While it's true that Libre Software developers work more closely with the users who contribute back to the project in some way, and those users tend to be the smarter, geekier users, the biggest difference between free and proprietary software is that free software encourages users to become smarter.
The value in learning the nitty-gritty details of a proprietary product are lost when the vendor makes incompatible changes to scare off potential competition. The proprietary vendor wants no help from the users. He wants his users to send him money on a regular basis and not ask questions unless they will pay for answers.
The Libre developer doesn't give a rats ass what the user does with her software. That's what makes the software free. The developer prefers to get something back for her effort, so she has a motive to make her software approachable and to provide her users with means to contribute back to the project, and often that means encouraging the user to get smarter, directly or indirectly.
This is a gross over-generalization, but/. is not the forum for full-blown research papers as comments, so I won't defend my thesis further.
I know noone in this forum wants a more effective weapon, but there are people who do, and nuclear weapons, while very powerful, are not ideal. Even the neutron bomb, which only kills living things, is sub-optimal.
The perfect weapon would only kill people who oppose the weilder. Nanotecho could implement that objective better than anything else I'm aware of. All weapons up to this point have been indiscriminate in who they kill. Land mines from 50 years ago take out the great-grandchildren of the people who laid the mines. Chemical and biological weapons blow around the planet. Nukes leave radiation and colateral damage.
If our understanding of nanotech is reasonable, it could selectively kill only the intended victims.
There is a bright side, however. Nanotech may also allow for the victims to be incapactiated, rather than killed. They could form the ultimate defensive system. Defendors of a realm could sick nano-nets on attackers to trap them and hold them down so that the defender can have a rational discussion about the situation with them.
Of course, no governement in history has ever had peaceful expansion as a goal, and defenders have never had nor been expected to have mercy for their oppressors... But I like to keep an optimistic outlook.
Anyone remember the urban legend about launching frozen chickens into jet engines to test them?
http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm
Combine that with one of these lasers, and our military could deliver hot chicken dinners to men on the front lines with precision and accuracy! No more jokes about the slop in the mess hall. Our boys can chow down on instant chicken dinners just by calling in an order. Within seconds they could be litterally buried in tasty hot chicken. Yum yum!
Not only did MS play by the rules, but they played off the greed of the other players. All the destructive contracts they got were based on the other players being unwilling to take a short-term loss for a long-term win. They took their short term win of money for a long term loss of freedom, and now that they have to pay that loss people are starting to complain. Moreover, most of the force behind the attacks on MS comes from their competitors who see legal action as a cheaper way to compete.
If MicroSoft were the only source of medicine, food, clothing, or shelter, then I'd have some sympathy for the detractors, but they sell SOFTWARE, and they don't even have a monopoly on that! People are just too cheap to suck it up and pay the REAL costs of freedom.
As Elbereth said here a few weeks ago, "Those who would trade a little freedom for a program that works deserve neither freedom nor a program that works."
The corporations have no police or armies of their own to speak of (thankfully), and any power they have is given to them by a government which is available to the highest bidder(s). If that government didn't have the kind of power it does, the corporations would have to create their own force, which would alienate their customers.
It's a myth that the US government holds back the corporations and forces them to play fair. For at least a hundred years it has done the opposite. The only times it every does anything right is when some wealthy person or group pays it to.
Unfortunately, there is no graceful way to change this situation. Try to change the government and the corporations work against us. Try to change the corporations and the government works against us. It will come to a head this century.
I haven't had any problems in four years. These problems happen to people who buy crap phones and crap service. The same is true for land lines.
"I also don't *want* to be reached sometimes"
So turn off your phone. Duh.
"I just set-up my personal voicemail box today"
That happens with email and land-line answering machines. It's never happened to me on voicemail or anywhere else, but maybe I'm just lucky.
"I also don't like people who can barely drive to begin with"
There's the real problem. Just because someone's an idiot who uses a cell phone doesn't make cell phones bad.
"...sorry for running-on so terribly, but I really hate cellphones"
If I were to guess, I'd say you're probably just jealous. You associate cell phones with "the burguiose", or maybe the "five-percenters" who own everything. Even if my guess is wrong about you, it's probably right about most cell-haters. They group people by the tools they use: SUV, Macintosh, guns, skateboards. It's not much different from grouping people by ethnicity or nationality.
