> I honestly would like a good explanation of > how the GPL is more beneficial to the > programmer than a license such as BSD. If > your intent is to share, why purposely step > on the toes of someone who may want to take > you up on the offer?
because your intent may be to share with other people who are willing to share, but not with those who just want to take without giving anything in return.
that's a perfectly reasonable desire, and that's why many programmers and users choose GPL projects over BSD-licensed projects. it's a way of giving without risk of feeling ripped off by parasites and leeches.
the GPL doesn't eliminate the free-loader problem, it just makes it irrelevant. it's still possible to take without giving (of course - some people aren't able to give anything valuable in return), it just ensures that if you do make and distribute a useful enhancement or derivative then you are required to share it.
it's not altruism, it's enlightened self-interest.
programmers who prefer BSD and similar licenses may not care about parasites and leeches (and may not even see them as such). that's fine. it's their software, they can choose to give it away in whatever manner they like. similarly, GPL fans can choose to give away their stuff in the way that they prefer.
> In the small lab setting, the point-of-view > that all results should be open is valid. On > the larger, macroeconomic scale, this > point-of-view hurts the free market.
no, it doesn't hurt the "free market". at all. it may (or may not) hurt a particular company (or two or three) but individual companies are NOT the free market. the free market also includes the hundreds or thousands of companies and individuals who are restrained from participating by trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, copyrights, patents, and so on.
in fact, any restriction on the free exchange of ideas and implementations of ideas (i.e. patents and copyrights) is INHERENTLY harmful to the free market. copyrights and patents are a socialist intervention into the free market.
this isn't necessarily a bad thing...there may be benefits in limiting the free market in this way, but that's because the world isn't as simple and black & white as american cultural programming (aka brainwashing) would have it - it's nowhere near as simple as "capitalism good, socialism bad".
actually, he could, and it would be easy. and correct. The Republican party are fascist. the Democrats are too.
> Republicans, whatever their merits and flaws, > are not interested in state control of > business, which is one of the key tenants of > fascism.
1. it's spelt "tenet", not "tenant". a tenant is someone who rents or otherwise possesses or occupies a property. a "tenet" is a principle, doctrine, or belief. sorry, but this is just one of those little things that piss me off because it's an extremely common stupid mistake. if you're going to use a word, at least use the right damn word and/or learn to spell it.
2. you've got the definition back to front. fascism is not about state control OF business. it is about the control of the state BY business...and that is EXACTLY what Republicans are about (and Democrats too, but that shouldn't come as any surprise, the only *real* difference between the two major parties is exactly which mega-corporations they favour, and which businesses will benefit if they are in power).
> if you respond that the Bush presidency is > Totalitarian, you will have lost all > credibility.
actually, he'd be quite credible because Bush *IS* a totalitarian. he's also an usurper because he stole the election by rigging it...not once, but twice.
if you were willing to open your eyes and see what is going on around you, you'd be able to see that for yourself.
> Imagine writing a howto. Now somebody else comes > along and adds lots of useful, relevant content > to the howto. However, they mark all of the > document as invariant and begin redistributing. > They've just reduced the "free-ness" of that > document, which is a big no-no.
that's not possible.
the primary subject matter of a GFDL document CAN NOT BE MADE INVARIANT.
only Secondary Sections can be made invariant. The GFDL has the following to say about it:
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.
> Having anyone at some point be able to take > the truly free and modifiable work of someone > else, then hijack it and make it non-free (as > this would surely be) is a big no-no.
the BSD license allows this, and it is considered DFSG-free. several other free licenses also allow it.
in other words: regardless of how undesirable this is, it is not prohibited by the DFSG.
yeah, they haven't yet learned the secret of not-really-free market capitalism from the americans. when they do, they'll be lobbying governments all over the world to require all computer users to have spyware installed, and make it a crime to remove it....and having their government threaten trade embargoes or excessive tariffs or, in extreme cases, military action against any nation which refuses to comply.
> How about hitting stupid users over the head > repeatedly until they click the 'install > critical updates' button...
idiot users are only partly to blame. the real problems are the idiot programmers and idiot managers and idiot marketing droids at microsoft who are responsible for the crap code in Windows.
clicking the "install critical updates" button doesn't do any good if there ISN'T an update to fix a bug....and even when there is an update, it often doesn't fix the underlying problem, it just patches one particular instance of a recurring bug so that it is hidden or difficult to exploit. eventually, a new exploit will be discovered for the SAME BUG.
"The Computer that I use", following the linguistic conventions of the planet Anarres(*) as using words like "my" and "mine" tends to create an unhealthy attitude of possessiveness.
> Just move Wine servers offshore somewhere like > Hungary and set up (virtual) shop there. > > It worked for MPlayer.
news just in: G.W. Bush adds Hungary to "Axis of Evil" terrorist list.
Invas....ooops...Operation Hungarian Liberty scheduled for 3 months after massive anti-Hungary propaganda campaign has manufactured american public support.
in the meantime, covert funding of skinhead and other neo-nazi groups will be increased.
> But we are short on plumbers in the UK too. > It seems to be down to a long term decline in > people training in the "trades" due to these > skills being looked down on by the growing > middle class.
that's part of the reason, but the main reason (which none of those responsible will ever admit to or acknowledge) is the privatisation of railways, gas & fuel services, water supplies and all the other public utilities which employed and trained huge armies of apprentices.
the public service utilities trained apprentices for future needs. the privatised utilities don't because they only plan for the short term - anyway, it's up to "the market" to magically supply them with trained tradespeople when they need them.
no apprentices == no qualified tradespeople.
yet another reason why privatisation was (and still is) a bad idea.
> some consider the gulf in intelligence between > them and their God to be so vast as to make > comparisons like that meaningless.
then why do they all have such a dumb, petty, small-minded god?
if nothing else can convince you that there is no god, maybe you'll be swayed by the fact that all the major religions propose a preposterously small-minded and insignificant god (e.g. a patriarch-shepherd) as the creator of a vast and incredibly complex universe.
it makes no sense at all.
it just defies belief.
