...which is fine, so long as those of us who want them can still get *real* computers.
My fear is that the huge media organizationas will be able to succesfully lobby the governments of the world to pass laws strictly regulating which computers are legal to own-- in the name of "protecting intellectual property" or some similar. (You can't own a real computer because you *might* use it to pirate music!)
It doesn't seem that unlikely a result to me at the moment. Indeed, in the absence of campaign finance reform much more radical than what is currently being proposed in the US, I suspect that an outcome like this is all but inevitable, at least in the US. (Right now, it is too easy for huge corporations with a vested interest in curtailing intellectual freedom to buy congressmen.)
Do a websearch. Even with a good tool like Google, most of the time (in my experience) one wades through a lot of "crap" (either real crap, or good stuff which isn't doesn't address the question you're really trying to answer). Eventually, you find what you're looking for.
Now suppose that pay-for-content was the usual model on the internet. If you had to pay a couple of cents for every useless web page you looked at during your web search, while you were trying to find that gem of the page that made the whole thing worth it, you'd be paying for a lot of stuff that you didn't want to be paying for.
What would happen? People would stop doing web searches. People who go with "known and trusted" sources for content-- i.e. the AOL/Time/Warner web pages, or other Megacorp-blessed web pages. If you have to pay for all your content, you will be a whole lot less willing to wade through pages looking for the unknown gem than you will be if you're paying a flat fee for all content (which is effectively the case now, where you just pay for access). This will squelch the greatest thing about the internet, which is that anybody who wants to can put something up there for other people to see. If nothing ever gets seen but the Megacorp-blessed pages, then the Internet is just a slightly faster way to get the same thing you get from Network TV. That would be sad.
Now, perhaps this isn't the real question. Perhaps we're only talking about paying for content for a few things-- coyprighted music, specific news feeds, etc. Well, fine. That might work. But a general "pay for content" model will only have limited success as long as free content is out there. Why should I pay for a subscription to "How To Get Your Hardware To Work Dot Com" when there are lots of people out there putting up web pages with hints and suggestions for getting your hardware to work? On the other hand, I did say "limited success". While I think that any system that tried to make all content on the internet something you pay for would fail, there are some things worth paying for. Indeed, I subscribe to a couple of webzines myself. It's not much-- to the tune of $15 a year or so-- but it is paying for content. But it's very very far from a model where all or even a significant amount of the online content must be explicitly paid for.
I *do* have something against micropayments. Micropayments mean always having to watch what you're doing. Each web page you download you ask yourself, is this worth $0.02 to me? I've been on a micropayment system, back in the 80's and early 90's on QuantumLink and GEnie. I hated it. By and large, I only used the "flat rate" sections of the services, and simply avoided the "pay for time" sections of the services. There was stuff I was interested in there, but I didn't want to have the watch the clock the whole time I was using it. It ruined it for me -- having to watch the clock made it simply not worth it. Micropayments are the same way. Let me pay a flat fee and browse all I want without worry, rather than having to keep making the decision over and over again whether to buy or not to buy.
-Rob
Re:The real question: Why Ruby?
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Why not Ruby?
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Another big argument for Ruby over Python used to be that Ruby was GPL but since there is a GPL Python this really does not stand, as well Perl is not GPL, so not much water there.
A couple of details: Pyton is not GPL, but it is available under a license which is GPL compatable, and certainly in any event good enough to satisfy the definitions of both Open Source and Free Software. Perl is (if memory serves) dual licensed, and one of the two license is in fact the GPL.
-Rob
The real question: Why Ruby?
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Why not Ruby?
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The question to me isn't "Why not Ruby?" The question I would need answered is "Why Ruby?"
We've already got Perl and Python. Both scripting languages are quite powerful (way beyond what simple shell scripting can do). Both have strong communities behind them and are well supported. Both have a lot of programmers working on extentions and modules. And, importantly, both languages are open and free. Perl and Python are different enough in structure that they appeal to different people. Some like both, some like one or the other. I wouldn't want either language to go away; I don't want to see Perl "beat" Python or vice versa, since they are different enough in concept. There is a place for both of them.
But, given that we have Perl and Python as free scripting languages, and that both are powerful and supported, why do we need yet another? Mind you, I don't really know anything about Ruby; perhaps it provides something which Perl and/or Python simply can't. But unless it does, I simply don't see the point of having Ruby. If Perl or Python were controlled by a single entity (as is the case with C#, and even to some extent Java), I would see the point of having another language. But given that Perl and Python belong to anybody who want to have it belong to them, unless Ruby provides something they don't, there is simply no point to Ruby, so far as I can tell.
If you want a scripting language to do something, rather than writing a whole new one, I would say put your effort into writing a module for Perl and/or Python. The world will be better served by that. Again, all of this is unless there is something fundamental and useful about Ruby which Perl and/or Python simply can't do.
Unfortunately this is unlikely to be a GNU/Linux variant, due to the restrictive GNU GPL...
I get really sick of hearing this. A few people from Microsoft drop the word that the GPL is what they have a beef with, not all free software, and suddenly even self-professed free software advocates are parroting the Microsoft line.
Step back and listen to what the hell you are saying for a moment. You are saying that other independent software vendors will hopefully pick up another OS instead of Microsoft to support, so that they won't all be dependent on Microsoft. But, you say, they won't choose GNU/Linux because the GPL is too restrictive.
Hello?