Well get over it. These people have self-determination, whether they admit it or not, and choose to use their tools in ways which offend the rest of us. Don't hate the tool, hate the abuse. Guns don't kill people, cell phones don't drive, skateboards don't ram into pedestrians and roll into traffic.
Deal directly with the real problems (murder, negligence, carelessness), not the tools involved or the groups of people who use the same tools.
"For instance, a digital camera that carries the new algorithms could be used to gather forensic evidence for use later in a courtroom. Any subsequent manipulations of the pictures could be detected, and the area where they occurred could be pinpointed."
Whatever the camera is doing at the scene of the crime could be faked in a lab. Even if each camera has its own PGP/GPG key, the picture is only as reliable as the security of the camera and the key.
What they should do is have the crime scene photographer and his superior digitally sign the images at the crime scene. This would remove the image format from the equation and make the data and the image as secure as the keys of the people involved.
Our chief feature is Surprise! Surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our _two_ features are surprise and fear. And ruthless aquisition of real game companies. Our *three* products are Surprise, Fear and Ruthless Aquisition.... and an almost usable Linux platform...
[...]
NOOOOObody expects the Microsoft XBox. Amongst our products are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, rutheless aquisition of real game companies, an almost useable Linux platform, and a new controller that fits normal hands...
100,000 pieces? Is that a lot?
on
Lego Addictions
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Can I get that in terms a simple consumer like me can understand? How many Lego bricks would it take to build a Library of Congress?
It's not just the pixelation or blurring that procedural shaders solve. Combined with other techniques such as bump and environment mapping, surfaces can be given depth without increasing the poly count. A texture can be be made to look like water without transmitting wave information to the video card. Just send a function.
The combination of pixel and vertex shaders allows stunning effects like flag that flaps in the wind and still casts the right shadows, and it's all done on the card (an example I stole from an NVidia presentation).
It's no cure-all, but it is another large step forward.
I browse/. at a threshold of 4, so if this is redundant, I appologize.
I have an infinite appatite for more toys. The only thing preventing me from buying quad Xeons, dual Athlons and a bunch of Sparc hardware is that I'm broke. This last year has been very difficult, and I think even more so in the technology sector. If we all start getting rich off of killing foreigners or something, then maybe the demand for more power will return. In the mean time I'd be more impressed if they could show that people were spending the same (inflation adjusted) money on lower-end hardware.
The article itself does mention the economic slump, but doesn't actually provide any real facts or data, just anecdote and fluff.
Other posters have answered the philisophical elements of your essay far better than I could have. However, another problem with Intellectual Property as a concept is the difficulty in defining the elements involved and enforcing the rules around them.
What is a unit of property? How much must a piece of data differ from another piece of data to not be considered a copy? Is an artist's rendition of a beautiful cathedral a theft of the archetecht's work? What if the artist's medium is sculpture? What if it's concrete and steel?
Any visual or auditory medium can be copied well enough to be considered perfect as soon as anyone witnesses the property. People will smuggle high-tech recording equipment into theaters and concerts, and their data will be copied. It would be easier to legislate fingernail length than IP theft. No matter what technology is used to keep people away from the medium, at some point they will see or hear it, and they may be wearing special glasses or hearing aids.
The key ingredient to understanding the irrelevance of IP law is trying to determine what has actually been taken from the artist. When physical property is taken from an owner, they can identify the last time they had it, and the first time they didn't have it. This is not so with copied IP. The artist can't tell how many copies of her work have been made, or when.
Note also that the "value" of IP as determined by the free market goes up over time as it is purchased from the owner. No other kind of property can be re-sold in this manner.
"Hello, would you like to rent an apartment? I have only one, and I'm renting it out to a million other people, but you don't have to worry about waiting to use the bathroom because you'll get your own copy of the apartment. But you still have to pay me. Why? Because otherwise you'd be stealing."
"Hello, would you like some food? I can give you as many servings as you like and I will never run out, but I have to charge you for every serving or I will starve."
I guess I dipped into the philosophy afterall. Oh well.
Thog: We've invented the wheel, the axe, and now Glogh has learned to ride a wheel and hit people with his axe, so we have our first policeman. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what kind of activities Glogh should police?