(yet some people manage to believe it anyway. my theory is that they are either insane or stupid or both).
> $200B at 15k/ea is around 13M houses. I think > that is low. It looks like it would cost more > to do the panels than the invasion cost, by > roughly twice.
and worth every cent. there are a few other cost factors in the comparison:
1. economy of scale. solar panels and inverters etc are going to get cheaper if they're produced at this kind of scale.
2. iraq's going to continue costing more & more over the next decade or two. it'll end up costing well over a trillion $, especially with haliburton's snout in the trough.
3. it doesn't have to be a 100% subsidy, it could be a 75% or 50% or even 25% subsidy and that would still be enough to make it viable for many home-owners to convert (especially with the cheaper production in 1. above). or it could be a sliding scale of subsidies - anywhere from 0% to 100% depending on wealth and income. or pay for a "standard" capacity (say, 2KW) with the homeowner paying for any extra capacity that they want...once the infrastructure (i.e. inverter) is installed, it's relatively cheap and easy to add more panels.
e.g. at today's prices, it would cost about $25K to completely convert one house to solar power. i can't quite justify/afford that....but i could afford $10K or maybe even $15K. not only would i be independant of the grid and the occasional power blackout (if i had batteries as well as grid-feed inverter), i'd also know that i was doing what i can to reduce my personal environmental impact.
> And that would still not cover autos, which are > IIRC %60 of our oil use.
for most city driving, a small electric car with under 100km range is more than adequate - especially if combined with access to a larger car (e.g. hire car) for long trips.
but the major benefit of decentralised solar power is that it would eliminate or at least minimise the need for coal power stations - coal, especially brown coal, is IMO far worse than oil.
> R&D spending would be a better use of the money, > but you need to check your math.
true. actually, i needed to actually DO the math - i have to admit that i didn't even bother.
and all the guesses above are a moot point - $200 billion in R&D funding over the next decade would give us a viable, cheap, clean energy source. that's a hell of a lot of research, engineering, and problem-solving for fuel cells, hydrogen generation, improved efficiency in solar cells and batteries, small-medium scale bio-gas generators(*) etc etc etc. the solution is probably going to be a combination of all of these technologies (and more).
(*) e.g. in combination with council "green waste" (lawn clippings, tree prunings, etc) collection services....which could be expanded to include composting - it's not that hard for householders to separate the organic material in their garbage. all it takes is two separate bins, one for compost, one for rubbish. plus they get the benefit of not having a stinky garbage bin.
the main problem is a lack of will to do it. the problem isn't insoluble, it's just that those who are in a position to authorise and fund it aren't in the least bit interested - the status quo keeps them rich and in power.
i'm an environmentalist and i have committed the heresy of being in favour of nuclear power for many years - my final conversion was after travelling to india and seeing the extreme of what fossil fuels are doing - in particular the difference at Agra (location of the Taj Mahal, which is being slowly eaten away by acid rain) in the 10 years between my first and second visits. the air in most cities in India is vile, a disgusting polluted outrage.
solar, wind, wave, biomass and other "green" forms of power generation are certainly part of the solution - unfortunately, they aren't all of it. they just can't generate enough power to replace what we need today, let alone the amount we want because of our wasteful over-consumption habits...even if we scaled back our consumption to reasonable levels, "green" power generation would not be enough. nuclear power is the only viable option in the short to medium term, and the only thing likely to enable us to bootstrap to a hydrogen economy.
(it's one of the reasons, aside from the humanitarian and anti-fascist reasons, why i have been and still am opposed to the invasion of iraq - we'd HAVE viable alternative fuels within a decade if even a fraction of the $200+ Billion spent so far on retaining control over oil was spent on R&D on alternative energy....or even if it was spent on subsidising existing alternative energy production - e.g. how much would it cost to put 3+KW of solar panels plus batteries and/or grid-feed inverter on every house? only a fraction of what the invasion has cost so far, maybe $15-$20K per house at today's production costs. if governments can spend hundreds of billions on destruction, why not on construction? similarly, how much would decentralised solar power cost as an alternative to yet another gas, coal, or oil-fired power station - all of which are subsidised or paid for entirely by governments around the world? if a govt can spend $300+ million to build a new coal power station for a medium-sized town, why not $50 million on solar panels and required solar infrastructure or a solar tower for that same town?)
i'm also in favour of (some applications of) genetic engineering. i think it could be of enormous benefit to the world IF done properly. i'm particularly in favour of genetic engineering of humans, to make us healthier, smarter, stronger, faster, more resilient etc - we've successfully detached ourselves from natural evolutionary processes, so we have to do it ourselves now.
the problem with both technologies is one of trust. who can you trust to control them so that they are done safely and for the benefit of humanity? you certainly can't trust corporations, especially evil bastards like Monsanto. you can't trust governments either, especially extreme corporate whores like the U.S. government who, these days, are just the legislative arm of the big corporations.
the problem is not the technology itself, it is the evil bastards who would control it and use it to extend their control over everyone and everything else.
once i would have said that i'd trust my own government (australia) to regulate these things properly....unfortunately, our government is just another corporate lackey these days, obeying orders from washington (which come indirectly from the corporates who control the U.S. govt).
part of the solution is a worldwide prohibition on patenting of ALL organisms and genes, whether genetically engineered or "natural". GE is far too important to be reduced to just property.
another part of the solution is a massive reversal in the privatisation trend - keep natural monopolies (like power, water, wired communications) in public hands rather than corporate.
> After Patent Apocalypse sends the American > software industry back to year zero. > [...] > When the entire industry in the USA grinds to > a halt, but all is well in Europe, that's > when the US will repent.
no, not even then because that would be interfering with property rights - which is NEVER acceptable in the US.
that's why it's dangerous to grant property rights to things that should never be private property (e.g. software patents, converting water-usage license to property that can be bought and sold, privatisation of public utilities, discounted sale of publicly-funded research, etc). once that "property" has been granted (aka "stolen from the public"), it can never be reclaimed.
