This argument is bogus. This issue has come up with the GPL. If you cannot agree to a license, then normal copyright law still applies. Normal copyright law prevents you from distributing copyrighted works.
Let's look at a food analogy. Suppose a Cola manufacturer refused to include the list of ingredients on their cans. They claimed that their list of ingredients was "copyright", "proprietary", and a "trade secret". Would the government turn a blind eye, and even start putting people in jail who passed around the ingredient list? Of course not. The exact formula might be a trade secret. But the list of ingredients (with terms like "spices", "other artificial flavor") is not a trade secret, or even copyrightable.
This was a specification of a product that was supposedly "infringing". If people posted the source code that Microsoft wrote, that is like posting the secret formula. If people post the Microsoft Kerberos specification, they are passing around the ingredient list. Some people are allergic to nuts and need to check the ingredients; others are allergic to vendor lock-in and incompatibility.
If it really is copyright infringement to re-serve someone else's webpage in an altered state, then www.askjeeves.com is infringing with its search result pages. When you click to go to a search result, it still looks like you are at AskJeeves. Of course if you read the text it says they are not affliated. I find this type of alteration more offensive than a user-requested translation of a web-page.
This is the real issue. Who owns the copyright of autogenerated code? What if the autogenerated code includes lots of junk not in the original source file?
I personally think they should separate out the commercial library code (or whatever they want to protect) from the generated code specifically dealing with the original source file. What they are doing now is akin to telling people that it is illegal to distribute assembly code generated from a C file. That is ridiculous. If the assembly code contains lots of commercial boilerplate they don't want released, (think stuff from _start), they should make it a shared library. Or have an option that outputs just the parts directly coming from the original source file.
It would be nice to know what Borland thinks about their own license. But when you agree to the license, you are agreeing to the license text itself and not Borland's interpretation of it. I think this story is good because it points out an ambiguity in a license that might cause problems for free software.
I agree, it would be more fun to see a spectrum of highly rated and lowly rated books. I think that Slashdot doesn't want to focus on unworthy books because there are so many great books out there. I think the most useful "bad" rating reviews would be mediocre reviews of books that have really cool sounding titles. Also, a single "worst of..." collective review might be fun (i.e. reviews of the worst 5 or 6 Java Books).
Maybe people are annoyed because their favorite website has been up and down intermittently lately. Add that to the fact that Microsoft is making everyone's blood boil (even more than usual) and you can't be surprised that posts contain a little more vitriol this week.
In 1997, cars killed 102197 people. Guns killed 32436 people. (Sources: FARS, CDC) Cars are three times more lethal than guns. And guns were designed to kill things! That tells you something. It freaks me out that people can get all concerned about violence enough to start meddling with other people's lives, and yet think nothing of hurling their bodies at 85mph down the freeway. WAKE UP! CARS ARE MORE LIKELY TO KILL YOU THAN GUNS! -Nathan Whitehead
Let me explain what I mean by experimental. Most music today is not experimental. It relies on musical concepts that have been developed since before ancient times. One of the purposes in music is to explore new sounds. Serialism explored new uses of the 12-tone scale. Non-traditional uses of instruments explores new sounds that instruments can make that they were not designed to make.
I would define experimental music as music that explores new ways of creating sound. Electronic music is now mainstream, you are correct. Things like Moog lowpass filters, ambient pads, are common-place. So experimental electronic music is where you use computers or other technology to experiment with creating new ways to synthesize sound. CSound is ideal for this.
I guess what I'm saying is that using existing instruments to make music is simply making music. Building your own original instrument for a song is experimental music, and is what CSound does best.
The license only allows you to distribute and use the software for educational purposes. This violates clause 6 of the guidelines, so it is not open source. (Clause 6 is the non-discrimination of field of endeavor).
Just thought I'd like to mention CSound, a very flexible music creation tool available for just about any platform. It is really a programming language for sound. The input is an orchestra (which defines the instruments) and a score (which defines the notes to play). The output is a wave file. The really neat thing is that the instruments can use all kinds of advanced functions available as CSound commands (i.e. different filters, formant synthesis, etc.)