Srak: I'm an old man, and I can't protect the grain silo from mischevious kids. Glogh should chase down kids and take them to their parents to be taught to work for their food.
Thog: Good suggestion. Anyone else?
Gliza: Some of the men in town have been... forceful with me, and with my father dead and no husband to defend me, they get away with it. If Glogh doesn't chop their heads off, I may have to do it myself.
Thog [sweating]: Duely noted! Next?
Wheez: I don't like the hat Srak wears when we're in the amphetheater listening to the drummers. I can't see the drummers if I sit behind him. I think Glogh should hit him if he doesn't quit.
Thog: Why don't you just tell him yourself?
Wheez: He's a public nuisance, it's a public problem!
Gliza: It doesn't bother me.
Glogh: Me either.
Thog: Now now, Wheez has a point. Srak has been quite a nuisance since he became Grain Master. I sometimes think he wears that hat at drum shows, just so we know he's there and that HE controls the GRAIN.
Wheez: Yeah! And I've seen him riding a wheel with that hat on, grinning like an idiot, and nearly running me over! Riding a wheel is hard enough as it is without something on his head confusing him.
[The cave people argue into the night, finally passing a law against wearing hats while riding a wheel or watching a performance. Srak is convicted retroactively, and Wheez and Thog take over control of the grain silo.
One can catch the paper against the roller holder and get more friction making tearing easier when the roll is installed "backwords". If you try to do this with a forwards roll you'll have to loop what you've got up and around, which tends to get complicated when one is focussed on the latest issue of Popular Mechanics... or whatever else one might read on the toilet... one-handed.
He may have a point, but I'll never know
on
GUIs for Everyone
·
· Score: 2
His explination at the end ("Note to slashdotters: I really did not intend for this "diatribe" to be posted on slashdot.") excuses him somewhat, but even so this essay is a poor piece of writing.
"Open source is new and freeish, BUT..." "We need a UI team." "People will keep running Windows for the apps."
I'm sorry, I thought this essay was going to be about User Interfaces, not Binary Application Interfaces.
"The Apple II is better than a modern PC because it has a blinking cursor." "I enjoyed Apple, Amiga and SGI interfaces' because I thought the machine knew I was there."
He wants HAL.
"We keep copying Microsoft, but we're not adding anything beyond what they provide, so we'll always be playing catch-up." "We need a GUI team to be Like Microsoft But Better."
Didn't he say earlier that it was the ability to run apps that kept people using Windows? Didn't he say that the cost of Windows is a drop in the bucket when people are paying much more for the apps it runs?
This is a weak essay, but it has an interesting point if we strip aside the nonsense: OpenSource user interfaces don't provide anything that isn't already available elsewhere in a "good enough" package. This is true. I hope some interesting projects of this nature do spring forth.
Actually, I'm with speakeasy. IANAL, but the way I read their TOS (http://speakeasy.net/tos/), sharing is not encouraged.
I still recommend Speakeasy. I live a few blocks from their main office. The service is great, the network is well maintained, and their staff are intelligent and professional.
They're a lot better than the ISP I used to work for;)
I pay $300/mo for 1.54 sDSL, and I want to share with my neigbors. My terms of use _prevents_ me from sharing my connection. I can use the entire 1.54Mbit both directions and my ISP doesn't care, but if I string a connection to my neighbor and my ISP finds out, I risk losing my connection.
I would love to support a neigborhood wireless network, and wouldn't mind sharing some of my ample bandwidth (network trafic aggregates well), but I can't because my ISP already aggregates between customers like me and because of the complications of who gets in trouble if my neighbor uses my net to attack someone.
It's going to take a large grassroots effort to free up "the last mile" from institutional control.
Slashdot Mirror
While it's true that Libre Software developers work more closely with the users who contribute back to the project in some way, and those users tend to be the smarter, geekier users, the biggest difference between free and proprietary software is that free software encourages users to become smarter.
/. is not the forum for full-blown research papers as comments, so I won't defend my thesis further.
The value in learning the nitty-gritty details of a proprietary product are lost when the vendor makes incompatible changes to scare off potential competition. The proprietary vendor wants no help from the users. He wants his users to send him money on a regular basis and not ask questions unless they will pay for answers.
