If you are a citizen of a country with no copyright law then you are free to use anything you want and you can set up a web site to distribute it.
BUT....
If you, living in a country with copyright laws, downloads anything from that web site, you are in violation of YOUR countries law and can be prosecuted in YOUR country. YOU are the law breaker, not the person running the site.
Also, folks, I used to work in telecom and my MSCS thesis research was paid for from a grant by the CIA. Believe me, if a US Federal judge ordered it, all traffic flowing from or to another country can be blocked. It isn't even that hard to tell routers not to pass packets with certain IP address ranges. A court order could simply block all access from the US (or any other country) to all IP address assigned to anyone in a country that contained servers that were in violation of the local laws. It's just too easy!
Never underestimate the power of a US Federal judge!
So, what if there were no patents or copyright?
Well, a few historians point at the US patent system as the root of all technical development during the last 200 years. The concept is that the inventor is granted a limited monopoly on the use of an invention in exchange for allowing everyone else to see how it works. This way we all can learn from the invention and one invention leads to another. Without patents people rely on keeping everything secret. If everything is secret the over all knowledge base doesn't grow. This actually works a lot like open source works. To get a patent you have to open the source for your invention. The difference is that you get to make money off of it for ~17 years before it become public domain.
The idea behind copyright is different. It was intended as a way to allow performers, writers, and artists to benefit from what they do just as patents allow inventors to benefit from what they do. But, now it is being applied to software in combination with patents and the actual invention (the source code) is being held as a secret. This goes against the very CONCEPT of patents and copyrights. Something is very wrong and it needs to be fixed.
I wish I had a solution, but I don't.
I can say that the solution to the problem won't come from complaining about it. It will only come when we organize and bring the same pressure on world governements that the large corporations currently do. And don't tell me this can't be done. Just look at the history of the labor movement if you want to see how a bunch of ordinary people brought big corporations and even governements to their knees.
Of course, you might want to visit the Ludlow monument to understand the risks. http://www.umwa.org/history/ludlow2.shtml
Let me tell you how completely false this crap about the dangers of PC's, the Internet, violent video games, role playing and so on and so on and so on is.
I'm nearly 50 years old. I grew up before the Internet existed. The first video game I ever saw was Pong and I saw it in a bar, I was over 21 when it came out. We had only three television stations ABC, CBS, and NBC with their pure pap white bread programming. No R rated movies on cable to ruin my morals. I learned to play D&D out of the original pamphlets while in college. In other words it is impossible for me to have ever been exposed to any of these so called corrupting influences because they didn't exist when I was a child. But, I was still a geek and nerd. We didn't have computers so I built simple electronic circuits, model airplanes, model rockets. I built my first liquid fuel rocket motor (compressed air and isopropyl alcohol for fuels) in sixth grade. I made my first home made working fire arm in eighth grade.
I was excluded from everything. I had very few friends. I was teased, hated, beaten. Held down and kicked. Just for knowing things. You all know how hard I tried to fit in. You all know what it feels like. I can't tell you how many nights I laid in bead hoping I would not wake up the next morning. I can't tell you how many times I considered doing exactly what happened at Columbine. I didn't need the Internet to show teach me how to build a propane bomb or a pipe bomb or a Molotov cocktail. I didn't need cable TV or violent video games to teach me about violence. I had dozens of people teaching me about it every day.
I did finally snap. I completely lost it. I woke up one day thinking. I can't make them like me. I can't make myself be like them. But, I can make them stop. (Remember this is in the '90s this is about 1966.) The next person who gave me crap at school got hit. And so did the next one and the next one. I also got beaten up a couple times. My nick name was changed from N****R to Cassias (short for Cassias Clay, who later changed his name to Mohammed Ali one of the greatest boxers and freedom fighters the world has known.) (I should mention I'm not black, I'm so pale that I have to wear long sleeved shirts to the beach. But, then we geeks know that the "normals" lump all the hated people together into one subhuman class. ) Oddly enough I wasn't suspended from school. I think some of the teachers were actually on my side.
The end of the story is that after I started hitting people who hurt me I found that I was suddenly a leader and a hero for all the other people like me. I suddenly had friends and when I got into a fight I wasn't alone. I soon had a small, but solid, group of geek friends. I learned that by undermining out self confidence and self image the normals make us embarrassed to associate with other geeks. They keep us isolated and powerless.
I survived high school. Managed to go to college. Managed to get a graduate degree in computer science. Got lucky enough to marry a geek girl (we share an interest in rocket engines.) I now live in a "latte ville" surrounded by other geeks. I have two geek kids in high school. And, I went through the anti-geek hysteria not as a student, but as a parent. I was shocked and amazed by Columbine. Not by what happened. I considered doing the same thing a hundred times while I was in high school. I was shocked that people were surprised that it happened. It was bound to happen. It will happen again.
