Gosh! your answer was so pedestrian! And yet, as usual, plenty of nitwits around to moderate you up.
Philosophy of Computer Science 101: what is the philosophical difference between running a program on a single computer, and running it in a client-server configuration where it runs on the server. In both cases, you are running the program. My question, far more insightful than your answer, was why draw this arbitrary distinction called "distribution"? Stallman got started when he wasn't allowed to change a program he was using. Note: he was running it, not just receiving the output. Webservers don't just deliver output either; it's different than if I hand you a sheet of paper printed by Excel, because you can tweak the inputs and receive new outputs at will. Having a license that requires software to remain free and open even in a client server enviroment is not ridiculous.
Conclusion? To the unwashed, any sufficiently advanced question is indistinguishable from ridiculous.
it is not equally ridiculous, though your example may be. If I give distribute GPL'ed binaries for your use, you are entitled to the source. Why should it make a difference whether you run the binary I make available to you on one machine or another? The network is the computer. If you run a binary, whether it's a CGI or a a server module, why shouldn't you be entitled to see and modify the source?
I'm not saying it must be this way, nor that the GPL requires it, but that it is not ridiculous.
the differences between Mandrake and RedHat are really minor at this point. If you want to run XFree 4.0 and you are used to RedHat, you will have no problem at all making the switch to Mandrake. I'll switch back to the next RedHat when it comes, but I like having an "extra" release in between RedHat releases.
Anybody know if the other "redhat-like" RPM distros are as similar and painless?
you're trying to sneak one by here. The rate of bribery in the US is extremely low, to the point that the vast majority of citizens never have to bribe anyone in government. The rate of bribery in Russia is very high to the point that virutally all citizens need to bribe people in government just in order to get by. To paraphrase your weasel words, "don't pretend".
I mean, for those of us who code, how is our job different from simply speaking another language?
It is completely different. Specific parts of the brain are hardwired for language with the result that close to 100% of children have the capability to be mulitlingual at age 5. Yet, a vanishingly small percentage of those children have the ability to do anything close to coding at age 5. Later, when some of them learn to code, they are using parts of the brain with no "code" hardwiring.
You posed a reasonable [rhetorical] hypothesis, but it doesn't bear up to close scrutiny. I'm pointing it out because it is a good instructive example of how something should not be taken as truth just because it "makes sense". That is an error many people are making in this thread, people who are claiming to be good at math and science, but citing as their evidence a single, uncontrolled, statitistically insignificant piece of anecdotal data. Claim it all you want, but "I know a girl who is a good coder" is not evidence that girls have the same aptitude for coding that boys do. I mean, I know girls who are good basketball players, and while I'm sure that the NBA is looking for the best, I'm equally sure that we will never see women playing professional basketball in anywhere near the numbers as men.
Here is a better way to think scientifically about the issue than what I've seen in this thread:
If it is shown quantitatively that women
are "as good/apt/likely/wired" as men at computer programming, then societal pressure might be a good place to look for a reason why we haven't seen the same numbers. But otherwise, societal pressure might equally be a rational response to a difference in ability. After all, society should not rationally be pressuring women to try out for men's professional basketball as it would likely result in a waste of time.
Now, I know that the sentiment here is that it would be great if women were every bit as good as men at programming. It's a sentiment that I share. But I recognize it as a sentiment, not science.
His story got published, and then got pulled. The salient question is how often do they pull stories. If it is not frequent, then he has grounds for a gripe. Understand? He was not complaining about the old news story that you are focusing on, he is complaining about something that happened recently, an anomoly that is curious because of an apparent conflict of interest.
ummm... that's not totally convincing. At the time they posted then pulled this more recent story, it was the people who owned a competitive service who pulled the story. That is enough to raise a flag.
it is ABSOLUTELY NOT the same as Slashdot deleting all references to kuro5hin. It might be analagous to slashdot not posting any stories about kuro5hin,
No, it is not analgous because kuro5hin is a direct competitor of slashdot. Newspapers don't routinely publish product announcements of their competition, and everybody understands that. This is different, more like Slashdot favoring VALinux over it's competitors, something that would not be obvious to a reader.
