the flaw in Petreley's thinking, and in many of the people here is that they start out with the assumption that intellectual property exists. Try starting with the assumption that it does not exist: you can't own an idea or the expression of it. You can write a song (Happy Birthday comes to mind), and you can teach it to other people, but once you have they are free to sing it too.
That's the way the world started out, and as we see with the open source movement, that's where the world is headed again. It's death to the big info monopolies and mafias, and good riddance.
Information does want to be free, because once you learn something you can't make yourself unlearn it... why feel guilty about it?
would you go to a doctor who didn't go to college? a lawyer? would you trust a pharmacist who didn't? how many Nobel prizes are awarded to non-grads?
how many of the most important computer algorithms (RSA was in the news this week) were developed by the self-taught? Recent Presidents of the US? Name a large bridge, dam, or other engineering project designed by people who didn't go to college. I mean, come up with your own favorite measure of learned achievement... it'll be the same story.
Sheesh. Just because you may not have learned anything in school or didn't even attend, don't denigrate the achievements of those who did. If you didn't go to college, you're not a bad person, just like I'm not a bad person because I don't play basketball as well as those in the NBA, but I'm not going to pretend that I play as well as they do to make myself feel better.
If you have the opportunity to go to college, go. If you have the opportunity to go to a more competitive school, do that too, doesn't matter how much in debt you wind up. No matter where you go, do the work, do the reading, do the homework. Sit in the front row and ask questions. In the end, you'll learn more, meet more movers and shakers, and have a richer intellectual and professional life.
whoops, I lost the meat of my comment and just kept the gripe. The meat was, thanks for the tip. It didn't work right off the bat, but I can see the mounts so I'll be able to change them.
and if a Unix environment is what you're trying to emulate (isn't that the whole idea?)
I don't want to make a big deal about this, but that line strikes me as emblematic of why programmers (and particularly unix) are considered un-userfriendly. First, that's not the reason that I want it or use it. I want Unix-like tools (bash, emacs, grep, etc.) in the Windows environment. If I didn't want the Windows environment, I'd just run linux.
From cygwin's bash you can launch DOS/windows apps, such as Perl, but it is totally screwed up if the pathnames are wrong.
But second, don't make something incompatible that doesn't need to be. There's no particular overlap between windows's default directory names and Cygwin's, so they live quite nicely superimposed atop one another. And, I like using bash filename completion. It would be even nicer if they'd convert the slashes, because some programs (perl for the scriptfile name) won't take 'em the bash way.
I have no use for software that hides the Windows environment... or as I said, I already have it: Linux (yes, or one of the BSDs, or even others).
who's being silly? I said I hadn't looked, and it is true that it's something that changed between B20 and 1.1, a change that I think is a mistake... sheesh! Don't be silly;)
good points, though I think in this case he made it relatively clear. I would add that after an emotional debate as this one was, the KDE side probably doesn't particularly want to hear his personal preferences at the moment. I think he meant it in a lighthearted way and didn't realize that he doesn't know how to be lighthearted.
He gave Gnome the old Al Gore kiss!
As to the personal preference issue: he has a personal preference for Gnome... so what? having or expressing personal preferences does not make one petty, and there's no evidence whatsoever that his legal-pettiness reflects any other personal preferences. What makes Stallman so weird is that he'd sue his mother whether he liked her or not. He wouldn't let his preference for Gnome change his behavior over licensing.
The original poster wrote, [RedHat:] "We're cool, so we use really needlessly monolithic and complicated tools..."
I'm not him, but if linuxconf is what he was talking about, RedHat is guilty of choosing to use it as he suggested. In most cases, disliking RedHat is disliking the things they chose to include.
You should have put it after the error that you quoted to say, "this error was contained in the original." Also, you misused the square brackets. You would use them within a quote to mean "this is the editor speaking words not contained in the original."
yes, you can get the new one at no cost. I get it by going to RedHat and putting "cygwin" in the search engine. You might want to upgrade from the B20 release because it has some nice additions, such as a telnet client, however it has some changes that I really didn't like. [I'm talking about the defaults. I haven't delved deeply enough to know if it's configable]
Download is slightly more involved (pull down a downloader, then get the downloader to pull down the many pieces), but the real screw is after installing: the file system is way suckier now: The new / is not the same as c:\ ! to get to C:\ you need to use/cygdrive/c or//c/ Blech!
What monolithic
config apps are you talking about?
