap vendors want to exchange a pile of cash for.
We just have to educate them. I will pay for software under very limited circumstances. If there is NO Free Software that can do the work I'll pay. If it isn't important (games) I'll pay. If it is going to process content I create it MUST write that in an open format, I won't be locked to a single vendor's whims. So I wouldn't buy Photoshop, even if Hell froze over and they ported it, unless I had an absolute requirement that The GIMP couldn't satisfy but since it writes many open formats I would buy it if I had to. Games are't a problem though. I really hated to see Loki go out, I did buy stuff from them.
At work we do the same thing. We have bought software before and will almost certainly buy it in the future. Just because I prefer Free Software doesn't mean we can refuse to computerize an operation just because there isn't a Free program available and we certainly don't have the man hours available to write an accounting system from scratch. That is just an example, yes there are some free offerings but none are anywhere ready yet. None can yet handle vital functions like payroll.
Yup, I also disagree with ESR's reasoning somewhat but agree that if you accept his reasoning his conclusion is perfectly rational and pro Free Software. But this is slashdot and for some reason there is a large contingent that loves to slag ESR so the editors are throwing a little raw meat out to get some pageviews on a slow Saturday.
I think ESR is wrong because most people aren't ever going to notice the 64bit transition, at least nothing like the 16-32 bit horrors of the 1990s. Both Linux (almost flawlessly on RH based distros and fairly useable on Debian ones) and Windows have made it all but unnoticable whether one is using 32 or 64 bit apps for 90+% of users and uses. Only those who need to malloc gigs need concern themselves.
But even ignoring all that we might want to consider compromising enough to capture desktop share. It wouldn't be unprecedented, GNU itself was developed on closed platforms because ALL platforms were closed, and after all the FSF is still wanking with HURD.
It isn't the 64 bit barrier we need to worry about, it is the ability to play multimedia content, which ESR also is concerned about, that is a real problem. We CAN'T write and distribute Free Software for most of that stuff because of patents. Yes I hate them as much as the next geek (and had the consistency to launch a big "Fuck you" to Tivo over yesterday's patent troll by them) but until we can change the rules of the game we are mostly stuck with them. Yes [I] can go get mplayer and most of [YOU] can get it, but corporate america isn't going to take a lawyer bumrush from the MPAA/Franhaufer/etc over the issue. And newbies are being put through a horrible rite of passage when they try to join us.
> I'm more concerned about what this means for projects like MythTV...
That was also my first reaction. But my second one was the beginning of a great anger against Slashdot for the spin they put on the story.
Tivo is acting as a patent troll, exactly the same as any other patent troll. So why was this story spun as a good thing? Why wasn't this story carried with the same moral outrage against the evils of the US patent system as, for example, Rambus? Or the Amazon one click patent? Lets be consistent here and leave the Tivo fanboi slavish devotion behind. Fuck TIVO!
> One would think that in 30 years and so many billion miles, it must be *VERY* lucky to have avoided
> any obstacles in its path?
> Can anyone explain?
Ok. Since you apparently skipped science class I'll keep it simple.
Well first off, space is big. Really really big. Mindbogglingly big. And second it is almost entirely empty. So the odds of it hitting anything is pretty much zilch, especially out where it is now.
> Sure the civil war eroded the inaugural charter, and it didn't solve the problem of why a member of a union has no right to terminate
> their membership. I won't say that the arrangement ought be 'right to work' style where they can dissolve without any notice. Obviously
> when you reach that style of union there are a lot of things to take care of a la divorce. What the war did was create an unlivable,
> unsustainable situation.
What an idiot. The War of Northern Agression might be many things, and by my choice for a name I'm hinting where my loyalties are at, but it did solve an otherwise unsolvable problem. And considering the South has failed to Rise Again in about a century and a half now I'd say it was quite sustainable as a solution.
Just take a look at the positions each side held and tell me how any peaceful solution was possible.
