To clarify what I meant by the stealing bit, I was referring to companies that basically take open source, make one or two small changes, and then use a huge name to make huge profits.
Or even when companies use open source and pass it off as their own work. Remember when sections of some BSD utilities were found in microsoft utilities (i.e. the version of ftp in windows)? Sure, they were legally allowed to use those under the BSD liscense, but don't you think it is a little suspect that they never once mentioned that they had borrowed code from BSD, or even claimed that it was their unique technology? They weren't required to under the terms of the liscense, so I guess they shouldn't have, right?
Don't get me wrong. This isn't 'poor independant open source' versus 'massive evil corporation', I just think that the original quote (remember, that's where this gave from) shows Sun's attitude towards open source, one that I (obviously) don't entirely agree with.
Re:Typical Sun Quote
on
LWCE Wrapup
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Because it is important to the open source community that you have the proper attitude. If you take, and use open source software for commercial gains, and ensure that the actual open source versions stay one step behind you are basically stealing. Maybe not legally, but I think, to some extent, morally. You are using the efforts of developers that you do not pay for corporate. Now, that said, Sun does have a pretty decent record, early on, of contribution. However, lately, they are asking more what open source can do for them than what they can do for open source. Yes, this is a perfectly natural thing for a company to do, but we should hardly praise Sun for the idea of taking Linux, adding a couple of proprietary features and then using it on their workstations and desktops, so that they can get free development.
Re:"linux approaching XP stability"
on
LWCE Wrapup
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I saw that too, and clicked through...it looks like what they meant was actually 'linux approaching XP ease of configuration.' Obviously, these are two very different things. Furthermore, the writers seem to not understand the difference at all. Can you really be a credible tech writer, if you confuse 'stability' with 'easy to use setup'?
Typical Sun Quote
on
LWCE Wrapup
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"The thing I worry about most with the open source community is the sentiment that open source is somehow different. It isn't," he said. Sounds just like the typical Sun opinion about Linux (and open source) in general. They miss the point and focus on the free-as-in-beer part (and therefore focus on producing cheap solutions) instead of the free as in speech part (and cooperate with the developers a little more).
See, I disagree with the argument a lot of people give that older games are superior to newer ones because 'the gameplay was better.' The tech at the time could only support very narrow concepts, like "eat the magic pills." Personally, that gets boring for me after awhile. Additionally, "bells and whistles" like better graphics and sound do make for better gameplay, IMHO, because it helps the player to suspend his or her disbelief. After all, it is pretty hard to think of yourself as a yellow circle, living in a maze, munching on all sorts of yummy powerups.
The Sinclair C5 was a commercial disaster. The Press hounded it as a dangerous joke. Only around 12,000 C5's were ever produced, many sold off abroad after the project folded.
No, no, I don't think this is Sinclair's site. After all, very few people are proud of making 'commercial disasters.'
Karl Cocknozzle writes Ok. I'm done. I can't read any more. I'll come back to this when I clean the coffee from my screen... and my keyboard... and the carpet...
Slashdot needs less shameless self promotion. Whether it be in the form of articles or shameless plugs for one's own tiny project embedded in a poster's sig, the shameless self-advertisement must stop!
juvenile at best, damaging at worst. Anyone who has actually seen the site (fish around, there are archives [hint--archive.org]) can see that it is all over. The message presented is far from consistant, and many points of his arguments depend of wild conspiracy theories. He's one of those people that thinks that the line at the DMV is a global new world conspiracy to prevent him from excercising his god given right to drive, for the purpose of immobilizing the masses for the impending coup. Ok, so maybe not that extreme, but close. It's people like him that damage the reputation of people really trying to change things for the better. While this prosecution does present issues for freedom of speech, he is no hero....
You raise an interesting point, which is that the works of these AIs are created after the AI studies the works of human artists. However, nearly all human creators study the works of others first. Certainly, musicians ususally usually listen to music before they become creators of their own works. Similarly, visual artists and writers are also inspired by their predecessors. These AIs do sometimes (actually, often, but misguided programmers tend to discourage this behavior in the system rather than encourage it) violate stylistic guidelines, and can thus be seen to 'innovate' in their respective fields.
Furthermore, the brilliant thing about many AI methods (neural nets come to mind), is that the system is so complicated that we don't really have a full understanding of it. On a local level, we understand the idea of artificial neurons, etc. and their parallels to biological systems. However, on the level of the system as a whole, it is often uncertain how it will behave.
I believe the theorem you are looking for is Godel's. It applies solely to formalized arithmatic, though there are a class of related proofs for other systems. They say, basically, that if a part of system can reference another part of the same system, a paradox can occur. It is the old problem of saying 'I tell only lies.' It is similar (for the programmers among us) to two functions which call each other in a circular way.
