Re:Free Software = Pompous Bores, discuss
on
Men of Zeal
·
· Score: 2
MacOS is the obvious example. Don't talk to me about Xerox PARC; that was closed too.
Vast numbers of efficient numerical computing and algorithmic innovations, plus the entire field of real-time computing is closed source.
Postscript, too.
And of course, the entire games industry is based on closed standards - DirectX, etc.
If you wanted to give an example of a genuine innovation from open source, I'd give half points for TeX. But that as essentially a one-man-show, from somebody who already had all the prestige he wanted and more.
Free Software = Pompous Bores, discuss
on
Men of Zeal
·
· Score: 5
(-1, Flamebait), yeh I know.
I really think someone should point out that there is no hidden section in the Linux Advocacy FAQ which says "Adopt the most pompous tone of voice possible. Imitate Jefferson when describing software licenses. Patronise. Speak ex cathedra. Above all, bore". And therefore, there is no need to imitate the prose styles of either Eric Raymond or Richard Stallman.
Despite what some think, the "Community" is not a Platonic Republic of beautiful people, creating wonders for the service of humanity. It's a bunch of noisy, egotistic, sometimes vicious people, attempting to knock off a version of Unix for personal amusement and gratification. Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work (don't talk to me about the Internet. Developed in academia and government, a completely different model). But it's quite clear; because there is a place for patents, to encourage investment in new invention (a bore would at this point quote the US Constitution).
And that's the point. There are horses for courses. Sensible, limited patent and copyrights help to stimulate creativity and reward people for doing really great stuff. They have their place. A totally "free" world would be one in which the rewards flowed to loud-mouthed blowhards who managed to steamroller their code through the intensely political process of an open source project, and then managed to lever their one or two projects into spokesmanship for "The Community", or even worse "My Tribe".
Don't believe me? Look at the main characters of the Free Software movement. How many of them don't have more or less serious ego issues? One, Alan Cox. An ego trip for talented programmers is, on balance a good thing. But it isn't a way of life, or a value system. And it doesn't deserve the language of the King James Bible.
No, an example of the marginal fallacy. The price of Motorola chips and beepers is set according to what the market will bear; they do not decide on a level of investment spend plus profits and then set prices in order to achieve that. The original poster is right to say that the loss was entirely borne by Motorola shareholders, and occurred some time ago when the sueless things were actually built.
Why are you attempting to tar Gates, the donor behind the largest charitable foundation in the world, with the brush of being a Randian?
Surely, Open Source has its own share of these nutters, starting with Eric "Love and altruism don't scale up very well" Raymond (the linked piece, btw, is the single stupidest piece of political polemic on the internet, IMO
"Delivery" in the context of a futures exchange doesn't mean physical delivery to the plant. "Delivery at USEC" means the time at which the buyer takes ownership of the uranium in the warehouse (USEC is presumably a secure storage facility). Sorry for not making this clear before
So in other words, you've been misquoting your wife, using a general statement of hers about "technology" which is broad enough to include the wheel, to defend statements about modern technology and specifically about the capitalist mode of production.
Looks like someone's sleeping on the couch tonight....
Once the hack tells you who had *bought* it, you'd know whom to crack next.
No you wouldn't; this is my point. The knowledge that a nuclear plant has bought uranium is not interesting in itself; it could be speculating, building an inventory, or any one of a number of other things. Added to this, typically the uranium is bought not at the individual plant level, but by operating companies and brokers who serve more than one plant.
What you need to find out is the time of delivery, and that is much more difficult. And uranium isn't loaded onto "trucks" at "docks" -- there's a lot more paperwork and confirmation than that, plus you'd need the right kind of transporter, plus you'd need to show up at the exact right time, having first somehow prevented the actual owner from arriving.
Just so that nobody's taken in by this lousy piece of propaganda (which, incidentally, even the nuke lobby has given up on these days), it is complete balls to suggest that coal is more radioactive than uranium.
This assumption depends on a) a ludicrous overestimate of the amount of naturally occurring trace radioactive elements (uranium, thorium etc.) in naturally occurring coal and b) an assumption that nuclear power always works without error and without leaks.
So in other words, if a nuclear power station is safe, then it's safe. Thanks, guys.
Nuclear plants do indeed have their own suppliers; the company backing this site is one of the biggest. This site is a B2B exchange just like a billion others. It's main use is for the plants to trade inventory. The web allows them to do so anonymously (nobody wants the competition to know whether they're desperate buyers or sellers). The uranium will not typically move back and forth across the country; what's being traded are rights to receive the uranium when you need it.