North: We must have the taxes we get from the South to fund the government, after all the South is the only part of the country generating exports while we must import most everything. Our Christian Fundamentalists have decided that slavery is WRONG and they are too important a voting block for us to ignore. We don't have the votes to amend the Constituition but this is so important we are going to do it anyway. In light of the above, allowing the Confederacy to leave is not on the table.
South: You bastards are taxing us to death to fund capital improvements in the North with your laws forcing most of our trade to move through Northern ports. The slavery issue was addressed eighty years ago when we all signed on to this Constituition that you guys seem hellbent on violating every time Congress comes into session. It is easy for you Yankees to get all moralistic, not having all that many slaves anymore, but you are asking us to commit economic suicide. You know you don't have the votes to amend it so you are just ignoring the rules and using your slight majority to ram stuff down our throats that are clearly unconstituitional. So screw you guys we are outta here.
> There are a lot of examples of conflicts where there were brief periods of outright war and many longer periods of minor
> warfare, which is exactly the current situation with terrorism.
Exactly. And that isn't peace either. And many times more people die from 'minor warfare' than would have died had it been allowed to come to a conclusion and end naturally.
For example, take the Middle East's big open sore. No negotiated settlement is possible so long as one side's position is that until they 'regain' every inch of Israel the War isn't over. So accept them at their word, take the leash off Israel and allow the war to run to it's conclusion. Either way we would then have peace. Either they would exterminate the Jews (unlikely) or finally be forced, not into yet another hudna, but into a full surrender. One where all the current incorrigble leaders could be removed, the madrassas could be reformed to prevent the poison from seeping into the next generation, etc. What we had instead was a thousand people killed and NOTHING solved, it will all begin again in a year or three when Hezbellah regains strength.
> > Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem.
> Iraq.
Wrong. Iraq wasn't the problem, Saddam and the Baath Party were the problem. And I'd say they are both pretty much solved with Saddam in prison and likely to be executed and Baath Party a sad remnant. We were not at war with the general population in Iraq after all.
But of course, like so often in the real world, many answers are also new questions. Removing Saddam unleased a lot of pent up violence, which has been encouraged by just about everybody. Start with Iran, then Syria, Al Queda, Hezbellah, and last but certainly not least in the cast of villans must be included the US Democratic Party.
> Well, sorry, you can't. Vietnam was another huge fucking mistake made by people such as yourself who believe that enough violence thrown
> at a problem will solve anything.
Again you are wrong. You are correct to conflate Vietnam and post Saddam Iraq though since both have similar causes. Both are attempts to solve internal problems via external means and are/were thus doomed to fail. In both conflicts the enemy (correctly) perceived the US as hopelessly divided, with sizable factions ready and willing to wage a propaganda war on their behalf for their own political purposes. Believing (again correctly) that while they could not hope to win on the battlefield that they could create enough news events for their erstwhile allies to win on the US political front, thus securing victory. The solution to this is fairly obvious so I won't belabor the point.
> I strive every day to make bug-free code, but I realize it's unrealistic to expect I'll ever get there.
> It doesn't make the ideal any less important or valuable.
Big difference being that pacifism only works if each and every person on the planet (AND any alien races that wander by) adopts pacifism. But each and every intermediate step between current reality and utopia makes matters worse and lowers the odds of actually attaining your goal. On the other hand, removing bugs from code makes the code better with no side effects (other than accidentally introducing a new bug with the patch) so fewer bugs are preferrable to more bugs, while working towards the eventual goal of zero bugs.
Personally I think anyone renouncing violence (one good place for the line being failure to submit to selective service) should be prohibited from voting. Think about it, Government is nothing but an attempt to attain a monopoly on the use of force and then use that monopoly to force the subjects of said government to do things they would not do without the threat of violence. Things like surrender half (or more) of the product of their labor. If you claim to be a real pacifist ANY vote other than for the instant abolition of the State is expressing a desire to use (or threaten with) the force of Government on someone so you really aren't a pacifist anyway so you should join me in my call.
