Bob Young's royalties. Dunno about the publisher's portion. As to your second comment, a book is an inanimate object. It can't cash in on anything. The implication is that the author is "cashing in".
Guess you missed the part where he states that the proceeds from the book are going to the FSF. So much for "cashing in", eh?
Why do people insist on crying that Red Hat and Bob Young are just out for a buck when EVERYTHING they've done has served to further the intrests of Free Software? All the software they produce is GPLed. They've been very generous about funding development (that means PAYING programmers to write free software). They pioneered "the letter".
It's reasonable that not everyone is going to like their distribution. Fine. Don't use it. But to accuse them of base motives when their actions CLEARLY indicate otherwise is just slander.
I think the solution to this kind of thing is to give all personal information the status of personal property. I.e., if someone wants to use my personal information, they have to get my permission, and pay me a royalty on it. That would make doing this kind of thing prohibitively expensive, both in royalty payments and administrative costs.
Actually, from a physiological standpoint at least, the human brain is very much a digital instrument...basic neurophysiology is based on the idea that neuron gates can be either open or closed/charged or uncharged...a binary system if I ever saw one...
Not true. Much of the signaling that goes on in synapses happens because of varying levels of neurotransmitters, and the amount of time they linger before re-uptake. This is the basis of modern antidepressant drugs like Prozac. They inhibit the re-uptake of Seritonin, causing it to linger in the synapse longer.
I don't think you can really compare human memory to computer memory. At least not in terms of quantity. Human brains are not digital, for one thing, and for another, much of the remembering we do is by association, not by some biological analog of "address space".
That said, I do think there's something like an upper limit. My grandfather, who's 100, has a lot of trouble remembering things he's learned recently. Not because he's senile or has altzheimer's disease or anything, but just because, well, his brain is full. At least that's how it seems to me. But given that it's taken him 95+ years to even approach that, I'd say the brain's storage capacity is pretty darn huge.
I think it is high time that people be held accountable for what they say online to other people. Folks say things on the Internet that they'd dare not say in print. I've been accused of a few libelous things myself and was advised to not proceed with filing suit due to the ambiguity of how the law applies to the Internet.
Americans have enjoyed the freedom of speech for many years, but have always known that the freedom of speech does NOT mean that you can say anything about anyone and get away with it. Apparently folks have forgotten that after getting their AOL accounts.
I think it's very ironic that you would say this while posting as an AC.
For months Fud Hat has been selling out and this is evidence of it. The raise in prices are more evidence. In an effort to go public and make gobs of dough, they've forgotten whose gotten to where they are.
Dude, get a grip. Red Hat Linux doesn't cost anything. I mean, yeah, if you want the official CD with all the extra stuff on it, you'll have to cough up some cash, but the main parts of the system - the GNU/Linux parts and the RPM parts, and the GNOME parts that Red Hat has spent lots of money on developing are all GPL'd.
The Village Voice has its agenda, and of course, it's free to vilify any expression of white malehood, but hey, should the guns ever point their way, they'll probably wish they'd taken the trouble to understand.
I believe that there is an equivalence; language is language, thought is thought, and if the machine that a poem "compiles" on is a person and a perl script "compiles" on a Linux box (although both are interpreted languages in very much the same way), well, a machine is a machine.
A person is not a machine, and I won't believe otherwise until someone proves to me what the nature of conciousness, and self-awareness are. The corresponidences between machine languages and human languages are not direct, nor is it sufficiently precise to say that a poem "compiles" on a person.
But more importantly, there is a difference between the intent involved in creating a program vs. speaking or writing. Programs serve only one function: to give instructions to machines. Human utterances my serve to give instructions, but they may also be used to do a lot of other things.
It is possible to draw analogies between programs and poems, but they're not the same thing. I think you're confusing analogies with equivalences.
As a practial matter, I'm glad the court ruled the way it did (the dubious precident-setting status of the ninth curcuit not withstanding). I think the U.S. crypto regulations are stupid and reactionary, and any step towards getting rid of them is a good thing.
However, I have to wonder about the whole code == speech thing. I mean, okay, on the one hand, you're talking about a *language*, in which you can express ideas (heck, people write poetry in Perl), but on the other hand, a program is essentially a machine.
I have to think that the process of creating software occupies some middle ground between expression and construction. You're building a machine, but you're building it out of nothing but logic and a set of syntactical rules.
