That's the underlying philosophy with free software though. The only justified reason to put artificial limitations on software is to preserve the freedom from other artificial limitations.
Sort of the way that we wouldn't be more free if murder was legal, even though it would mean less laws.
I'm not sure where that manifesto came from, but it's pretty radical, moreso than anything I've heard before. That manifesto is close to what RMS believes, but not quite. Even RMS recognizes copyright as valid. He believes in ownership of software.
He believes it's immoral to put artifical limitations on the users of software, but I've not heard him say anything like "No one should own anything".
It actually goes against the legal basis of the GPL. The GPL supports the idea that the owner of the software has exclusive rights to grant the end user permission to copy and modify the software. The GPL is a license the author can use to conditionally grant those rights to others if they comply with the requirements therein.
That manifesto almost looks like a straw man to me, I question the intent of the author.
Because what Dell is suggessting is tantamount to the president saying "All these senators and congressmen that don't agree with each other on issues really is hampering things, we need a single person that is the one standard for the government".
It's not the way a democratic republic works, and it's not the way that free software works. Dell can go shit in his hat.
What Dell is really saying is "I wish I had a way to make money off this 'Linux thing'"... that's not our problem if he can't figure out a way how to make money off it, and I'm doing just fine without his company involved.
What's fishy about SHA-1? And AFAIK no one's found a way to craft a file with a certain MD5 unless they have control over both files that they want to collide.
That raises an interesting possibility. If you upload a file to Google that they already have in someone else's gDrive, there's no need for them to keep two copies of it.
Reminds me of way back when on AOL when AOL would store internal email attachments on their servers. "Pirating" something just meant forwarding an email with the attachment that never hit your local computer, drastically reducing the time required since everyone was on slow modems back then.
It will be funny when the first SHA or MD5 collision hits though, they'll have to be very careful with that if they go with a system like this to reduce redundant file storage.
Digital signals are a little more sensitive actually, but audio in general is extremely independant of wire characteristics.
Baseband audio is only 0-30khz and that's being generous. You can put 30khz across barbed wire fence and it'll sound the same. It's just too low frequency for RF effects to show up unless your wires are 50 miles long, no matter what any "audiophile" says.
That's exactly their advantage. We have a Jabber server at work that no one uses, because it's easier to just get on AIM where everyone is in one spot. You can get on AIM from anywhere, and not have to worry about getting a VPN set up to get to the jabber server, etc.
Home office deductions only work if you use the home office exclusively for business purposes. It is a good idea to segregate your general accounts from the business accounts too, it helps a lot if you are audited.
As far as justifying it as a business in general, as long as your goal is to make money then it's OK. You don't need much justification of your intent to make money. Think of an artist, they probably mostly do it for the enjoyment of their work, but they can easily justify it as a business as long as they are selling or attempting to sell at least some of their work, and the other work can be considered as building their reputation (like advertising expense).
For specific situations you'd have to talk to a tax advisor. Even the IRS doesn't know what half their rules mean, or how they would apply to some specific situations. The best you can do is follow the rules they do have a clear idea of what they mean. A tax advisor would know which rules those are.:)
The IRS doesn't distinguish between "income" due to hobby and "income" due to work
Actually, it does, but both are taxed. If you claim "hobby income" you can deduct "hobby losses", but "hobby losses" can never exceed "hobby income", unlike business losses which can exceed income and reduce your tax bill.
Because of this, very few people use the hobby income rules, instead opting to just treat their hobby as a business if it is enough income that they are afraid the IRS might catch on.
IANATL (tax advisor), but I've been doing my own business taxes for years.
aren't developing something new and giving back to the OS community with this, you are reverse engineering a (presumably) patented product and wanting to release that knowledge into the OS community.
You claim there's a difference, but this is exactly what OpenOffice and Samba did.
I said it here on Slashdot back in 2002. I guess Scott Adams read that article.