But being a hypocrite you won't. Truth is you love violence, just as long as the right people are inflicting suffering on your enemies. And as long as you don't have to get your hands dirty so you can avert your eyes and pretend it isn't happening and at any rate YOU aren't doing it. But you are. If you eat a hamburger you are killing cows, same as if you did it yourself. And if you vote for some Republicrat who violates his oath of office and steals someone's labor against their will to fund AIDS research/welfare/farm subsidy/etc. you are pro violence. When government threatens to fine/imprision/whatever someone for putting up a billboard too close to election day, what else is it but a threat of violence against anyone rocking the incumbent boat? Ok, you are on the 'correct/non-violent' side of the issues I threw out at random? Bet there are others you ARE on the violent side of, care to refute me?
Getting the mental defectives off the voter registration rolls would be a major win. And yes pacifism is a mental defect. If nothing else it reveals a profound lack of reasoning skills and probably a deep seated suicidal self hatred. Note I'm talking about pacifism here, not the sane belief that intelligent, rational self interested people can almost always work out their problems in a peaceful way. But to believe that the world is currently populated solely with that sort of enlightened folk is delusional at best.
> at least they are doing something to curb war and destruction you war mongering fucknuckles.
You say that like violence and war are bad things. All things being equal I think we can all agree that a peaceful solution to a problem is better than a violent one. But all things are not equal and all problems do not have peaceful solutions. And for the fucktard who said "Violence doesn't solve anything." I have just one question:
Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem. You might not like the solution, but violence does solve problems. Just look at American history and count how many times violence solved the problem of the day. Start with the colonies dispute with the King of England.
We talked and pleaded our case until we were blue in the face. In the end though, we stopped talking and started shooting and the problem was solved. Then about eighty years later we had a big dispute about federal vs states' rights with abolition vs slavery all muddled in the middle. Again the problem festered for years until violence resolved the problem. (Personally I think it was resolved the wrong way but again in that they destroyed the principles the Republic was based upon in the effort to preserve it, but opinions are like assholes in that everybody has one.) They solved the problem though and it hasn't recurred in over a century so I think we can all agree it is pretty much solved.
Nazi problem? Solved with lots of ultra violence, on both sides of the argument.
Imperial Japan? Solved with even more ultra violence, culminating is a really big spasm of overkill. But it solved the problem.
The only major foreign policy dispute of the 20th century solved with little (if you can discount the dozens of 'brush wars' like Vietnam) violence was the Cold War, it was solved by the speaking of but a single sentence. Of course the struggle to get the right person in the right place to speak it was a major undertaking. Which proves words aren't totally useless.
And actually, I firmly believe the current GWOT could be solved in a similar fashion. But it probably won't, instead culminating in another few years in a global spasm of violence that will make WWII and the mass graves of Communism pale in comparison. And since the War will begin at a time and place of the barbarian's choice our only hope is that they miscalculate and believe they can win a little too early.
> I think ALL sources are "good" sources -- but I also believe they all suffer from bias.
No, some sources are worthless. A biased source is useful, even Al Manar or Al Jezera is useful in as much as they present a direct line of communications to the terrorists. CNN or the NTY is useful because they will reliably give you the Democratic Party line. Fox gives the Republican position. But if Reuters can't fix this problem fast they become useless. Fiction mixed with news isn't worth squat. Beyond the two doctored photos this same asshat has been caught staging pictures. If we can't even assume a photo has any relationship with the caption there isn't a point. And if they are this sloppy with pictures, which any competent editor should have KNOWN was faked, can we trust the text stories they are passing over their wire?
Their problem is they have been caught allowing Hizbollah to submit propaganda into their service. I know I'll be branded all sort of nasty things for what I'm about to say but the only solution is to avoid allowing muslim/arab reporters from submitting GWOT stories, assign Europeans/Asians/etc. instead. Certainly ban any Lebanese stringer from covering the war inside Lebanon on the grounds there ain't no way to seperate out who is and isn't Hizbollah.
Nope, Playboy airbrushes the hell (well Photoshop nowadays I assume) out their models. Been doing it for decades. If you want the 'real deal' you have to move on down to the sleezier mags.