I believe that code should have the same protection as speech, but I don't think that we should necessarily reduce the two to an equivalence.
I agree that the full account transfer isn't a virtual transaction, but there are a virtual transactions taking place. Many of the actions are actioning off object within the game with no change of account taking place. For instance you mail me $50 US and I'll have my character transfer to you his new potion. That is indeed a transaction involving a virtual object.
Fair enough, but how is that any different from paying your ISP an extra few bucks per month to give you more disk space? The point is that just because gamers are doing it doesn't mean it's new or revolutionary. Transactions involving intangible things has been around for a long time.
An account on an Ultima server is no more "virtual" than an account on your ISP. You're paying for access, which, granted, is not the most tangible thing in the world, but is as real as any other service. "Characters" and "houses", etc, are just the cyphers that people use to gain access onto the server. It's no more "virtual" than a poker chip.
It's never a good idea to get so caught up in a buzzword that you lose sight of what's really going on. There's nothing especially radical or revolutionary going on here. Just people paying for computer access and recreation, both of which have been going on for years.
I'm not saying that the personalities don't have an effect on what comes out of them, I'm saying I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to focus on personalities in advocacy.
Linux vs. Windows != Linus vs. Bill. That's all. I'm not saying they're not related, but to the extent that Linus vs. Bill becomes a media proxy for Linux vs. Windows, that's the wrong game to be playing.
I like to bust on Bill as much as anyone, but I wonder how wise it is to take the advocacy wars to a Linus vs. Bill level. It seems to me that the emphasis should be on the technology, rather than the personalities involved.
I realize it's easier for media types to grasp on the obvious difference in personal style between Linus and Bill, but understanding the technical issues is a lot more important.
agree totally, and that is why I find it so abhorrent that the publishers of filtering software try to prevent consumers from keeping themselves informed.
Me too. I think that if you're using filtering software, and you find out that it's filtering something it shouldn't be, you should be able to return it for a full refund. Likewise, I tink that you're making a bad decision if use a piece of software without having recieved full disclosure about what exactly it does.
But you still have the choice of whether or not to use that software. Every consumer has the duty to inform themselves about the products they're using.
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Bob Young's royalties. Dunno about the publisher's portion. As to your second comment, a book is an inanimate object. It can't cash in on anything. The implication is that the author is "cashing in".
Guess you missed the part where he states that the proceeds from the book are going to the FSF. So much for "cashing in", eh?
Why do people insist on crying that Red Hat and Bob Young are just out for a buck when EVERYTHING they've done has served to further the intrests of Free Software? All the software they produce is GPLed. They've been very generous about funding development (that means PAYING programmers to write free software). They pioneered "the letter".
It's reasonable that not everyone is going to like their distribution. Fine. Don't use it. But to accuse them of base motives when their actions CLEARLY indicate otherwise is just slander.
I think the solution to this kind of thing is to give all personal information the status of personal property. I.e., if someone wants to use my personal information, they have to get my permission, and pay me a royalty on it. That would make doing this kind of thing prohibitively expensive, both in royalty payments and administrative costs.
*sigh* Why does everything have to be regulated? Why can't we have even one little island of freedom in this world?
I'm starting to think that way to go here is co-op ISPs. Find the other geeks in your community and pool your resources to get a T1 or whatever.
Frank Zappa used to say that "fondling and fetish potential" were an important part of the experience of owning an album.
I doubt your grandfather's brain is full.
That was sort of a joke. What I meant was that I think the storage capacity of the brain is limited by things that aren't comparable to "disk space".
Actually, from a physiological standpoint at least, the human brain is very much a digital instrument...basic neurophysiology is based on the idea that neuron gates can be either open or closed/charged or uncharged...a binary system if I ever saw one...
Not true. Much of the signaling that goes on in synapses happens because of varying levels of neurotransmitters, and the amount of time they linger before re-uptake. This is the basis of modern antidepressant drugs like Prozac. They inhibit the re-uptake of Seritonin, causing it to linger in the synapse longer.
I don't think you can really compare human memory to computer memory. At least not in terms of quantity. Human brains are not digital, for one thing, and for another, much of the remembering we do is by association, not by some biological analog of "address space".