You don't need to hire hackers to trace who bought the stuff. There are not so very many nuclear plants in the world, they are all pretty big things, their locations are a matter of public record, and they all get pretty regular deliveries of uranium. If you think you can hijack one, then just hire Dolph Lundgren and Alan Rickman, and away you go (for some reason, it seems impossible to hijack anything without at least on of those two).
Hacking the site, no matter how expertly done, would gain you the knowledge of who had *bought* the uranium. Since nuclear power plants do not typically wait until they're running out of uranium before buying some more, this gives you no knowledge beyond the date at which a book entry was presumably made on the ledgers of a storage facility, the locations of which are also public knowledge. In order to know when it's going to be delivered, you'd need to crack the far more secure communications of the power plants and storage facilities.
Karma is frozen in the upward direction only.
Clearly you're joking, but the answer to your question if similarly misinterpreted is that the uranium is delivered to your bonded and approved storage facility, or more likely, a book entry is made in your name at a central uranium stockist. Don't have an approved storage facility, or an account at a stockist? Well, then tough, they won't deliver anywhere else. Not that this will stop about a million little buggers making the same "great, now I can buy uranium" post below --- I swear that Malda posts these things for page views.
If you came up to me and said "Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is and has been available for years", I'd know what you meant, as would most of Slashdot
You are wrong. Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is not available to the general public, as to create a functional bit-for-bit copy of a DVD without encrypting it requires the copying of the track with the session keys. Normal DVD-ROM drives cannot access this section (after all, why would they need to?), so without specialised equipment, the creation of functional bit-for-bit copies is not possible.
In any case, of course, bit-for-bit copying is more or less totally irrelevant to the actual offence under the DMCA; that of circumventing a protection device.
and you ought to know it. The conclusion isn't "and therefore I rule" -- the rulings are made on every specific point, throughout the rest of the text. The conclusion is just a summing up of the central issue. Every legal point is justified with respect to purely legal arguments, and there are no new rulings in the conclusion. If you want to have a conclusion which you can post on slashdot and expect the world to understand it (and I think we all do), then you have to allow the judge to step back from the minutiae and make a statement about the big picture.
And it's true. Eric Corley/Emmanuel Goldstein does have those beliefs, or something recognisably like them. It would be extremely hard to read a few issues of 2600 (named after a method of stealing telephone services), and not come away with an impression something like the judge's. Goldstein thinks he has a set of rights which, in the opinion of the judge, he does not have.
And you've been covering free speech issues long enough to know a bit about the ambiguous status of instructions for breaking into computers when it comes to "freedom of the press". In so far as the "unpopular opinions" expressed in 2600 magazine are expression, they are protected. But articles like "Fun at Costco" aren't really opinions -- they're more like instruction manuals. "Freedom of the press" doesn't mean that 2600's past can't be taken as persuasive when considering their current motives (which Garbus portrayed as ludicrously pure-as-the-driven-snow)
Given that motive is an important part in the construction of the offence under the DMCA, the affiliation and past publications of the defendants are clearly relevant. Your two statements about "freedoms" are wrong both as general assertions and in application to this case.
hmmmmm, yes, allowing the commission of acts of violence against individual human beings in order "to protect the whole of humanity", that's a principle with a good track record this century, isn't it?
... he just decided that source code is not worthy of Constitutional protections.
No, he decided that source code was worthy of Constitutional protections, and said so, very plainly in the ruling. However, Constitutional protections do not rule out content-neutral regulation of "expressive actions", if the public benefit of regulating the "action" outweighs the restriction which is thereby put on expression. Since the DMCA does appear to fit into this category, it is Constitutional in this sense. He noted that the "fair use" argument was stronger, but decided on balance that CSS did not sufficiently impair fair use to render the DMCA's application in this case to be unconstitutional.
. Imagine your next video card has the GPU microcode kept in encrypted flash: you can't even use the card without using the vendors drivers unless you want to circumvent the encryption method. This means the DMCA allows vendors to prevent open source drivers from being traded and improved.
Not true; the DMCA specfically has a "reverse engineering exception", for decryption aimed at facilitating the interoperability of computer systems. This was actually the kingpin of the "Linux Argument" in the DeCSS defense, and they would have got away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids ^H^H^H^H^H the judge's ruling that Corley and Johansen did not really have this intention.
You have indeed bored us with this before, and since punches don't travel well through the internet, I guess you'll probably say it again. But you're as wrong then as you are now and will be in future.
If I organise a sporting event, you have no right to watch it, or to broadcast it, without my permission. You see, if we don't have this little right in place, I probably won't bother (and won't be able to afford) to organise any more sporting events. You'll have to do it for yourself. And people want to see Michael Johnson; they don't want to see your fat ass wobbling down the track. And Quake will never be an Olympic sport.