> First off Ubuntu is not an end-to-end solution as you describe
You are correct that Ubuntu, alone, is unimpressive. But Ubuntu + Debian will become unstoppable in another year unless someone does something about it. Witness the reponse of Novell with OpenSUSE and even the attempt to open up whatever the heck Lindows is calling themselves this week. They see the threat and are doing something about it. What is Red Hat's plan?
Compare and contrast the relationship between Ubuntu and Debian with Fedora and anyone else. Yes Fedora can be made usable if you plug in the redilly available stuff sitting at Dag and Livna. But you aren't allowed to mention those in any official Fedora materials. Yes, the RHEL rebuilds can satisfy the needs of the small scale production environment. But because Fedora, despite the official pronouncements to the contrary, is still just a beta program for RHEL an official link to one of them as an answer to a potential Fedora user's question about longterm supported versions isn't possible.
> Ubuntu get way too much credit....
Whether us old hands like it doesn't really matter. I liked RH's way enough to respin RHEL instead of switching distros, so that should tell ya where I come down on the issue. But I see a bandwagon effect getting rolling that is going to reshape the landscape. Ubuntu is easy enough to install now and will only get better. Yes it still has issues, but then so does Fedora. Ubuntu has a massive PR campaign behind it. Plus it seems to be getting the sort of zealots that a year ago were Gentoo's natural growth medium AND they are picking off most of the 'end user' crowd. To me that spells tipping point, if not already then soon.
I suspect the major reason the word "Ubuntu" is on everyone's lips these days is they are the last piece in a complete stack. Debian has always had the hearts and minds of a lot of serious developers but had a justified reputation as 'not for mortals.' Ubuntu completed the sequence. Unstable is where the developers live, Testing is where it settles down, Stable is for servers and now Ubuntu gives access to end users and desktop deployments. Especially with the LTS series the Debian world now offers a total end to end solution.
Compare to RedHat's stack. Rawhide maps to unstable, only less stable. More accurate would be the Fedora Test releases compare to Unstable. Fedora roughly maps to Testing and RHEL to Stable except it is only available bundled with a service contract. It is probably safe to say few developers develop on rawhide, from what I see on the mailing lists at least, most appear to use Fedora and add some packages from Rawhide/Dag/livna/etc. For the corporate world RHEL is worth every penny, as the RedHat financial statements attest. But you guys don't have anything to offer in the vast space between the deveopers and the major site installs.
When you dropped RHL I grabbed the RHEL source and started White Box, since joined by at least three more rebuild projects. However a new user understands none of that, only seeing Red Hat's offerings, which has nothing for them. They see Fedora Core, which has an expiration date not much longer than milk. Installing a new OS is traumatic enough, the thought of being forced to do it twice a year is right out, especially if they actually do it once and fight the war to get a working system. (drivers, media support, etc) And if they do invest the time to learn linux the Fedora way, unless they work at a site that is a candidate for RHEL there isn't any place to use that knowledge in the real world. Hint: Most of the Linux machines in production use aren't candidates for RHEL. Try selling management on a RHEL support contract that costs more ANNUALLY than an NT license for a file/print server. Critical web server, yes. Oracle server, no problem. But most places start smaller.
Compare to Ubuntu. Most users DO know Ubuntu is Debian based. But unlike Debian, Ubuntu compromised Free Software principles enough to make it fairly easy to get a working machine. So a new user can get going fairly easy and they aren't told they MUST upgrade annually, semi-annually preferred. And once they learn, Ubuntu LTS can be used for real work and it is only a small hop to Debian for a server or Sid to participate in development.
> For the record, any political contributions we make go to PACs. We figure that the money will be better distributed
> to the candidates that actually support our positions, than if we gave to the national parties.
God damn! It just makes my day to see someone else with a political clue here at slashdot! I don't care if your preferred PACs are moveon.org, CPAC or the NRA, just the fact you have figured that out puts you miles ahead of 90% of the general population and apparently about 99% of slashdot useful idiots.
