I think that argument would only apply if the result were wrong due to a technical flaw. If (theoretically) it was wrong due to tampering (one side would win more often than the other if votes are almost even) then it would remove the voters control over the government. This would likely lead to increased corruption as there is no longer a means to keep politicians on their toes.
Well it's somewhat undemocratic - even if there is a vast majority of voters voting against the guy you like to vote for in one poll - I feel this shouldn't prevent you from voting for him again.
In some places where proportional voting is used, there is a sy
stem in place which might satisfy you, though: Each party submits a list of candidates if 30% of the people vote for their list than the top 30 entries in the list make it. However if you don't like one of the entries on the list, you just cross his name out, and you can still vote for the party. If enough people do that for the same person, the party still gets 30% of the seats but that guy is out.
This gives you some additional control over the party while still being able to vote for the party you like best.
The goal is *NOT* to kill Microsoft Windows and every OS and have just GNU/Linux with one desktop installed on all computers.
Maybe that's not your goal, but e.g. RMS wants to reach a point were there is only free software.
There's no desktop war, so there is not going to be a winner.
Well depends what you want to see as a war - KDE was specifically set up to create a unified desktop, Gnome was setup to replace KDE because people (developers) felt very strongly about the license of Qt at the time.
For coders, projects are mostly about fun!
I'm not saying that's a bad attitude to have, but many developers feel strongly about licensing questions. When you generalize your own views to those of all developers you end up misrepresenting them.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
A week or so later, The New York Times reports on how only one Israeli died in the WTC that day
The origin of this wierd myth is probably as described here.
Initially the number of Jewish dead was estimated according to the occupancy of the towers. As many people weren't at work yet or managed to escape, the actual numbers of both total deaths and Jewish deaths was much lower. Someone noticed that suddenly there were a lot less Jewish dead then in the first estimate and came up with an absurd theory.
Anyway here is a list of victims - I see quite a number of jewish names on it:
list
So Blockbuster can buy movies in Hong Kong for $2/per and rent them in the U.S. for $4/night? Right, like the industry is going to listen to this guy.
Those pirated DVDs would not be affected by region coding. They'd be illegal copies of the US versions - i.e. they would have the US region code.
For people who sell illegal copies, it's not an issue that it's illegal to make a copy with another region code. The copy is illegal this way or the other. Only legal businesses are affected by the restriction.
I happen to tell then that Microsoft probably only has the majority share of users in the US.
That would be nice, but I doubt it is true. It's only recently that some countries start to switch from MS to OSS. I don't think there is a single country were MS has a minority share yet. (Certainly not Germany, which for some reason is often named in that respect.)
I don't think your post adds anything I haven't pointed out already? He did not claim to have "invented" something, nor does he deserve credit for "creating".
By his use of the words "I took the iniative", he took credit for being the first of the 'Net's creators. This is false: it was around before he got involved.
There is something to what you say - the quote is as follows:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
He used the word "create" which means "invent" in this context.
He takes a lot more credit than which he deserves, but "create" in this context clearly refers to legislative/administrative tasks.
When music is hard to get (low supply) and people want it (demand goes up) the price goes up. Look at live music back in the time of Bach or Beethoven. The average person could not afford it -- so only the rich had the best music.
That's a bit OT, but IIRC Bach played in a publicly accessible church. He tried to get hired by the king of Saxony and by the king of Prussia, but didn't succeed.
Well, the attempt was caught by an automatic check. So it seems the automatic checking system which is in place is working. Obviously it should be investigated how the guy broke into the gateway, but in order to sneak in a modification to the actual source he would have to break into Linus' machine *and* into the BK server. Breaking into the gateway was a dead end.
So the story does not expose a methodology problem - the route the guy tried could not possibly work. Accordingly the worry level should be appropriately low. Nothing wrong with being alert, of course.
Well c't is *the* computer magazine in Germany, the majority of readers are Windows users. Sure the technical quality is high, but it's by no means a niche magazine.
What the paper says is that another paper might be wrong.