> - use the tool, but stop using BK (which makes > it useless)
this ignores the incremental evolution of software. the correct form of this choice is:
- use the tool (which is far from finished), and submit bug reports and patches to assist in its development.
there are lots of tools which we use now, which are partial clones of or incomplete alternatives to proprietary tools. some of them are good enough to be very useful now, some are only marginally useful, and many just show promise....but if nobody used them at all, they would never improve to the point where they were useful.
btw, i think that the one thing the pro-BK people are completely missing is that the very fact that McAvoy had the *capability* to revoke the free BK client license is *precisely* why BK should never have been used for the kernel. it doesn't matter whether LM used that capacity or not (in the end, he did - which just proves that the nay-sayers were right), what matters is that he had the capability to revoke access. that risk more than outweighed any convenience provided by the superior SCM technology. vendor lock-in is THE single most important thing that free software (and open protocols & data formats) frees us from.
no. it's the other way around. it's bad (but not bad enough to be amusing or entertaining...it's just tediously bad), therefore i don't like it.
> I suppose that a robot could be programmed to > believe anything its creator found to be > advantageous.
where's the benefit to the programmers/creators to do that? if they did, it obviously backfired because they ended up with genocidal robots....if they had watched 2001 they would have known it's dangerous to confuse AIs with irrational and conflicting information.
> You're OK with the starships jumping around > from star system to star system,
of course i can - it's supposed to be science fiction, after all....and they are star ships which kind of implies that they can travel from one star to another.
> but you can't swallow that a robot can be > programmed?
not at all. of course robots can be programmed. that's not even science fiction, that's science fact (and the only kind of robots we currently have).
what i can't swallow is that an artificial intelligence could, without pre-programming, observe the universe and conclude that there is a god or gods responsible for it all and that those god(s) actually care in the slightest about insignificant creatures & machines on an irrelevant world in the middle of nowhere (on a cosmological scale, ANYWHERE is irrelevent). that kind of conclusion takes either pre-programming (machines) or brainwashing (humans, same thing) or it takes both ignorance AND wishful thinking - and i don't see any reason to believe that an AI would have both of those traits (especially the latter).
> That is, of course, your prerogative, but you > sound pretty silly trying to make that be the > reason the show is bad.
no, it's not why the show is bad. the show is bad because it's crappy soap opera. it also coincidentally happens to have a space setting (note: this is NOT the same thing as space opera).
the religion thing is just what makes the show unwatchable for me....i might be able to tolerate yet another crappy soap opera in space (in lieue of decent science fiction) but boring theological crap masquerading as science fiction in a soap opera is beyond my ability to stomach.
> BSG is not science fiction. It's space opera,
no, it's soap opera that happens to be set in space, not space opera. there's a difference.
> and damn fine space opera at that.
it may or may not be good soap opera (personally, i think it's tedious), but it's certainly not space opera of any kind. sure, it has excellent production values and a fairly large budget. so what? they aren't required for good SF (or for good space opera either). it's lacking in science, it's lacking in good writing, and both of those are required for good SF.
> Realizing the Cylons as motivated by > theological beliefs rather than mere revenge > creates a villain with far greater depth than > Atlantis' Wraith, or even any of the "big bads" > from Buffy.
well, yes, it's true that religion tends to encourage genocidal behaviour but the religious emphasis is what really makes the show unwatchable for me.
i find it hard to believe that technologically advanced humans with interstellar travel capabilities and colonies will have such primitive superstitious beliefs, let alone the AI machines.
robots believing in a god? get real. it's just not credible.
> Certainly, BSG is not a prefect show, but as > far as contemporary science fiction is > concerned, BSG has improved upon the genre.
no it hasn't. it's just another turgid drama dressed up as science-fiction, with way too much tedious theological garbage.
like ST:TNG etc, it's just another soap opera in space....although a very different kind of drama, far more inter-character tension (in fact, that's about all the show has, and that gets very boring, very fast).
SF isn't about who is bonking (or not bonking) who, or the tensions between characters - it's about the ideas, it's about extrapolation of social and other trends, it's about exploring the possible. BSG has little or none of that.
> Okay... so I'm paying you how much for the > diagnostics because you're incompetent, and how > much to actually fix my problem?
that's not a fair question. spending time diagnosing problems is NOT a sign of incompetence, it's a neccessary part of doing the job properly.
with most computer problems, the time required to accurately diagnose a problem is many times greater than the time required to actually fix it.
a tech who jumps in with the first "fix" they can think of, without bothering to find out whether their initial theory is correct is likely to CAUSE far more damage than they attempting to fix.
some problems are simple and obvious, and the first theory you come up with is correct....but some problems are not at all simple, and you may go through several theories as to the cause before you figure out what the problem really is.
methodically formulating and testing theories is an essential problem-solving skill....in fact, IMO, it is THE single most important problem-solving skill any tech can/should have.
so if some tech takes three hours to find out what the problem is, and then five minutes to fix it and 15 more to test the fix, should they be paid for 3 hours 20 minutes or just 5 (or 20) minutes?
IMO, assuming that they are actually reasonably competent and aren't just deliberately wasting time to rip off the customer, they should be paid for the full 3:20 - that's how much work they did.
it may or may not be fair to charge less for diagnostic time than fixing time, but even that is debatable - the time for either depends on the skill level of the tech, and should be reflected in the hourly rate....otherwise, incompetent and/or novice techs end up making much more than good techs because they take many times longer to solve the problem.
the trouble is that most end-users aren't able to tell whether they are being ripped off or not. ultimately, they have only themselves to blame - it's not that hard to learn enough to at least be able to spot bullshit-artists and if they can't be bothered doing that, it's their own stupid fault.
as in EVERY other field, the onus is on you to understand at least enough to know whether you're being ripped off or not.
on another topic:
> How far will you go in investigating the > validity of this offer? Will you ignore the > offer of a years' free subscription? Did you > notice that you're giving away enough > information to be subject to identify theft?
it doesn't matter. no time at all. it's spam. the correct course of action in ALL cases like this is: ignore it, delete it, add them to your anti-spam blacklist and boycott them. if you think there's a chance it might do some good, waste some time complaining to them and their ISP (but you're better off just blacklisting them and optionally reporting them to various anti-spam services).