PACs are the big equalizer between US and the monied interests. Sure Exxon can give a candidate a pile of cash, so can the alternative energy companies, the other oil companies, the car companies. But so can Greenpeace. I don't particularly like Greenpeace, but recognize they give political voice to a large number of people who would be raging in the wilderness otherwise. Personally I'd rather they be in the game fighting for what they believe instead of assembling pipebombs. Same for the NRA, and remember WE already HAVE GUNS but content ourselves with donating money and plinking! Because that is what it comes down too, our form of government works because most people realize they have a shot at bringing about change through peaceful means instead of going all Hezbullah on us, which is why we only have a few really fringe nutjobs (ELF a few pro-life types and one Tim Mcveigh are about the extent of the homegrown type in the last few decades) blowing crap up. Outlaw PACs and lobbying and I'd really hate to see how bloody the current war of words between NARAL and the Pro-Life camp would get.
Which is why I'm really not looking forward to the next presidential election cycle. Hopefully something will shake up the landscape before then. Because while I'm a lifelong Republican I follow Heinlein's law. I will vote for a dunderhead of my party vs a genius of the party opposing, but I won't vote for someone outright harmful to our form of Government or who exhibits a gross moral defect. Most Democrats are terrified of Hillary Clinton and are praying for someone else to emerge, and I agree. But our side seems hellbent on nominating John McCain, primary sponsor of McCain Feingold and thus failing the 'harmful to our form of Government' test. If the Repubs hold Congress in the fall and appear likely to repeat in '08 I might have to vote for Hillary on the "she won't get anything from a Republican Congress while McCain would." argument.
> Why use the acronyms if you're just going to waste further space by defining them?
Or better, use the acronym and make it a link to definition. Use the Web for the original purpose. Or better, use some of the new junk to a good purpose and make acronym do a little yellow popup when the mouse hovers over them.
> So what I want to know is this: what part of "no law" did the legislatures not understand?
Perhaps you can point me to the part that says there are one set of laws for thee and me and another set (subset actually) that apply to the NYT. It cuts both ways, Congress shall make NO law, period. No special favors and no special restrictions. America is a classless society before the law, Presidents and Congressmen are equal to Journalists who are equal to Professors who are equal to the lowliest homeless bum. If the lowliest bum can be convicted of Obstruction of Justice for tipping of a dope dealer of a bust he heard about in exchange for a rock of crack cocaine then Judith Miller should be facing Obstruction of Justice charges for tipping off terrorists of an impending bust in exchange her awards.
Yes I know it doesn't really work that way in practice, the most Ms. Miller faces is loss of her phone records, Cynthia McKinney wasn't indicted for a crime any of us would be in prison for, Rep Kennedy crashes into the barrier in front of Congress and only has to go to rehab, etc. etc. But that is the ideal we should all be striving for. Everyone is equal before the law. Unless you wish to argue that nobody should ever be compelled to testify and that conspiracy laws should be stricken from the lawbooks for everyone, then Ms. Miller must be compelled to either testify or face conspiracy charges. (Can't do both, 5th Amendment forbids it.)
> I would be very worried if it became a crime to tell someone that was a suspect of a crime that
> they are a suspect of a crime.
Put down the crackpipe dude. Have you ever heard of a little concept called "Obstruction of Justice?" It's what ended up taking out Tricky Dick Nixon.
> The NYT was against revealing sources in both cases.
Ah, but there is more to the story my politically uneducated friend. The special prosocutor in the 'Plamegate' tempest in a teapot was appointed to appease the howls of outrage pouring forth daily from.... wait for it..... the editorial page of the New York Times.
And now that it is all over we can make a reasonably accurate guess why they stonewalled the turnover of Ms. Miller's records. Because they knew what was in her records, and therefore knew they wouldn't harm Chimpy; thus quietly turning them over would have brought the 'scandal' to an end a good year sooner and that wasn't in their interest.