It doesn't say there'll be no global warming, it doesn't provide an alternative climate theory. That's all fine for a scientific work - criticism is important. However it does not give us any indications whether releasing certain emissions into the atmosphere is safe for us.
What the Mann paper claims is that there is an observable trend showing global temperature increase. This is not by all means the only argument pointing to a danger related to releasing "green house gases". These are not affected if the Mann paper is found to be flawed. I think it's extremely premature to assume at this point that we have no problems.
It has been tapped in some cases. The German computer magazine c't has already distributed Knoppix with their magazine 3 times. While I really like my SuSE installation, I think Knoppix makes an even better live CD.
In the US yes, but that protects you from court rulings (at least it should) not from commercial pressure. Fox can still put pressure on the Simpsons' creators and get them to stop news ticker parodies. Which is apparently what they did.
Apart from that - the US system allows you to sue anyone, and not have to repay their costs even if you lose. So really that "right" exists only as long as someone who can affort the lawyers doesn't feel like taking it from you.
I think SCO is making entirely bogus claims, but this sounds a bit like a circular argument to me.
Let's say you accept this: You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it.
Ok, let's say they take that view. Now the second part: However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. - Well that's what the license says, in other words the document which they are not accepting.
So I think, if you are trying to find out what happens if the GPL does not hold up in court, it doesn't make sense to analyze further requirements of the GPL. You'd instead have to look at general copyright law.
Similarly if the code was not actually property of the people who attached the GPL license, then the GPL would not apply - you can't
rightfully attach a license to something which
doesn't belong to you. Again, in this case to look at provisions of the GPL does not help. If code was generated by a combination of GPL code and stolen (yeah right) SCO code, than the person generating that code has no rights to it. Neither GPL rights nor copyrights.
On the other hand if they are found to have no case, and they are violating the GPL - e.g. when distributing gcc, then the gcc contributors should have a way to sue. I wasn't able to find that on their page though. (Might have missed it.)
The Register says: the SCO Group is to resume distributing Linux, but only if you agree to a new "IP license" which implicitly supports SCO's intellectual property claims.
However here is the download page: http://www.sco.com/support/linux_info.html - where is the restrictive license?
Well Vietnam *is* a communist dictatorship. They get to decide what's happening to Vietnam's IT and to most other aspects of people's lifes. Ok, we don't like that (I assume). That's independent of the content of their IT decisions though - if they decide for MS they are not a democratic country either, and they still don't provide freedom and choice.
So given that, and given that they made the decision for OSS: Yay for going to OSS, and they still are a communist dictatorship.
Disclaimer: I don't have in-depth knowledge of Vietnam today, so sorry for simplifying this.
You may be right, but I'm not sure whether that sentence of the article is really accurate. It's an English language summary discussing Vietnamese regulations, something could easily get lost there.
I suspect the restriction won't actually apply to computers built in Vietnam and then exported, simply because that wouldn't affect their policy in any way.
I don't understand that - if you want to use MS on your own PC in Vietnam, you still can. So you still have your freedom of choice.
As far as governmen PCs go - well the government has decided to exercise their freedom of choice for their own PCs. In the past they chose MS, now they choose Linux - what's the difference as far as freedom is concerned?
That's not what I recall happening. Gnome was set up from the start as an alternative to KDE. It wasn't a branch of KDE, nor was it made up of ex-KDE developers.
KDE lost no developers because Gnome was set up (other than potential developers, of course). So that would be a significant difference here.
Having said that - I tend to agree with your conclusion.:-)
A split doesn't necessarily mean the original project will suffer.
The problem with shrinkwrap licenses is, that by
the time you get the license you *have* already
bought the thing.
To change contract conditions after a sale was
agreed is cheating. Why should you be bound by
any private contract which you did not agree to?
For what it's worth - here is a comprehensive
article on the subject:
snopes
It seems like he did try to avoid it (but not evade it) - then again, that's perfectly legitimate.
I'm curious about this seniority system - I'm not really informed about this, but how can this be constitutional? Isn't the voter supposed to decide who gets power, rather than the politicians themselves? I'm not a US citizen, so sorry about being ignorant about this - I'm just interested.