> The current top twenty are all American or > Australian. "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" > are the current heavy hitters with various CSI > variants continuing to have a solid impact too.
that's partly because there's hardly anything else on prime-time commercial TV but CSI and L&O and similar fascist police-state propaganda (where all criminals are both stupid and evil, and cops just have to violate their rights in order to protect the nice people).
> But Amazon didn't have that DVD available until > the start of this year. Would you put up with a > several-month delay just to stay legit?
sure, why not? i'd rather that than several weeks of my adsl line being maxed out up & downloading ~22 episodes at ~700MB per episode. that's about 15.5GB. that takes a long time to download at 512Kbps, and even longer to upload at 128Kbps (if you do the right thing and have a u/d share ratio of at least 1.0)
i've got far more important things to use my internet link for than up & downloading videos that i can buy for well under $100 AUD per season. having a usable internet link is worth a lot more to me than saving $50-$100.
hell, i even bought some of the stargate box sets and stargate is mostly crap pseudo-SF (with the occasional gem of an episode) - and it got crappier every season....but i'll still probably buy the last two season sets just because i'm a sucker for even crap SF (crap SF is tolerable without ads). why? because $60 AUD per box set aint bad value - cheap entertainment, less than $3/episode, without ads or other annoyances...and much better quality than some over-compressed DIVX download.
so, that works out to a choice between $2.72 per episode at DVD quality, or somewhere between half a day and three days to download at crap quality, with a good chance that the seed will vanish and the download will have huge gaps in it. the choice is easy.
btw, yes i've bought all the farscape box sets available here too, seasons 1-3. they were more expensive, over $100AUD/set, but worth it. no ads, good quality, and i got to avoid the annoyance of channel 9 fucking around with the schedule (as they did EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WEEK), just as channel 7 did with Buffy & Angel & Stargate....it seems that the commercial channels think that SF geeks will put up with anything.
i actually downloaded the final 3 episode of buffy season 7 because channel 7 kept screwing around with the schedule. i still bought the box set when it came out a few months later, so i could watch the whole season (including the episodes i missed because C7 changed the timeslot without warning) without interruption or ads. if i hadn't already watched most of the season and wasn't wanting to see the end, i would have just waited until the box was available for sale.
(and season 7 was crap compared the earlier seasons, and i knew it was crap before i bought the box....the entertainment value exceeded the crap quotient. the same isn't true for the final season of angel, unfortunately. that was seriously crap. about the only good episode was the muppet angel episode, one of the few written by Joss Whedon. i don't think i'll bother to buy that. it was so bad that i didn't care that channel 7 screwed around with the timeslot as usual and i missed quite a few episodes)
(oh, and i bought the firefly box set too - even after i spent ages downloading the entire series in divx format. it was worth it just to watch them at DVD quality. and i'll watch them again in a year or two, and every few years after that. i liked firefly....it was redneck cowboys in space, but the show had a lot of potential)
anyway, i've digressed a lot. my point was that downloading over-compressed TV episodes isn't worth it (IMO, to me at least) when you can buy the episode at DVD quality for about $3 in bulk.
the economics don't work out the same for movies, unfortunately. $30-$40 for a movie DVD just isn't worth it most of the time, especially when most hollywood movies are complete crap. i might pay $13 or so to see it at a cinema but $30+ for a DVD is too much. i'm more inclined to download a movie, as a low-quality preview/trial....and if i like it, i'll still end up buying it. if movies were around $10 or even $15 per DVD i'd buy a lot more, as that's within my "who gives a damn" price threshold.
oh yeah, one last thing. i've got a DVB-T card now and am running VDR. don't need to care about the c
> Surely there are many companies that are using > the open source code out there, putting it > into their systems and then not releasing > the fixes/changes back into the open domain. > (I know of several companies doing that). So > yeah, you can make money that way.. but it's > not exactly following the GPL.
you only have to release your changes IF you re-distribute the GPL code in any way. if you only use it internally on your own machines, there is no requirement to release your changes.
that *IS* following the GPL. exactly.
obviously, if your product is software then you will have to release your changes and distribute full source code under the GPL along with the binaries....but if the software is just infrastructure used by your business, then there is no conflict, and no problem - the GPL software that you use is just a cheaper, more flexible tool that you can freely adapt to your own needs. you can optionally choose to contribute your changes "upstream" but you don't have to (it is often wise to do so, though - it avoids re-implementation costs when there is a new version of the upstream code, plus you might get the benefit of some improvements made by other people who use your changes. it's also a good way of steering the upstream project away from directions that are incompatible with your changes, or at least making sure that your needs/changes are taken into account).
i don't see the point. mysql tacking-on more features in an attempt to pretend to be a real database just destroys what mysql is good for with no chance of it ever successfully implementing the features - you can't just tack on these features, they have to be designed in from the start.
mysql's a good little toy database that's perfectly suited to mostly-read applications (e.g. many kinds of web sites). why throw that away to be a half-arsed imitation of a real db?
if you want a real db, use postgres or oracle or sybase or even ms sql.
if all you need is a toy db (aka glorified filesystem with sql capabilities) then use mysql.
IMO, someone should fork an old version of mysql (before it got all the pretend-to-be-a-real-db features) fix the bugs, optimise it for even more speed if possible, and maintain that as a simple, no-frills, fast, web database engine suitable for applications that are read-mostly.
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> I honestly would like a good explanation of
> how the GPL is more beneficial to the
> programmer than a license such as BSD. If
> your intent is to share, why purposely step
> on the toes of someone who may want to take
> you up on the offer?
because your intent may be to share with other people who are willing to share, but not with those who just want to take without giving anything in return.
that's a perfectly reasonable desire, and that's why many programmers and users choose GPL projects
over BSD-licensed projects. it's a way of giving without risk of feeling ripped off by parasites and leeches.
the GPL doesn't eliminate the free-loader problem, it just makes it irrelevant. it's still possible to take without giving (of course - some people aren't able to give anything valuable in return), it just ensures that if you do make and distribute a useful enhancement or derivative then you are required to share it.
it's not altruism, it's enlightened self-interest.
programmers who prefer BSD and similar licenses may not care about parasites and leeches (and may not even see them as such). that's fine. it's their software, they can choose to give it away in whatever manner they like. similarly, GPL fans can choose to give away their stuff in the way that they prefer.
