What a pussy way to boycott. If you are going to boycott Slashdot, do it. Don't filter out the banner ads.
Why? Personally, I don't feel the need to boycott Slashdot, but I still filter out all banner ads from all sites I visit. I own my bandwith and computer monitor and I don't let anybody use my property for purposes I don't approve of. If they want to advertise on my computer screen, they have to offer me a good price for my screen real estate and bandwidth. Short of that, no dice.
It's pretty clear that the right is individual and absolute.
It may be clear to you, but your opinion doesn't count. What counts is the interpretation of the Supreme Court. Take your favorite gun control measure and try to challenge it before the Supreme Court, we'll see how far you go.
Of course, neither you nor the NRA will do that, because they know that they will lose since their interpretation of the 2nd is wrong. They don't want to let this little dirty secret get out though. That's why, whenever new gun control measures are debated, the NRA screams "Unconstitutional!" but when the measures are passed, they never challenge them. Their lawyers are too smart for that.
I doubt that banner ad revenue is so hot at slashdot, since readers here are mostly technically minded and therefore use products such as junkbuster to reduce unnecessary bandwidth requirements.
The second amendment says unambiguously that the right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED, period, with no exceptions, and this has not been amended at all, as far as i'm aware.
That's not what it says. Look it up. The Supreme Court has never acknowledged a private person's right to own guns. The NRA knows that, and never challenges gun control measures before the high court (they only scream "Second Amendment!" but never act on it), they would without doubt be laughed out of the chamber. The Second Amendment allows well-regulated armed state militias, that's all. This is the consensus of all supreme court judges and all constitutional scholars.
If somebody works and produces a product that you use, enjoy, whatever, shell out a few bucks, geez. Making all books (or software, for that matter) free doesn't provide a lot of incentive to people.
People who write books or software generally don't need a monetary incentive; they do it because they love doing it. Certainly the best people do it because they love it, just like in almost any field. The most compelling incentive is always that you are proud of what you are creating, not some meager pay check.
Do you really want the trust-fund, independently wealthy types as our only writers?
No. Do you mainly see the trust-fund, independently wealthy types writing free software? No? Why then would it be different for free literature? People, rich or poor, long to write, you don't have to pay them. Just like people love to program, even without payment.
I wonder what the differences between Napster, HotLine and Carracho are. All of them seem to allow to temporarily serve files and chat sessions from your local computer to the world, obviously intended for mp3 and warez trading. I think HotLine and Carracho are mainly popular in the Mac community. They seem to have some sort of tracker site to make it easy to find servers. Anybody knows more?
You call this freedom? You give me a choice between destitution and taxation and tell me I'm free because I have a choice?
If the income threshold in your country is such that it implies destitution, then indeed you don't have a choice, and the threshold needs to be fixed in order to restore freedom of choice. I don't know where you live, but I know that in the US one can live comfortably below the income tax threshold, because I did it as a graduate student. I didn't own a car or a TV or a computer or a phone (I still don't). I was not destitute.
How could anybody be against China adopting Free Software? What's wrong with more freedom in China? I don't understand ESR's point and I wish he would stop making non-sensical statements in my name.
Socialism, even the democratic kind, cannot optimize social welfare. Without accurate prices that reflect costs, you lose too much efficiency.
Depends on what you mean with "optimizing". Surely, capitalist societies maximize the average living standard, but that's not even the goal of democratic socialism: the goal is to maximize the lot of the worst off. In that, it succeeds quite admirably. The average living standard in the US is higher than in Europe, but at the same time the low end of society is a lot worse off in the US than in Europe.
While I do see QCAD as a valuable, useful tool, and I encourage its development, a GPL'd CAD program is simply unlikely to have the robustness of a commercial package required to earn the trust and support of commercial enterprises. CAD is a serious, serious business, and small, subtle bugs can lead to extremely expensive (or dangerous) mistakes. A word processor, etc. simply doesn't have such a stringent requirement.
Word processors don't have stringent requirements, and most of them are commercial, and most of them suck. Operationg systems and compilers have stringent requirements, and many of them are free and excellent. Your point was?
And even if it is any good - is it good enough for professional use? My first reaction is to say no. I have never used the software...
Then why don't you shut up? "I have never met you, but my first reaction is that you are a moron."
I would like, for a moment to compare a typical free 3D modeller to a typical commercial one. There is no comparison, really. Blender not withstanding, most free modellers are truly horrendous.
Why compare a typical free one to a typical commercial one? You seem to admit yourself that Blender is a high quality free modeller. Do you need more that one high quality free modeller?
||Everyone, except entities which enforce software patents, of course.
|Nah, that'd just bring the sharks out and make you look meanspirited. Instead, be like Ghandi and retain the moral high ground.
If I recall correctly, Ghandi had no problem with fighting non-violently against injustice.