AFAIK, it was original when I said it back then. If you can dig up a link to that Dilbert that would be great, it would be amusing to see how far the meme went.:)
If you actually read the study, the ethanol energy return is 1.08...
But only if "the fertilizers are produced by modern processing plants, corn is converted in modern ethanol facilities, and farmers achieve normal corn yields".
The way they get the larger numbers like 1.3 are by adding in "coproduct energy credits"... i.e. the energy that waste products from the process are assumed to represent.
That study doesn't mention anything about the other numbers that page talks about, but the Diesel and Gas numbers are obvious BS too. No one would ever make gasoline or diesel if it took more fossil fuel to produce than it yielded. It just wouldn't be worth it. this Wikipedia says net return on oil is 5, but used to be 50, but it's disputed. I guarantee you it's >1.
The media/software companies don't say "Preventing end-users from using the files they have in the way they want, which we like to call Digital Rights Management...."
If they are going to throw around buzzwords, you can't call Stallman out for doing the same thing.
That's just not true though. Let me find some Java apps off the top of my head.
Azureus: Note: Using an old Java version or having more than one installed may cause severe problems like 100% CPU usage! The latest official Java is version 1.5 Update 6.
That sure sounds like telling you to use a specific version to me.
jasperreports: JRE 1.3 or higher
OK that's one point for you.
GanttProject: The absolute prerequisite is a correctly installed Java 1.4.x or 1.5.x.
You'll just instead have to deal with silly Sun upgrades when they break things every few releases. I've never seen a Java app that didn't say "use this particular version of the JVM or all hell will break loose".
Slashdot Mirror
That's the underlying philosophy with free software though. The only justified reason to put artificial limitations on software is to preserve the freedom from other artificial limitations.
Sort of the way that we wouldn't be more free if murder was legal, even though it would mean less laws.
I'm not sure where that manifesto came from, but it's pretty radical, moreso than anything I've heard before. That manifesto is close to what RMS believes, but not quite. Even RMS recognizes copyright as valid. He believes in ownership of software.
He believes it's immoral to put artifical limitations on the users of software, but I've not heard him say anything like "No one should own anything".
It actually goes against the legal basis of the GPL. The GPL supports the idea that the owner of the software has exclusive rights to grant the end user permission to copy and modify the software. The GPL is a license the author can use to conditionally grant those rights to others if they comply with the requirements therein.
That manifesto almost looks like a straw man to me, I question the intent of the author.
Monoculture leads to weakness and extinction.
Because what Dell is suggessting is tantamount to the president saying "All these senators and congressmen that don't agree with each other on issues really is hampering things, we need a single person that is the one standard for the government".
It's not the way a democratic republic works, and it's not the way that free software works. Dell can go shit in his hat.
Obviously Dell wants those dollars or he wouldn't even bother with this commentary about it.
I'm not complaining about it!
What Dell is really saying is "I wish I had a way to make money off this 'Linux thing'"... that's not our problem if he can't figure out a way how to make money off it, and I'm doing just fine without his company involved.
That's Michael Dell's problem, not the linux community's.
What's fishy about SHA-1? And AFAIK no one's found a way to craft a file with a certain MD5 unless they have control over both files that they want to collide.
That raises an interesting possibility. If you upload a file to Google that they already have in someone else's gDrive, there's no need for them to keep two copies of it.
Reminds me of way back when on AOL when AOL would store internal email attachments on their servers. "Pirating" something just meant forwarding an email with the attachment that never hit your local computer, drastically reducing the time required since everyone was on slow modems back then.
It will be funny when the first SHA or MD5 collision hits though, they'll have to be very careful with that if they go with a system like this to reduce redundant file storage.
Digital signals are a little more sensitive actually, but audio in general is extremely independant of wire characteristics.
Baseband audio is only 0-30khz and that's being generous. You can put 30khz across barbed wire fence and it'll sound the same. It's just too low frequency for RF effects to show up unless your wires are 50 miles long, no matter what any "audiophile" says.