CSound is primarily used for experimental electronic music, but I have found it is also excellent for creating new and original samples that can be used anywhere. The learning curve can be somewhat steep (it is similar to assembly language) but if you are serious about creating original music you should check it out. A nice page to get started is: the MITPress Frontpage
I'll accept your challenge. From my own personal experience with talking with people using Napster, about 1/5 of the downloaded songs are owned on CD by the downloader. That's 20%. They are just too lazy to rip the song themselves. What songs is a random student going to want to listen to? Obviously, they like the songs they already have, so are likely to download these same songs. If you own the CD, it is not a copyright infringement to download the MP3.
Of course your challenge was to show that more than 1% of mp3's traded are not copyrighted. Do you know of ANY mp3's that are not copyrighted? Many mp3's are freely distributable, but that does not mean they are not copyrighted. It doesn't make sense to ask about "non-copyrighted" mp3's. It only makes sense to ask about copyright violations. I challenge you to show me an mp3 song that is not copyrighted.
The following systems are freely distributed with full source code. They are more specialized programs, but can also do most of the basic stuff as well.
Macaulay2 is for algebraic geometry and commutative algebra. (Not too user friendly at the moment)
They are all fun to play around with. You just can't get discouraged if you don't understand a lot of the commands (they have some WEIRD functions that probably only a handful of people in the world fully understand).
This fiasco illustrates how DNA testing can be abused. It is NOT ACCEPTABLE to keep a massive file of DNA codes of citizens, then when evidence comes in to match it with the entire database. As others have pointed out, there may be a one-in-37 million chance the DNA matches any given person, but the chance it matches SOMEONE who did not commit the crime can be unacceptably high (1/56 in this case).
The correct use of DNA testing is for verifying suspects. Ideally, evidence is collected at the scene of the crime and a list of suspects is generated. If DNA evidence is found, it is checked against the list of suspects only. Only then is a DNA match meaningful. I think that using the entire database violates the principle of probable cause. Citizens should be innocent until proven guilty. If your DNA happens to match the DNA found at a random crime scene, you should not have to prove your innocence.
Explanation of the math:
Chance of a DNA sample matching another random sample: 1/37e6
Chance of 2 DNA samples matching a random sample: (1/37e6)^2
Chance that neither of the 2 DNA samples match a random sample: (1 - 1/37e6)^2
Chance that none of the 660,000 samples match a random sample: (1 - 1/37e6)^660000
Chance that at least one of the 660,000 samples match any given random sample: 1 - (1 - 1/37e6)^660000 = 1/56.6
That last paragraph was hilarious. I didn't get it for a second or two. (If you don't see it, think self-referential).
-Nathan Whitehead
A new proof that Jon Katz is a gasbag. Consider the sentence, "If this sentence is true, then Jon Katz is a gasbag." Is the sentence true or false? Suppose it was true. Then since the sentence is true, Jon Katz is a gasbag. Thus if the sentence is true, then Jon Katz is a gasbag. This proves the sentence.
If I read the article correctly, the results seemed to be that lack of sleep caused parts of the brain to shut down. The functions of the part of the brain that shutdown were rerouted to other parts of the brain and overall brain activity was increased to compensate for the inefficiency. In particular verbal skills are rerouted to the numerical reasoning section.
This result corresponds with my own college experiences. I always found that staying up all night writing a term paper due the next day was more productive than staying up all night trying to finish calculus homework. Programming lies somewhere in between; much is linguistic (verbal) and much is analytic. Hacking away late at night on new code can be awesome. But trying to find bugs in a complicated procedure at 4am is not fun. Maybe this research explains it, since debugging is more analytical and writing new code involves more language skills.
This was a good interview. I often read Katz' articles and get involved in the discussions. Other times I start reading but get bored and go to the next article. I have always wondered why Katz is at Slashdot. His views and personality don't really fit with the Slashdot community's. This interview was a good explanation of why Katz is here, and what he is trying to do.