Retaining the moral high ground is what we are doing right now: we publish our inventions in source code without patenting them, meaning everybody including the other side is free to use them. If we want to continue doing that, then no open source patent portfolio is needed. If however we want to fight against software patents that hinder us, then we need to assemble patents ourselves and use them aggressively.
So instead of worrying about whether or not people should have the right to patent what you've done, merely patent it yourself and then give everyone the right to copy your invention.
Everyone, except entities which enforce software patents, of course.
I think this is an excellent idea; what we need is a Patenting-HOWTO and a couple of pro-bono patent attorneys which show us the minimal-cost way of doing things. A couple of LyX templates to fill out, the right jargon to use, where to mail the stuff, it can't be rocket science. Then we need to convince RedHat or somebody else with money lying around to pay the application fees for every patent that goes into this open source portfolio.
The US government is not stupid. They know very well that the strong crypto algorithms are well known all over the world and free crypto software is widely used and can be downloaded from many non-US servers (and can also be produced by every CS major in a month).
So why do they insist on export controls? It's plain: to slow down crypto proliferation inside the US. The major email programs still don't include seamless crypto integration.
The most revealing bit of the puzzle is that source code is not exportable if it only contains hooks to allow easy plugging in of foreign developed crypto code. No US developed free software currently contains hooks like that, since it is impossible to prevent free software from being exported. It's not about stopping the flow of crypto algorithms to foreigners, it's also not about terrorists and organized crime (they can easily invest a bit of work and put the hooks in themselves): it's all about preventing wide spread adoption of strong crypto for every day communications in the US.
The major email programs still don't include seamless crypto integration.
The government currently listens in on telephone conversations and email, and they would like to continue in the future.
Your paying the government back for that education in the form of taxes every day you work in Finland.
Nobody forces you to pay taxes, since nobody forces you to hold down a job that earns more than the tax threshold. Therefore, you pay the government back only if you freely choose to do so, and it is very well possible to get a completely free education. "Free" as in "free beer" as in "somebody else pays".
Actually, in many countries the effective cost of education is negative because every student who needs it gets a stipend. These societies don't consider education to be a service for sale, but a right that everybody has.
All doctrine falls flat in the face of God's incredible love for us through Jesus Christ. Nothing else is really worth talking about.
It is a rather strange form of love though, maybe best described as "tough love". Sometimes, it's not so desirable to be loved by Him. For example when He decides to express His incredible love by letting you die with thirst while lying under the remains of your earthquake-destroyed house with broken bones.
I'm pretty convinced that they can't break the RSA public key system. But you don't need to break RSA to break PGP. The weak spot of PGP is the random number generator (PGP uses RSA only to transmit a randomly generated key which is then used by both parties for the rest of the communication). If you can predict the distribution of numbers the generator produces, you can break PGP without any need to factor large integers.
As far as I know, there is no decent random number generator on Windows. Linux has a good one though. I have no idea whether it is good enough. You could try to find out by sending a Linux-PGP encrypted death threat to the president...
The same goes for P3P. Nobody is forcing you to visit all these evil moneygrabbing sites - if you don't want to give out your personal details, you don't have to.
Except that the vast majority of people, who are stupid, will like P3P because it relieves them from typing in the same personal information over and over again. After a while, commercial sites won't let you in anymore unless you switch on P3P. Lying about your identity becomes much more difficult; you'll have to juggle different P3P profiles.
The Direct Marketing Association of junk mail fame backs P3P. Be afraid.
A quick deja search revealed this message in which somebody complains about being spammed from a domain owned by Dr. Chiou. The spam is for Windows software.
The article writer seems to be confused about what genes are and what the Genome Project does.
What the research labs all over the world put in the public domain every night is the raw base sequence of the human genome. Much of that is useless junk and furthermore, by just looking at it, you cannot tell what is junk and what is a gene.
And even if you found out that a certain subsequence constitutes a gene, you'd still have no clue about what the protein encoded by that gene does.
Corporations are not very eager to patent the raw sequence; instead they are trying to find genes in the sequence which are relevant for some disease. They then want a patent covering all possible tests and cures based on that gene.
Several patents like that have been issued in the US (I'm not sure if it's possible in Europe). For example, all tests and drugs based on the human breast cancer genes have been patented; if you wanted to develop, sell or use a drug or test based on these genes, you'd have to negotiate a license from the patent holder. For that reason, many labs have stopped doing these tests.
Personally, I think these patents are way too broad. Nobody should be able to say "I own all possible drugs which are based on this information" without even describing a single such drug. Let the drugs themselves be patented if necessary, but not the information used to make them. It is clear that the companies discovered the gene and its function, they didn't invent it. Discoveries are not patentable, only inventions are. A specific drug or test based on the gene is an invention.
