I wonder how Linus can know that. How can he make this claim without providing any supporting evidance for what he believe Tridge's intention was. To me it doesn't seem to be anything more than a wild and totally biased speculation.
Given that Linus and Tridge discussed Tridge's intentions, don't you think he's in quite a good position to make that claim?
On another point I would find it to be really unlikely that any major DVD player would truly get this penalty imposed against it. It would be a huge loss to be the first movie that doesn't work on sony blah players so no movie company is going to be the one who takes that first step.
That's the way I see it. It might be used against software players, but I'd be shocked if it was used against a hardware device.
However, many people (like myself) believe there is little or no persuasive evidence for macro-evolution, the spontaneous generation of radically new organisms marked by completely new genes, chromosomes, and physiological characteristics.
At least one of those speciation events was a spontaneous doubling of the number of chromosomes.
It's easy to imagine in macroscopic terms how a freckle might turn into an eyeball. It's impossible, however, to explain the process in molecular-evolutionary terms.
I believe there are examples in nature of pretty much every likely step on the way to the eyeball: heat sensitive glans, camera obscura "eyes", etc. Whether the gaps between these steps are small enough, I'm not qualified to judge.
They were simply interesting facts that could explained both by macro-evolution and by creation.
Everything can be explained by creation, so there is no point weighing each fact in that way. Instead I think you should ask yourself this:
Given a belief in God and creation what is more likely given the evidence: that God created everything according to the literal interpretation of the bible, but made all this evidence of evolution to [trick us|force us to have to take the bible on faith], or that God created the mechanism of evolution more or less as science describes it and that the bible [should not|does not need to] be taken literally?
In my mind, the later seems more elegant and, following the principle of Occam's Razor, more likely. And surely a creation that essentially creates and evolves itself from the beginning is far more divine than a creation that is designed to last detail? But it's very much a question for religious, not scientific debate.
Innocent users don't hack their devices. Not necessarily saying you're wrong otherwise.
The point is that if you happen to own the same device that the hacker broke the keys for, you could be SOL. I.e. if someone cracks the keys for Sony's Model 99 HDDVD player, the DVDCCA can revoke those keys and everyone who owns a Model 99 now has a useless paperweight (well I guess they'd still play old discs, just not new ones). Now, whether they'd use that ability or not, who knows? It's the sort of thing that would have lawyers lining up to start class actions suits, I'd expect.
When evolution shows a jump in species with a significant difference, then they would be more considering.
There are numerous speciation events on record. See this FAQ. But observed speciation doesn't convince Creationists because their beliefs are not based on evidence and reasoning, they're based on faith.
Linus didn't blast OpenOffice, but doing so would have been consistent with what he's been saying about Bitmover, and this story hoists Linus by his own petard. Tridge did not attempt to reverse-engineer the internals of the Bitmover program. He reverse-engineered its over-wire protocol in order to produce a program that would interoperate with it over the net. This was a perfectly moral and reasonable act and parallels what Tridge did to make Samba compatible with Windows file and printer sharing.
I think you're putting words into Linus' mouth. AFAICS, Linus said that he doesn't disagree with Larry's position, i.e. he doesn't believe Larry should have to make it easy for anyone looking to replicate BK's functionality. And that Larry should discontiue the free version if he feels he's not getting anything out of it. He hasn't said anything directly for or against reverse engineering, has he?
You are free to negotiate a contract with whatever terms you are comfortable with. You personally may not trust McVoy, but you shouldn't need to. That's why contracts exist in the first place.
Obviously McVoy doesn't want someone else to produce a tool with the same features as BK, but he has never said there is any reason why they shouldn't. All he's done is tried to stop them using the free version of BK to do so.
That's not true; he has stopped people from using the free version of BK when they were working on Subversion, even though they weren't using BK in their work on Subversion, nor implementing anything in Subversion that wasn't common knowledge in the SCM world outside of BitKeeper.
His claim is that using BK (and thus seeing how it works) is enough to provide an advantage to competitors, such as the Subversion developers. So it falls under the "stop them using the free version of BK to do so". I think his claim is highly debatable, but it's his software, his rules. If you don't like that condition on the free version you can purchase a commercial license. I don't see how anyone can claim that he doesn't have a right to determine who he gives his software to (provided he's not breaking any laws).