Let's go by that one again. They support Microsoft now. They want to go somewhere else, but... the GPL is too restrictive? How can you say that a company that currently supports software for a licensed Microsoft operating system would have any reason to find the GPL restrictive at all? OK, so they can't include GPLed code in their products without GPLing those products... but do you think that Microsoft gives them blanket approval to just freely include Microsoft code on their products? At all? Do you think they get access to Microsoft source code for free, and with no license restriction beyond making freely available any modifications they make to that code?
Those of us who are free software advocates have got to stop bashing the GPL. It is counter productive, and it feeds right back into Microsoft. Don't use the GPL if you prefer a BSD-like license... that's fine! But you are only hurting free software by adding any sort of weight to this impression that the GPL is too restrictive for anybody to actually use.
So until Linux fully addresses these issues (something which, as much as I'm a fan of Linux, I doubt will every fully happen), there will be a need for some people to install and use Windows. Claiming otherwise is at best misguided advocacy and at worst trolling.
What do you use on Windows that you can't get on another platform? Honestly?
Yes, there are some people out there who really need Windows because of what it offers. But for 90% of the computer users, the sheep who will be installing XP on their systems because it's easiest, never mind any privacy invasion or loss of ocntrol to Microsoft, they don't really need Windows. There are other OSes out there that can do absolutely everything that the vast majority of home users would need. And, today, more than one of those other OSes are just as easy as Windows to use, and almost as easy to Install. MacOS is one obvious case, but Linux now does have almost everything one one want. No, not all software has been ported to Linux. Nor will it ever be. But do you really need Microsoft Word? Or do you need a functional word processor? There is a world of difference between the two.
Asserting that people need to use Windows simply because there is "more" software available for it, and because "many" things haven't been ported to Windows, is mindless conformism at best and trolling at worst. Open your eyes, open your mind, and stop spewing the party line because it's just easiest.
I hear you and I feel your pain. Me, I'm lucky in that I don't have to deal with Microsoft much, and I'm in a field where, if somebody sends me a Word file, I can write back telling them to send it to me in a real format.
Here's the thing though: the reason you need to make sure Windows works, the reason you need to use Microsoft save formats (PowerPoint and Word) as if they were standard interchange formats, is all because so many people use Windows XP. If more people in the world would get a *clue*, then you wouldn't have to do it either. I don't care if people use Windows, just so long as they respect the standards that internet, E-mail, etc. are built on, and don't send me documents in Word format assuming I'll read them.
The people who use PowerPoint to sell Linux-- they don't help.
There are things you can do, though. Stop sending people Office docuemnts. When they send you one, ask them to send it to you in a standard format. OK, you can't stop making sure your code will work with Windows, if people are going to use it, but you can make a little bit of noise, and cause a little bit of friction, when people assume that you will treat Microsoft formats as "the standard". Don't be like the professor who uses PowerPoint for Linux presentations because "it's what's there". Complain to the professor that by using an internal save format for a specific program, he's not making his notes available to everybody in the class. Even if you *do* end up caving in and getting a Windows machine to read it with, don't admit that, and continue to complain until he wakes up and stops being a Microsoft shill.
It is probably impossible to fully escape from Microsoft, but most people give up too easily.
Just don't install Windows XP. I don't use Windows anything. So I'm not succeptible.
What bothers me is the number of people who are going to install Windows XP, either not realizing that they are giving MS the ability to cripple their machine, or thinking that they don't need to care.
You do have a choice. I just wish more people would realize that they don't have to put up with this sort of thing, and choose to eschew Microsoft.
Ironically, I believe that a restriction such as "for use on free OSes only" would make software non-free under the GNU definition.
While the advantages of such a "super-viral" licensing restriction are clear, it is probably going too far. Heck, the BSD-licence fans already say that the GPL goes too far and is going to strangle free software in excessive idealism. I'm not sure I agree, but I would prefer that free software just remain free, even for people who want to use it with other non-free software.
Note that this restriction is *not* necessary to prevent companies from rolling the software into their proprietary product. The GPL already prevents that.
How log has the Amiga really been dead anyways (and this is NOT a flame) ? At least 15 years ago, for all intents and purposes.
That's an overestimate. It may have been fading 11 years ago, but Commodore didn't go belly up until less than 10 years ago. I'd say that up to and through the introduction of the A4000 (which was something like 1992), the Amiga was an alive and viable, if niche machine. 15 years ago, the A3000 hadn't even come out yet, and there is something to be said to the argument that the A3000 was the "best" Amiga that was ever released. (The A4000 was clearly a more advanced machine, but it was behind the curve when it came out, whereas the A3000 was still ahead of the curve.)
Mind you, I still have an A3000. I almost never use it any more, but up until less than 1 year ago, I still used it reasonably regularly. There was more "life" in the Amiga after it was dead than there are in a lot of machines. However, since Commodore went under, there's been very little other than hope to sustain Amiga users. For a long time, the rebirth was "just around the corner." This company, then the other, was going to renew the Amiga. After about six iterations of that, even I finally gave up. Sure, there have been advances (OS patches, 68060 accelerator boards, PPC accelerator boards, even some software advances), but it's been limping since C= went under, and nothing has renewed it since then.
If a new company comes out with something amazing that succeeds under the name "Amiga," it really will at this point be only the name that is the same. The down period has been too long for any real sort of continuity. As such, I have to admit that I'm no longer really that interested, and won't be unless what comes out is truly amazing on its own terms.
-Rob
Page fault latency: in all of 2.2, or fixed?
