I fail to see where I accuse the President of doing anything illegal. In my opinion, that's still an open question for the courts to decide. Is it legal to listen to the domestic half of an international conversation without warrant? Are the laws currently governing this act so outdated that they should be (and are being) ignored?
Bush's answer to those questions is "yes." That's the legal precedent that the President has so far set. He set this _NOT_ through our legislators or through the courts, but by HIS word alone. It has yet to be seriously challenged because of the state of US government up until Jan 1, 2007.
Perhaps "obnoxious" would be a better word? I'm just trying to convey that these moves are rather obvious power-grabs into an area where the law is ill-defined.
Wow. This may be the first time I've ever been convinced that the tech community does indeed have the right, even the DUTY, to commit an act of civil disobedience.
I wasn't born by 1969, so I didn't get my rioting chance:)
From The Article:
Martin said Bush is "using the same legal reasoning" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping. Can anyone say slippery slope? Two blatant, obvious power grabs in just a few years and why? Because he's already set legal precedent, that's why.
Gotta admit it, the guy knows how to play the chess game of politics.
I am not surprised at all by this statistic. Every few months or so I've been hearning something about russia's space program in the major news sources (like CNN); this while the US space program was completly grounded.
Sometimes, it almost seems like beating the Russians to the moon killed the US space program more than anything else. It meant that we no longer had anything to proove, and could just sit back and watch space-planes evolve on their own. Well, that ain't happening.
What would happen if Russia became the first nation to have a semi-permanent lunar settlement? That I could see happening.
wait wait wait... this was in canada, right? NORTHERN canada. I'm in upstate NY and its fscking cold. In the middle of winter. Ice is breaking off, in the middle of winter.
Can complex software really be done in your spare time? That really is the question, isn't it? If the answer is "no," then it seems like open source software is what the critics say it is: an anomaly created by the birth of the internet, and it will die out like any other fad; leaving established, commercial software as the primary source of usable software technology.
Let me be crystal clear: THIS IS NOT TRUE!!
What is happening is the value of software is shifting. In the future, you won't have to work on open source software "in your spare time." You will be paid to work on open source software by the company you work for, because they have a stake in the software's success. Software is a living thing and must be maintained. If my business directly depends on... say... Asterisk running correctly, then I'd better have at least one OSS hacker who knows the Asterisk source code... get it?
Remember the old mantra: Free Software was never intended to be free-as-in-beer. You still have to pay for it if you want any real commercial use out of it. Companies will slowly realize they don't have to pay a monopolistic empire for all their software needs, but rather can hire their local blue-collar OSS hacker. Only then will the economy make some progress...
I RTFA, and the point of the article... is.... what? The media lies? Wow, now there's a news flash.
Local stations can play all the propoganda they way and call it "news." That's their right. The evil creeps in when governments begin to _force_ stations to play propoganda as news.
The so-called knowledge economy is growing fast as the traditional manufacturing of goods is replaced by more intangible assets.
In my opinion, if its intangible, then it shouldn't really be part of the economy in the first place. What is _actually_ happening is a portion of the economy is beginning show signs of no longer being relevant. With so much quality content out there for free, people are starting to wonder why they're continuing to shovel money to deified pop stars.
These are not "intangible assets." They are radio signals, waves, energy, which cannot be captured or sold. Stamp it on a CD, dress it up nice, and you've got something to sell. Something tangible you can look at in 50 years and remember (or wonder) why you spent the money.
Then there's the idea that entertainers should actually _perform_ to make their money, instead of selling copies of themselves... but that's just TOO revolutionary:)
Only when selling numbers are you able to dictate the exact details of how your product is used. What other marketable item exists where the seller has the full force of law behind it they say "this product can only be used for bla bla bla...". If I want to buy a sofa and use it as a bed, I can do that. If I complain to the sofa dealer about my back hurting, they won't listen to me, because they said it was for sitting, not sleeping. However, if my dealer is Microsoft, they call the FBI and put me in jail for violation of contract.
Open source is the only software. When all you pay for is arranged numbers, you forfit all your rights of ownership to the dealer. At least, that's how it works these days...
This is an obvious move in a complex conspiracy scheme. And by that I do not refer to those who deny the moon landing. I'm rather referring to a move by NASA scientists to get governments to stop fighting with themselves and kick-start the space race:
1) lose the original moon landing tapes 2) drum up foreign anti-american sentiment (however might they do that?) 3) attack the very achievement of the moon landing itself, using the "lack of the source" as proof 4) require that we send another mission to the moon to find the original lander, and build a base around it to serve as true proof of the event. 5) magically find the tapes in Armstrong's basement
I'll bet most north koreans already deny that the US landed on the moon.
That would be my first question. Why would the FBI engage in such an obvious publicity stunt? Arrest someone right before they're supposed to speak before a group of hackers? They'd better have some serious charges to levy against him, or else they've just shot themselves in the foot.... again.
Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody - no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional - has equal access
What is this "equal access" crap? Is he saying that my access to the internet is equal to google's? Obviously that is impossible. I send my packets out, google sends some of them back. The various routers and networks along the way drop a few of them, and send a few of them along. Hopefully, everything works right and my messages gets through, but this is by nature an unreliable medium. Why are people expecting it to be a level playing field when nothing else in the world is like that?
The internet will become tiered and fragmented. I believe that it is the nature of humans to thirst for knowledge, and this thirst will always maintain a route of comunication from one corner of the globe to the other. It won't be the telco's that will keep it up, it's us.
Does anyone think that there exists sufficient language to regulate ANY activity on the internet? Governments use platforms like child porn and copyright infringement to attemnt to push legislation into the mostly lawless arena of the internet. If any sweeping legislation does get through, who's going to enforce it? Internet police? The logical conclusion is what government does with all other regulation: licence and tax. To optain an IP address, you would need a government supplied license, one which requires signing off on a legally binding agreement, paying a fee for the beurocracy, and a tax for the usage.
I don't see how else you can even think about drafting laws in a lawless arena. The first step for everything is that which China has already made: all ISPs are now 0wned by the government.
The signal is the key. If the format of the signal is in some patented, commercially controled format like MP3, then any government from anywhere can influence the DRM within the signal. However, if the signal is OGG, an open format, then it cannot be controlled. Even if governments craft laws that make it illegal to "broadcast any music created by anyone other than the broadcaster" without a license (something which is totally impossible to reconcile with the american constitution allowing freedom of expression), they will have the obvious problem of enforcing an unpopular law on SINGLE INDIVIDUALS, not corporations.
That is not to say that governments won't try to make these laws. The only difference is, with open formats, these abhorent actions are presented with immediate resistance, whereas with commercial formats, the automatically bend over and take it, no matter if its right or wrong.
Barring erasing my drive and reinstalling OS X, I am stuck with an Apple laptop that only runs Windows. Any feedback? I don't want solutions that entail using the command line.
Wow. I mean this is simply an amazing convergance of computer users here. First a/. article from a mac-hack asking what's the "best windows software," then another complaining about having to use a command line! I think a lot of people are going to realize just how little they know about how computer's actually work.
Does anyone else believe that the command line will never go away? Current computers are all linear, so it makes sense that the only truely effective way to communicate with them is over a linear command line.
Why is this being treated with any surprise? The government of china is communist, and by definition that means a single group of party leaders control essentially every aspect of a citizen's life. It seems perfectly logical that they would conciously block the deployment of a foreign product until a domestic one is released to the market.
The question becomes: why did they choose to be deceptive in their practices? I think its part of comnunist philosophy, that leaders have to deceive the public to a certain extent, because full knowledge of what's really going on is not benificial to progress or economic success. And if this is really the case, why can't this be part of the political conversation instead of how best to use military force?
Does this executable format have anything to do with the binaries being able to execute on both ppc and intel machines?
I have a friend who just got a new intel mac laptop. There are a lot of programs which won't run correctly because they don't fully support the intel architecture. However, I know from my linux experience that if I compile something for ppc, and then something for x86, neither executable will even LOAD on the other architecture, let alone execute with any functionality. When I download things for this new mac, I never select anything that is intel specific, and programs like oggdrop and vlc seem to work just fine.
Is this some magic that the program is doing? Or is it on the system level? Or am I missing something obvious about macs?
I've been tossing the idea around about selling some open source project ideas to my old high school. When it comes to the labor of installation and maintainence that usually comes with open source projects, I see this as the very REASON I would use this in class. Fixing all those little tedious bugs associated with any open source project are a great way to learn how operating systems work.
I fail to see how this is anything but free labor in exchange for a chance at a contest prize. VMWare sells the licenses to their software, don't they? This does not exclude them from contributing to open source, but I think they shouldn't dangle carrots out there and hope that random programers will do development for them.
"Each of these companies has been advised that they are offering infringing products, that AT&T can provide proof of infringement, and that AT&T is offering a license under reasonable on non-discriminatory terms," Michael J. Robinson, licensing director of AT&T Intellectual Property Management, wrote in a letter sent in December 2005, and obtained by PC Magazine.
In other words, we threaten you, and you secretly pay us what we want. AT&T gies people offers they can't refuse. Software patents basically legalize extortion perputrated by corporations.
you must remember that since you're trying to profit from an open source project, the software itself is essentially public domain and you won't be able to sell licenses for it. If you try to jump through licensing hoops to try and prevent that, you won't get as much support from the OSS community in support and integration for your product. Remember you can't make money selling electrons.