Linuxconf is monolithic and it doesn't work very well. netcfg is so much nicer than linuxconf primarily because it does just one thing. Kudzu is monolithic and while it does work remarkably well at a few things (network cards and video adapters), but it's not transparent (monolithic, after all) and in cases where you wish it would do nothing it becomes clear that it's not clear what it does.
In what does RH prevent you from mangling the whole of/etc with vi(1)?
There are tools (those above?) which seem to keep shadow copies of some config files. Your hand edits can get lost. I'd tell you which ones, but my list would be hit or miss. I'm sure the RH documentation lays it all out clearly so I refer you there.
what is it that bothers you so much about Redhat apart from the fact that they try to make
GNU/Linux palatable to newbies? And if it's that fact mostly, then I have to ask you why?
What bothers me about it is that there are very few computer newbies around. Most linux newbies come from Windows, and the RH model (followed by quite a few others too) seems to be "make linux look like Windows". I don't see any efforts to teach the unix ways (examples: stdin/stdout, X server vs. X client, text! text! text! config files...). Creating Windows all over again going the wrong way.
It is true that trademarks need defending, and "xerox" and "kleen-ex" are good examples of trademarks in wide generic use, along with "bandaid", but those companies have not lost those trademarks by not defending them. Competitors still cannot use those words commercially.
Anybody have a good example of a trademark that was lost?
Trade secrets are another form of IP, and they must be defended also, starting with, you gotta label the secrets and keep them secret from people who don't need to know.
As to patents, are you sure they need to be defended? Isn't there a tradition of keeping quiet about a patent to let your "victims" build a greater dependence on the technology before springing the royalty trap?
ask any economist: minimum wage laws increase the wages for some number of workers who have jobs, but they decrease the wages of other workers who will not be employed at all. The effect is strong enough such that the overall result of minimum wage laws is to decrease the net amount of money that flows from employers to low wage families, and there is a further negative effect from the decrease in the number of people getting valuable first job experiences.
If you care about the working poor, you should be against minimum wage laws and instead be in favor of policies that increase employment.
this is all standard econ 101: who is it that someone can be considered educated without it?
"Kibbies" are Middle Eastern lamb meatloaf sandwiches. "Kibbles" are pet food.
but I do agree with the thrust of what you said. I'll just add on some economic justification. Part of what makes open source work is that it is, in a capitalist sense, ultimately competitive. If you do something for free, you have undercut the competition. If you you do something high quality and free, you've undercut all of the competition. If you write the best TCP/IP doc there is, and you give it away, the world will beat a path to your door. You win, and nobody else will ever write doc again. If there's any paid work to do, you'll be asked. If you do it because you love it, all the better.
I accept you points, but my point was that in the US you are never forced to testify against yourself, so you will not have to make a statement either way if you don't want to, and if you understand this in advance.
When you are a defendent, there is a layer in between, your lawyer, who can ask questions like "how do you know my client got your letters?"
If reverse engineering is legal in the case in question (I don't know that it is, IANAL), then building a server is not using their intellectual property, it is using yours. That's how I interpret that clause.
Ignoring lots of stuff is OK unless it's something you need to sign for, or is delivered by a sheriff. But if you are ignoring, don't tell everybody that you're getting them. better to preserve "plausible deniability".
your objections are easily resolved: resolving such problems is exactly what pricing systems do.
some rights can be grandfathered, you can pay for unreassignability, blah blah. The point is, if you understand why auctions and market prices are better than communist/fascist/religious secretive/nepotistic central planning committees, you can understand how property rights are bought and sold.
list strap instead of wrist strap? I'm not making fun of you, but I doubt you are who you say you are. Japanese language speakers typically use R instead of L, not L instead of R. Like my favorite sushi bar: robster special!
They can't win: it's either have a bunch of snap-together wheels, or reinvent the wheel:) They chose to reinvent the wheel, and as such they've simply automated the "NIH" syndrome, which, second thought, is a kind of consciousness: reinvento ergo sum.
in my original post I noted this problem.
"fungible" is a legal term meaning "one is just as good as another." So, for an example, paperback books are pretty fungible. If you lend me any old copy of The Valley of The Dolls and I lose it, I can give you back another copy and you can't sue me claiming you've been harmed.
So, what I meant by "buying" an IP address was that you are entitled to one in the place where you bought it, but the actual address would be subject to change for routing purposes. Should you be allowed to move your IP? It doesn't matter; prices in a rational market would reflect the value/cost of that choice.