Re:The Matrix is just a movie
on
Powered by Blood
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Have you ever heard of Cybernetic Poet? Or any of the music composing artificial intelligences? They regularly produce art which human judges mistake for man-made. Sure, it's not 100% indistiguishable yet, but it appears that with more processing power comes more 'correct' output. You are showing your carbon-bias. Your brain is really no more than a neural net itself (ok, it might have some quantum computing ability,but that is far from accepted fact). It just happens to be more powerful than artificial neural nets we can put together now. And, did you know (speaking of souls) that there is an area of the brain, that when stimulated electrically, causes the person in question to feel like they are having a religious experience? This goes a long way to say that artificial intelligences might well be able to experience the same things we do, if made sufficiently complicated.
In a lot of cases, I have noticed, speed isn't the problem. A lot of times, I conenct to a WiFi network at full speed, and it is very responsive, and then suddenly it will drop link. It will go from full signal strength to none, seemingly instantly, then work again a minute or so later. This is because the problem is reliability of connection, especially in 'built up areas' i.e. the city. So, what we really need is a redundant, wireless backbone, so I can browse my pr0n-- err, open source software without gettting dropped signals.
Yeah. I did. However, I never end up proofing my/. posts before I post them, and that's my favorite kind of error. Oh well. I promise it gets much better when I'm not posting to/. and actually bother to read what I'm typing.:)
Well, linux is not unix. Technically... though this article seems to believe otherwise. Several of the BSDs (though I'm not sure which, FreeBSD and NetBSD maybe) have ancestries which can be traced back to real unix. Linux is more closely related (at least in terms of origin) to *shutter* Minix.
Well, the first thing I can think of is: SCO probably won't be around this time next year. So chances are, you're going to be out of luck for support, unless someone pops up to cover SCO support contracts (for a significant price, I'm sure).
Slashdot Mirror
To clarify what I meant by the stealing bit, I was referring to companies that basically take open source, make one or two small changes, and then use a huge name to make huge profits.
Or even when companies use open source and pass it off as their own work. Remember when sections of some BSD utilities were found in microsoft utilities (i.e. the version of ftp in windows)? Sure, they were legally allowed to use those under the BSD liscense, but don't you think it is a little suspect that they never once mentioned that they had borrowed code from BSD, or even claimed that it was their unique technology? They weren't required to under the terms of the liscense, so I guess they shouldn't have, right?
Don't get me wrong. This isn't 'poor independant open source' versus 'massive evil corporation', I just think that the original quote (remember, that's where this gave from) shows Sun's attitude towards open source, one that I (obviously) don't entirely agree with.
Because it is important to the open source community that you have the proper attitude. If you take, and use open source software for commercial gains, and ensure that the actual open source versions stay one step behind you are basically stealing. Maybe not legally, but I think, to some extent, morally. You are using the efforts of developers that you do not pay for corporate. Now, that said, Sun does have a pretty decent record, early on, of contribution. However, lately, they are asking more what open source can do for them than what they can do for open source. Yes, this is a perfectly natural thing for a company to do, but we should hardly praise Sun for the idea of taking Linux, adding a couple of proprietary features and then using it on their workstations and desktops, so that they can get free development.
Yeah, I saw that too, and clicked through...it looks like what they meant was actually 'linux approaching XP ease of configuration.' Obviously, these are two very different things. Furthermore, the writers seem to not understand the difference at all. Can you really be a credible tech writer, if you confuse 'stability' with 'easy to use setup'?
"The thing I worry about most with the open source community is the sentiment that open source is somehow different. It isn't," he said.
Sounds just like the typical Sun opinion about Linux (and open source) in general. They miss the point and focus on the free-as-in-beer part (and therefore focus on producing cheap solutions) instead of the free as in speech part (and cooperate with the developers a little more).
Harmful interference? Or maybe...
Hamful interference!
Ba dum ching.
Yeah, but it would have been even worse in 8-bit sounds and 64x48 graphics... :)
See, I disagree with the argument a lot of people give that older games are superior to newer ones because 'the gameplay was better.' The tech at the time could only support very narrow concepts, like "eat the magic pills." Personally, that gets boring for me after awhile. Additionally, "bells and whistles" like better graphics and sound do make for better gameplay, IMHO, because it helps the player to suspend his or her disbelief. After all, it is pretty hard to think of yourself as a yellow circle, living in a maze, munching on all sorts of yummy powerups.
They'll be used in clothing and other personal effects that you'll carry with you at all times.
;)
Make your own clothes. Specifically, a nive big, thick tin foil hat.