That said, I do think there's something like an upper limit. My grandfather, who's 100, has a lot of trouble remembering things he's learned recently. Not because he's senile or has altzheimer's disease or anything, but just because, well, his brain is full. At least that's how it seems to me. But given that it's taken him 95+ years to even approach that, I'd say the brain's storage capacity is pretty darn huge.
I think it is high time that people be held accountable for what they say online to other people. Folks say things on the Internet that they'd dare not say in print. I've been accused of a few libelous things myself and was advised to not proceed with filing suit due to the ambiguity of how the law applies to the Internet.
Americans have enjoyed the freedom of speech for many years, but have always known that the freedom of speech does NOT mean that you can say anything about anyone and get away with it. Apparently folks have forgotten that after getting their AOL accounts.
I think it's very ironic that you would say this while posting as an AC.
Dude, get a grip. Red Hat Linux doesn't cost anything. I mean, yeah, if you want the official CD with all the extra stuff on it, you'll have to cough up some cash, but the main parts of the system - the GNU/Linux parts and the RPM parts, and the GNOME parts that Red Hat has spent lots of money on developing are all GPL'd.
The Village Voice has its agenda, and of course, it's free to vilify any expression of white malehood, but hey, should the guns ever point their way, they'll probably wish they'd taken the trouble to understand.
I assume these things DON'T have the chip ID, yes?
Do the macros work in this version?
That's a very good point. I hadn't thought of it like that.
A person is not a machine, and I won't believe otherwise until someone proves to me what the nature of conciousness, and self-awareness are. The corresponidences between machine languages and human languages are not direct, nor is it sufficiently precise to say that a poem "compiles" on a person.
But more importantly, there is a difference between the intent involved in creating a program vs. speaking or writing. Programs serve only one function: to give instructions to machines. Human utterances my serve to give instructions, but they may also be used to do a lot of other things.
It is possible to draw analogies between programs and poems, but they're not the same thing. I think you're confusing analogies with equivalences.
As a practial matter, I'm glad the court ruled the way it did (the dubious precident-setting status of the ninth curcuit not withstanding). I think the U.S. crypto regulations are stupid and reactionary, and any step towards getting rid of them is a good thing.
However, I have to wonder about the whole code == speech thing. I mean, okay, on the one hand, you're talking about a *language*, in which you can express ideas (heck, people write poetry in Perl), but on the other hand, a program is essentially a machine.
I have to think that the process of creating software occupies some middle ground between expression and construction. You're building a machine, but you're building it out of nothing but logic and a set of syntactical rules.
I believe that code should have the same protection as speech, but I don't think that we should necessarily reduce the two to an equivalence.
Fair enough, but how is that any different from paying your ISP an extra few bucks per month to give you more disk space? The point is that just because gamers are doing it doesn't mean it's new or revolutionary. Transactions involving intangible things has been around for a long time.
Geez, Neil, lighten up.
An account on an Ultima server is no more "virtual" than an account on your ISP. You're paying for access, which, granted, is not the most tangible thing in the world, but is as real as any other service. "Characters" and "houses", etc, are just the cyphers that people use to gain access onto the server. It's no more "virtual" than a poker chip.
It's never a good idea to get so caught up in a buzzword that you lose sight of what's really going on. There's nothing especially radical or revolutionary going on here. Just people paying for computer access and recreation, both of which have been going on for years.
Of course, the ninth circuit court of appeals is notoriously looney.
I'm not saying that the personalities don't have an effect on what comes out of them, I'm saying I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to focus on personalities in advocacy.
Linux vs. Windows != Linus vs. Bill. That's all. I'm not saying they're not related, but to the extent that Linus vs. Bill becomes a media proxy for Linux vs. Windows, that's the wrong game to be playing.
I like to bust on Bill as much as anyone, but I wonder how wise it is to take the advocacy wars to a Linus vs. Bill level. It seems to me that the emphasis should be on the technology, rather than the personalities involved.
I realize it's easier for media types to grasp on the obvious difference in personal style between Linus and Bill, but understanding the technical issues is a lot more important.
Me too. I think that if you're using filtering software, and you find out that it's filtering something it shouldn't be, you should be able to return it for a full refund. Likewise, I tink that you're making a bad decision if use a piece of software without having recieved full disclosure about what exactly it does.
But you still have the choice of whether or not to use that software. Every consumer has the duty to inform themselves about the products they're using.