The guy doing the reverse engineering was not using BK and so was not subject to
the license. He was under no obligation moral or legal to comply with either the spirit or the letter of the license.
Yes, which is why BitMover's only recourse is to discontinue the free version. I think it's likely that had Tridgell been using BK he'd now be facing a lawsuit.
The issue was that he works at the same place as Linus -> no more free license for Linus. If Linus worked somewhere else there would be no issue.
Not quite. The situation now is no more free BK at all. At some point, those of us who use free BK for non-kernel work will find it no longer functions. BitMover may grant some developers commercial licenses for free, but it's on a case by case basis. The problem with Linus and Tridgell working at the same place is that McVoy feels ODSL didn't come to the party when he was trying to resolve the situation before, so now he's unwilling to grant licenses to ODSL people, whether they want to pay or not.
So? Does that mean that Linus wasn't riding on Unix's coattails when he copied Unix?
No, it means that Linus was doing so with permission. The publication of the specifications invites implementation. But McVoy (claims he) did everything he could to avoid the need for the community to implement tools that might be problematic for BitMover, short of opening the code entirely. From his point of view the situation is pretty straight forward: he was giving the community BK, in exchange for publicity. When the deal became that he was giving the community BK in exchange for publicity and (what he perceives to be) a significant risk to his business, he decided it was no longer worth it. It's his right to not make things easy for competitors. He tried to do so through the license, Tridgell was able to circumvent that move by making sure he wasn't bound by the license, McVoy has responded the only way he could: he's withdrawn the free version.
The key point that people seem to be missing when they object to McVoy's stance is that it is based on the specifics of the deal he offered to the community: free BK is return for publicity and the promise not to use it to compete with him. I cannot see any moral or ethical justification for people to then claim that McVoy's being "evil" and infact they should be allowed to use BK to compete with BitMover.
None of the parties involved are acting in an "evil" way. They are simply comming to the situation with different philosophies and acting accordingly. McVoy wanted to provide material help to the community without hurting his business, Linus just wants a SCM that would not get in the way of his way of working, Tridgell wanted an open source tool to access the BK repositories (and possibly has a philosophical objection to BKs use).
Do you think that Larry really would have been happy if someone made well-known and publically available specifications and Tridge was just copying them? Larry didn't want another BitKeeper out there, however it was copied.
Of course not, but that's a straw man. Unless BitMover themselves published the specifications they're still facing competitors who are using their own work against them. It doesn't matter who writes the specification and who writes the re-implementation. Obviously McVoy doesn't want someone else to produce a tool with the same features as BK, but he has never said there is any reason why they shouldn't. All he's done is tried to stop them using the free version of BK to do so.
Right now, he is saying this to potential BitMover clients: "If you use BitKeeper, then I will control your development process. I am free to change how you work at just a whim." Can you imagine even ONE company that would accept terms like this? I can't.
No, he's not. Don't confuse the "free" BK license with the commercial license. McVoy has always said that if you buy a commercial license you can do whatever you like (within reason, certainly it doesn't have the "anti-competition" clauses). The deal he's offered is "you can use BK for free, but if you don't you have to promise not to use it to damage my business". That seems pretty reasonable to me, and obviously Linus also thought it was fair. Now he's found that a) there are people who won't comply with the spirit of the license, and b) maintaining two versions of the software is not economical. So no more free BK.
It's not just bollocks, it's rank hypocrisy coming from Linus Torvalds, who would be a completely unknown, minor software developer in Finland if he hadn't ridden -- dry-humped, actually -- on the coattails of Unix.
The specifications for Unix operating systems are well known and publically available. Have you got any proof that any significant amount of reverse engineering of a closed source Unix was done? Because if you don't, then you're the one being a ridiculous ass.
How much has Linus use of Bitkeeper hampered the development of a free software alternative? I mean, if Linus had used a free SCM since the beginning, chances are that much more effort would have invested in that very same system to make it better.
Linus could not have chosen a free alternative because no such thing existed. The options (CVS, Arch, Subversion, etc) where not up to the task. So his decision hasn't hampered their development at all, in fact it's stimulated their development by highlighting the missing functionality.