This is about whether a media outlet has a hidden agenda. The whole point of news media (from the perspective of the reader) is to get at the truth. If an outlet is not up front about how they make "editorial" decisions, then they are guilty of not revealing the truth. The guy who started this question is interested in finding out the truth, and informing the rest of us about it.
I don't understand your complaint about that. Aren't you interested in knowing what biases infect the media you read? Isn't knowing which biases are there better than simply saying "everything's biased"?
I don't know what you are talking about... I don't think you do either. ssh is encrypted and it's not any harder to use then telnet is. And, it's one of the reasons why Windows is sliding into oblivion so fast in the server market.
This is also purely legal hairsplitting. Surely no-one objects on moral grounds to linking two pieces of open source code together!
The issue is not open-sourcedness, the issue is legally compatible with the GPL. If it is legally incompatible, then KDE would represent by far the largest scale violation of the GPL. Even if it is not the most egregious alleged violation, its sheer scale would make it a prime target for enforcement because it would pose the largest marketshare threat to the "true" GPLed GNOME.
And, that might make SUSE the target, rather than KDE?
While many people think that too much time is spent on arguing about licenses, to me the arguing all seems to stem from so many attempts to get around the simple/extra/viral requirement of the GPL by people who don't like the requirement. People who don't like this requirement are constantly slanging the GPL because of it. I do see vociferous defense of the GPL in return, but I don't see GPLers getting bitter about the other opened source licenses. The FSF does have pages up offering critiques of the other licenses, but the critiques are reasonably rational, whereas, the folks criticizing the GPL use pejorative language ("viral", "restricting freedom", etc) rather than just sticking with the simpler and more honest "we don't believe that everyone should have to give up their source". In their defense, I suppose the resentment comes from the huge marketshare that the GPL has acheived.
Slashdotters, do you think that the GPL has been partly responsible for the success of GNU and linux, or the other way round?
The main reason the clause is part of the GNU GPL is because Richard Stallman, the license's principal author, believes that anyone who drinks from the commonweal should give back.
He probably believes this, but IIRC, the main reason is that Richard Stallman believes that users of software have a right to the source so they can fix bugs. He got started on the idea out of frustration with buggy laser printer software he was using but couldn't get a copy of. I point it out because I'm intrigued by the idea of the practicality of [purely as an example] commercial software like Microsoft Office being sold for exactly the price and with exactly the terms that it has today, but including the source so you could make modifications yourself (with no right to redistribute). Not likely to happen in the course of events, but it would be cool anyway.
I'm thinking (with no particular evidence) that Trolltech is the company that may be involved in the rumored FSF GPL testcase. I mean, they continue to refine their license, they feel the need to speak out, and they've incurred the dislike of the Debian-we-are-the-true-GPL crowd. Maybe now that GNOME is so far along, the plan is to pull the plug on KDE?
P.S. I searched all the forums and have not seen this discussed. Has it been suggested?
I addressed the bit about the "1000 times" in several other posts [see the thread] so I didn't bother to say it to you, but you missed it so, "1000 times" is a standard English idiom meaing "a lot". Any first grader in the US would know it, I'm sorry if it confused you.
Please, don't waste my time using the former East Germany as an example economy.
But, if you understand free market pricing, the money that companies make from selling consumer information comes back to the consumer in the form of lower prices if there is competition. Since the companies profit from the data, they can afford lower profit margins. It's standard economic theory.
My original statements and argument were made on a completely sound economic basis.
I was referring to high unemployment rates which prevail across all of Europe even though the economies are so different. That high unemployment is directly due to higher government intervention in the economy than in the US. Nobody with half a brain would argue that point.
Privacy regulations lead to a smaller economy. Companies are willing to pay for information about consumers because it has economic value. Banning these transactions slows the economy down.