If your goal is to support and provide income for your company with an OpenSource OS that can run Linux binaries, Consider that BSD can provide you with ALL of that *AND* the licensing terms that won't get a pack of rabid/.'ers all over you.
Sounds good, except it's wrong, since all the BSD's contain lots of GPL'ed software. If you want to stick to pure BSD licenses, you are essentially restricted to the kernel and a couple of tools. Many things you need are protected under GPL. You can run but you cannot hide from rabid/.'ers.
The GPL does not contain the terms "internal" or "external" distribution or "public release"; it only talks about distribution. Distribution is the act of handing a copy of the software to someone else. It doesn't matter if that someone else is your mother, an anonymous FTP user or one of your employees.
The employee case is actually somewhat interesting: suppose you are an employer, you have modified the Linux kernel and now you are hiring somebody to extend your changes. You hand him a copy to work on (you "distribute"), but as part of his contract, he is not allowed to distribute further. Of course, he promptly puts the copy out for FTP and you promptly fire him. He cannot contend the firing since he violated a contract. Fine so far. But now the copyright holders of the Linux kernel will sue you, since you distributed a GPL covered work with additional restrictions (the work contract), and this is explicitly forbidden by paragraph 6 of the GPL. You have just broken copyright law (distributed a copy without permission of the copyright holders), which can result in civil as well as criminal penalties.
Also note that the people who downloaded the modified kernel via FTP now have complete GPL rights to it and may redistribute as they see fit (paragraph 4). You cannot stop them in any way.
If they don't include full source for all GPLed software or if they require any sort of non-disclosure or non-redistribution agreement, just give RMS a call and the matter will be taken care off. The FSF sure could use a nice "donation" (a.k.a. out of court settlement).
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Personally, I don't feel the need to boycott Slashdot, but I still filter out all banner ads from all sites I visit. I own my bandwith and computer monitor and I don't let anybody use my property for purposes I don't approve of. If they want to advertise on my computer screen, they have to offer me a good price for my screen real estate and bandwidth. Short of that, no dice.
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It may be clear to you, but your opinion doesn't count. What counts is the interpretation of the Supreme Court. Take your favorite gun control measure and try to challenge it before the Supreme Court, we'll see how far you go.
Of course, neither you nor the NRA will do that, because they know that they will lose since their interpretation of the 2nd is wrong. They don't want to let this little dirty secret get out though. That's why, whenever new gun control measures are debated, the NRA screams "Unconstitutional!" but when the measures are passed, they never challenge them. Their lawyers are too smart for that.
--
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That's not what it says. Look it up. The Supreme Court has never acknowledged a private person's right to own guns. The NRA knows that, and never challenges gun control measures before the high court (they only scream "Second Amendment!" but never act on it), they would without doubt be laughed out of the chamber. The Second Amendment allows well-regulated armed state militias, that's all. This is the consensus of all supreme court judges and all constitutional scholars.
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People who write books or software generally don't need a monetary incentive; they do it because they love doing it. Certainly the best people do it because they love it, just like in almost any field. The most compelling incentive is always that you are proud of what you are creating, not some meager pay check.
Do you really want the trust-fund, independently wealthy types as our only writers?
No. Do you mainly see the trust-fund, independently wealthy types writing free software? No? Why then would it be different for free literature? People, rich or poor, long to write, you don't have to pay them. Just like people love to program, even without payment.
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Please don't try to suck others into your little pyramid schemes. Thank you.
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If the income threshold in your country is such that it implies destitution, then indeed you don't have a choice, and the threshold needs to be fixed in order to restore freedom of choice. I don't know where you live, but I know that in the US one can live comfortably below the income tax threshold, because I did it as a graduate student. I didn't own a car or a TV or a computer or a phone (I still don't). I was not destitute.
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Depends on what you mean with "optimizing". Surely, capitalist societies maximize the average living standard, but that's not even the goal of democratic socialism: the goal is to maximize the lot of the worst off. In that, it succeeds quite admirably. The average living standard in the US is higher than in Europe, but at the same time the low end of society is a lot worse off in the US than in Europe.
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Word processors don't have stringent requirements, and most of them are commercial, and most of them suck. Operationg systems and compilers have stringent requirements, and many of them are free and excellent. Your point was?
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Then why don't you shut up? "I have never met you, but my first reaction is that you are a moron."
I would like, for a moment to compare a typical free 3D modeller to a typical commercial one. There is no comparison, really. Blender not withstanding, most free modellers are truly horrendous.
Why compare a typical free one to a typical commercial one? You seem to admit yourself that Blender is a high quality free modeller. Do you need more that one high quality free modeller?
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|Nah, that'd just bring the sharks out and make you look meanspirited. Instead, be like Ghandi and retain the moral high ground.
If I recall correctly, Ghandi had no problem with fighting non-violently against injustice.