I CAN see several ways to stop it from happening again. We, the geeks and the nerds, must organize and demand fair treatment. We must sue in the courts and we must demonstrate in the streets and on the net. To quote Joe Hill, "Don't mourn, organize."
Sure, several, nay MANY, people are looking at exactly that. Take a look at the OpenAL and SDL projects over at loki games (www.lokigames.com). take a looke at the DRI (https://sourceforge.net/projects/dri/) project for fast OpenGL under X. That project is heavily inspired by the needs of game developers.
Others that are inspired by the needs of game developers include packages like svgalib, Crystal Space (http://crystal.linuxgames.com/), and Allegro (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/).
I'm sure there are many others that I'm missing. If you know of any, please post them.
Ok, I've looked at everything that has been suggested. My evaluations are as follows:
FLTK -- Very nice, free, supports windows and unix, supports OpenGL. Sadly, it appears to lack some of the standard dialogs that you really want in a toolkit. I may use this anyway because it is a very nice package. This is one I could get behind using just so that if I came up with useful widgets based on it I could contribute them.
V -- Seems to have everything I want. I'm not fond of the toolkit being layered on top of other tool kits, but this will work for what I want.
wxWindows -- No built in OpenGL support. GL support is available but not as a supported part of the package. Win32 support of OpenGL may or may not exist
GTK+ -- Win32 support is still not what you'd call complete. OpenGL support is from a third party. May or may not exist for win32.
OpenStep -- Can't find anything about this. OpenStep.org says the site will open in June of 1997? Seems to be vaporware. Did find a link on the Apple.com site that list it as being available for windows 95 at a price of $5000?
GNUStep -- Only supports UNIX. Says you might be able to run it under Window NT using cygwin.
So far it looks like FLTK and V are the closest to what I want. Looks like fltk (www.fltk.org
GTK+ --
I have been looking for a GUI tool kit to use for open source development. To support my application it must have a 3D widget (something that supports OpenGL or equivalent.) To make it possible to reach a large audience it must be portable to UNIX and Win32 (hiss boo but still 95% of the users.) Support for Mac and other niche OSes would be nice.
Does anyone know of a good one? So far I've identified the following:
Java -- has everything I want, but can require nasty complicated down loads and installation to get a version that has all the features I want to use.
tcl/tk -- Ok, I just don't like tcl, but it meets the spec.
QT -- almost perfect except that the GPLed version doesn't support Win32. Win32 support costs ~US $1500.
The article had so many technical errors that it
became unreadable to me. First off, transistors can have a near infinite number of states, not just "on" and "off". Otherwise they would make very poor amplifiers, which is what they were invented for. Secondly, silicon neurons can have millions of states, be self organizing, learn... just like the carbon based neurons we use. Silicon neurons have the nice features that they don't catch cold, operate a million time faster than living neurons, use very little energy, and can operate at a range of temperatures that will kill a living neuron.
This groups sounds more like a "carbon cult" than a research group.
This just shows how old I am, but the name SNAP originally stands for Space Nuclear Auxilary Power. Check out this badly mangled url for more information:
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.Projects/Human.Expl oration.and.Development.of.Space/Human.S pace.Flight/Shuttle/Shuttle.Missions/Flight.031.ST S-34/Galileos.Power.Supply/Space.Nuclear.Power.System.Accidents
People should be a little more careful picking their names.
I'll turn 48 next saturday. I've been a programmer, since I was 19... Last time I looked for a job it took me 2 years to find a company that would hire me. The time before that it took me 2 weeks. The difference? My beard turned gray while I was at my last job. Funny how that happens.
I'm highly educated, and have up to date skills. I have a wide range of experience. I have shipped a LOT of real products to real customers. I'm willing to work for a reasonable salary.
The kid in the next cube with 2 years experience, NO formal training, who has never shipped a finished product, regularly gets offers for 20% to 40% more than I currently make. I apply for the same jobs and don't even get a rejection email.
Most of the programmers I've known over the last 29 years have given up trying to work as programmers. Not that they don't want to. It's just that it is very very hard to get a job as a programmer if you are over 40.
I can also tell you I have experienced what happens when you get "daddy" tracked in a job. All of the sudden you can't get a raise, can't get any more training, suddenly it isn't in the companies "best interests" to send you to conferences. "What, just because your kid is on the way to the emergency room you think you should be able to leave before 10 P.M. tonight? Remember, we hired YOUR, we didn't hire your family!"