You could reasonably say that you think the tradeoff is worth it. But you are stupid if you say that what I say is not true, and you did, so that makes you... yes, you guessed it, stupid.
saying that something is "1000 times more" is an idiom that means "a lot". It is a standard English idiom that any competent speaker would know. It's not my fault that you don't know it. I've also visited far more of the world than you imagine, and far more than you have. France, Germany, and Finland do not have higher productivity, nor do they have high productivity growth which is a more important number. They have high automation because labor is artificially priced higher than capital, but that's an economic argument, something you wouldn't understand.
economics is not artificial any more than physics is. it is the science used to describe trade, trade which occurs anywhere people live side by side. And the rest of your post was nonsense too.
poor people around the world travel to the US if they can. they choose the US over Europe. Which is all good, because we take large numbers of poor people from the third world, unlike Europe which treats nth generation "dark" people as non citizens. So much for your "statistics".
Name the exciting European companies in high tech. That didn't take long, did it.
hey, I'm a privacy nut so don't get me wrong. I enhance my privacy by not participating in all sorts of things that might benefit me. But the flip side of privacy is the freedom to gather information. Do you thing other people should control information that you accumulate? Should they be able to tell you what you can do with your knowledge? The US economy is 1000 times more robust than European economies because we allow people with ideas to exploit them.
So, while I'd like to see more privacy here in the US, I'd definitely not like to see more European economic schlerosis.
And don't think they have much privacy there either. Norway, for example, makes your income tax return public. Sure, companies can't use it, but they print it in the newspaper if it is interesting. I'm not kidding.
actually, it's not. French does derive from Latin, yes, but most Latinate words came into English directly from French with the Norman conquest and subsequent rule starting 1066 AD.
And to this day, the English language reflects the fact that the French were the rich-rulers and the English were the poor-peasants. For example, for animals we say "pig" and "cow", but for the foods we use the French "pork" and "beef" because only the wealthy ate meat on a regular basis. Also, the English words for body parts and functions still today are considered "vulgar" while the French words are "polite". You'll even note that in this thread people are making jokes out of the English word "hard". The "durable" version of the word is more closely associated with the oh-so-bourgeois preoccupation with consumer goods.
While the way-back origin of words is very interesting, when and how words enter a language is more important to their cultural significance.
Those benchmarks would be useful, yes... but coding is a really high-pay occupation. If you buy the fastest SCSI disks, and a multi-CPU Xeon, you'll get very fast build times. It only costs a few thousand extra which over the course of a year is nothing compared to the cost of programmer time.
you're on the right track, actually, but you have a few misunderstandings about trademark law. Domain names are covered by trademark law, so saying "owned the domain" doesn't mean anything if you don't own the trademark.
to me, the point about etoy vs etoys was which one came first, not which one was a big company.
and you can have similar sounding names in different areas, although certain trademarks acheive a status that is transcendent. For example, you cannot make computers named Coca-Cola here in the US. But T-shirts is in one of the 20 International classes. A lawyer would advice you when you create a trademark to print it on a bunch of different things and sell them: coffee cups, T-shirts, frisbees... these are all different classes and if you put your trademark on them you claim the use of the name in that class.
That's why Chunky Monkey was asking for those restrictions. The other domain may not want to go ahead under those restrictions, that's reasonable, but to claim that they are the victims of some evil forces is just waving their ignorance in the air.
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Philosophy of Computer Science 101: what is the philosophical difference between running a program on a single computer, and running it in a client-server configuration where it runs on the server. In both cases, you are running the program. My question, far more insightful than your answer, was why draw this arbitrary distinction called "distribution"? Stallman got started when he wasn't allowed to change a program he was using. Note: he was running it, not just receiving the output. Webservers don't just deliver output either; it's different than if I hand you a sheet of paper printed by Excel, because you can tweak the inputs and receive new outputs at will. Having a license that requires software to remain free and open even in a client server enviroment is not ridiculous.
Conclusion? To the unwashed, any sufficiently advanced question is indistinguishable from ridiculous.
I'm not saying it must be this way, nor that the GPL requires it, but that it is not ridiculous.
Anybody know if the other "redhat-like" RPM distros are as similar and painless?
you're trying to sneak one by here. The rate of bribery in the US is extremely low, to the point that the vast majority of citizens never have to bribe anyone in government. The rate of bribery in Russia is very high to the point that virutally all citizens need to bribe people in government just in order to get by. To paraphrase your weasel words, "don't pretend".
