Why do you not want lots of people writing drivers for your hardware? Why do you not look forward to it becoming the standard hardware for its purpose because everyone and their dog knows they can support it? Why do you not want to GPL the source and then use the best ideas that come from people that modify that code to improve your own drivers?
I can see an argument against the GPL for software writers but I had always assumed that it was a dream for hardware people that, presumably, want to get support for their hardware spread far and wide. What am I missing?
Penny Marshall direct the next LOTR movie. We'd all go to see it anyway, but we'd cry because we know how much better Peter Jackson would have made it.
I have no idea who Penny Marshall is but I can't believe she'd be worse than Jackson unless she's deaf dumb and blind!
he only proprietary thing in the new SuSE edition is the Arconis NTFS repartitioner.
I was more getting at why are people supporting the use of MS Office than complaining about a lack of source code for SuSE. I assume that Word is still proprietary!
Get yourself a copy of RH/Mandrake/whatever and send the 129 bucks to OpenOffice.org. Why rely on software with no source code? It doesn't make any sense.
Unlike most users of Windows, which merely license the code, KMart bought licenses
In fact, since the "licence" has no expiry period or any specified method of renewal the only part of it which is a licence is the name; under the law all pre-XP Windows users were engaged in a sale and can legally tell MS where to stick it if they want to sell it on, as long as they don't keep a "backup".
Microsoft has been trying this on for years but that still doesn't make it legal.
The Oxford Union contains more than its fair share of future congresspeople, members of Parliament and even presidents and prime ministers. That's why these debates can attract significent players in their topics and why Rosen looks so unhappy - she knows that in the audience (and the debating teams) there were future policy makers and that they'll remember her argument as the failed one.
And a very recent example, to the contrary of this report, a French author "could have faced up to 18 months in jail or a 70,000 euro (£44,000) fine if found guilty" of "inciting racial hatred by saying Islam was "the stupidest religion""
Perhaps that's why the report specifically singled France out as being poor for Europe. Did you not read that bit?
I fail to see how stopping people from illegally trading media over the web should be considered treacherous, in fact it is commendable.
It is, but when you also stop people legally trading information or legally using the information that they have bought and paid for then it is no longer commendable.
The bottom line is that DRM etc. are about eradicating fair use at least as much as they are about anti-piracy.
Instead of leaving the internet as a 'wild west' with no laws, Microsoft and the RIAA (along with some politicians) are benevolently expending time and effort to establish some sort of order.
I've had a bad day (I had to sack 33 people and myself) but this at least made me laugh. Thanks.
When you get 'beamed-up' the actual atoms of *your* body are converted to energy, moved as energy, and re- integrated at the target site.
You get burnt up and the energy is used to create a copy of you. Not really any better, especially since the Uncertainty Principle means that you will lose data and thermodynamics means you'll lose more the faster you do it.
By accepting the premise of #1, you are supporting Myriad's patent claim.
Absolutely. I have no problem with patents on inventions, such as a particular way to isolate a gene. I don't accept that a gene is a invention and I don't accept that anyone else should be blocked from developing a different process for the same genes.
So now you are rehashing the same old argument mankind has been having with itself for millenia; Does the soul exist?
No, the slightly younger argument: what is consciousness?
Or, as I believe, we are simply programmed to believe (I Do not necessarily mean this in a literal sense) that we have a consciousness and in reality we are simply complex organic machines governed by various electrical and chemical processes.
Well, I don't see what that has to do with it. What is doing the beliving in this model if it's not the mind?
. If you copied yourself, quantum particle for quantum particle (simplest theoretical case but hardest to pull off unless we discover some neato trick of physics)
In fact, totally impossible unless we find a way around Heisenberg so this seems to be a totall invalid approach right from the start.
you would have two of you which both believed they were you, and each would be just as right as the other.
Except one has a discontinuity in their existance which the other does not.
The bottom line is no one knows what causes "mind" but pretending it doesn't exist is not a great step forward (unless you're George Bush Jr, in which case it's the best bet).
If you have the ability to read 7 trillion neurons and what weights and connections they respond with to the other 7 trillion neurons, you can copy a brain. it's just that simple.