The Libre developer doesn't give a rats ass what the user does with her software. That's what makes the software free. The developer prefers to get something back for her effort, so she has a motive to make her software approachable and to provide her users with means to contribute back to the project, and often that means encouraging the user to get smarter, directly or indirectly.
This is a gross over-generalization, but
I know noone in this forum wants a more effective weapon, but there are people who do, and nuclear weapons, while very powerful, are not ideal. Even the neutron bomb, which only kills living things, is sub-optimal.
The perfect weapon would only kill people who oppose the weilder. Nanotecho could implement that objective better than anything else I'm aware of. All weapons up to this point have been indiscriminate in who they kill. Land mines from 50 years ago take out the great-grandchildren of the people who laid the mines. Chemical and biological weapons blow around the planet. Nukes leave radiation and colateral damage.
If our understanding of nanotech is reasonable, it could selectively kill only the intended victims.
There is a bright side, however. Nanotech may also allow for the victims to be incapactiated, rather than killed. They could form the ultimate defensive system. Defendors of a realm could sick nano-nets on attackers to trap them and hold them down so that the defender can have a rational discussion about the situation with them.
Of course, no governement in history has ever had peaceful expansion as a goal, and defenders have never had nor been expected to have mercy for their oppressors... But I like to keep an optimistic outlook.
Fun stuff.
Whichever two moderators rated this as "overrated" have no sense of humor and no concept of what the moderation system is about.
This post works for me on multiple levels. I give it two thumbs up.
Are you putting me on? Formica?
a
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=formic
Anyone remember the urban legend about launching frozen chickens into jet engines to test them?
http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm
Combine that with one of these lasers, and our military could deliver hot chicken dinners to men on the front lines with precision and accuracy! No more jokes about the slop in the mess hall. Our boys can chow down on instant chicken dinners just by calling in an order. Within seconds they could be litterally buried in tasty hot chicken. Yum yum!
Not only did MS play by the rules, but they played off the greed of the other players. All the destructive contracts they got were based on the other players being unwilling to take a short-term loss for a long-term win. They took their short term win of money for a long term loss of freedom, and now that they have to pay that loss people are starting to complain. Moreover, most of the force behind the attacks on MS comes from their competitors who see legal action as a cheaper way to compete.
If MicroSoft were the only source of medicine, food, clothing, or shelter, then I'd have some sympathy for the detractors, but they sell SOFTWARE, and they don't even have a monopoly on that! People are just too cheap to suck it up and pay the REAL costs of freedom.
As Elbereth said here a few weeks ago, "Those who would trade a little freedom for a program that works deserve neither freedom nor a program that works."
The corporations have no police or armies of their own to speak of (thankfully), and any power they have is given to them by a government which is available to the highest bidder(s). If that government didn't have the kind of power it does, the corporations would have to create their own force, which would alienate their customers.
It's a myth that the US government holds back the corporations and forces them to play fair. For at least a hundred years it has done the opposite. The only times it every does anything right is when some wealthy person or group pays it to.
Unfortunately, there is no graceful way to change this situation. Try to change the government and the corporations work against us. Try to change the corporations and the government works against us. It will come to a head this century.
Whoever marked this 'offtopic' isn't a Simpsons fan. What a waste of a moderation point.
"Cell phones are not very reliable."
I haven't had any problems in four years. These problems happen to people who buy crap phones and crap service. The same is true for land lines.
"I also don't *want* to be reached sometimes"
So turn off your phone. Duh.
"I just set-up my personal voicemail box today"
That happens with email and land-line answering machines. It's never happened to me on voicemail or anywhere else, but maybe I'm just lucky.
"I also don't like people who can barely drive to begin with"
There's the real problem. Just because someone's an idiot who uses a cell phone doesn't make cell phones bad.
"...sorry for running-on so terribly, but I really hate cellphones"
If I were to guess, I'd say you're probably just jealous. You associate cell phones with "the burguiose", or maybe the "five-percenters" who own everything. Even if my guess is wrong about you, it's probably right about most cell-haters. They group people by the tools they use: SUV, Macintosh, guns, skateboards. It's not much different from grouping people by ethnicity or nationality.