Your analogy between the Spanish genocide of the Aztecs, and auctioning broadcasting rights, was noted, and gives some insight into the value of your opinions more generally. Why don't ya show some guts, and start analogising with a Holocaust that more people have heard about?
Since the US rights alone come to US$613mn, and the worldwide broadcasting rights are multi-billion, I think the IOC has its head screwed on here. Allowing internet broadcasting diminishes the value of the traditional broadcasting rights by removing their exclusivity. The 'net boys went into an auction, they lost, and now they're whining like bitches. If we hurry, we might catch the film, which I believe that they will be showing at 11.
What's wrong with not wanting people to take pictures of you in your room? If you ever have sex, I'd like to take advantage of this curious attitude you have toward privacy. Hell, I might even chip in a few bucks toward the cost.
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MacOS is the obvious example. Don't talk to me about Xerox PARC; that was closed too.
Vast numbers of efficient numerical computing and algorithmic innovations, plus the entire field of real-time computing is closed source.
Postscript, too.
And of course, the entire games industry is based on closed standards - DirectX, etc.
If you wanted to give an example of a genuine innovation from open source, I'd give half points for TeX. But that as essentially a one-man-show, from somebody who already had all the prestige he wanted and more.
I really think someone should point out that there is no hidden section in the Linux Advocacy FAQ which says "Adopt the most pompous tone of voice possible. Imitate Jefferson when describing software licenses. Patronise. Speak ex cathedra. Above all, bore". And therefore, there is no need to imitate the prose styles of either Eric Raymond or Richard Stallman.
Despite what some think, the "Community" is not a Platonic Republic of beautiful people, creating wonders for the service of humanity. It's a bunch of noisy, egotistic, sometimes vicious people, attempting to knock off a version of Unix for personal amusement and gratification. Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work (don't talk to me about the Internet. Developed in academia and government, a completely different model). But it's quite clear; because there is a place for patents, to encourage investment in new invention (a bore would at this point quote the US Constitution).
And that's the point. There are horses for courses. Sensible, limited patent and copyrights help to stimulate creativity and reward people for doing really great stuff. They have their place. A totally "free" world would be one in which the rewards flowed to loud-mouthed blowhards who managed to steamroller their code through the intensely political process of an open source project, and then managed to lever their one or two projects into spokesmanship for "The Community", or even worse "My Tribe".
Don't believe me? Look at the main characters of the Free Software movement. How many of them don't have more or less serious ego issues? One, Alan Cox. An ego trip for talented programmers is, on balance a good thing. But it isn't a way of life, or a value system. And it doesn't deserve the language of the King James Bible.
No, an example of the marginal fallacy. The price of Motorola chips and beepers is set according to what the market will bear; they do not decide on a level of investment spend plus profits and then set prices in order to achieve that. The original poster is right to say that the loss was entirely borne by Motorola shareholders, and occurred some time ago when the sueless things were actually built.
Hmmm, yeh, giving your credit card number to a drug smuggling company, sounds like a reeeeeally good idea.
Surely, Open Source has its own share of these nutters, starting with Eric "Love and altruism don't scale up very well" Raymond (the linked piece, btw, is the single stupidest piece of political polemic on the internet, IMO
PICS will work as soon as everyone can agree on a standardised set of tags describing the content of a site, ie never.
Like VA Linux, Red Hat, Linuxcare, Caldera? They're all on Open Source anyway.
barring accident, no radioactive materials escape nuclear plants,
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
Care to reconcile?
"Delivery" in the context of a futures exchange doesn't mean physical delivery to the plant. "Delivery at USEC" means the time at which the buyer takes ownership of the uranium in the warehouse (USEC is presumably a secure storage facility). Sorry for not making this clear before
Looks like someone's sleeping on the couch tonight ....
I take it your wife isn't much of an anthropologist, then; the Romans, Hindu and Chinese all had flush toilets about 1500 years ago.
No you wouldn't; this is my point. The knowledge that a nuclear plant has bought uranium is not interesting in itself; it could be speculating, building an inventory, or any one of a number of other things. Added to this, typically the uranium is bought not at the individual plant level, but by operating companies and brokers who serve more than one plant.
What you need to find out is the time of delivery, and that is much more difficult. And uranium isn't loaded onto "trucks" at "docks" -- there's a lot more paperwork and confirmation than that, plus you'd need the right kind of transporter, plus you'd need to show up at the exact right time, having first somehow prevented the actual owner from arriving.
This assumption depends on a) a ludicrous overestimate of the amount of naturally occurring trace radioactive elements (uranium, thorium etc.) in naturally occurring coal and b) an assumption that nuclear power always works without error and without leaks.
So in other words, if a nuclear power station is safe, then it's safe. Thanks, guys.