> In the small lab setting, the point-of-view
> that all results should be open is valid. On
> the larger, macroeconomic scale, this
> point-of-view hurts the free market.
no, it doesn't hurt the "free market". at all. it may (or may not) hurt a particular company (or two or three) but individual companies are NOT the free market. the free market also includes the hundreds or thousands of companies and individuals who are restrained from participating by trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, copyrights, patents, and so on.
in fact, any restriction on the free exchange of ideas and implementations of ideas (i.e. patents and copyrights) is INHERENTLY harmful to the free market. copyrights and patents are a socialist intervention into the free market.
this isn't necessarily a bad thing...there may be benefits in limiting the free market in this way, but that's because the world isn't as simple and black & white as american cultural programming (aka brainwashing) would have it - it's nowhere near as simple as "capitalism good, socialism bad".
> Copyright would not exist if it weren't for
> "societies" resources being used to compel
> compliance.
more to the point, copyright laws are a socialist interference with the free market that would otherwise exist in their absence.
> Actually, you couldn't make that case at all.
actually, he could, and it would be easy. and correct. The Republican party are fascist. the Democrats are too.
> Republicans, whatever their merits and flaws,
> are not interested in state control of
> business, which is one of the key tenants of
> fascism.
1. it's spelt "tenet", not "tenant". a tenant is someone who rents or otherwise possesses or occupies a property. a "tenet" is a principle, doctrine, or belief. sorry, but this is just one of those little things that piss me off because it's an extremely common stupid mistake. if you're going to use a word, at least use the right damn word and/or learn to spell it.
2. you've got the definition back to front. fascism is not about state control OF business. it is about the control of the state BY business...and that is EXACTLY what Republicans are about (and Democrats too, but that shouldn't come as any surprise, the only *real* difference between the two major parties is exactly which mega-corporations they favour, and which businesses will benefit if they are in power).
> if you respond that the Bush presidency is
> Totalitarian, you will have lost all
> credibility.
actually, he'd be quite credible because Bush *IS* a totalitarian. he's also an usurper because he stole the election by rigging it...not once, but twice.
if you were willing to open your eyes and see what is going on around you, you'd be able to see that for yourself.
> Imagine writing a howto. Now somebody else comes
> along and adds lots of useful, relevant content
> to the howto. However, they mark all of the
> document as invariant and begin redistributing.
> They've just reduced the "free-ness" of that
> document, which is a big no-no.
that's not possible.
the primary subject matter of a GFDL document CAN NOT BE MADE INVARIANT.
only Secondary Sections can be made invariant. The GFDL has the following to say about it:
A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.
The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.
The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License.
> Having anyone at some point be able to take
> the truly free and modifiable work of someone
> else, then hijack it and make it non-free (as
> this would surely be) is a big no-no.
the BSD license allows this, and it is considered DFSG-free. several other free licenses also allow it.
in other words: regardless of how undesirable this is, it is not prohibited by the DFSG.
> Hey look! The free market, Russian style.
yeah, they haven't yet learned the secret of not-really-free market capitalism from the americans. when they do, they'll be lobbying governments all over the world to require all computer users to have spyware installed, and make it a crime to remove it....and having their government threaten trade embargoes or excessive tariffs or, in extreme cases, military action against any nation which refuses to comply.
> How about hitting stupid users over the head
> repeatedly until they click the 'install
> critical updates' button...
idiot users are only partly to blame. the real problems are the idiot programmers and idiot managers and idiot marketing droids at microsoft who are responsible for the crap code in Windows.
clicking the "install critical updates" button doesn't do any good if there ISN'T an update to fix a bug....and even when there is an update, it often doesn't fix the underlying problem, it just
patches one particular instance of a recurring bug so that it is hidden or difficult to exploit. eventually, a new exploit will be discovered for the SAME BUG.
> Can't wait what they'll come up with next!
"The Computer that I use", following the linguistic conventions of the planet Anarres(*) as using words like "my" and "mine" tends to create an unhealthy attitude of possessiveness.
(*) _The Dispossessed_ Ursula K. Le Guin.
> It's called Diet Coke for a reason ;)
yeah, that's because market research indicated that "Brain Tumour Coke" wouldn't sell very well.
1. sugar. obesity. diabetes.
2. aspartame. brain tumours. seizures.
3. saccharin. prostate cancer.
your choice. would you like fries with that?
have a nice day.
> Just move Wine servers offshore somewhere like
> Hungary and set up (virtual) shop there.
>
> It worked for MPlayer.
news just in: G.W. Bush adds Hungary to "Axis of Evil" terrorist list.
Invas....ooops...Operation Hungarian Liberty scheduled for 3 months after massive anti-Hungary propaganda campaign has manufactured american public support.
in the meantime, covert funding of skinhead and other neo-nazi groups will be increased.
> But we are short on plumbers in the UK too.
> It seems to be down to a long term decline in
> people training in the "trades" due to these
> skills being looked down on by the growing
> middle class.
that's part of the reason, but the main reason (which none of those responsible will ever admit to or acknowledge) is the privatisation of railways, gas & fuel services, water supplies and all the other public utilities which employed and trained huge armies of apprentices.
the public service utilities trained apprentices for future needs. the privatised utilities don't because they only plan for the short term - anyway, it's up to "the market" to magically supply them with trained tradespeople when they need them.
no apprentices == no qualified tradespeople.
yet another reason why privatisation was (and still is) a bad idea.
> some consider the gulf in intelligence between
> them and their God to be so vast as to make
> comparisons like that meaningless.
then why do they all have such a dumb, petty, small-minded god?
if nothing else can convince you that there is no god, maybe you'll be swayed by the fact that all the major religions propose a preposterously small-minded and insignificant god (e.g. a patriarch-shepherd) as the creator of a vast and incredibly complex universe.
it makes no sense at all.
it just defies belief.