We need a Katz. We need more people that can ramble on about the importance of the invention of the automobile without knowing anything about the engine. I'd wager that most Slashdot regulars are much more concerned with device drivers and programming languages than technological trends. We need someone to give us a view of the forest and not just the trees. Even if we disagree with his views we still get a chance to step back and argue with Katz! The important thing is to keep thinking about the big picture.
My only criticisms is his writing style. I find it too rambling and it has too many grammatical errors. Please edit your copy more, Jon! For example, talking about grammar Katz says, "Some it was sloppy for sure". My goodness!
BeOS boots fast! This is the number 1 reason I use BeOS. It is a nice operating system. It works. You don't have to fiddle with things for hours like in Linux. You don't get frustrated with the crappy gui like in Windows. C++ application programming is intuitive and clean. When I do operating system development things, I want a system that is powerful and boots in as little time as possible (I don't always have a junky second test machine available).
On the same note, how can you get Linux to boot as fast as possible? Does anyone have any tricks for me? I'm willing to live without X, CDROM drivers, etc. if the machine will boot in under 30 seconds. Is it possible to tweak the rc scripts for faster boot times? (Of course I have already compiled the kernel without anything non-essential).
Linux/GNU and the whole Open Source phenomena is for me one of the most interesting socioeconomic experiments ever! It certainly hints towards (or at least gives ideas about) where the society may go - in particular regarding work, organisations and intellectual properties.
I thought that line was interesting. I hadn't really thought about Linux and Open Source in that way. Will cooperation and sharing become dominant social attitudes in the future as it gets easier and easier to meet our basic needs? Is the natural progression of knowledge from hoarding and secrecy to openness and teamwork? For example, early mathematical discoveries were seriously protected, i.e. people got killed for revealing them. Now you can go on the internet and download preprints for free from around the world.
Maybe the free software movement is just a small taste of things to come. Maybe its about more than just software.
Having a disclaimer that says, "Comments are owned by the poster," is a little different than a website claiming control over all the content on the public forums at the site. Having posters release the copyright to their posts into the public domain would make it easier to compile lots of posts about a given topic and redistribute the collection. That's about the only benefit I can think of. And really, if someone is going to take the time to compile something like that they should have enough energy to rewrite and paraphrase the whole thing and just cite the sources. That is legal no matter who owns the copyright to the comments.
What exactly does it mean to understand a theory? You can go to a physics lab and repeat a lot of the experiments that inspired QM. You can read about QM, then use the formulae and ideas to predict what will happen before you do new experiments. Then you can do the new experiments, and get the predicted results. Even if you say that "understanding" a theory means that it is intuitive to you, the current generation of physicists has grown up with QM. Many of them understand it intuitively. I don't get why people say QM is not understandable.
I'm sorry, but I have to agree with the sentiment screw the desktop! Too many people in the Linux community are worrying about things like "will Linux beat Windows?" or "if Linux wants to go mainstream it will have to get easier to use."
You are missing the whole point of Linux! If you don't like something, stop complaining and start coding. The reason Linux is a success is because people work on things they think are important. I personally don't care about streaming video, games, supporting the latest 3D cards etc. So why should I code those things? Too many people new to Linux think that Linux should cater to them. It doesn't, it caters to the developers of Linux. This is not elitist because anyone can be a developer. If it happens to be useful to more people, that's an added bonus.
The creator of the code can license the code under any license they wish. Slashdot has choosen to license the code under a modified GPL license that includes a terms-of-use clause (you must link back to Slashdot). The only "problem" is that they didn't release the code under the GPL, so it is not fully free software. This is choosing to use a non-free license, not breaking an existing license.
That said, I think that requiring people that use the code to link back to Slashdot is perfectly acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
-Nathan
-Nathan Whitehead
This was a specification of a product that was supposedly "infringing". If people posted the source code that Microsoft wrote, that is like posting the secret formula. If people post the Microsoft Kerberos specification, they are passing around the ingredient list. Some people are allergic to nuts and need to check the ingredients; others are allergic to vendor lock-in and incompatibility.