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Kernel Benchmarks
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One thing that I wonder about: that huge performance hit on the page fault latency shown in 2.2.6. Is it still there as of 2.2.19? Did the fix make its way back into the 2.2 series, or is it only fixed as of the later 2.3's and the 2.4 series? 2.2.6 is the only 2.2 in their study, so the study doesn't answer the question.
The judges might question why computer code should be considered as expression, and as such why it ought to be protected under free speech. To those of us who program, it's pretty obvious that computer code is expression. But the judges don't understand computer programming, and as such they can't understand the expression therein.
I would ask: to the judges all understand French? Chinese? Swahili? Pick a language that they don't all understand. Ought they then to allow legal restriction of the epxression of certain ideas in that language? Even questioning it seems to be saying, after all, it's just a whole lot of yammering and noise; if we don't understand it, it can't be expression that needs free speech protection.
The painting analogy is flawed. The MPAA lawyer would like you to believe that copying restrictions on DVDs are similar to you not being forced to let people into your living room just because you've hung a painting there. (Assuming I've interpreted the article correcty.)
A much better analogy would be that after you buy a painting, the artist may come in to your home and tell you where you can and can not hang that painting, how long you can have it up, and excatly when you can have it displayed. You would be forced by law to do exactly as the artist demands. This is what the MPAA Is doing with copy restrictions (and DMCA anti-circumvention) on DVDs. You have something which you've bought, but which they are now telling you how you can and cannot use it in the privacy of your own home. (E.g., "You cannot play this on a computer running Linux.")
Why just the judges understand how code can be art? Hell, I don't understand how wrapping a motercycle with cellophane (or whatever that was) is art, but lots of other people seem to think so. Just because it doesn't sound like art to me doesn't make me think that the activity ought not be protected under freedom of expression.
Anybody who is a programmer and enjoys doing it has seen code which he thinks is beautiful, or at least elegant. Two different ways of doing the same exact thing, both functional, but one might be ugly, while the other will elicit noises of appreciation from good programmers. Ask any programmer, and I'm sure they will all be able to think of cases where this has happened to them. Just because the judges don't know enough programming to understand this isn't cause to restrict freedom of speech.
Saying that fair use copying creates a clear and present danger is disinginuous. IF something which might be used for infringing purposes must be restricted just to prevent that possible case, then cars certainly should immediately be outlawed in this country. Bank robbery getaways, hit-and-run killings, speeding on the freeway, all of these things are illegal and enabled by cars. Outlaw those puppies.
A hypothetical situation where fair user might require the original content in its full glory. You're a researcher who wants to evaluate the efficacy of different compression algorithms-- compression vs. quality loss, etc. Probably you do most of your research on some sample case. Your funding agency, however, wants to see how the compression works on a "real world" example. If your funding agency is not the owner of the copyright of material they want you to test it on, you need to have pieces of that material in its full, undegraded glory in order to perform your tests.
Hypothetical, perhaps a bit contrived, but you get the general idea. No infringing is going on-- no distribution whatsoever is going on. If I want to try this just for fun in the privacy of my own home (condudcting one's own scientific experiments is a tradition in this country that goes back to Ben Franklin), there's nothing to stop me. But if I'm prevented from making personal, fair-use, full-quality copies of the material, I can't do an experiment such as I describe.
A common misconception, left over from decades of cosmology textbooks which implicitly assumed a zero cosmological constant (equivalently, no dark energy). These textbooks all make the equation that closed geometry = universe recollapses, open geometry = universe expands forever, flat geometry = borderline case.
In fact, if you have a cosmological constant (or dark energy), you can have a closed univere which expands at an accelerating rate.
The best evidence about the geometry of the universe currently comes from cosmic microwave background observations, which suggests that the geometry is *flat*. The supernova evidence suggests that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
It is a mistake to state that an eternal expansion, or an accelerating expansion, is an "open" universe.
This whole thing seems rather contrary to the open-source mentality. If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void.
Personally, I rather don't care of "patents" on stupid ideas do become void. As far as I'm concerned, the idea is to keep businesses from patenting, profiting from, and then (most significantly) preventing others from using ideas which are obvious or which have existed in the free software community from a long time. If that is your goal, you don't care if your patent becomes void-- you just care that somebody else doesn't get a non-void patent on the idea which they are then going to attempt to use to profit, leech-like.
I think that the copyleft does a fine job on it's own, thanks.
This should be in a FAQ, the memorization of which is required before one is allowed to post (even anonymously) on Slashdot. COPYRIGHT!=PATENT
The purpose of patents and patent law in general is to prompt innovation through guarantee of exclusive rights to profit from said innovation.
Fine. A noble purpose. Unfortunately, too often, patents don't work that way. Nowadays, a lot of software and "business model" patents serve either to stilfe innovation, or give companies whose true innovation is the use of predatory legal practises the ability to profit from technical non-innovations.
If organizations like this are created whose purpose is to actively discourage corporations from making money from innovations, than what is the point of patents? Why even have them at all?
Because this service isn't going to be listing the "new innovations" that companies are making so that they can exclusively profit from them. This service is going to be listing the things that are either (a) out there and as old as the hills, or (b) written by free software developers without the time, money, or desire to attempt to file a restrictive real patent. What this service will hopefully do is prevent businesses from giving up on innovating themselves because they find it's much easier to be the first to the pole with a patent on an obvious or old idea, and because they then find it much easier to profit from the innovations of others.