Retaining the moral high ground is what we are doing right now: we publish our inventions in source code without patenting them, meaning everybody including the other side is free to use them. If we want to continue doing that, then no open source patent portfolio is needed. If however we want to fight against software patents that hinder us, then we need to assemble patents ourselves and use them aggressively.
--
Everyone, except entities which enforce software patents, of course.
I think this is an excellent idea; what we need is a Patenting-HOWTO and a couple of pro-bono patent attorneys which show us the minimal-cost way of doing things. A couple of LyX templates to fill out, the right jargon to use, where to mail the stuff, it can't be rocket science. Then we need to convince RedHat or somebody else with money lying around to pay the application fees for every patent that goes into this open source portfolio.
--
So why do they insist on export controls? It's plain: to slow down crypto proliferation inside the US. The major email programs still don't include seamless crypto integration.
The most revealing bit of the puzzle is that source code is not exportable if it only contains hooks to allow easy plugging in of foreign developed crypto code. No US developed free software currently contains hooks like that, since it is impossible to prevent free software from being exported. It's not about stopping the flow of crypto algorithms to foreigners, it's also not about terrorists and organized crime (they can easily invest a bit of work and put the hooks in themselves): it's all about preventing wide spread adoption of strong crypto for every day communications in the US.
The major email programs still don't include seamless crypto integration.
The government currently listens in on telephone conversations and email, and they would like to continue in the future.
--
Nobody forces you to pay taxes, since nobody forces you to hold down a job that earns more than the tax threshold. Therefore, you pay the government back only if you freely choose to do so, and it is very well possible to get a completely free education. "Free" as in "free beer" as in "somebody else pays".
Actually, in many countries the effective cost of education is negative because every student who needs it gets a stipend. These societies don't consider education to be a service for sale, but a right that everybody has.
--
It is a rather strange form of love though, maybe best described as "tough love". Sometimes, it's not so desirable to be loved by Him. For example when He decides to express His incredible love by letting you die with thirst while lying under the remains of your earthquake-destroyed house with broken bones.
--
As far as I know, there is no decent random number generator on Windows. Linux has a good one though. I have no idea whether it is good enough. You could try to find out by sending a Linux-PGP encrypted death threat to the president...
--
--
Except that the vast majority of people, who are stupid, will like P3P because it relieves them from typing in the same personal information over and over again. After a while, commercial sites won't let you in anymore unless you switch on P3P. Lying about your identity becomes much more difficult; you'll have to juggle different P3P profiles.
The Direct Marketing Association of junk mail fame backs P3P. Be afraid.
Protocols can be dangerous.
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This is pretty funny.
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What the research labs all over the world put in the public domain every night is the raw base sequence of the human genome. Much of that is useless junk and furthermore, by just looking at it, you cannot tell what is junk and what is a gene.
And even if you found out that a certain subsequence constitutes a gene, you'd still have no clue about what the protein encoded by that gene does.
Corporations are not very eager to patent the raw sequence; instead they are trying to find genes in the sequence which are relevant for some disease. They then want a patent covering all possible tests and cures based on that gene.
Several patents like that have been issued in the US (I'm not sure if it's possible in Europe). For example, all tests and drugs based on the human breast cancer genes have been patented; if you wanted to develop, sell or use a drug or test based on these genes, you'd have to negotiate a license from the patent holder. For that reason, many labs have stopped doing these tests.
Personally, I think these patents are way too broad. Nobody should be able to say "I own all possible drugs which are based on this information" without even describing a single such drug. Let the drugs themselves be patented if necessary, but not the information used to make them. It is clear that the companies discovered the gene and its function, they didn't invent it. Discoveries are not patentable, only inventions are. A specific drug or test based on the gene is an invention.
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Sounds good, except it's wrong, since all the BSD's contain lots of GPL'ed software. If you want to stick to pure BSD licenses, you are essentially restricted to the kernel and a couple of tools. Many things you need are protected under GPL. You can run but you cannot hide from rabid /.'ers.
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The employee case is actually somewhat interesting: suppose you are an employer, you have modified the Linux kernel and now you are hiring somebody to extend your changes. You hand him a copy to work on (you "distribute"), but as part of his contract, he is not allowed to distribute further. Of course, he promptly puts the copy out for FTP and you promptly fire him. He cannot contend the firing since he violated a contract. Fine so far. But now the copyright holders of the Linux kernel will sue you, since you distributed a GPL covered work with additional restrictions (the work contract), and this is explicitly forbidden by paragraph 6 of the GPL. You have just broken copyright law (distributed a copy without permission of the copyright holders), which can result in civil as well as criminal penalties.
Also note that the people who downloaded the modified kernel via FTP now have complete GPL rights to it and may redistribute as they see fit (paragraph 4). You cannot stop them in any way.
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