That's like saying "only the majority can be rascist."
Well, you're right, there is an analogy here. People who make that claim about racism are trying to capture that same sense. However, they are different words with different histories, so one claim's veracity does not hinge on the other's. FUD most definitely started out meaning exactly the uneasy feeling you get when you fear defying the big player.
It is also true that there is a qualitative difference between the "racism" that keeps blacks out of country clubs, and the "racism" that makes whites fear walking through ghettos, and the racism that places lower scoring blacks ahead of some whites for certain jobs. It is valuable to capture those differences for clarity, but redefining racism is probably not going to be successful. FUD is a useful term to use to describe a particular situation. It's a same to see it diminished to mean something generic like "sling mud"
no, you're missing the point. What you are talking about is called disinformation.
FUD is not the "information", FUD is the feeling you get when you Fear the 800 pound gorilla. Spreading FUD is spreading that uneasy feeling you get when you consider departing from the mainstream.
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That's the way the world started out, and as we see with the open source movement, that's where the world is headed again. It's death to the big info monopolies and mafias, and good riddance.
Information does want to be free, because once you learn something you can't make yourself unlearn it... why feel guilty about it?
Sheesh. Just because you may not have learned anything in school or didn't even attend, don't denigrate the achievements of those who did. If you didn't go to college, you're not a bad person, just like I'm not a bad person because I don't play basketball as well as those in the NBA, but I'm not going to pretend that I play as well as they do to make myself feel better.
If you have the opportunity to go to college, go. If you have the opportunity to go to a more competitive school, do that too, doesn't matter how much in debt you wind up. No matter where you go, do the work, do the reading, do the homework. Sit in the front row and ask questions. In the end, you'll learn more, meet more movers and shakers, and have a richer intellectual and professional life.
whoops, I lost the meat of my comment and just kept the gripe. The meat was, thanks for the tip. It didn't work right off the bat, but I can see the mounts so I'll be able to change them.
I don't want to make a big deal about this, but that line strikes me as emblematic of why programmers (and particularly unix) are considered un-userfriendly. First, that's not the reason that I want it or use it. I want Unix-like tools (bash, emacs, grep, etc.) in the Windows environment. If I didn't want the Windows environment, I'd just run linux. From cygwin's bash you can launch DOS/windows apps, such as Perl, but it is totally screwed up if the pathnames are wrong.
But second, don't make something incompatible that doesn't need to be. There's no particular overlap between windows's default directory names and Cygwin's, so they live quite nicely superimposed atop one another. And, I like using bash filename completion. It would be even nicer if they'd convert the slashes, because some programs (perl for the scriptfile name) won't take 'em the bash way.
I have no use for software that hides the Windows environment... or as I said, I already have it: Linux (yes, or one of the BSDs, or even others).
who's being silly? I said I hadn't looked, and it is true that it's something that changed between B20 and 1.1, a change that I think is a mistake... sheesh! Don't be silly ;)
good points, though I think in this case he made it relatively clear. I would add that after an emotional debate as this one was, the KDE side probably doesn't particularly want to hear his personal preferences at the moment. I think he meant it in a lighthearted way and didn't realize that he doesn't know how to be lighthearted. He gave Gnome the old Al Gore kiss!
thanks for clarifying the legal issue.
As to the personal preference issue: he has a personal preference for Gnome... so what? having or expressing personal preferences does not make one petty, and there's no evidence whatsoever that his legal-pettiness reflects any other personal preferences. What makes Stallman so weird is that he'd sue his mother whether he liked her or not. He wouldn't let his preference for Gnome change his behavior over licensing.
I'm not him, but if linuxconf is what he was talking about, RedHat is guilty of choosing to use it as he suggested. In most cases, disliking RedHat is disliking the things they chose to include.
You should have put it after the error that you quoted to say, "this error was contained in the original." Also, you misused the square brackets. You would use them within a quote to mean "this is the editor speaking words not contained in the original."
Download is slightly more involved (pull down a downloader, then get the downloader to pull down the many pieces), but the real screw is after installing: the file system is way suckier now: The new / is not the same as c:\ ! to get to C:\ you need to use /cygdrive/c or //c/ Blech!
Linuxconf is monolithic and it doesn't work very well. netcfg is so much nicer than linuxconf primarily because it does just one thing. Kudzu is monolithic and while it does work remarkably well at a few things (network cards and video adapters), but it's not transparent (monolithic, after all) and in cases where you wish it would do nothing it becomes clear that it's not clear what it does.