The current patent system has no real checks and balances, and the mess that is civil law in this country only makes it worse. The sort of people that this new service is hoping to protect are the sort of people from who can't afford to defend themselves against the threat of a patent lawsuit.
For Stallman, any other form of licence is just a tactical compromise on the way to finagling everyone into using his beloved GPL. He wants to try to promote Ogg to become the de facto standard, and then start including features in it with GPL code, so that anyone who wants to stay up with the development path has to join his merry band of intellectual property guerrillas. Of course, when Microsoft do this, it's called "embrace and extend", but Open Source's favourite sweaty hippie would never do anything so bad, wold he?
Look, that makes no sense. Just sit back and think about it. Microsoft "embrace and extend" = create incompatable versions so that everybody is locked into using Microsoft products/standards, and so that Microsoft gets sole control over something which was once out there for all to use. GPL "embrace and extend" = forever make it impossible for any one self-interest to use something to their own ends without leaveing it out in the open for anybody else to use.
How is this comparable? One is inherently selfish. The other is inherently protective. They're opposite.
Sure, criticize the restrictiveness of the GPL. That's fine. But that restrictiveness is of a *very* different nature than the restrictiveness of proprietary licenses such as what comes out of Microsoft, and it's just a stupid troll to try to compare the two.
Regarding the "IP guerrilla" nature of RMS and the GPL: sure, weakening IP is their goal. On the other hand, their way of going about it is entirely fair, and calling them a guerrilla isn't. They aren't going in there and insisting that proprietary software be made illegal, or that proprietary software must be opened up. They are *suggesting* that you might want to choose not to use it. What the GPL does is insure that that which *starts* open, *stays* open. What's so awful about that? It sounds like a damn good idea to me. If you're going to defend propreitary software, bear in mind that almost nobody who produces such software would ever let anybody else use their code without all sorts of restrictive licensing terms dictated by *them*. These restrictive licensing terms will tend to be must less protective of "general use" than the GPL is.
"These people have mortgages," Schroeder is quoted as saying in the article.
Answer: so what? The people who made buggy whips back when horse-drawn carraiges were all the rage had expenses too. Then their industry went obselete. Should the government have passed litigation that insured that their industry would survive, to "save jobs"? No, people adapted. They found something useful to do for society.
The MPAA, the RIAA, and now the publishers try to focus everybody on the creative people. They try to use the scare tactics that the musicians, writers, and so forth will not be paid unless we have all these draconian controls on digital distribution. But that's not what this really is about. There are lots of people in the distribution industry who have jobs that will become obselete as the digital world takes hold. Some of the people at the top of this chain of jobs have a lot of money and a lot of power. They don't want to lose it.
The creative people will not become obselete. All this technology can't replace the creativity of writers. What it can replace is the full industry that's in place to "publish" and distribute the writer's work. If these people really did care about the creators, they'd be trying to figure out how best to find a niche and adapt to the digital world. Instead, they're trying to insure that those who have the power base in the analog paper world maintain that power base once it has become unnatural for them to do so.
I have full confidence that the writers, musicians, etc., will find a way to live in the digital world, given the chance. We value them, and they will still be valued in the digital world. (I don't know it will work; I could spew some ideas, but I don't claim to have the answers. But I do know that the right answer isn't to clamp down and hand the keys to our minds to the executives of the RIAA and publishing industry.)
However, we don't value the recording and publishing industry. We've only valued them because they were necessary for the creative people to communicate their works to us. Those industries are becoming dinosaurs. We should let them die. The people with mortgages in that industry should find something new to do. That may sound harsh, but it's the way things go. Buggy whip makers had to find something new to do too. It's ridiculous to strangle individual freedoms across the world in the name of protecting jobs that are becoming useless.
Hey, maybe some of those trying to preserve their positions in the recording and publishing industries could instead try to find a way making a living by helping writers and musicians be recognized and known in the digital world, where information can flow freely without being blessed by a huge corporation, and where it will be that much harder for a really good writer or musician to become widely known! Maybe they could be on the forefront of inventing the new distribution model in a world where it's easy to freely copy content! Naaah, much easier to legislate the continued existence of their obselete industry.
Just don't get HDTV, unless the laws have changed such that fair use comes back and we won't have to be subject to the controls on copying and playback of the digital signal. If they are dependent on a patented signal which must be licensed from a consortium of content providers, then all the builders of end user equipment will be beholden to them, and it will be DeCSS lawsuits all over again.
Only if enough people who realize this decide *not* to buy HDTV is there hope. Yes, it will be painful if you can't get an analog signal, but just do without. Otherwise, we will be gladly cedeing any freedoms we might have to the content providers.
I have recommended, and the consensus on the short-lived "gnupedia" mailing list is that this is a good recommendation, that the FSF instead sponsor a project to be called "Alexandria" -- a more general repository for free texts.
This sounds to me very much like the Gutenberg project, at least from this noe sentence from the article. Why is this just not a repeat of the same thing? RMS is going to start something up which is going to go in competition with a longstanding free project out there. The difference being, the Gutenberg project is more longstanding and much better known than Nupedia.
Yes, I realize that the Gutenberg project is mostly for "classic" texts who have passed into the public domain. However, I was under the impression that their mission could include current free texts. (I could be wrong.)
Slashdot Mirror
...which is fine, so long as those of us who want them can still get *real* computers.
My fear is that the huge media organizationas will be able to succesfully lobby the governments of the world to pass laws strictly regulating which computers are legal to own-- in the name of "protecting intellectual property" or some similar. (You can't own a real computer because you *might* use it to pirate music!)