(yet some people manage to believe it anyway. my theory is that they are either insane or stupid or both).
> $200B at 15k/ea is around 13M houses. I think
> that is low. It looks like it would cost more
> to do the panels than the invasion cost, by
> roughly twice.
and worth every cent. there are a few other cost factors in the comparison:
1. economy of scale. solar panels and inverters etc are going to get cheaper if they're produced at this kind of scale.
2. iraq's going to continue costing more & more over the next decade or two. it'll end up costing well over a trillion $, especially with haliburton's snout in the trough.
3. it doesn't have to be a 100% subsidy, it could be a 75% or 50% or even 25% subsidy and that would still be enough to make it viable for many home-owners to convert (especially with the cheaper production in 1. above). or it could be a sliding scale of subsidies - anywhere from 0% to 100% depending on wealth and income. or pay for a "standard" capacity (say, 2KW) with the homeowner paying for any extra capacity that they want...once the infrastructure (i.e. inverter) is installed, it's relatively cheap and easy to add more panels.
e.g. at today's prices, it would cost about $25K to completely convert one house to solar power. i can't quite justify/afford that....but i could afford $10K or maybe even $15K. not only would i be independant of the grid and the occasional power blackout (if i had batteries as well as grid-feed inverter), i'd also know that i was doing what i can to reduce my personal environmental impact.
> And that would still not cover autos, which are
> IIRC %60 of our oil use.
for most city driving, a small electric car with under 100km range is more than adequate - especially if combined with access to a larger car (e.g. hire car) for long trips.
but the major benefit of decentralised solar power is that it would eliminate or at least minimise the need for coal power stations - coal, especially brown coal, is IMO far worse than oil.
> R&D spending would be a better use of the money,
> but you need to check your math.
true. actually, i needed to actually DO the math - i have to admit that i didn't even bother.
and all the guesses above are a moot point - $200 billion in R&D funding over the next decade would give us a viable, cheap, clean energy source. that's a hell of a lot of research, engineering, and problem-solving for fuel cells, hydrogen generation, improved efficiency in solar cells and batteries, small-medium scale bio-gas generators(*) etc etc etc. the solution is probably going to be a combination of all of these technologies (and more).
(*) e.g. in combination with council "green waste" (lawn clippings, tree prunings, etc) collection services....which could be expanded to include composting - it's not that hard for householders to separate the organic material in their garbage. all it takes is two separate bins, one for compost, one for rubbish. plus they get the benefit of not having a stinky garbage bin.
the main problem is a lack of will to do it. the problem isn't insoluble, it's just that those who are in a position to authorise and fund it aren't in the least bit interested - the status quo keeps them rich and in power.
i'm an environmentalist and i have committed the heresy of being in favour of nuclear power for many years - my final conversion was after travelling to india and seeing the extreme of what fossil fuels are doing - in particular the difference at Agra (location of the Taj Mahal, which is being slowly eaten away by acid rain) in the 10 years between my first and second visits. the air in most cities in India is vile, a disgusting polluted outrage.
solar, wind, wave, biomass and other "green" forms of power generation are certainly part of the solution - unfortunately, they aren't all of it. they just can't generate enough power to replace what we need today, let alone the amount we want because of our wasteful over-consumption habits...even if we scaled back our consumption to reasonable levels, "green" power generation would not be enough. nuclear power is the only viable option in the short to medium term, and the only thing likely to enable us to bootstrap to a hydrogen economy.
(it's one of the reasons, aside from the humanitarian and anti-fascist reasons, why i have been and still am opposed to the invasion of iraq - we'd HAVE viable alternative fuels within a decade if even a fraction of the $200+ Billion spent so far on retaining control over oil was spent on R&D on alternative energy....or even if it was spent on subsidising existing alternative energy production - e.g. how much would it cost to put 3+KW of solar panels plus batteries and/or grid-feed inverter on every house? only a fraction of what the invasion has cost so far, maybe $15-$20K per house at today's production costs. if governments can spend hundreds of billions on destruction, why not on construction? similarly, how much would decentralised solar power cost as an alternative to yet another gas, coal, or oil-fired power station - all of which are subsidised or paid for entirely by governments around the world? if a govt can spend $300+ million to build a new coal power station for a medium-sized town, why not $50 million on solar panels and required solar infrastructure or a solar tower for that same town?)
i'm also in favour of (some applications of) genetic engineering. i think it could be of enormous benefit to the world IF done properly. i'm particularly in favour of genetic engineering of humans, to make us healthier, smarter, stronger, faster, more resilient etc - we've successfully detached ourselves from natural evolutionary processes, so we have to do it ourselves now.
the problem with both technologies is one of trust. who can you trust to control them so that they are done safely and for the benefit of humanity? you certainly can't trust corporations, especially evil bastards like Monsanto. you can't trust governments either, especially extreme corporate whores like the U.S. government who, these days, are just the legislative arm of the big corporations.
the problem is not the technology itself, it is the evil bastards who would control it and use it to extend their control over everyone and everything else.
once i would have said that i'd trust my own government (australia) to regulate these things properly....unfortunately, our government is just another corporate lackey these days, obeying orders from washington (which come indirectly from the corporates who control the U.S. govt).
part of the solution is a worldwide prohibition on patenting of ALL organisms and genes, whether genetically engineered or "natural". GE is far too important to be reduced to just property.
another part of the solution is a massive reversal in the privatisation trend - keep natural monopolies (like power, water, wired communications) in public hands rather than corporate.
^W is prohibited technology in america, anyway, as the un-president refuses to acknowlege any control or legal limits on his actions.
> After Patent Apocalypse sends the American
> software industry back to year zero.
> [...]
> When the entire industry in the USA grinds to
> a halt, but all is well in Europe, that's
> when the US will repent.
no, not even then because that would be interfering with property rights - which is NEVER acceptable in the US.
that's why it's dangerous to grant property rights to things that should never be private property (e.g. software patents, converting water-usage license to property that can be bought and sold, privatisation of public utilities, discounted sale of publicly-funded research, etc). once that "property" has been granted (aka "stolen from the public"), it can never be reclaimed.
in this case, at least, property IS theft.