In what does RH prevent you from mangling the whole of /etc with vi(1)?
There are tools (those above?) which seem to keep shadow copies of some config files. Your hand edits can get lost. I'd tell you which ones, but my list would be hit or miss. I'm sure the RH documentation lays it all out clearly so I refer you there.
what is it that bothers you so much about Redhat apart from the fact that they try to make GNU/Linux palatable to newbies? And if it's that fact mostly, then I have to ask you why?
What bothers me about it is that there are very few computer newbies around. Most linux newbies come from Windows, and the RH model (followed by quite a few others too) seems to be "make linux look like Windows". I don't see any efforts to teach the unix ways (examples: stdin/stdout, X server vs. X client, text! text! text! config files...). Creating Windows all over again going the wrong way.
Anybody have a good example of a trademark that was lost?
As to patents, are you sure they need to be defended? Isn't there a tradition of keeping quiet about a patent to let your "victims" build a greater dependence on the technology before springing the royalty trap?
huh? you're confusing yourself: what does simplicity have to do with the issue?
ask any economist: minimum wage laws increase the wages for some number of workers who have jobs, but they decrease the wages of other workers who will not be employed at all. The effect is strong enough such that the overall result of minimum wage laws is to decrease the net amount of money that flows from employers to low wage families, and there is a further negative effect from the decrease in the number of people getting valuable first job experiences.
If you care about the working poor, you should be against minimum wage laws and instead be in favor of policies that increase employment.
this is all standard econ 101: who is it that someone can be considered educated without it?
"Kibbies" are Middle Eastern lamb meatloaf sandwiches. "Kibbles" are pet food.
but I do agree with the thrust of what you said. I'll just add on some economic justification. Part of what makes open source work is that it is, in a capitalist sense, ultimately competitive. If you do something for free, you have undercut the competition. If you you do something high quality and free, you've undercut all of the competition. If you write the best TCP/IP doc there is, and you give it away, the world will beat a path to your door. You win, and nobody else will ever write doc again. If there's any paid work to do, you'll be asked. If you do it because you love it, all the better.
When you are a defendent, there is a layer in between, your lawyer, who can ask questions like "how do you know my client got your letters?"
If reverse engineering is legal in the case in question (I don't know that it is, IANAL), then building a server is not using their intellectual property, it is using yours. That's how I interpret that clause.
Ignoring lots of stuff is OK unless it's something you need to sign for, or is delivered by a sheriff. But if you are ignoring, don't tell everybody that you're getting them. better to preserve "plausible deniability".
your objections are easily resolved: resolving such problems is exactly what pricing systems do. some rights can be grandfathered, you can pay for unreassignability, blah blah. The point is, if you understand why auctions and market prices are better than communist/fascist/religious secretive/nepotistic central planning committees, you can understand how property rights are bought and sold.
list strap instead of wrist strap? I'm not making fun of you, but I doubt you are who you say you are. Japanese language speakers typically use R instead of L, not L instead of R. Like my favorite sushi bar: robster special!
They can't win: it's either have a bunch of snap-together wheels, or reinvent the wheel :) They chose to reinvent the wheel, and as such they've simply automated the "NIH" syndrome, which, second thought, is a kind of consciousness: reinvento ergo sum.
So, what I meant by "buying" an IP address was that you are entitled to one in the place where you bought it, but the actual address would be subject to change for routing purposes. Should you be allowed to move your IP? It doesn't matter; prices in a rational market would reflect the value/cost of that choice.
Well, you're right, there is an analogy here. People who make that claim about racism are trying to capture that same sense. However, they are different words with different histories, so one claim's veracity does not hinge on the other's. FUD most definitely started out meaning exactly the uneasy feeling you get when you fear defying the big player.
It is also true that there is a qualitative difference between the "racism" that keeps blacks out of country clubs, and the "racism" that makes whites fear walking through ghettos, and the racism that places lower scoring blacks ahead of some whites for certain jobs. It is valuable to capture those differences for clarity, but redefining racism is probably not going to be successful. FUD is a useful term to use to describe a particular situation. It's a same to see it diminished to mean something generic like "sling mud"
FUD is not the "information", FUD is the feeling you get when you Fear the 800 pound gorilla. Spreading FUD is spreading that uneasy feeling you get when you consider departing from the mainstream.