It is completely different. Specific parts of the brain are hardwired for language with the result that close to 100% of children have the capability to be mulitlingual at age 5. Yet, a vanishingly small percentage of those children have the ability to do anything close to coding at age 5. Later, when some of them learn to code, they are using parts of the brain with no "code" hardwiring.
You posed a reasonable [rhetorical] hypothesis, but it doesn't bear up to close scrutiny. I'm pointing it out because it is a good instructive example of how something should not be taken as truth just because it "makes sense". That is an error many people are making in this thread, people who are claiming to be good at math and science, but citing as their evidence a single, uncontrolled, statitistically insignificant piece of anecdotal data. Claim it all you want, but "I know a girl who is a good coder" is not evidence that girls have the same aptitude for coding that boys do. I mean, I know girls who are good basketball players, and while I'm sure that the NBA is looking for the best, I'm equally sure that we will never see women playing professional basketball in anywhere near the numbers as men.
Here is a better way to think scientifically about the issue than what I've seen in this thread:
Now, I know that the sentiment here is that it would be great if women were every bit as good as men at programming. It's a sentiment that I share. But I recognize it as a sentiment, not science.
His story got published, and then got pulled. The salient question is how often do they pull stories. If it is not frequent, then he has grounds for a gripe. Understand? He was not complaining about the old news story that you are focusing on, he is complaining about something that happened recently, an anomoly that is curious because of an apparent conflict of interest.
ummm... that's not totally convincing. At the time they posted then pulled this more recent story, it was the people who owned a competitive service who pulled the story. That is enough to raise a flag.
No, it is not analgous because kuro5hin is a direct competitor of slashdot. Newspapers don't routinely publish product announcements of their competition, and everybody understands that. This is different, more like Slashdot favoring VALinux over it's competitors, something that would not be obvious to a reader.
This is about whether a media outlet has a hidden agenda. The whole point of news media (from the perspective of the reader) is to get at the truth. If an outlet is not up front about how they make "editorial" decisions, then they are guilty of not revealing the truth. The guy who started this question is interested in finding out the truth, and informing the rest of us about it.
I don't understand your complaint about that. Aren't you interested in knowing what biases infect the media you read? Isn't knowing which biases are there better than simply saying "everything's biased"?
"What software do I need for security?"
"First thing, you need ssh."
"ssh you say? ok, i'll talk softly... [whispering] what software do I need?"
I don't know what you are talking about... I don't think you do either. ssh is encrypted and it's not any harder to use then telnet is. And, it's one of the reasons why Windows is sliding into oblivion so fast in the server market.
This is also purely legal hairsplitting. Surely no-one objects on moral grounds to linking two pieces of open source code together!
The issue is not open-sourcedness, the issue is legally compatible with the GPL. If it is legally incompatible, then KDE would represent by far the largest scale violation of the GPL. Even if it is not the most egregious alleged violation, its sheer scale would make it a prime target for enforcement because it would pose the largest marketshare threat to the "true" GPLed GNOME.
And, that might make SUSE the target, rather than KDE?
While many people think that too much time is spent on arguing about licenses, to me the arguing all seems to stem from so many attempts to get around the simple/extra/viral requirement of the GPL by people who don't like the requirement. People who don't like this requirement are constantly slanging the GPL because of it. I do see vociferous defense of the GPL in return, but I don't see GPLers getting bitter about the other opened source licenses. The FSF does have pages up offering critiques of the other licenses, but the critiques are reasonably rational, whereas, the folks criticizing the GPL use pejorative language ("viral", "restricting freedom", etc) rather than just sticking with the simpler and more honest "we don't believe that everyone should have to give up their source". In their defense, I suppose the resentment comes from the huge marketshare that the GPL has acheived.
Slashdotters, do you think that the GPL has been partly responsible for the success of GNU and linux, or the other way round?
The main reason the clause is part of the GNU GPL is because Richard Stallman, the license's principal author, believes that anyone who drinks from the commonweal should give back.