So, you're saying the original person would experiance BOTH brains/bodies? Seems unlikely.
Plus, of course, what does Heisenberg do to the question "If you have the ability to read 7 trillion neurons and what weights and connections they respond with to the other 7 trillion neurons"?
1) How to reliably isolate and test the gene. This is a patentable, chemical process.
Fair enough.
2) Determine what a healthy 'wildtype' of the gene looks like.
That's just factual information, no reason that should be patenable any more than the colour of the sky.
3) Catalog and determine the effect of thousands of mutations and variants of the gene.... One of the reasons Myriad is HQ'd in Utah is to have access to all the Mormon geneaological records;
So this part is a derivative work based on a database of factual information. That's not a very good basis for a patent either.
The real solution is to define a seperate category of patent for genes, genetic testing, et al.
No, that's the trap they want you to fall into. By assuming that the patent system does not protect these things already you are pushed into accepting unneeded and unreasonable extensions. As you pointed out, the detection is a chemical process which can already be patented. Almost every genetic "breakthrough" involves such a process and thus is covered by the existing patent system in a fair way.
There is no more reason to allow patenting of genes than there was to allow the inventor of the deep-mine lift-winder a patent on coal.
No more than the users choose to give them. If they did start to abuse it I think they would soon lose that responsibility to someone else. There's always a new gun in town when it comes to search engines, just waiting for the old man to make a slip-up.
Hmm, doesn't this involve an eternal soul, or such?.. All very religion based and no proof either way.
No, just the observation that a photocopy is not the original, even if the original is destroyed in the process and no matter how good the photocopier.
If you can download the mind - will we be able to upload it as well at some point in the future?
It wouldn't work like that. Imagine that the copy of your mind is uploaded into a new body before you die. Do you think your consciousness would suddenly transfer to the new body? All the copying could do is create a new consciousness in the new body, your old one (ie, you) would still grow old and die in the old body, never to return.
This is also the argument against Star Trek transporters. You die each time you use one but a new person is created at the other end that thinks it's you. You don't know anything about this, of course, you've just been disintegrated!
Jefferson would have viewed today's airport searches and ID checks as repugnant and proof that the bill of rights had failed to preserve the rights of man from the tiranny of a too powerful state.
Would that be before or after he checked that his slaves were working hard enough to keep him in his big house on his big estate?
I don't see any reason to think that Jefferson would or did give a toss about anybody's rights other than his and his rich mates; all his fine words were designed to get the rabble to support the aristocracy that he and Washington represented.
(I paraphrase slightly) "change the law or we'll.."
This is NOT a slight paraphrase to say the least.
Ballmer said: "If there are aspects that are not allowed, it would encourage us to require a change in the legal framework. Otherwise, it wouldn't make economic sense."
So "require a change in the legal framework" and "Otherwise, it wouldn't make economic sense." [to sell Xbox]. That pretty well looks like "change the law or we'll leave" to me. What part did you think meant "fair enough, the law's the law and we respect that but we've lost the battle for the market and I guess that's just business; well done Sony!"?
The only restriction the GNU GPL places on how much you can charge to distribute GPL-covered software has to do with distributing binaries without the corresponding complete source code.
This is not true. The GPL means that you can not make charging a condition of allowing others to redistribute the code since this would make the software "not free" (in either sense).
Microsoft in this case are charging per copy for their super-secret protocol. If I release some software based on this, I have to pay them. If I release the software under the GPL I would not be allowed by the GPL to force the recipient to pay Microsoft. At that point MS sets the law on me.
The Washington Post article made no distinction between kinds of payments. They clearly said "[the GNU GPL] bars any payment".
Your selective quote demonstrates why I chose to make a lengthy quote in my original post. In the context of the WP's discussion of the effects of Microsoft charging a royalty it is not clear that they mean what you seem to want them to mean.
The GPL's terms on distributing GPL-covered works for a fee do not change for "payments to third parties".
They don't but they make it impossible to comply with third party demands that every copy MUST incur a cost. You can not match the freedom of the GPL up with a legally enforced demand for restrictions from a third party, it just doesn't work.