> - use the tool, but stop using BK (which makes
> it useless)
this ignores the incremental evolution of software. the correct form of this choice is:
- use the tool (which is far from finished), and submit bug reports and patches to assist in its development.
there are lots of tools which we use now, which are partial clones of or incomplete alternatives to proprietary tools. some of them are good enough to be very useful now, some are only marginally useful, and many just show promise....but if nobody used them at all, they would never improve to the point where they were useful.
btw, i think that the one thing the pro-BK people are completely missing is that the very fact that McAvoy had the *capability* to revoke the free BK client license is *precisely* why BK should never have been used for the kernel. it doesn't matter whether LM used that capacity or not (in the end, he did - which just proves that the nay-sayers were right), what matters is that he had the capability to revoke access. that risk more than outweighed any convenience provided by the superior SCM technology. vendor lock-in is THE single most important thing that free software (and open protocols & data formats) frees us from.
> So you don't like it, and therefore it's Bad.
no. it's the other way around. it's bad (but not bad enough to be amusing or entertaining...it's just tediously bad), therefore i don't like it.
> I suppose that a robot could be programmed to
> believe anything its creator found to be
> advantageous.
where's the benefit to the programmers/creators to do that? if they did, it obviously backfired because they ended up with genocidal robots....if they had watched 2001 they would have known it's dangerous to confuse AIs with irrational and conflicting information.
> You're OK with the starships jumping around
> from star system to star system,
of course i can - it's supposed to be science fiction, after all....and they are star ships which kind of implies that they can travel from one star to another.
> but you can't swallow that a robot can be
> programmed?
not at all. of course robots can be programmed. that's not even science fiction, that's science fact (and the only kind of robots we currently have).
what i can't swallow is that an artificial intelligence could, without pre-programming, observe the universe and conclude that there is a god or gods responsible for it all and that those god(s) actually care in the slightest about insignificant creatures & machines on an irrelevant world in the middle of nowhere (on a cosmological scale, ANYWHERE is irrelevent). that kind of conclusion takes either pre-programming (machines) or brainwashing (humans, same thing) or it takes both ignorance AND wishful thinking - and i don't see any reason to believe that an AI would have both of those traits (especially the latter).
> That is, of course, your prerogative, but you
> sound pretty silly trying to make that be the
> reason the show is bad.
no, it's not why the show is bad. the show is bad because it's crappy soap opera. it also coincidentally happens to have a space setting (note: this is NOT the same thing as space opera).
the religion thing is just what makes the show unwatchable for me....i might be able to tolerate yet another crappy soap opera in space (in lieue of decent science fiction) but boring theological crap masquerading as science fiction in a soap opera is beyond my ability to stomach.
> BSG is not science fiction. It's space opera,
no, it's soap opera that happens to be set in space, not space opera. there's a difference.
> and damn fine space opera at that.
it may or may not be good soap opera (personally, i think it's tedious), but it's certainly not space opera of any kind. sure, it has excellent production values and a fairly large budget. so what? they aren't required for good SF (or for good space opera either). it's lacking in science, it's lacking in good writing, and both of those are required for good SF.
> Realizing the Cylons as motivated by
> theological beliefs rather than mere revenge
> creates a villain with far greater depth than
> Atlantis' Wraith, or even any of the "big bads"
> from Buffy.
well, yes, it's true that religion tends to encourage genocidal behaviour but the religious emphasis is what really makes the show unwatchable for me.
i find it hard to believe that technologically advanced humans with interstellar travel capabilities and colonies will have such primitive superstitious beliefs, let alone the AI machines.
robots believing in a god? get real. it's just not credible.
> Certainly, BSG is not a prefect show, but as
> far as contemporary science fiction is
> concerned, BSG has improved upon the genre.
no it hasn't. it's just another turgid drama dressed up as science-fiction, with way too much tedious theological garbage.
like ST:TNG etc, it's just another soap opera in space....although a very different kind of drama, far more inter-character tension (in fact, that's about all the show has, and that gets very boring, very fast).
SF isn't about who is bonking (or not bonking) who, or the tensions between characters - it's about the ideas, it's about extrapolation of social and other trends, it's about exploring the possible. BSG has little or none of that.
> diagnostics because you're incompetent, and how
> much to actually fix my problem?
that's not a fair question. spending time diagnosing problems is NOT a sign of incompetence, it's a neccessary part of doing the job properly.
with most computer problems, the time required to accurately diagnose a problem is many times greater than the time required to actually fix it.
a tech who jumps in with the first "fix" they can think of, without bothering to find out whether their initial theory is correct is likely to CAUSE far more damage than they attempting to fix.
some problems are simple and obvious, and the first theory you come up with is correct....but some problems are not at all simple, and you may go through several theories as to the cause before you figure out what the problem really is.
methodically formulating and testing theories is an essential problem-solving skill....in fact, IMO, it is THE single most important problem-solving skill any tech can/should have.
so if some tech takes three hours to find out what the problem is, and then five minutes to fix it and 15 more to test the fix, should they be paid for 3 hours 20 minutes or just 5 (or 20) minutes?
IMO, assuming that they are actually reasonably competent and aren't just deliberately wasting time to rip off the customer, they should be paid for the full 3:20 - that's how much work they did.
it may or may not be fair to charge less for diagnostic time than fixing time, but even that is debatable - the time for either depends on the skill level of the tech, and should be reflected in the hourly rate....otherwise, incompetent and/or novice techs end up making much more than good techs because they take many times longer to solve the problem.
the trouble is that most end-users aren't able to tell whether they are being ripped off or not. ultimately, they have only themselves to blame - it's not that hard to learn enough to at least be able to spot bullshit-artists and if they can't be bothered doing that, it's their own stupid fault.
as in EVERY other field, the onus is on you to understand at least enough to know whether you're being ripped off or not.
on another topic:
> How far will you go in investigating the
> validity of this offer? Will you ignore the
> offer of a years' free subscription? Did you
> notice that you're giving away enough
> information to be subject to identify theft?
it doesn't matter. no time at all. it's spam. the correct course of action in ALL cases like this is: ignore it, delete it, add them to your anti-spam blacklist and boycott them. if you think there's a chance it might do some good, waste some time complaining to them and their ISP (but you're better off just blacklisting them and optionally reporting them to various anti-spam services).