Ok. So you didn't get it. The link in the sig and my homepage are both to my own tiny project... sorry. if you still find that offensive...
The Site for Sinclair C5 Enthusiasts Worldwide
The Sinclair C5 was a commercial disaster. The Press hounded it as a dangerous joke.
Only around 12,000 C5's were ever produced, many sold off abroad after the project folded.
No, no, I don't think this is Sinclair's site. After all, very few people are proud of making 'commercial disasters.'
Karl Cocknozzle writes
Ok. I'm done. I can't read any more. I'll come back to this when I clean the coffee from my screen... and my keyboard... and the carpet...
Wow. Way to double max out your moderation (and your karma)! Good going ;)
Slashdot needs less shameless self promotion. Whether it be in the form of articles or shameless plugs for one's own tiny project embedded in a poster's sig, the shameless self-advertisement must stop!
Yes. I am kidding.
juvenile at best, damaging at worst. Anyone who has actually seen the site (fish around, there are archives [hint--archive.org]) can see that it is all over. The message presented is far from consistant, and many points of his arguments depend of wild conspiracy theories. He's one of those people that thinks that the line at the DMV is a global new world conspiracy to prevent him from excercising his god given right to drive, for the purpose of immobilizing the masses for the impending coup. Ok, so maybe not that extreme, but close. It's people like him that damage the reputation of people really trying to change things for the better. While this prosecution does present issues for freedom of speech, he is no hero....
Under Godwin's Law, I officially declare this thread closed. Trigun loses. Err... somebody else wins...
You raise an interesting point, which is that the works of these AIs are created after the AI studies the works of human artists. However, nearly all human creators study the works of others first. Certainly, musicians ususally usually listen to music before they become creators of their own works. Similarly, visual artists and writers are also inspired by their predecessors. These AIs do sometimes (actually, often, but misguided programmers tend to discourage this behavior in the system rather than encourage it) violate stylistic guidelines, and can thus be seen to 'innovate' in their respective fields.
Furthermore, the brilliant thing about many AI methods (neural nets come to mind), is that the system is so complicated that we don't really have a full understanding of it. On a local level, we understand the idea of artificial neurons, etc. and their parallels to biological systems. However, on the level of the system as a whole, it is often uncertain how it will behave.
I believe the theorem you are looking for is Godel's. It applies solely to formalized arithmatic, though there are a class of related proofs for other systems. They say, basically, that if a part of system can reference another part of the same system, a paradox can occur. It is the old problem of saying 'I tell only lies.' It is similar (for the programmers among us) to two functions which call each other in a circular way.
Have you ever heard of Cybernetic Poet? Or any of the music composing artificial intelligences? They regularly produce art which human judges mistake for man-made. Sure, it's not 100% indistiguishable yet, but it appears that with more processing power comes more 'correct' output. You are showing your carbon-bias. Your brain is really no more than a neural net itself (ok, it might have some quantum computing ability,but that is far from accepted fact). It just happens to be more powerful than artificial neural nets we can put together now. And, did you know (speaking of souls) that there is an area of the brain, that when stimulated electrically, causes the person in question to feel like they are having a religious experience? This goes a long way to say that artificial intelligences might well be able to experience the same things we do, if made sufficiently complicated.
In a lot of cases, I have noticed, speed isn't the problem. A lot of times, I conenct to a WiFi network at full speed, and it is very responsive, and then suddenly it will drop link. It will go from full signal strength to none, seemingly instantly, then work again a minute or so later. This is because the problem is reliability of connection, especially in 'built up areas' i.e. the city. So, what we really need is a redundant, wireless backbone, so I can browse my pr0n-- err, open source software without gettting dropped signals.
it only takes up 3/4 of the screen
So quit complaining and turn your res down already.
Pinkerton was also famous for being called in to stop labor strikes at Carnegie Steel and then shooting the workers that were on strike...
Yeah. I did. However, I never end up proofing my /. posts before I post them, and that's my favorite kind of error. Oh well. I promise it gets much better when I'm not posting to /. and actually bother to read what I'm typing. :)
Sedative dart in the neck.
Ah, but there is no VB support on my operating system, so clearly it doesn't perform as well as C/Perl/Fortran/etc. Not all languages are equal.
Well, linux is not unix. Technically... though this article seems to believe otherwise. Several of the BSDs (though I'm not sure which, FreeBSD and NetBSD maybe) have ancestries which can be traced back to real unix. Linux is more closely related (at least in terms of origin) to *shutter* Minix.
Well, the first thing I can think of is: SCO probably won't be around this time next year. So chances are, you're going to be out of luck for support, unless someone pops up to cover SCO support contracts (for a significant price, I'm sure).