Put it this way: explain to me how GPL'd software can be released such that Microsoft's legal requirement that they are paid for every copy of the software can be fulfilled in any reasonable way that would stop a court from finding that you had breached their copyright.
Yes, but in the case of a black hole, we are using the event horizon to define the limit of the 'object' we are measuring.. because that's all we can do.
A better way to look at is that you are calculating the average density of the space enclosed by the event horizon. That's not the same as the density of the object inside the horizon but, as you say, it's all we can do; we have no useful descriptions or theories of what the object is actually like.
Since Microsoft is charging a royalty fee to use the communications protocols, any open-source developer - those who contend that sharing software blueprints is the best way to build products - would not be able to use them. Those companies, which include Linux firms, use a special "free software" license called the General Public License that bars any payment.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the mainstream press gets salient details wrong. The last sentence of the above paragraph is simply untrue.
In this context it is true. The GPL prevents an open source developer charging Microsoft's royalty to their users as that would be a restriction on the distribution.
In other words, the GPL bars payments to third parties in these sort of cases.
Slashdot Mirror
TWW
I can see an argument against the GPL for software writers but I had always assumed that it was a dream for hardware people that, presumably, want to get support for their hardware spread far and wide. What am I missing?
TWW
I have no idea who Penny Marshall is but I can't believe she'd be worse than Jackson unless she's deaf dumb and blind!
TWW
I was more getting at why are people supporting the use of MS Office than complaining about a lack of source code for SuSE. I assume that Word is still proprietary!
TWW
TWW
In fact, since the "licence" has no expiry period or any specified method of renewal the only part of it which is a licence is the name; under the law all pre-XP Windows users were engaged in a sale and can legally tell MS where to stick it if they want to sell it on, as long as they don't keep a "backup".
Microsoft has been trying this on for years but that still doesn't make it legal.
TWW
The Oxford Union contains more than its fair share of future congresspeople, members of Parliament and even presidents and prime ministers. That's why these debates can attract significent players in their topics and why Rosen looks so unhappy - she knows that in the audience (and the debating teams) there were future policy makers and that they'll remember her argument as the failed one.
TWW
Rutland forever!
TWW
Perhaps that's why the report specifically singled France out as being poor for Europe. Did you not read that bit?
TWW
It is, but when you also stop people legally trading information or legally using the information that they have bought and paid for then it is no longer commendable.
The bottom line is that DRM etc. are about eradicating fair use at least as much as they are about anti-piracy.
Instead of leaving the internet as a 'wild west' with no laws, Microsoft and the RIAA (along with some politicians) are benevolently expending time and effort to establish some sort of order.
I've had a bad day (I had to sack 33 people and myself) but this at least made me laugh. Thanks.
TWW
You get burnt up and the energy is used to create a copy of you. Not really any better, especially since the Uncertainty Principle means that you will lose data and thermodynamics means you'll lose more the faster you do it.
TWW
Absolutely. I have no problem with patents on inventions, such as a particular way to isolate a gene. I don't accept that a gene is a invention and I don't accept that anyone else should be blocked from developing a different process for the same genes.
TWW
No, the slightly younger argument: what is consciousness?
Or, as I believe, we are simply programmed to believe (I Do not necessarily mean this in a literal sense) that we have a consciousness and in reality we are simply complex organic machines governed by various electrical and chemical processes.
Well, I don't see what that has to do with it. What is doing the beliving in this model if it's not the mind?
. If you copied yourself, quantum particle for quantum particle (simplest theoretical case but hardest to pull off unless we discover some neato trick of physics)
In fact, totally impossible unless we find a way around Heisenberg so this seems to be a totall invalid approach right from the start.
you would have two of you which both believed they were you, and each would be just as right as the other.
Except one has a discontinuity in their existance which the other does not.
The bottom line is no one knows what causes "mind" but pretending it doesn't exist is not a great step forward (unless you're George Bush Jr, in which case it's the best bet).
TWW
So, you're saying the original person would experiance BOTH brains/bodies? Seems unlikely.
Plus, of course, what does Heisenberg do to the question "If you have the ability to read 7 trillion neurons and what weights and connections they respond with to the other 7 trillion neurons"?
TWW
Fair enough.