I don't know why I so stupid as to stay in this business. I can tell you that there is NO shortage of IT talent in the US. There isn't really even a shortage of CHEAP It talent in the US. There is a shortage of IT talent that is stupid enough to work 80 hours/week for a fixed (small) salary, no benefits and NO RESPECT!
Slashdot Mirror
BUT....
If you, living in a country with copyright laws, downloads anything from that web site, you are in violation of YOUR countries law and can be prosecuted in YOUR country. YOU are the law breaker, not the person running the site.
Also, folks, I used to work in telecom and my MSCS thesis research was paid for from a grant by the CIA. Believe me, if a US Federal judge ordered it, all traffic flowing from or to another country can be blocked. It isn't even that hard to tell routers not to pass packets with certain IP address ranges. A court order could simply block all access from the US (or any other country) to all IP address assigned to anyone in a country that contained servers that were in violation of the local laws. It's just too easy!
Never underestimate the power of a US Federal judge!
So, what if there were no patents or copyright?
Well, a few historians point at the US patent system as the root of all technical development during the last 200 years. The concept is that the inventor is granted a limited monopoly on the use of an invention in exchange for allowing everyone else to see how it works. This way we all can learn from the invention and one invention leads to another. Without patents people rely on keeping everything secret. If everything is secret the over all knowledge base doesn't grow. This actually works a lot like open source works. To get a patent you have to open the source for your invention. The difference is that you get to make money off of it for ~17 years before it become public domain.
The idea behind copyright is different. It was intended as a way to allow performers, writers, and artists to benefit from what they do just as patents allow inventors to benefit from what they do. But, now it is being applied to software in combination with patents and the actual invention (the source code) is being held as a secret. This goes against the very CONCEPT of patents and copyrights. Something is very wrong and it needs to be fixed.
I wish I had a solution, but I don't.
I can say that the solution to the problem won't come from complaining about it. It will only come when we organize and bring the same pressure on world governements that the large corporations currently do. And don't tell me this can't be done. Just look at the history of the labor movement if you want to see how a bunch of ordinary people brought big corporations and even governements to their knees.
Of course, you might want to visit the Ludlow monument to understand the risks. http://www.umwa.org/history/ludlow2.shtml
stonewolf
I'm nearly 50 years old. I grew up before the Internet existed. The first video game I ever saw was Pong and I saw it in a bar, I was over 21 when it came out. We had only three television stations ABC, CBS, and NBC with their pure pap white bread programming. No R rated movies on cable to ruin my morals. I learned to play D&D out of the original pamphlets while in college. In other words it is impossible for me to have ever been exposed to any of these so called corrupting influences because they didn't exist when I was a child. But, I was still a geek and nerd. We didn't have computers so I built simple electronic circuits, model airplanes, model rockets. I built my first liquid fuel rocket motor (compressed air and isopropyl alcohol for fuels) in sixth grade. I made my first home made working fire arm in eighth grade.
I was excluded from everything. I had very few friends. I was teased, hated, beaten. Held down and kicked. Just for knowing things. You all know how hard I tried to fit in. You all know what it feels like. I can't tell you how many nights I laid in bead hoping I would not wake up the next morning. I can't tell you how many times I considered doing exactly what happened at Columbine. I didn't need the Internet to show teach me how to build a propane bomb or a pipe bomb or a Molotov cocktail. I didn't need cable TV or violent video games to teach me about violence. I had dozens of people teaching me about it every day.
I did finally snap. I completely lost it. I woke up one day thinking. I can't make them like me. I can't make myself be like them. But, I can make them stop. (Remember this is in the '90s this is about 1966.) The next person who gave me crap at school got hit. And so did the next one and the next one. I also got beaten up a couple times. My nick name was changed from N****R to Cassias (short for Cassias Clay, who later changed his name to Mohammed Ali one of the greatest boxers and freedom fighters the world has known.) (I should mention I'm not black, I'm so pale that I have to wear long sleeved shirts to the beach. But, then we geeks know that the "normals" lump all the hated people together into one subhuman class. ) Oddly enough I wasn't suspended from school. I think some of the teachers were actually on my side.
The end of the story is that after I started hitting people who hurt me I found that I was suddenly a leader and a hero for all the other people like me. I suddenly had friends and when I got into a fight I wasn't alone. I soon had a small, but solid, group of geek friends. I learned that by undermining out self confidence and self image the normals make us embarrassed to associate with other geeks. They keep us isolated and powerless.