So where's the money come from? That's what everyone's trying to figure out. The subscription model is one, selling support licenses is another. I'm trying to find a way to sell complete systems, so the value isn't so much in the software but in the labor put into building a complete open source system. There are as many ways to try and hack this as there are open source programmers.
Slashdot Mirror
I fail to see where I accuse the President of doing anything illegal. In my opinion, that's still an open question for the courts to decide. Is it legal to listen to the domestic half of an international conversation without warrant? Are the laws currently governing this act so outdated that they should be (and are being) ignored?
Bush's answer to those questions is "yes." That's the legal precedent that the President has so far set. He set this _NOT_ through our legislators or through the courts, but by HIS word alone. It has yet to be seriously challenged because of the state of US government up until Jan 1, 2007.
Perhaps "obnoxious" would be a better word? I'm just trying to convey that these moves are rather obvious power-grabs into an area where the law is ill-defined.
Wow. This may be the first time I've ever been convinced that the tech community does indeed have the right, even the DUTY, to commit an act of civil disobedience.
:)
I wasn't born by 1969, so I didn't get my rioting chance
-dave
Gotta admit it, the guy knows how to play the chess game of politics.
-dave
I am not surprised at all by this statistic. Every few months or so I've been hearning something about russia's space program in the major news sources (like CNN); this while the US space program was completly grounded.
Sometimes, it almost seems like beating the Russians to the moon killed the US space program more than anything else. It meant that we no longer had anything to proove, and could just sit back and watch space-planes evolve on their own. Well, that ain't happening.
What would happen if Russia became the first nation to have a semi-permanent lunar settlement? That I could see happening.
wait wait wait... this was in canada, right? NORTHERN canada. I'm in upstate NY and its fscking cold. In the middle of winter. Ice is breaking off, in the middle of winter.
damn. I've just been convinced.
Let me be crystal clear: THIS IS NOT TRUE!!
What is happening is the value of software is shifting. In the future, you won't have to work on open source software "in your spare time." You will be paid to work on open source software by the company you work for, because they have a stake in the software's success. Software is a living thing and must be maintained. If my business directly depends on... say... Asterisk running correctly, then I'd better have at least one OSS hacker who knows the Asterisk source code... get it?
Remember the old mantra: Free Software was never intended to be free-as-in-beer. You still have to pay for it if you want any real commercial use out of it. Companies will slowly realize they don't have to pay a monopolistic empire for all their software needs, but rather can hire their local blue-collar OSS hacker. Only then will the economy make some progress...
-dave
The site has a robots.txt that doesn't allow a quick mirror. I had to cut-y-paste the image links into a terminal and use wget for each one.
http://6thstreetradio.org/~davek/olpc/
The 4 images are there, though, which is probably what most people want.
I RTFA, and the point of the article... is.... what? The media lies? Wow, now there's a news flash.
Local stations can play all the propoganda they way and call it "news." That's their right. The evil creeps in when governments begin to _force_ stations to play propoganda as news.
In my opinion, if its intangible, then it shouldn't really be part of the economy in the first place. What is _actually_ happening is a portion of the economy is beginning show signs of no longer being relevant. With so much quality content out there for free, people are starting to wonder why they're continuing to shovel money to deified pop stars.
These are not "intangible assets." They are radio signals, waves, energy, which cannot be captured or sold. Stamp it on a CD, dress it up nice, and you've got something to sell. Something tangible you can look at in 50 years and remember (or wonder) why you spent the money.
Then there's the idea that entertainers should actually _perform_ to make their money, instead of selling copies of themselves... but that's just TOO revolutionary
-dave
Only when selling numbers are you able to dictate the exact details of how your product is used. What other marketable item exists where the seller has the full force of law behind it they say "this product can only be used for bla bla bla...". If I want to buy a sofa and use it as a bed, I can do that. If I complain to the sofa dealer about my back hurting, they won't listen to me, because they said it was for sitting, not sleeping. However, if my dealer is Microsoft, they call the FBI and put me in jail for violation of contract.
Open source is the only software. When all you pay for is arranged numbers, you forfit all your rights of ownership to the dealer. At least, that's how it works these days...
-dave
This is an obvious move in a complex conspiracy scheme. And by that I do not refer to those who deny the moon landing. I'm rather referring to a move by NASA scientists to get governments to stop fighting with themselves and kick-start the space race:
1) lose the original moon landing tapes
2) drum up foreign anti-american sentiment (however might they do that?)
3) attack the very achievement of the moon landing itself, using the "lack of the source" as proof
4) require that we send another mission to the moon to find the original lander, and build a base around it to serve as true proof of the event.
5) magically find the tapes in Armstrong's basement
I'll bet most north koreans already deny that the US landed on the moon.
(insert tounge into cheek)
-dave
That would be my first question. Why would the FBI engage in such an obvious publicity stunt? Arrest someone right before they're supposed to speak before a group of hackers? They'd better have some serious charges to levy against him, or else they've just shot themselves in the foot.... again.