He probably believes this, but IIRC, the main reason is that Richard Stallman believes that users of software have a right to the source so they can fix bugs. He got started on the idea out of frustration with buggy laser printer software he was using but couldn't get a copy of. I point it out because I'm intrigued by the idea of the practicality of [purely as an example] commercial software like Microsoft Office being sold for exactly the price and with exactly the terms that it has today, but including the source so you could make modifications yourself (with no right to redistribute). Not likely to happen in the course of events, but it would be cool anyway.
P.S. I searched all the forums and have not seen this discussed. Has it been suggested?
Please, don't waste my time using the former East Germany as an example economy.
But, if you understand free market pricing, the money that companies make from selling consumer information comes back to the consumer in the form of lower prices if there is competition. Since the companies profit from the data, they can afford lower profit margins. It's standard economic theory.
My original statements and argument were made on a completely sound economic basis.
Privacy regulations lead to a smaller economy. Companies are willing to pay for information about consumers because it has economic value. Banning these transactions slows the economy down.
You could reasonably say that you think the tradeoff is worth it. But you are stupid if you say that what I say is not true, and you did, so that makes you ... yes, you guessed it, stupid.
saying that something is "1000 times more" is an idiom that means "a lot". It is a standard English idiom that any competent speaker would know. It's not my fault that you don't know it. I've also visited far more of the world than you imagine, and far more than you have. France, Germany, and Finland do not have higher productivity, nor do they have high productivity growth which is a more important number. They have high automation because labor is artificially priced higher than capital, but that's an economic argument, something you wouldn't understand.
economics is not artificial any more than physics is. it is the science used to describe trade, trade which occurs anywhere people live side by side. And the rest of your post was nonsense too.
Name the exciting European companies in high tech. That didn't take long, did it.
So, while I'd like to see more privacy here in the US, I'd definitely not like to see more European economic schlerosis.
And don't think they have much privacy there either. Norway, for example, makes your income tax return public. Sure, companies can't use it, but they print it in the newspaper if it is interesting. I'm not kidding.
Actually, it's Latin ...
actually, it's not. French does derive from Latin, yes, but most Latinate words came into English directly from French with the Norman conquest and subsequent rule starting 1066 AD.
And to this day, the English language reflects the fact that the French were the rich-rulers and the English were the poor-peasants. For example, for animals we say "pig" and "cow", but for the foods we use the French "pork" and "beef" because only the wealthy ate meat on a regular basis. Also, the English words for body parts and functions still today are considered "vulgar" while the French words are "polite". You'll even note that in this thread people are making jokes out of the English word "hard". The "durable" version of the word is more closely associated with the oh-so-bourgeois preoccupation with consumer goods.
While the way-back origin of words is very interesting, when and how words enter a language is more important to their cultural significance.
Those benchmarks would be useful, yes... but coding is a really high-pay occupation. If you buy the fastest SCSI disks, and a multi-CPU Xeon, you'll get very fast build times. It only costs a few thousand extra which over the course of a year is nothing compared to the cost of programmer time.
They did the research, that's why they chose the name, no doubt. The English word "durable" comes from the French word for hard, dur.
to me, the point about etoy vs etoys was which one came first, not which one was a big company.
and you can have similar sounding names in different areas, although certain trademarks acheive a status that is transcendent. For example, you cannot make computers named Coca-Cola here in the US. But T-shirts is in one of the 20 International classes. A lawyer would advice you when you create a trademark to print it on a bunch of different things and sell them: coffee cups, T-shirts, frisbees... these are all different classes and if you put your trademark on them you claim the use of the name in that class.
That's why Chunky Monkey was asking for those restrictions. The other domain may not want to go ahead under those restrictions, that's reasonable, but to claim that they are the victims of some evil forces is just waving their ignorance in the air.
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Congratulations! You may already be a winner! Your Netpliance computer is waiting for you. Winners will will receive accomodations in their own homes, and will simply need to pay the $25.95 a month in order to keep winning with our great service...
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didn't you forget to say, "but I'll die for your right to post these links!" :)
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