> The current top twenty are all American or
> Australian. "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost"
> are the current heavy hitters with various CSI
> variants continuing to have a solid impact too.
that's partly because there's hardly anything else on prime-time commercial TV but CSI and L&O and similar fascist police-state propaganda (where all criminals are both stupid and evil, and cops just have to violate their rights in order to protect the nice people).
> But Amazon didn't have that DVD available until
> the start of this year. Would you put up with a
> several-month delay just to stay legit?
sure, why not? i'd rather that than several weeks of my adsl line being maxed out up & downloading
~22 episodes at ~700MB per episode. that's about 15.5GB. that takes a long time to download at 512Kbps, and even longer to upload at 128Kbps (if you do the right thing and have a u/d share ratio of at least 1.0)
i've got far more important things to use my internet link for than up & downloading videos that i can buy for well under $100 AUD per season. having a usable internet link is worth a lot more to me than saving $50-$100.
hell, i even bought some of the stargate box sets and stargate is mostly crap pseudo-SF (with the occasional gem of an episode) - and it got crappier every season....but i'll still probably buy the last two season sets just because i'm a sucker for even crap SF (crap SF is tolerable without ads). why? because $60 AUD per box set
aint bad value - cheap entertainment, less than $3/episode, without ads or other annoyances...and much better quality than some over-compressed DIVX download.
so, that works out to a choice between $2.72 per episode at DVD quality, or somewhere between half a day and three days to download at crap quality, with a good chance that the seed will vanish and the download will have huge gaps in it. the choice is easy.
btw, yes i've bought all the farscape box sets available here too, seasons 1-3. they were more expensive, over $100AUD/set, but worth it. no ads, good quality, and i got to avoid the annoyance of channel 9 fucking around with the schedule (as they did EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WEEK), just as channel 7 did with Buffy & Angel & Stargate....it seems that the commercial channels think that SF geeks will put up with anything.
i actually downloaded the final 3 episode of buffy season 7 because channel 7 kept screwing around with the schedule. i still bought the box set when it came out a few months later, so i could watch the whole season (including the episodes i missed because C7 changed the timeslot without warning) without interruption or ads. if i hadn't already watched most of the season and wasn't wanting to see the end, i would have just waited until the box was available for sale.
(and season 7 was crap compared the earlier seasons, and i knew it was crap before i bought the box....the entertainment value exceeded the crap quotient. the same isn't true for the final season of angel, unfortunately. that was seriously crap. about the only good episode was the muppet angel episode, one of the few written by Joss Whedon. i don't think i'll bother to buy that. it was so bad that i didn't care that channel 7 screwed around with the timeslot as usual and i missed quite a few episodes)
(oh, and i bought the firefly box set too - even after i spent ages downloading the entire series in divx format. it was worth it just to watch them at DVD quality. and i'll watch them again in a year or two, and every few years after that. i liked firefly....it was redneck cowboys in space, but the show had a lot of potential)
anyway, i've digressed a lot. my point was that downloading over-compressed TV episodes isn't worth it (IMO, to me at least) when you can buy the episode at DVD quality for about $3 in bulk.
the economics don't work out the same for movies, unfortunately. $30-$40 for a movie DVD just isn't worth it most of the time, especially when most hollywood movies are complete crap. i might pay $13 or so to see it at a cinema but $30+ for a DVD is too much. i'm more inclined to download a movie, as a low-quality preview/trial....and if i like it, i'll still end up buying it. if movies were around $10 or even $15 per DVD i'd buy a lot more, as that's within my "who gives a damn" price threshold.
oh yeah, one last thing. i've got a DVB-T card now and am running VDR. don't need to care about the c
> Surely there are many companies that are using
> the open source code out there, putting it
> into their systems and then not releasing
> the fixes/changes back into the open domain.
> (I know of several companies doing that). So
> yeah, you can make money that way.. but it's
> not exactly following the GPL.
you only have to release your changes IF you re-distribute the GPL code in any way. if you only use it internally on your own machines, there is no requirement to release your changes.
that *IS* following the GPL. exactly.
obviously, if your product is software then you will have to release your changes and distribute full source code under the GPL along with the binaries....but if the software is just infrastructure used by your business, then there is no conflict, and no problem - the GPL software that you use is just a cheaper, more flexible tool that you can freely adapt to your own needs. you can optionally choose to contribute your changes "upstream" but you don't have to (it is often wise to do so, though - it avoids re-implementation costs when there is a new version of the upstream code, plus you might get the benefit of some improvements made by other people who use your changes. it's also a good way of steering the upstream project away from directions that are incompatible with your changes, or at least making sure that your needs/changes are taken into account).
even more popular would be squid DNA - can you imagine a club full of humans with chromatophores?
:)
tentacles would be cool and useful too...and possibly open up opportunities for a lucrative career in the anime tentacle-porn industry.
i don't see the point. mysql tacking-on more features in an attempt to pretend to be a real database just destroys what mysql is good for with no chance of it ever successfully implementing the features - you can't just tack on these features, they have to be designed in from the start.
mysql's a good little toy database that's perfectly suited to mostly-read applications (e.g. many kinds of web sites). why throw that away to be a half-arsed imitation of a real db?
if you want a real db, use postgres or oracle or sybase or even ms sql.
if all you need is a toy db (aka glorified filesystem with sql capabilities) then use mysql.
IMO, someone should fork an old version of mysql (before it got all the pretend-to-be-a-real-db features) fix the bugs, optimise it for even more speed if possible, and maintain that as a simple, no-frills, fast, web database engine suitable for applications that are read-mostly.