Time to face it. Bush drew a line in the sand and said you are either with us or with the terrorists. The moonbats didn't need two full seconds to decide which side of the line they were going to stand on, and while at first it was more a case of simply being on the opposite side from Chimpy, they are starting to realize that Bush was right, and once on the side of the terrorists they might as well start swingin for their team. After all it was an easy enough slide, almost all of the left/msm are pro PLO and anti-semitic (even the jews in the media tend towards the left winger self hating jew variety), they hate America and western civilization with a passion equal to UBL himself although for totally different reasons and have zero moral restraints. Most of them spent the 60s through early 90s fighting passionately against the West in the service of the Soviets and when it comes to insane evil is UBL and Irans mad mullahs really worse masters/allies than the heirs of Stalin?
> Then upon reading the story -- it's the same reporter!?!
Hypocrisy isn't something the NYT worries about. If investigating a leak might hurt Chimpy McBushHitler (or Dick "Halliburton" Cheney) they are all for it. If Chimpy is the one wanting to know who leaked stuff they are against it. Just that simple. And if all this stuff helps the terrorists who the hell cares, the War is just a fevered raving of Chimpy and they wouldn't be trying to blow us up if Kerry had been elected.
> The 1st Amendment is for *everybody*, not just reporters.
Preach it! Reporters are Citizens, same as thee and me. Any other setup requires some government agency licensing reporters and "Press" organizations and anyone who doesn't think that is a bigger perversion of the idea embodied in the 1st Amendment than McCain Fiengold ain't on the same planet I'm sitting on.
No, reporters are Citizens, just like us 'little people in flyover country' and they are subject to the same laws as we are. If I tipped off a terrorist organization that the feds were about to sieze their assets I'd be in a "Pound me in the Ass Federal Prison" now. Which is exactly where the NYT reporters should be. Whether they should have their phone records seized is a no brainer and in a sane world they would be heaving a huge sigh of relief that was all that was happening to them.
> Consider how the original Star Wars got to be the highest grossing movie of it's time.
> It spent over a year in theaters.
Star Wars spent a year in theaters because it was still making theater owners MONEY. But mostly because the rules were different then, theater owners decided what they would run and how long they would run it. That is no longer true. Big movie studios get commitments months in advance from the big theater chains for x number of screens for y number of days. So even if a movie is still pulling enough coin to justify keeping it playing another couple of weeks they have already committed the screen to the next piece of crap coming down the pipeline so the movie moves on down the road to the second run theater and from there to pay per view and dvd because those contracts were also signed before the film opened, leaving no room to reap those extra profits from a hit.
And the studios are in no mood to change things because they bullied the theaters into giving up almost all of the take for the first two weeks of release and living off the concession stand. So studios go all out to front load the bulk of the box office into those two weeks and don't really care about the rest of the run, because if it didn't do good those first two weekends they are boned. So big blockbusters with big brand name stars and a recycled but market tested story set in an established franchise with big advertising campaigns to get people to go on the opening weekend. And of course another bonus is when (not if) the movie sucks they already have most of the audience banked before the word of mouth gets out.
> good taste means that, while we require a hint of the human capacity for evil to understand why the villian
> is the villian, we aren't really interested in wallowing in the evil. Lynch/Tarentino will always have their
> fan base,
And sometimes the writer shoots straight over the heads of most of the audience. Take Tarentino and Pulp Fiction. The DVD has a reprint of a review in the booklet. It was clear the reviewer was far too sophisticated to get the meaning either so don't feel bad, you have lots of company. I suspect Tarentino laughed his ass off when the reviews came in. If one takes a little time to ponder the film it really isn't too hard to figure out so I won't spoil it here, only suggest you rent it, watch it again and then ponder a few minutes. One hint: straighten out the timeline and it gets a lot easier to see. It really is a slap the forehead kind of thing.
> The same could be said about the early American and Soviet space programs - they really needed the experience the Germans had.
But of course! Keep in mind the reason "Our German scientists were so much better than Russia's German scientists" though. Their distribution was not random. Being 'rocket scientists' in both senses of the term they understood Germany was losing and made every effort to be captured by American or British forces instead of the Russians.
In other words, they wanted to be here building rockets for US instead of slaving away for the Soviet Empire.