-Nathan Whitehead
Question 9
-Nathan Whitehead
If it really is copyright infringement to re-serve someone else's webpage in an altered state, then www.askjeeves.com is infringing with its search result pages. When you click to go to a search result, it still looks like you are at AskJeeves. Of course if you read the text it says they are not affliated. I find this type of alteration more offensive than a user-requested translation of a web-page.
I personally think they should separate out the commercial library code (or whatever they want to protect) from the generated code specifically dealing with the original source file. What they are doing now is akin to telling people that it is illegal to distribute assembly code generated from a C file. That is ridiculous. If the assembly code contains lots of commercial boilerplate they don't want released, (think stuff from _start), they should make it a shared library. Or have an option that outputs just the parts directly coming from the original source file.
-Nathan Whitehead
-Nathan Whitehead
-Nathan Whitehead
Nathan Whitehead
In 1997, cars killed 102197 people. Guns killed 32436 people. (Sources: FARS, CDC) Cars are three times more lethal than guns. And guns were designed to kill things! That tells you something. It freaks me out that people can get all concerned about violence enough to start meddling with other people's lives, and yet think nothing of hurling their bodies at 85mph down the freeway. WAKE UP! CARS ARE MORE LIKELY TO KILL YOU THAN GUNS! -Nathan Whitehead
I would define experimental music as music that explores new ways of creating sound. Electronic music is now mainstream, you are correct. Things like Moog lowpass filters, ambient pads, are common-place. So experimental electronic music is where you use computers or other technology to experiment with creating new ways to synthesize sound. CSound is ideal for this.
I guess what I'm saying is that using existing instruments to make music is simply making music. Building your own original instrument for a song is experimental music, and is what CSound does best.
Nathan Whitehead
Nathan Whitehead
Just thought I'd like to mention CSound, a very flexible music creation tool available for just about any platform. It is really a programming language for sound. The input is an orchestra (which defines the instruments) and a score (which defines the notes to play). The output is a wave file. The really neat thing is that the instruments can use all kinds of advanced functions available as CSound commands (i.e. different filters, formant synthesis, etc.)
CSound is primarily used for experimental electronic music, but I have found it is also excellent for creating new and original samples that can be used anywhere. The learning curve can be somewhat steep (it is similar to assembly language) but if you are serious about creating original music you should check it out. A nice page to get started is: the MITPress Frontpage
Nathan Whitehead
Of course your challenge was to show that more than 1% of mp3's traded are not copyrighted. Do you know of ANY mp3's that are not copyrighted? Many mp3's are freely distributable, but that does not mean they are not copyrighted. It doesn't make sense to ask about "non-copyrighted" mp3's. It only makes sense to ask about copyright violations. I challenge you to show me an mp3 song that is not copyrighted.
Nathan Whitehead
They are all fun to play around with. You just can't get discouraged if you don't understand a lot of the commands (they have some WEIRD functions that probably only a handful of people in the world fully understand).
Nathan Whitehead
The correct use of DNA testing is for verifying suspects. Ideally, evidence is collected at the scene of the crime and a list of suspects is generated. If DNA evidence is found, it is checked against the list of suspects only. Only then is a DNA match meaningful. I think that using the entire database violates the principle of probable cause. Citizens should be innocent until proven guilty. If your DNA happens to match the DNA found at a random crime scene, you should not have to prove your innocence.
Explanation of the math:
Chance of a DNA sample matching another random sample: 1/37e6
Chance of 2 DNA samples matching a random sample: (1/37e6)^2
Chance that neither of the 2 DNA samples match a random sample: (1 - 1/37e6)^2
Chance that none of the 660,000 samples match a random sample: (1 - 1/37e6)^660000
Chance that at least one of the 660,000 samples match any given random sample:
1 - (1 - 1/37e6)^660000 = 1/56.6
-Nathan Whitehead
-Nathan Whitehead
A new proof that Jon Katz is a gasbag. Consider the sentence, "If this sentence is true, then Jon Katz is a gasbag." Is the sentence true or false? Suppose it was true. Then since the sentence is true, Jon Katz is a gasbag. Thus if the sentence is true, then Jon Katz is a gasbag. This proves the sentence.