Which they calculated by dividing 94.15 by 0.01. The problem is, what if that 0.01 isn't accurately measured? If it's really 0.014 then the contrast ratio is 6700:1, a difference of 30% from their figure. My point is that because of the way that ratio is calculated it's likely to be very inaccurate. A bit more precision in the measuring would have been good.
So yes, CRTs have great contrast. But take the actual numbers with a lot of salt.
Thanks BitMover for proving why Linus' decision to rely on a non-free version control system was a mistake.
How was it a mistake? Linus (and others) got three years use of a tool which has clearly improved the development process for them. What have they lost? Nothing. When the decision was made there was no viable open source alternative, so what should Linus have done? Continued to use nothing in the hopes that one of the open source projects matured to the point where it was workable? Well, three years later none of them have. So it seems pretty clear to me that Linus did make the right decision.
Linus would have done better if he'd said it was temporary until a good Open Source product came along.
If he didn't say exactly that, he certainly implied it. I'm sure he said something along the lines of "I'd like to use an open source tool, but there are none that are good enough". I think the fact that we are three years down the track and there is still nothing good enough proves that he made the right decision.
You linked to a "by invitation" editorial. That doesn't necessarily represent the normal views of the magazine. Have you got any further evidence they generally support Lomborg's views?
I just found SC2 a few weeks ago. It's good, but I found it essentially boils down to a text adventure game (take this thing to that guy to get this other thing...). The combat is simplistic with limited scope for tactics, most of which are in ship selection. There is very little strategy overall. I think I'll enjoy it more when I replay it simply because I'll know where to go first to speed up the tedium of collecting resources and flying around.
Anyway, I think I'll be replaying Master Of Orion and Frontier a lot more than SC2.
I can't imagine the lag in results making it into the index would bother me unless I already knew a specific site existed.
I guess the problem for Yahoo is that no matter how good (or up to date) their search is, there will still be a lot of people who will continue to use Google while it's good enough. I'm in that camp. I rarely fail to find what I want with Google so there isn't any impetus to change.
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Given a belief in God and creation what is more likely given the evidence: that God created everything according to the literal interpretation of the bible, but made all this evidence of evolution to [trick us|force us to have to take the bible on faith], or that God created the mechanism of evolution more or less as science describes it and that the bible [should not|does not need to] be taken literally?
In my mind, the later seems more elegant and, following the principle of Occam's Razor, more likely. And surely a creation that essentially creates and evolves itself from the beginning is far more divine than a creation that is designed to last detail? But it's very much a question for religious, not scientific debate.
On second thoughts, perhaps this is more to the point.
You are free to negotiate a contract with whatever terms you are comfortable with. You personally may not trust McVoy, but you shouldn't need to. That's why contracts exist in the first place.
The key point that people seem to be missing when they object to McVoy's stance is that it is based on the specifics of the deal he offered to the community: free BK is return for publicity and the promise not to use it to compete with him. I cannot see any moral or ethical justification for people to then claim that McVoy's being "evil" and infact they should be allowed to use BK to compete with BitMover.
None of the parties involved are acting in an "evil" way. They are simply comming to the situation with different philosophies and acting accordingly. McVoy wanted to provide material help to the community without hurting his business, Linus just wants a SCM that would not get in the way of his way of working, Tridgell wanted an open source tool to access the BK repositories (and possibly has a philosophical objection to BKs use).
Of course not, but that's a straw man. Unless BitMover themselves published the specifications they're still facing competitors who are using their own work against them. It doesn't matter who writes the specification and who writes the re-implementation. Obviously McVoy doesn't want someone else to produce a tool with the same features as BK, but he has never said there is any reason why they shouldn't. All he's done is tried to stop them using the free version of BK to do so.So yes, CRTs have great contrast. But take the actual numbers with a lot of salt.
You linked to a "by invitation" editorial. That doesn't necessarily represent the normal views of the magazine. Have you got any further evidence they generally support Lomborg's views?
Anyway, I think I'll be replaying Master Of Orion and Frontier a lot more than SC2.
Why is that a shame? It appears to be pretty much done.
I guess the problem for Yahoo is that no matter how good (or up to date) their search is, there will still be a lot of people who will continue to use Google while it's good enough. I'm in that camp. I rarely fail to find what I want with Google so there isn't any impetus to change.