Re:Power at a safe current...
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 1
Well, what harms you is the power which is applied to your body. (A lot depends on where that is, of course, and duration is a factor, too.) That amount of power depends on your resistance, and on the voltage applied to your body. So assuming your resistance was constant (in reality it's very much variable, though) doubling the voltage connected to your body would double the amount of current through your body, and quadrupple the amount of power applied to your body.
When being connected to a battery (instead of to an idealized voltage source) increasing the current which comes out of the battery will decrease it's voltage. Usually that's modelled by assuming an internal resistance in the battery. So if the internal resistance of the battery was 100 kOhms, and your body resistance was also 100 kOhms, then only half the battery voltage would be applied to your body (additionally there is the resistance from you to ground, or whatever is needed to complete the circuit).
Car batteries are a lot more powerful than batteries used in appliances like a portable radio, the internal resistance of them are lower - hence they can be potentially more dangerous. (Actual car batteries would have internal resistances less than 1 Ohm, and can provide currents in the 600 Amp range). So there is a difference between applying a "ideal" voltage to your body, and actually touching a battery - the amount of danger depends on the voltage, but also on the characteristics of the battery.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that argument would only apply if the result were wrong due to a technical flaw. If (theoretically) it was wrong due to tampering (one side would win more often than the other if votes are almost even) then it would remove the voters control over the government. This would likely lead to increased corruption as there is no longer a means to keep politicians on their toes.
In some places where proportional voting is used, there is a sy stem in place which might satisfy you, though: Each party submits a list of candidates if 30% of the people vote for their list than the top 30 entries in the list make it. However if you don't like one of the entries on the list, you just cross his name out, and you can still vote for the party. If enough people do that for the same person, the party still gets 30% of the seats but that guy is out.
This gives you some additional control over the party while still being able to vote for the party you like best.
Maybe that's not your goal, but e.g. RMS wants to reach a point were there is only free software.
There's no desktop war, so there is not going to be a winner.
Well depends what you want to see as a war - KDE was specifically set up to create a unified desktop, Gnome was setup to replace KDE because people (developers) felt very strongly about the license of Qt at the time.
For coders, projects are mostly about fun!
I'm not saying that's a bad attitude to have, but many developers feel strongly about licensing questions. When you generalize your own views to those of all developers you end up misrepresenting them.
The origin of this wierd myth is probably as described here.
Initially the number of Jewish dead was estimated according to the occupancy of the towers. As many people weren't at work yet or managed to escape, the actual numbers of both total deaths and Jewish deaths was much lower. Someone noticed that suddenly there were a lot less Jewish dead then in the first estimate and came up with an absurd theory.
Anyway here is a list of victims - I see quite a number of jewish names on it: list
How much research did you do on this, exactly?
Those pirated DVDs would not be affected by region coding. They'd be illegal copies of the US versions - i.e. they would have the US region code.
For people who sell illegal copies, it's not an issue that it's illegal to make a copy with another region code. The copy is illegal this way or the other. Only legal businesses are affected by the restriction.
That would be nice, but I doubt it is true. It's only recently that some countries start to switch from MS to OSS. I don't think there is a single country were MS has a minority share yet. (Certainly not Germany, which for some reason is often named in that respect.)
I don't think your post adds anything I haven't pointed out already? He did not claim to have "invented" something, nor does he deserve credit for "creating".
There is something to what you say - the quote is as follows:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
He used the word "create" which means "invent" in this context.
He takes a lot more credit than which he deserves, but "create" in this context clearly refers to legislative/administrative tasks.
That's a bit OT, but IIRC Bach played in a publicly accessible church. He tried to get hired by the king of Saxony and by the king of Prussia, but didn't succeed.
So the story does not expose a methodology problem - the route the guy tried could not possibly work. Accordingly the worry level should be appropriately low. Nothing wrong with being alert, of course.
Well c't is *the* computer magazine in Germany, the majority of readers are Windows users. Sure the technical quality is high, but it's by no means a niche magazine.