It doesn't seem that unlikely a result to me at the moment. Indeed, in the absence of campaign finance reform much more radical than what is currently being proposed in the US, I suspect that an outcome like this is all but inevitable, at least in the US. (Right now, it is too easy for huge corporations with a vested interest in curtailing intellectual freedom to buy congressmen.)
-Rob
That should have been "ensure".
Doh, I feel illiterate.
-Rob
...wait until Microsoft demands an auditor be sent out to the satellites to insure full licence compliance.
-Rob
Do a websearch. Even with a good tool like Google, most of the time (in my experience) one wades through a lot of "crap" (either real crap, or good stuff which isn't doesn't address the question you're really trying to answer). Eventually, you find what you're looking for.
Now suppose that pay-for-content was the usual model on the internet. If you had to pay a couple of cents for every useless web page you looked at during your web search, while you were trying to find that gem of the page that made the whole thing worth it, you'd be paying for a lot of stuff that you didn't want to be paying for.
What would happen? People would stop doing web searches. People who go with "known and trusted" sources for content-- i.e. the AOL/Time/Warner web pages, or other Megacorp-blessed web pages. If you have to pay for all your content, you will be a whole lot less willing to wade through pages looking for the unknown gem than you will be if you're paying a flat fee for all content (which is effectively the case now, where you just pay for access). This will squelch the greatest thing about the internet, which is that anybody who wants to can put something up there for other people to see. If nothing ever gets seen but the Megacorp-blessed pages, then the Internet is just a slightly faster way to get the same thing you get from Network TV. That would be sad.
Now, perhaps this isn't the real question. Perhaps we're only talking about paying for content for a few things-- coyprighted music, specific news feeds, etc. Well, fine. That might work. But a general "pay for content" model will only have limited success as long as free content is out there. Why should I pay for a subscription to "How To Get Your Hardware To Work Dot Com" when there are lots of people out there putting up web pages with hints and suggestions for getting your hardware to work? On the other hand, I did say "limited success". While I think that any system that tried to make all content on the internet something you pay for would fail, there are some things worth paying for. Indeed, I subscribe to a couple of webzines myself. It's not much-- to the tune of $15 a year or so-- but it is paying for content. But it's very very far from a model where all or even a significant amount of the online content must be explicitly paid for.
I *do* have something against micropayments. Micropayments mean always having to watch what you're doing. Each web page you download you ask yourself, is this worth $0.02 to me? I've been on a micropayment system, back in the 80's and early 90's on QuantumLink and GEnie. I hated it. By and large, I only used the "flat rate" sections of the services, and simply avoided the "pay for time" sections of the services. There was stuff I was interested in there, but I didn't want to have the watch the clock the whole time I was using it. It ruined it for me -- having to watch the clock made it simply not worth it. Micropayments are the same way. Let me pay a flat fee and browse all I want without worry, rather than having to keep making the decision over and over again whether to buy or not to buy.
-Rob
Another big argument for Ruby over Python used to be that Ruby was GPL but since there is a GPL Python this really does not stand, as well Perl is not GPL, so not much water there.
A couple of details: Pyton is not GPL, but it is available under a license which is GPL compatable, and certainly in any event good enough to satisfy the definitions of both Open Source and Free Software. Perl is (if memory serves) dual licensed, and one of the two license is in fact the GPL.
-Rob
The question to me isn't "Why not Ruby?" The question I would need answered is "Why Ruby?"
We've already got Perl and Python. Both scripting languages are quite powerful (way beyond what simple shell scripting can do). Both have strong communities behind them and are well supported. Both have a lot of programmers working on extentions and modules. And, importantly, both languages are open and free. Perl and Python are different enough in structure that they appeal to different people. Some like both, some like one or the other. I wouldn't want either language to go away; I don't want to see Perl "beat" Python or vice versa, since they are different enough in concept. There is a place for both of them.
But, given that we have Perl and Python as free scripting languages, and that both are powerful and supported, why do we need yet another? Mind you, I don't really know anything about Ruby; perhaps it provides something which Perl and/or Python simply can't. But unless it does, I simply don't see the point of having Ruby. If Perl or Python were controlled by a single entity (as is the case with C#, and even to some extent Java), I would see the point of having another language. But given that Perl and Python belong to anybody who want to have it belong to them, unless Ruby provides something they don't, there is simply no point to Ruby, so far as I can tell.
If you want a scripting language to do something, rather than writing a whole new one, I would say put your effort into writing a module for Perl and/or Python. The world will be better served by that. Again, all of this is unless there is something fundamental and useful about Ruby which Perl and/or Python simply can't do.
-Rob
Unfortunately this is unlikely to be a GNU/Linux variant, due to the restrictive GNU GPL...
I get really sick of hearing this. A few people from Microsoft drop the word that the GPL is what they have a beef with, not all free software, and suddenly even self-professed free software advocates are parroting the Microsoft line.
Step back and listen to what the hell you are saying for a moment. You are saying that other independent software vendors will hopefully pick up another OS instead of Microsoft to support, so that they won't all be dependent on Microsoft. But, you say, they won't choose GNU/Linux because the GPL is too restrictive.
Hello?