Nuclear plants do indeed have their own suppliers; the company backing this site is one of the biggest. This site is a B2B exchange just like a billion others. It's main use is for the plants to trade inventory. The web allows them to do so anonymously (nobody wants the competition to know whether they're desperate buyers or sellers). The uranium will not typically move back and forth across the country; what's being traded are rights to receive the uranium when you need it.
Hacking the site, no matter how expertly done, would gain you the knowledge of who had *bought* the uranium. Since nuclear power plants do not typically wait until they're running out of uranium before buying some more, this gives you no knowledge beyond the date at which a book entry was presumably made on the ledgers of a storage facility, the locations of which are also public knowledge. In order to know when it's going to be delivered, you'd need to crack the far more secure communications of the power plants and storage facilities.
Karma is frozen in the upward direction only. Clearly you're joking, but the answer to your question if similarly misinterpreted is that the uranium is delivered to your bonded and approved storage facility, or more likely, a book entry is made in your name at a central uranium stockist. Don't have an approved storage facility, or an account at a stockist? Well, then tough, they won't deliver anywhere else. Not that this will stop about a million little buggers making the same "great, now I can buy uranium" post below --- I swear that Malda posts these things for page views.
You are entirely wrong, my friend . . . .
You are wrong. Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is not available to the general public, as to create a functional bit-for-bit copy of a DVD without encrypting it requires the copying of the track with the session keys. Normal DVD-ROM drives cannot access this section (after all, why would they need to?), so without specialised equipment, the creation of functional bit-for-bit copies is not possible.
In any case, of course, bit-for-bit copying is more or less totally irrelevant to the actual offence under the DMCA; that of circumventing a protection device.
And it's true. Eric Corley/Emmanuel Goldstein does have those beliefs, or something recognisably like them. It would be extremely hard to read a few issues of 2600 (named after a method of stealing telephone services), and not come away with an impression something like the judge's. Goldstein thinks he has a set of rights which, in the opinion of the judge, he does not have.
And you've been covering free speech issues long enough to know a bit about the ambiguous status of instructions for breaking into computers when it comes to "freedom of the press". In so far as the "unpopular opinions" expressed in 2600 magazine are expression, they are protected. But articles like "Fun at Costco" aren't really opinions -- they're more like instruction manuals. "Freedom of the press" doesn't mean that 2600's past can't be taken as persuasive when considering their current motives (which Garbus portrayed as ludicrously pure-as-the-driven-snow)
Given that motive is an important part in the construction of the offence under the DMCA, the affiliation and past publications of the defendants are clearly relevant. Your two statements about "freedoms" are wrong both as general assertions and in application to this case.
hmmmmm, yes, allowing the commission of acts of violence against individual human beings in order "to protect the whole of humanity", that's a principle with a good track record this century, isn't it?
No, he decided that source code was worthy of Constitutional protections, and said so, very plainly in the ruling. However, Constitutional protections do not rule out content-neutral regulation of "expressive actions", if the public benefit of regulating the "action" outweighs the restriction which is thereby put on expression. Since the DMCA does appear to fit into this category, it is Constitutional in this sense. He noted that the "fair use" argument was stronger, but decided on balance that CSS did not sufficiently impair fair use to render the DMCA's application in this case to be unconstitutional.
Not true; the DMCA specfically has a "reverse engineering exception", for decryption aimed at facilitating the interoperability of computer systems. This was actually the kingpin of the "Linux Argument" in the DeCSS defense, and they would have got away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids ^H^H^H^H^H the judge's ruling that Corley and Johansen did not really have this intention.
If I organise a sporting event, you have no right to watch it, or to broadcast it, without my permission. You see, if we don't have this little right in place, I probably won't bother (and won't be able to afford) to organise any more sporting events. You'll have to do it for yourself. And people want to see Michael Johnson; they don't want to see your fat ass wobbling down the track. And Quake will never be an Olympic sport.
Your analogy between the Spanish genocide of the Aztecs, and auctioning broadcasting rights, was noted, and gives some insight into the value of your opinions more generally. Why don't ya show some guts, and start analogising with a Holocaust that more people have heard about?
Since the US rights alone come to US$613mn, and the worldwide broadcasting rights are multi-billion, I think the IOC has its head screwed on here. Allowing internet broadcasting diminishes the value of the traditional broadcasting rights by removing their exclusivity. The 'net boys went into an auction, they lost, and now they're whining like bitches. If we hurry, we might catch the film, which I believe that they will be showing at 11.
What's wrong with not wanting people to take pictures of you in your room? If you ever have sex, I'd like to take advantage of this curious attitude you have toward privacy. Hell, I might even chip in a few bucks toward the cost.