What the Mann paper claims is that there is an observable trend showing global temperature increase. This is not by all means the only argument pointing to a danger related to releasing "green house gases". These are not affected if the Mann paper is found to be flawed. I think it's extremely premature to assume at this point that we have no problems.
It has been tapped in some cases. The German computer magazine c't has already distributed Knoppix with their magazine 3 times. While I really like my SuSE installation, I think Knoppix makes an even better live CD.
In the US yes, but that protects you from court rulings (at least it should) not from commercial pressure. Fox can still put pressure on the Simpsons' creators and get them to stop news ticker parodies. Which is apparently what they did.
Apart from that - the US system allows you to sue anyone, and not have to repay their costs even if you lose. So really that "right" exists only as long as someone who can affort the lawyers doesn't feel like taking it from you.
Ok, let's say they take that view. Now the second part: However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. - Well that's what the license says, in other words the document which they are not accepting.
So I think, if you are trying to find out what happens if the GPL does not hold up in court, it doesn't make sense to analyze further requirements of the GPL. You'd instead have to look at general copyright law.
Similarly if the code was not actually property of the people who attached the GPL license, then the GPL would not apply - you can't rightfully attach a license to something which doesn't belong to you. Again, in this case to look at provisions of the GPL does not help. If code was generated by a combination of GPL code and stolen (yeah right) SCO code, than the person generating that code has no rights to it. Neither GPL rights nor copyrights.
On the other hand if they are found to have no case, and they are violating the GPL - e.g. when distributing gcc, then the gcc contributors should have a way to sue. I wasn't able to find that on their page though. (Might have missed it.)
The Register says: the SCO Group is to resume distributing Linux, but only if you agree to a new "IP license" which implicitly supports SCO's intellectual property claims.
However here is the download page: http://www.sco.com/support/linux_info.html - where is the restrictive license?
So given that, and given that they made the decision for OSS: Yay for going to OSS, and they still are a communist dictatorship.
Disclaimer: I don't have in-depth knowledge of Vietnam today, so sorry for simplifying this.
I suspect the restriction won't actually apply to computers built in Vietnam and then exported, simply because that wouldn't affect their policy in any way.
As far as governmen PCs go - well the government has decided to exercise their freedom of choice for their own PCs. In the past they chose MS, now they choose Linux - what's the difference as far as freedom is concerned?
That's not what I recall happening. Gnome was set up from the start as an alternative to KDE. It wasn't a branch of KDE, nor was it made up of ex-KDE developers.
KDE lost no developers because Gnome was set up (other than potential developers, of course). So that would be a significant difference here.
Having said that - I tend to agree with your conclusion. :-)
A split doesn't necessarily mean the original project will suffer.
The problem with shrinkwrap licenses is, that by the time you get the license you *have* already bought the thing. To change contract conditions after a sale was agreed is cheating. Why should you be bound by any private contract which you did not agree to?
How was the error of voting systems measured - would you have a cite? Cheers
For what it's worth - here is a comprehensive article on the subject: snopes It seems like he did try to avoid it (but not evade it) - then again, that's perfectly legitimate.
Hmph - if Linux development is hindered in Europe it directly affects users in the US.
I'm curious about this seniority system - I'm not really informed about this, but how can this be constitutional? Isn't the voter supposed to decide who gets power, rather than the politicians themselves? I'm not a US citizen, so sorry about being ignorant about this - I'm just interested.
When being connected to a battery (instead of to an idealized voltage source) increasing the current which comes out of the battery will decrease it's voltage. Usually that's modelled by assuming an internal resistance in the battery. So if the internal resistance of the battery was 100 kOhms, and your body resistance was also 100 kOhms, then only half the battery voltage would be applied to your body (additionally there is the resistance from you to ground, or whatever is needed to complete the circuit).
Car batteries are a lot more powerful than batteries used in appliances like a portable radio, the internal resistance of them are lower - hence they can be potentially more dangerous. (Actual car batteries would have internal resistances less than 1 Ohm, and can provide currents in the 600 Amp range). So there is a difference between applying a "ideal" voltage to your body, and actually touching a battery - the amount of danger depends on the voltage, but also on the characteristics of the battery.