Well get over it. These people have self-determination, whether they admit it or not, and choose to use their tools in ways which offend the rest of us. Don't hate the tool, hate the abuse. Guns don't kill people, cell phones don't drive, skateboards don't ram into pedestrians and roll into traffic.
Deal directly with the real problems (murder, negligence, carelessness), not the tools involved or the groups of people who use the same tools.
Thank you.
"For instance, a digital camera that carries the new algorithms could be used to gather forensic evidence for use later in a courtroom. Any subsequent manipulations of the pictures could be detected, and the area where they occurred could be pinpointed."
Whatever the camera is doing at the scene of the crime could be faked in a lab. Even if each camera has its own PGP/GPG key, the picture is only as reliable as the security of the camera and the key.
What they should do is have the crime scene photographer and his superior digitally sign the images at the crime scene. This would remove the image format from the equation and make the data and the image as secure as the keys of the people involved.
It'd be like watching an animatronic Real Doll make love to my girlfriend, and that doesn't strike me as such a bad thing.
The post wasn't interesting, but his or her Monty Python accent was:
"[the] Xbox is small, nitty..."
"an hard drive"
"an horde of penguines"
Next I'd like to see Eliza Doolittle post "They hardly ever have an hurricaine down in Hedeford."
I had no front plate in Santa Cruz for two years and was never hassled.
Our chief feature is Surprise! Surprise and fear ... fear and surprise ... Our _two_ features are surprise and fear. And ruthless aquisition of real game companies. Our *three* products are Surprise, Fear and Ruthless Aquisition. ... and an almost usable Linux platform...
[...]
NOOOOObody expects the Microsoft XBox. Amongst our products are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, rutheless aquisition of real game companies, an almost useable Linux platform, and a new controller that fits normal hands...
Can I get that in terms a simple consumer like me can understand? How many Lego bricks would it take to build a Library of Congress?
It's not just the pixelation or blurring that procedural shaders solve. Combined with other techniques such as bump and environment mapping, surfaces can be given depth without increasing the poly count. A texture can be be made to look like water without transmitting wave information to the video card. Just send a function.
The combination of pixel and vertex shaders allows stunning effects like flag that flaps in the wind and still casts the right shadows, and it's all done on the card (an example I stole from an NVidia presentation).
It's no cure-all, but it is another large step forward.
I browse /. at a threshold of 4, so if this is redundant, I appologize.
I have an infinite appatite for more toys. The only thing preventing me from buying quad Xeons, dual Athlons and a bunch of Sparc hardware is that I'm broke. This last year has been very difficult, and I think even more so in the technology sector. If we all start getting rich off of killing foreigners or something, then maybe the demand for more power will return. In the mean time I'd be more impressed if they could show that people were spending the same (inflation adjusted) money on lower-end hardware.
The article itself does mention the economic slump, but doesn't actually provide any real facts or data, just anecdote and fluff.
Other posters have answered the philisophical elements of your essay far better than I could have. However, another problem with Intellectual Property as a concept is the difficulty in defining the elements involved and enforcing the rules around them.
What is a unit of property? How much must a piece of data differ from another piece of data to not be considered a copy? Is an artist's rendition of a beautiful cathedral a theft of the archetecht's work? What if the artist's medium is sculpture? What if it's concrete and steel?
Any visual or auditory medium can be copied well enough to be considered perfect as soon as anyone witnesses the property. People will smuggle high-tech recording equipment into theaters and concerts, and their data will be copied. It would be easier to legislate fingernail length than IP theft. No matter what technology is used to keep people away from the medium, at some point they will see or hear it, and they may be wearing special glasses or hearing aids.
The key ingredient to understanding the irrelevance of IP law is trying to determine what has actually been taken from the artist. When physical property is taken from an owner, they can identify the last time they had it, and the first time they didn't have it. This is not so with copied IP. The artist can't tell how many copies of her work have been made, or when.
Note also that the "value" of IP as determined by the free market goes up over time as it is purchased from the owner. No other kind of property can be re-sold in this manner.
"Hello, would you like to rent an apartment? I have only one, and I'm renting it out to a million other people, but you don't have to worry about waiting to use the bathroom because you'll get your own copy of the apartment. But you still have to pay me. Why? Because otherwise you'd be stealing."