-dave
What is this "equal access" crap? Is he saying that my access to the internet is equal to google's? Obviously that is impossible. I send my packets out, google sends some of them back. The various routers and networks along the way drop a few of them, and send a few of them along. Hopefully, everything works right and my messages gets through, but this is by nature an unreliable medium. Why are people expecting it to be a level playing field when nothing else in the world is like that?
The internet will become tiered and fragmented. I believe that it is the nature of humans to thirst for knowledge, and this thirst will always maintain a route of comunication from one corner of the globe to the other. It won't be the telco's that will keep it up, it's us.
-dave
Does anyone think that there exists sufficient language to regulate ANY activity on the internet? Governments use platforms like child porn and copyright infringement to attemnt to push legislation into the mostly lawless arena of the internet. If any sweeping legislation does get through, who's going to enforce it? Internet police? The logical conclusion is what government does with all other regulation: licence and tax. To optain an IP address, you would need a government supplied license, one which requires signing off on a legally binding agreement, paying a fee for the beurocracy, and a tax for the usage.
I don't see how else you can even think about drafting laws in a lawless arena. The first step for everything is that which China has already made: all ISPs are now 0wned by the government.
-dave
The signal is the key. If the format of the signal is in some patented, commercially controled format like MP3, then any government from anywhere can influence the DRM within the signal. However, if the signal is OGG, an open format, then it cannot be controlled. Even if governments craft laws that make it illegal to "broadcast any music created by anyone other than the broadcaster" without a license (something which is totally impossible to reconcile with the american constitution allowing freedom of expression), they will have the obvious problem of enforcing an unpopular law on SINGLE INDIVIDUALS, not corporations.
That is not to say that governments won't try to make these laws. The only difference is, with open formats, these abhorent actions are presented with immediate resistance, whereas with commercial formats, the automatically bend over and take it, no matter if its right or wrong.
-dave
Wow. I mean this is simply an amazing convergance of computer users here. First a
Does anyone else believe that the command line will never go away? Current computers are all linear, so it makes sense that the only truely effective way to communicate with them is over a linear command line.
Why is this being treated with any surprise? The government of china is communist, and by definition that means a single group of party leaders control essentially every aspect of a citizen's life. It seems perfectly logical that they would conciously block the deployment of a foreign product until a domestic one is released to the market.
The question becomes: why did they choose to be deceptive in their practices? I think its part of comnunist philosophy, that leaders have to deceive the public to a certain extent, because full knowledge of what's really going on is not benificial to progress or economic success. And if this is really the case, why can't this be part of the political conversation instead of how best to use military force?
-dave
Does this executable format have anything to do with the binaries being able to execute on both ppc and intel machines?
I have a friend who just got a new intel mac laptop. There are a lot of programs which won't run correctly because they don't fully support the intel architecture. However, I know from my linux experience that if I compile something for ppc, and then something for x86, neither executable will even LOAD on the other architecture, let alone execute with any functionality. When I download things for this new mac, I never select anything that is intel specific, and programs like oggdrop and vlc seem to work just fine.
Is this some magic that the program is doing? Or is it on the system level? Or am I missing something obvious about macs?
War, bombs, exploding cars, roadside explosives, suicide bombers, beheadings, kidnappings, and invasion.... DON'T contribute to violent behavior?
Ban the video games, you'd better ban the news too.
I've been tossing the idea around about selling some open source project ideas to my old high school. When it comes to the labor of installation and maintainence that usually comes with open source projects, I see this as the very REASON I would use this in class. Fixing all those little tedious bugs associated with any open source project are a great way to learn how operating systems work.
Open source too much labor for education? FUD.
I fail to see how this is anything but free labor in exchange for a chance at a contest prize. VMWare sells the licenses to their software, don't they? This does not exclude them from contributing to open source, but I think they shouldn't dangle carrots out there and hope that random programers will do development for them.
In other words, we threaten you, and you secretly pay us what we want. AT&T gies people offers they can't refuse. Software patents basically legalize extortion perputrated by corporations.
I want to be so influential that I am able to send a few philosophical emails and have it reverberate and spawn discussion throughout the world.
Can anyone think of another person besides Linus who holds such influence in directing the political mind outside of politics and commerce?
you must remember that since you're trying to profit from an open source project, the software itself is essentially public domain and you won't be able to sell licenses for it. If you try to jump through licensing hoops to try and prevent that, you won't get as much support from the OSS community in support and integration for your product. Remember you can't make money selling electrons.
So where's the money come from? That's what everyone's trying to figure out. The subscription model is one, selling support licenses is another. I'm trying to find a way to sell complete systems, so the value isn't so much in the software but in the labor put into building a complete open source system. There are as many ways to try and hack this as there are open source programmers.