I survived high school. Managed to go to college. Managed to get a graduate degree in computer science. Got lucky enough to marry a geek girl (we share an interest in rocket engines.) I now live in a "latte ville" surrounded by other geeks. I have two geek kids in high school. And, I went through the anti-geek hysteria not as a student, but as a parent. I was shocked and amazed by Columbine. Not by what happened. I considered doing the same thing a hundred times while I was in high school. I was shocked that people were surprised that it happened. It was bound to happen. It will happen again.
I CAN see several ways to stop it from happening again. We, the geeks and the nerds, must organize and demand fair treatment. We must sue in the courts and we must demonstrate in the streets and on the net. To quote Joe Hill, "Don't mourn, organize."
StoneWolf
Others that are inspired by the needs of game developers include packages like svgalib, Crystal Space (http://crystal.linuxgames.com/), and Allegro (http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/).
I'm sure there are many others that I'm missing. If you know of any, please post them.
stonewolf
FLTK -- Very nice, free, supports windows and unix, supports OpenGL. Sadly, it appears to lack some of the standard dialogs that you really want in a toolkit. I may use this anyway because it is a very nice package. This is one I could get behind using just so that if I came up with useful widgets based on it I could contribute them.
V -- Seems to have everything I want. I'm not fond of the toolkit being layered on top of other tool kits, but this will work for what I want.
wxWindows -- No built in OpenGL support. GL support is available but not as a supported part of the package. Win32 support of OpenGL may or may not exist
GTK+ -- Win32 support is still not what you'd call complete. OpenGL support is from a third party. May or may not exist for win32.
OpenStep -- Can't find anything about this. OpenStep.org says the site will open in June of 1997? Seems to be vaporware. Did find a link on the Apple.com site that list it as being available for windows 95 at a price of $5000?
GNUStep -- Only supports UNIX. Says you might be able to run it under Window NT using cygwin.
So far it looks like FLTK and V are the closest to what I want. Looks like fltk (www.fltk.org GTK+ --
Does anyone know of a good one? So far I've identified the following:
Java -- has everything I want, but can require nasty complicated down loads and installation to get a version that has all the features I want to use.
tcl/tk -- Ok, I just don't like tcl, but it meets the spec.
QT -- almost perfect except that the GPLed version doesn't support Win32. Win32 support costs ~US $1500.
Any other suggestions?
Maybe 5 mps. Escape velocity is around 7 MPS. At 50 MPS the shuttle and the station would be headed out of the solar system. NOT orbiting the earth.
The article had so many technical errors that it became unreadable to me. First off, transistors can have a near infinite number of states, not just "on" and "off". Otherwise they would make very poor amplifiers, which is what they were invented for. Secondly, silicon neurons can have millions of states, be self organizing, learn... just like the carbon based neurons we use. Silicon neurons have the nice features that they don't catch cold, operate a million time faster than living neurons, use very little energy, and can operate at a range of temperatures that will kill a living neuron. This groups sounds more like a "carbon cult" than a research group.
This just shows how old I am, but the name SNAP originally stands for Space Nuclear Auxilary Power. Check out this badly mangled url for more information: http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.Projects/Human.Expl oration.and.Development.of.Space/Human.S pace.Flight/Shuttle/Shuttle.Missions/Flight.031.ST S-34/Galileos.Power.Supply/Space.Nuclear .Power.System.Accidents
People should be a little more careful picking their names.
I'll turn 48 next saturday. I've been a programmer, since I was 19... Last time I looked for a job it took me 2 years to find a company that would hire me. The time before that it took me 2 weeks. The difference? My beard turned gray while I was at my last job. Funny how that happens.
I'm highly educated, and have up to date skills. I have a wide range of experience. I have shipped a LOT of real products to real customers. I'm willing to work for a reasonable salary.
The kid in the next cube with 2 years experience, NO formal training, who has never shipped a finished product, regularly gets offers for 20% to 40% more than I currently make. I apply for the same jobs and don't even get a rejection email.
Most of the programmers I've known over the last 29 years have given up trying to work as programmers. Not that they don't want to. It's just that it is very very hard to get a job as a programmer if you are over 40.
I can also tell you I have experienced what happens when you get "daddy" tracked in a job. All of the sudden you can't get a raise, can't get any more training, suddenly it isn't in the companies "best interests" to send you to conferences. "What, just because your kid is on the way to the emergency room you think you should be able to leave before 10 P.M. tonight? Remember, we hired YOUR, we didn't hire your family!"
I don't know why I so stupid as to stay in this business. I can tell you that there is NO shortage of IT talent in the US. There isn't really even a shortage of CHEAP It talent in the US. There is a shortage of IT talent that is stupid enough to work 80 hours/week for a fixed (small) salary, no benefits and NO RESPECT!
stonewolf I'm no ghost dog