Let's go by that one again. They support Microsoft now. They want to go somewhere else, but... the GPL is too restrictive? How can you say that a company that currently supports software for a licensed Microsoft operating system would have any reason to find the GPL restrictive at all? OK, so they can't include GPLed code in their products without GPLing those products... but do you think that Microsoft gives them blanket approval to just freely include Microsoft code on their products? At all? Do you think they get access to Microsoft source code for free, and with no license restriction beyond making freely available any modifications they make to that code?
Those of us who are free software advocates have got to stop bashing the GPL. It is counter productive, and it feeds right back into Microsoft. Don't use the GPL if you prefer a BSD-like license... that's fine! But you are only hurting free software by adding any sort of weight to this impression that the GPL is too restrictive for anybody to actually use.
-Rob
So until Linux fully addresses these issues (something which, as much as I'm a fan of Linux, I doubt will every fully happen), there will be a need for some people to install and use Windows. Claiming otherwise is at best misguided advocacy and at worst trolling.
What do you use on Windows that you can't get on another platform? Honestly?
Yes, there are some people out there who really need Windows because of what it offers. But for 90% of the computer users, the sheep who will be installing XP on their systems because it's easiest, never mind any privacy invasion or loss of ocntrol to Microsoft, they don't really need Windows. There are other OSes out there that can do absolutely everything that the vast majority of home users would need. And, today, more than one of those other OSes are just as easy as Windows to use, and almost as easy to Install. MacOS is one obvious case, but Linux now does have almost everything one one want. No, not all software has been ported to Linux. Nor will it ever be. But do you really need Microsoft Word? Or do you need a functional word processor? There is a world of difference between the two.
Asserting that people need to use Windows simply because there is "more" software available for it, and because "many" things haven't been ported to Windows, is mindless conformism at best and trolling at worst. Open your eyes, open your mind, and stop spewing the party line because it's just easiest.
-Rob
I hear you and I feel your pain. Me, I'm lucky in that I don't have to deal with Microsoft much, and I'm in a field where, if somebody sends me a Word file, I can write back telling them to send it to me in a real format.
Here's the thing though: the reason you need to make sure Windows works, the reason you need to use Microsoft save formats (PowerPoint and Word) as if they were standard interchange formats, is all because so many people use Windows XP. If more people in the world would get a *clue*, then you wouldn't have to do it either. I don't care if people use Windows, just so long as they respect the standards that internet, E-mail, etc. are built on, and don't send me documents in Word format assuming I'll read them.
The people who use PowerPoint to sell Linux-- they don't help.
There are things you can do, though. Stop sending people Office docuemnts. When they send you one, ask them to send it to you in a standard format. OK, you can't stop making sure your code will work with Windows, if people are going to use it, but you can make a little bit of noise, and cause a little bit of friction, when people assume that you will treat Microsoft formats as "the standard". Don't be like the professor who uses PowerPoint for Linux presentations because "it's what's there". Complain to the professor that by using an internal save format for a specific program, he's not making his notes available to everybody in the class. Even if you *do* end up caving in and getting a Windows machine to read it with, don't admit that, and continue to complain until he wakes up and stops being a Microsoft shill.
It is probably impossible to fully escape from Microsoft, but most people give up too easily.
-Rob
It doesn't bother me.
Just don't install Windows XP. I don't use Windows anything. So I'm not succeptible.
What bothers me is the number of people who are going to install Windows XP, either not realizing that they are giving MS the ability to cripple their machine, or thinking that they don't need to care.
You do have a choice. I just wish more people would realize that they don't have to put up with this sort of thing, and choose to eschew Microsoft.
-Rob
Ironically, I believe that a restriction such as "for use on free OSes only" would make software non-free under the GNU definition.
While the advantages of such a "super-viral" licensing restriction are clear, it is probably going too far. Heck, the BSD-licence fans already say that the GPL goes too far and is going to strangle free software in excessive idealism. I'm not sure I agree, but I would prefer that free software just remain free, even for people who want to use it with other non-free software.
Note that this restriction is *not* necessary to prevent companies from rolling the software into their proprietary product. The GPL already prevents that.
-Rob
...of a common enemy, out there and openly declared.
-Rob
How log has the Amiga really been dead anyways (and this is NOT a flame) ? At least 15 years ago, for all intents and purposes.
That's an overestimate. It may have been fading 11 years ago, but Commodore didn't go belly up until less than 10 years ago. I'd say that up to and through the introduction of the A4000 (which was something like 1992), the Amiga was an alive and viable, if niche machine. 15 years ago, the A3000 hadn't even come out yet, and there is something to be said to the argument that the A3000 was the "best" Amiga that was ever released. (The A4000 was clearly a more advanced machine, but it was behind the curve when it came out, whereas the A3000 was still ahead of the curve.)
Mind you, I still have an A3000. I almost never use it any more, but up until less than 1 year ago, I still used it reasonably regularly. There was more "life" in the Amiga after it was dead than there are in a lot of machines. However, since Commodore went under, there's been very little other than hope to sustain Amiga users. For a long time, the rebirth was "just around the corner." This company, then the other, was going to renew the Amiga. After about six iterations of that, even I finally gave up. Sure, there have been advances (OS patches, 68060 accelerator boards, PPC accelerator boards, even some software advances), but it's been limping since C= went under, and nothing has renewed it since then.
If a new company comes out with something amazing that succeeds under the name "Amiga," it really will at this point be only the name that is the same. The down period has been too long for any real sort of continuity. As such, I have to admit that I'm no longer really that interested, and won't be unless what comes out is truly amazing on its own terms.