That's exactly their advantage. We have a Jabber server at work that no one uses, because it's easier to just get on AIM where everyone is in one spot. You can get on AIM from anywhere, and not have to worry about getting a VPN set up to get to the jabber server, etc.
Home office deductions only work if you use the home office exclusively for business purposes. It is a good idea to segregate your general accounts from the business accounts too, it helps a lot if you are audited.
:)
As far as justifying it as a business in general, as long as your goal is to make money then it's OK. You don't need much justification of your intent to make money. Think of an artist, they probably mostly do it for the enjoyment of their work, but they can easily justify it as a business as long as they are selling or attempting to sell at least some of their work, and the other work can be considered as building their reputation (like advertising expense).
For specific situations you'd have to talk to a tax advisor. Even the IRS doesn't know what half their rules mean, or how they would apply to some specific situations. The best you can do is follow the rules they do have a clear idea of what they mean. A tax advisor would know which rules those are.
Did you even read the summary?
The IRS doesn't distinguish between "income" due to hobby and "income" due to work
Actually, it does, but both are taxed. If you claim "hobby income" you can deduct "hobby losses", but "hobby losses" can never exceed "hobby income", unlike business losses which can exceed income and reduce your tax bill.
Because of this, very few people use the hobby income rules, instead opting to just treat their hobby as a business if it is enough income that they are afraid the IRS might catch on.
IANATL (tax advisor), but I've been doing my own business taxes for years.
aren't developing something new and giving back to the OS community with this, you are reverse engineering a (presumably) patented product and wanting to release that knowledge into the OS community.
You claim there's a difference, but this is exactly what OpenOffice and Samba did.
congratulations AOL! Now bugger off, you jerk-burgers!
You know, they still run the aim servers... for free.
And they stopped deliberately breaking other clients for the most part.
Ah I almost fell for that one. Good one. IHBT, IWHAND.
Ah, well I guess maybe I can claim the title of bringing it to Slashdot. :)
I said it here on Slashdot back in 2002. I guess Scott Adams read that article.
:)
AFAIK, it was original when I said it back then. If you can dig up a link to that Dilbert that would be great, it would be amusing to see how far the meme went.
It's comparing apples to oranges then.
Oil->gas extraction cost you are saying has less than 50% efficiency if you want to look at it that way.
They are the ones confusing efficiency with net energy gain.
Those numbers are bullshit.
If you actually read the study, the ethanol energy return is 1.08...
But only if "the fertilizers are produced by modern processing plants, corn is converted in modern ethanol facilities, and farmers achieve normal corn yields".
The way they get the larger numbers like 1.3 are by adding in "coproduct energy credits"... i.e. the energy that waste products from the process are assumed to represent.
That study doesn't mention anything about the other numbers that page talks about, but the Diesel and Gas numbers are obvious BS too. No one would ever make gasoline or diesel if it took more fossil fuel to produce than it yielded. It just wouldn't be worth it. this Wikipedia says net return on oil is 5, but used to be 50, but it's disputed. I guarantee you it's >1.
These asteroids have a way of correcting their course once NASA gets more funding.
Diplomacy??
The media/software companies don't say "Preventing end-users from using the files they have in the way they want, which we like to call Digital Rights Management...."
If they are going to throw around buzzwords, you can't call Stallman out for doing the same thing.
That's just not true though. Let me find some Java apps off the top of my head.
Azureus:
Note: Using an old Java version or having more than one installed may cause severe problems like 100% CPU usage!
The latest official Java is version 1.5 Update 6.
That sure sounds like telling you to use a specific version to me.
jasperreports:
JRE 1.3 or higher
OK that's one point for you.
GanttProject:
The absolute prerequisite is a correctly installed Java 1.4.x or 1.5.x.
Yep, no dictating specific versions there.
You'll just instead have to deal with silly Sun upgrades when they break things every few releases. I've never seen a Java app that didn't say "use this particular version of the JVM or all hell will break loose".