2) Determine what a healthy 'wildtype' of the gene looks like.
That's just factual information, no reason that should be patenable any more than the colour of the sky.
3) Catalog and determine the effect of thousands of mutations and variants of the gene.... One of the reasons Myriad is HQ'd in Utah is to have access to all the Mormon geneaological records;
So this part is a derivative work based on a database of factual information. That's not a very good basis for a patent either.
The real solution is to define a seperate category of patent for genes, genetic testing, et al.
No, that's the trap they want you to fall into. By assuming that the patent system does not protect these things already you are pushed into accepting unneeded and unreasonable extensions. As you pointed out, the detection is a chemical process which can already be patented. Almost every genetic "breakthrough" involves such a process and thus is covered by the existing patent system in a fair way.
There is no more reason to allow patenting of genes than there was to allow the inventor of the deep-mine lift-winder a patent on coal.
TWW
No more than the users choose to give them. If they did start to abuse it I think they would soon lose that responsibility to someone else. There's always a new gun in town when it comes to search engines, just waiting for the old man to make a slip-up.
TWW
No, just the observation that a photocopy is not the original, even if the original is destroyed in the process and no matter how good the photocopier.
TWW
It wouldn't work like that. Imagine that the copy of your mind is uploaded into a new body before you die. Do you think your consciousness would suddenly transfer to the new body? All the copying could do is create a new consciousness in the new body, your old one (ie, you) would still grow old and die in the old body, never to return.
This is also the argument against Star Trek transporters. You die each time you use one but a new person is created at the other end that thinks it's you. You don't know anything about this, of course, you've just been disintegrated!
TWW
Would that be before or after he checked that his slaves were working hard enough to keep him in his big house on his big estate?
I don't see any reason to think that Jefferson would or did give a toss about anybody's rights other than his and his rich mates; all his fine words were designed to get the rabble to support the aristocracy that he and Washington represented.
TWW
This is NOT a slight paraphrase to say the least.
Ballmer said: "If there are aspects that are not allowed, it would encourage us to require a change in the legal framework. Otherwise, it wouldn't make economic sense."
So "require a change in the legal framework" and "Otherwise, it wouldn't make economic sense." [to sell Xbox]. That pretty well looks like "change the law or we'll leave" to me. What part did you think meant "fair enough, the law's the law and we respect that but we've lost the battle for the market and I guess that's just business; well done Sony!"?
TWW
This is not true. The GPL means that you can not make charging a condition of allowing others to redistribute the code since this would make the software "not free" (in either sense).
Microsoft in this case are charging per copy for their super-secret protocol. If I release some software based on this, I have to pay them. If I release the software under the GPL I would not be allowed by the GPL to force the recipient to pay Microsoft. At that point MS sets the law on me.
The Washington Post article made no distinction between kinds of payments. They clearly said "[the GNU GPL] bars any payment".
Your selective quote demonstrates why I chose to make a lengthy quote in my original post. In the context of the WP's discussion of the effects of Microsoft charging a royalty it is not clear that they mean what you seem to want them to mean.
The GPL's terms on distributing GPL-covered works for a fee do not change for "payments to third parties".
They don't but they make it impossible to comply with third party demands that every copy MUST incur a cost. You can not match the freedom of the GPL up with a legally enforced demand for restrictions from a third party, it just doesn't work.
Put it this way: explain to me how GPL'd software can be released such that Microsoft's legal requirement that they are paid for every copy of the software can be fulfilled in any reasonable way that would stop a court from finding that you had breached their copyright.
TWW
TWW
Have you got a reference for that figure? I'd be interested in looking in to this in more detail.
TWW
A better way to look at is that you are calculating the average density of the space enclosed by the event horizon. That's not the same as the density of the object inside the horizon but, as you say, it's all we can do; we have no useful descriptions or theories of what the object is actually like.
TWW
Perhaps not surprisingly, the mainstream press gets salient details wrong. The last sentence of the above paragraph is simply untrue.
In this context it is true. The GPL prevents an open source developer charging Microsoft's royalty to their users as that would be a restriction on the distribution.
In other words, the GPL bars payments to third parties in these sort of cases.
TWW