-Rob
One thing that I wonder about: that huge performance hit on the page fault latency shown in 2.2.6. Is it still there as of 2.2.19? Did the fix make its way back into the 2.2 series, or is it only fixed as of the later 2.3's and the 2.4 series? 2.2.6 is the only 2.2 in their study, so the study doesn't answer the question.
-Rob
The judges might question why computer code should be considered as expression, and as such why it ought to be protected under free speech. To those of us who program, it's pretty obvious that computer code is expression. But the judges don't understand computer programming, and as such they can't understand the expression therein.
I would ask: to the judges all understand French? Chinese? Swahili? Pick a language that they don't all understand. Ought they then to allow legal restriction of the epxression of certain ideas in that language? Even questioning it seems to be saying, after all, it's just a whole lot of yammering and noise; if we don't understand it, it can't be expression that needs free speech protection.
-Rob
The painting analogy is flawed. The MPAA lawyer would like you to believe that copying restrictions on DVDs are similar to you not being forced to let people into your living room just because you've hung a painting there. (Assuming I've interpreted the article correcty.)
A much better analogy would be that after you buy a painting, the artist may come in to your home and tell you where you can and can not hang that painting, how long you can have it up, and excatly when you can have it displayed. You would be forced by law to do exactly as the artist demands. This is what the MPAA Is doing with copy restrictions (and DMCA anti-circumvention) on DVDs. You have something which you've bought, but which they are now telling you how you can and cannot use it in the privacy of your own home. (E.g., "You cannot play this on a computer running Linux.")
-Rob
Why just the judges understand how code can be art? Hell, I don't understand how wrapping a motercycle with cellophane (or whatever that was) is art, but lots of other people seem to think so. Just because it doesn't sound like art to me doesn't make me think that the activity ought not be protected under freedom of expression.
Anybody who is a programmer and enjoys doing it has seen code which he thinks is beautiful, or at least elegant. Two different ways of doing the same exact thing, both functional, but one might be ugly, while the other will elicit noises of appreciation from good programmers. Ask any programmer, and I'm sure they will all be able to think of cases where this has happened to them. Just because the judges don't know enough programming to understand this isn't cause to restrict freedom of speech.
Saying that fair use copying creates a clear and present danger is disinginuous. IF something which might be used for infringing purposes must be restricted just to prevent that possible case, then cars certainly should immediately be outlawed in this country. Bank robbery getaways, hit-and-run killings, speeding on the freeway, all of these things are illegal and enabled by cars. Outlaw those puppies.
-Rob
A hypothetical situation where fair user might require the original content in its full glory. You're a researcher who wants to evaluate the efficacy of different compression algorithms-- compression vs. quality loss, etc. Probably you do most of your research on some sample case. Your funding agency, however, wants to see how the compression works on a "real world" example. If your funding agency is not the owner of the copyright of material they want you to test it on, you need to have pieces of that material in its full, undegraded glory in order to perform your tests.
Hypothetical, perhaps a bit contrived, but you get the general idea. No infringing is going on-- no distribution whatsoever is going on. If I want to try this just for fun in the privacy of my own home (condudcting one's own scientific experiments is a tradition in this country that goes back to Ben Franklin), there's nothing to stop me. But if I'm prevented from making personal, fair-use, full-quality copies of the material, I can't do an experiment such as I describe.
-Rob
A common misconception, left over from decades of cosmology textbooks which implicitly assumed a zero cosmological constant (equivalently, no dark energy). These textbooks all make the equation that closed geometry = universe recollapses, open geometry = universe expands forever, flat geometry = borderline case.
In fact, if you have a cosmological constant (or dark energy), you can have a closed univere which expands at an accelerating rate.
The best evidence about the geometry of the universe currently comes from cosmic microwave background observations, which suggests that the geometry is *flat*. The supernova evidence suggests that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
It is a mistake to state that an eternal expansion, or an accelerating expansion, is an "open" universe.
-Rob
This whole thing seems rather contrary to the open-source mentality. If you patent something, and don't enforce the patent, it becomes void.
Personally, I rather don't care of "patents" on stupid ideas do become void. As far as I'm concerned, the idea is to keep businesses from patenting, profiting from, and then (most significantly) preventing others from using ideas which are obvious or which have existed in the free software community from a long time. If that is your goal, you don't care if your patent becomes void-- you just care that somebody else doesn't get a non-void patent on the idea which they are then going to attempt to use to profit, leech-like.
I think that the copyleft does a fine job on it's own, thanks.
This should be in a FAQ, the memorization of which is required before one is allowed to post (even anonymously) on Slashdot. COPYRIGHT!=PATENT
-Rob
The purpose of patents and patent law in general is to prompt innovation through guarantee of exclusive rights to profit from said innovation.
Fine. A noble purpose. Unfortunately, too often, patents don't work that way. Nowadays, a lot of software and "business model" patents serve either to stilfe innovation, or give companies whose true innovation is the use of predatory legal practises the ability to profit from technical non-innovations.
If organizations like this are created whose purpose is to actively discourage corporations from making money from innovations, than what is the point of patents? Why even have them at all?
Because this service isn't going to be listing the "new innovations" that companies are making so that they can exclusively profit from them. This service is going to be listing the things that are either (a) out there and as old as the hills, or (b) written by free software developers without the time, money, or desire to attempt to file a restrictive real patent. What this service will hopefully do is prevent businesses from giving up on innovating themselves because they find it's much easier to be the first to the pole with a patent on an obvious or old idea, and because they then find it much easier to profit from the innovations of others.