"Hello, would you like some food? I can give you as many servings as you like and I will never run out, but I have to charge you for every serving or I will starve."
I guess I dipped into the philosophy afterall. Oh well.
I almost ate the flame bait myself. Even if I didn't like Harry Potter, the comment is clearly antagonistic, and adds nothing to the news item itself.
Thog: We've invented the wheel, the axe, and now Glogh has learned to ride a wheel and hit people with his axe, so we have our first policeman. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what kind of activities Glogh should police?
... forceful with me, and with my father dead and no husband to defend me, they get away with it. If Glogh doesn't chop their heads off, I may have to do it myself.
Srak: I'm an old man, and I can't protect the grain silo from mischevious kids. Glogh should chase down kids and take them to their parents to be taught to work for their food.
Thog: Good suggestion. Anyone else?
Gliza: Some of the men in town have been
Thog [sweating]: Duely noted! Next?
Wheez: I don't like the hat Srak wears when we're in the amphetheater listening to the drummers. I can't see the drummers if I sit behind him. I think Glogh should hit him if he doesn't quit.
Thog: Why don't you just tell him yourself?
Wheez: He's a public nuisance, it's a public problem!
Gliza: It doesn't bother me.
Glogh: Me either.
Thog: Now now, Wheez has a point. Srak has been quite a nuisance since he became Grain Master. I sometimes think he wears that hat at drum shows, just so we know he's there and that HE controls the GRAIN.
Wheez: Yeah! And I've seen him riding a wheel with that hat on, grinning like an idiot, and nearly running me over! Riding a wheel is hard enough as it is without something on his head confusing him.
[The cave people argue into the night, finally passing a law against wearing hats while riding a wheel or watching a performance. Srak is convicted retroactively, and Wheez and Thog take over control of the grain silo.
One can catch the paper against the roller holder and get more friction making tearing easier when the roll is installed "backwords". If you try to do this with a forwards roll you'll have to loop what you've got up and around, which tends to get complicated when one is focussed on the latest issue of Popular Mechanics... or whatever else one might read on the toilet... one-handed.
His explination at the end ("Note to slashdotters: I really did not intend for this "diatribe" to be posted on slashdot.") excuses him somewhat, but even so this essay is a poor piece of writing.
"Open source is new and freeish, BUT..."
"We need a UI team."
"People will keep running Windows for the apps."
I'm sorry, I thought this essay was going to be about User Interfaces, not Binary Application Interfaces.
"The Apple II is better than a modern PC because it has a blinking cursor."
"I enjoyed Apple, Amiga and SGI interfaces' because I thought the machine knew I was there."
He wants HAL.
"We keep copying Microsoft, but we're not adding anything beyond what they provide, so we'll always be playing catch-up."
"We need a GUI team to be Like Microsoft But Better."
Didn't he say earlier that it was the ability to run apps that kept people using Windows? Didn't he say that the cost of Windows is a drop in the bucket when people are paying much more for the apps it runs?
This is a weak essay, but it has an interesting point if we strip aside the nonsense: OpenSource user interfaces don't provide anything that isn't already available elsewhere in a "good enough" package. This is true. I hope some interesting projects of this nature do spring forth.
Their PA-RISC machines have been pretty popular for things like airline reservation systems and low-end graphics workstations.
They also helped out with Itanium.
Actually, I'm with speakeasy. IANAL, but the way I read their TOS (http://speakeasy.net/tos/), sharing is not encouraged.
;)
I still recommend Speakeasy. I live a few blocks from their main office. The service is great, the network is well maintained, and their staff are intelligent and professional.
They're a lot better than the ISP I used to work for
I pay $300/mo for 1.54 sDSL, and I want to share with my neigbors. My terms of use _prevents_ me from sharing my connection. I can use the entire 1.54Mbit both directions and my ISP doesn't care, but if I string a connection to my neighbor and my ISP finds out, I risk losing my connection.
I would love to support a neigborhood wireless network, and wouldn't mind sharing some of my ample bandwidth (network trafic aggregates well), but I can't because my ISP already aggregates between customers like me and because of the complications of who gets in trouble if my neighbor uses my net to attack someone.
It's going to take a large grassroots effort to free up "the last mile" from institutional control.