This result corresponds with my own college experiences. I always found that staying up all night writing a term paper due the next day was more productive than staying up all night trying to finish calculus homework. Programming lies somewhere in between; much is linguistic (verbal) and much is analytic. Hacking away late at night on new code can be awesome. But trying to find bugs in a complicated procedure at 4am is not fun. Maybe this research explains it, since debugging is more analytical and writing new code involves more language skills.
-Nathan Whitehead
We need a Katz. We need more people that can ramble on about the importance of the invention of the automobile without knowing anything about the engine. I'd wager that most Slashdot regulars are much more concerned with device drivers and programming languages than technological trends. We need someone to give us a view of the forest and not just the trees. Even if we disagree with his views we still get a chance to step back and argue with Katz! The important thing is to keep thinking about the big picture.
My only criticisms is his writing style. I find it too rambling and it has too many grammatical errors. Please edit your copy more, Jon! For example, talking about grammar Katz says, "Some it was sloppy for sure". My goodness!
-Nathan Whitehead
BeOS boots fast! This is the number 1 reason I use BeOS. It is a nice operating system. It works. You don't have to fiddle with things for hours like in Linux. You don't get frustrated with the crappy gui like in Windows. C++ application programming is intuitive and clean. When I do operating system development things, I want a system that is powerful and boots in as little time as possible (I don't always have a junky second test machine available).
On the same note, how can you get Linux to boot as fast as possible? Does anyone have any tricks for me? I'm willing to live without X, CDROM drivers, etc. if the machine will boot in under 30 seconds. Is it possible to tweak the rc scripts for faster boot times? (Of course I have already compiled the kernel without anything non-essential).
-Nathan
Linux/GNU and the whole Open Source phenomena is for me one of the most interesting socioeconomic experiments ever! It certainly hints towards (or at least gives ideas about) where the society may go - in particular regarding work, organisations and intellectual properties.
I thought that line was interesting. I hadn't really thought about Linux and Open Source in that way. Will cooperation and sharing become dominant social attitudes in the future as it gets easier and easier to meet our basic needs? Is the natural progression of knowledge from hoarding and secrecy to openness and teamwork? For example, early mathematical discoveries were seriously protected, i.e. people got killed for revealing them. Now you can go on the internet and download preprints for free from around the world.
Maybe the free software movement is just a small taste of things to come. Maybe its about more than just software.
-Nathan Whitehead
Having a disclaimer that says, "Comments are owned by the poster," is a little different than a website claiming control over all the content on the public forums at the site. Having posters release the copyright to their posts into the public domain would make it easier to compile lots of posts about a given topic and redistribute the collection. That's about the only benefit I can think of. And really, if someone is going to take the time to compile something like that they should have enough energy to rewrite and paraphrase the whole thing and just cite the sources. That is legal no matter who owns the copyright to the comments.
-Nathan Whitehead
What exactly does it mean to understand a theory? You can go to a physics lab and repeat a lot of the experiments that inspired QM. You can read about QM, then use the formulae and ideas to predict what will happen before you do new experiments. Then you can do the new experiments, and get the predicted results. Even if you say that "understanding" a theory means that it is intuitive to you, the current generation of physicists has grown up with QM. Many of them understand it intuitively. I don't get why people say QM is not understandable.
You are missing the whole point of Linux! If you don't like something, stop complaining and start coding. The reason Linux is a success is because people work on things they think are important. I personally don't care about streaming video, games, supporting the latest 3D cards etc. So why should I code those things? Too many people new to Linux think that Linux should cater to them. It doesn't, it caters to the developers of Linux. This is not elitist because anyone can be a developer. If it happens to be useful to more people, that's an added bonus.
That said, I think that requiring people that use the code to link back to Slashdot is perfectly acceptable.
-Nathan Whitehead