The current patent system has no real checks and balances, and the mess that is civil law in this country only makes it worse. The sort of people that this new service is hoping to protect are the sort of people from who can't afford to defend themselves against the threat of a patent lawsuit.
-Rob
For Stallman, any other form of licence is just a tactical compromise on the way to finagling everyone into using his beloved GPL. He wants to try to promote Ogg to become the de facto standard, and then start including features in it with GPL code, so that anyone who wants to stay up with the development path has to join his merry band of intellectual property guerrillas. Of course, when Microsoft do this, it's called "embrace and extend", but Open Source's favourite sweaty hippie would never do anything so bad, wold he?
Look, that makes no sense. Just sit back and think about it. Microsoft "embrace and extend" = create incompatable versions so that everybody is locked into using Microsoft products/standards, and so that Microsoft gets sole control over something which was once out there for all to use. GPL "embrace and extend" = forever make it impossible for any one self-interest to use something to their own ends without leaveing it out in the open for anybody else to use.
How is this comparable? One is inherently selfish. The other is inherently protective. They're opposite.
Sure, criticize the restrictiveness of the GPL. That's fine. But that restrictiveness is of a *very* different nature than the restrictiveness of proprietary licenses such as what comes out of Microsoft, and it's just a stupid troll to try to compare the two.
Regarding the "IP guerrilla" nature of RMS and the GPL: sure, weakening IP is their goal. On the other hand, their way of going about it is entirely fair, and calling them a guerrilla isn't. They aren't going in there and insisting that proprietary software be made illegal, or that proprietary software must be opened up. They are *suggesting* that you might want to choose not to use it. What the GPL does is insure that that which *starts* open, *stays* open. What's so awful about that? It sounds like a damn good idea to me. If you're going to defend propreitary software, bear in mind that almost nobody who produces such software would ever let anybody else use their code without all sorts of restrictive licensing terms dictated by *them*. These restrictive licensing terms will tend to be must less protective of "general use" than the GPL is.
-Rob
"These people have mortgages," Schroeder is quoted as saying in the article.
Answer: so what? The people who made buggy whips back when horse-drawn carraiges were all the rage had expenses too. Then their industry went obselete. Should the government have passed litigation that insured that their industry would survive, to "save jobs"? No, people adapted. They found something useful to do for society.
The MPAA, the RIAA, and now the publishers try to focus everybody on the creative people. They try to use the scare tactics that the musicians, writers, and so forth will not be paid unless we have all these draconian controls on digital distribution. But that's not what this really is about. There are lots of people in the distribution industry who have jobs that will become obselete as the digital world takes hold. Some of the people at the top of this chain of jobs have a lot of money and a lot of power. They don't want to lose it.
The creative people will not become obselete. All this technology can't replace the creativity of writers. What it can replace is the full industry that's in place to "publish" and distribute the writer's work. If these people really did care about the creators, they'd be trying to figure out how best to find a niche and adapt to the digital world. Instead, they're trying to insure that those who have the power base in the analog paper world maintain that power base once it has become unnatural for them to do so.
I have full confidence that the writers, musicians, etc., will find a way to live in the digital world, given the chance. We value them, and they will still be valued in the digital world. (I don't know it will work; I could spew some ideas, but I don't claim to have the answers. But I do know that the right answer isn't to clamp down and hand the keys to our minds to the executives of the RIAA and publishing industry.)
However, we don't value the recording and publishing industry. We've only valued them because they were necessary for the creative people to communicate their works to us. Those industries are becoming dinosaurs. We should let them die. The people with mortgages in that industry should find something new to do. That may sound harsh, but it's the way things go. Buggy whip makers had to find something new to do too. It's ridiculous to strangle individual freedoms across the world in the name of protecting jobs that are becoming useless.
Hey, maybe some of those trying to preserve their positions in the recording and publishing industries could instead try to find a way making a living by helping writers and musicians be recognized and known in the digital world, where information can flow freely without being blessed by a huge corporation, and where it will be that much harder for a really good writer or musician to become widely known! Maybe they could be on the forefront of inventing the new distribution model in a world where it's easy to freely copy content! Naaah, much easier to legislate the continued existence of their obselete industry.
-Rob
Sueage is the American pastime.
Just don't get HDTV, unless the laws have changed such that fair use comes back and we won't have to be subject to the controls on copying and playback of the digital signal. If they are dependent on a patented signal which must be licensed from a consortium of content providers, then all the builders of end user equipment will be beholden to them, and it will be DeCSS lawsuits all over again.
Only if enough people who realize this decide *not* to buy HDTV is there hope. Yes, it will be painful if you can't get an analog signal, but just do without. Otherwise, we will be gladly cedeing any freedoms we might have to the content providers.
-Rob
I have recommended, and the consensus on the short-lived "gnupedia" mailing list is that this is a good recommendation, that the FSF instead sponsor a project to be called "Alexandria" -- a more general repository for free texts.
This sounds to me very much like the Gutenberg project, at least from this noe sentence from the article. Why is this just not a repeat of the same thing? RMS is going to start something up which is going to go in competition with a longstanding free project out there. The difference being, the Gutenberg project is more longstanding and much better known than Nupedia.
Yes, I realize that the Gutenberg project is mostly for "classic" texts who have passed into the public domain. However, I was under the impression that their mission could include current free texts. (I could be wrong.)
For the Gutenberg project, see: http://promo.net/pg
-Rob