Well, it seems to me then that there must be some way that such a platform would violate the GPL without the GPL having to explicitly state "this platform violates the GPL".
I'm hardly a legal scholar, those kinds of things make my head hurt, but it seems to me that the "trusted platform" thing is ipso facto what the software runs on, even if it takes software to implement such a platform.
I don't know, I'm probably butchering the logic as bad as a Microsoft marketing person, a SCO CEO, or a presidential campaign manager, but I still think there must be a better way to do it without having to be so explicit. I suppose I should also review the latest draft again and compare it with previous versions. I think anything that could perpetuate the image that Open Source people are Birkenstock-wearing, unshowered, raving, pinko zealots doesn't help the cause...
DRM is suffering setbacks, at least in terms of content, and the "trusted computing" thing hasn't taken off the way I thought it would. I think market forces are the answer to defeating DRM (well, that and _real_ antitrust action by the government). I think the tide is changing.
Oh well, I need more caffeine, maybe I'll get more work done and be less hopelessly idealistic.
We would love to have a robotic vacuum cleaner but we just have too much stuff laying around. I guess we'll have to hold out for the robotic maid. Does anyone have Rosie for sale?
What? You mean people aren't guaranteed a right to a comfortable living? How vicious and socially Darwinian of you.
And I wouldn't want it any other way. I've been laid off 3 times in the past 5 years, and you know what? I went and found another job each time, in two cases, much better than before. I'm very happy that I got laid off last time, because my current job is much more interesting and fun. I might have to work harder, but since I'm enjoying it, that's not a minus.
It's called capitalism. If you can't deal with it, move to Europe where they are more welcoming of people on the perpetual dole. Just make sure you're comfortable with the idea of becoming a dhimmi in the next decade or so.
Oh, sure... if you're looking to get things done, then fine, use FVWM2. But as soon as you realize your priority should be eye-candy and infinite flexibility and 3D graphics, then you'll come back to the One True WM.
OK, I need unwind through my levels of sarcasm. I actually think KDE is pretty swell, especially because I _know_ I don't know a tenth of what it is capable of. I would switch to KDE on Windows in a heartbeat, but the last time I tried (which admittedly was a long time ago) KDE running under Cygwin was pretty slow.
Of course, the real solution is to run KDE on Linux, and minus a couple of Windows apps and games I really need (or want), that's exactly what I'd prefer.
It's very contrived, but it's conceivable that, say, Microsoft could secretly pay off the FSF to issue a GPL 4 that could do things the "or later version" people never dreamed of.
I don't care how good the FSF, and I believe their motives are pure and good, in the crazy legal and technological environment, I could see a future where the FSF isn't what it is now, or even that there is a battle over what is the FSF or what is a valid new version of the GPL.
I would never go for the "or later version" clause. Of course, I also think the political statement in the GPL3 drafts about how "DRM is teh EV1L" are just ridiculous. DRM is "teh EV1L" but they should save their pontificating for the blogs. It's an arbitrary restriction for no other reason than the FSF wants to make a statement (and I even agree). Shouldn't there be a clause that GPL software can't be used in devices that squash kittens or that GPL software can't be used in world-annihilating Doomsday devices? I'm sure everyone would support preserving kittens and the world, but I don't think we need to codify that.
I understand the new draft qualifies this clause more strictly, but it's still the equivalent of a bumper-sticker slogan in a serious legal document. I wouldn't include "Save the Whales" or "Free Tibet" in my will, why should the GPL complain (implicitly) about the evils of DRM?
You gotta love our court system... there's a whole industry of tort based on the fact that it's much, much easier and less expensive to settle than fight and still risk getting some vindictive judge or jury to find against you anyway.
It seems gaming the courts is more common that using them for actual justice.
This is nothing new. Government regulation has become so complex that no one can understand it or adhere to it, even if they are trying. The tax law is a perfect example, but there are far more pervasive and hidden laws that will trip you up only when your political enemies, or someone with a grudge, decides to point them out.
I heard many years ago that a cop could, for any vehicle that hasn't just pulled out of the dealer lot, pretty much find an infraction at will. While I believe the vast majority of police are honest, it's really heart-warming to know that there is so much leeway for those few who want to abuse their power.
And even if you haven't done anything wrong, if they want you bad enough, they'll get you anyway just by harassing you until you make a mistake (cf. Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby).
That symptom points to a larger underlying problem, er, feature of Windows compared to Linux. In Windows, you cannot delete a file until you convince every single process, however obscure, to stop accessing it. Sometimes this is impossible short of rebooting. In Linux, when you delete a file, it gets deleted. I don't know exactly how this works under the covers... maybe Linux pretends to delete it until everyone lets go and then deletes it for real, the difference is, you don't have sit around and struggle to tell the computer you want to delete a flippin' file, or give up and come back later.
It's yet another in a long line of millions of instances where when you use Microsoft, you work for the software rather than the software working for you. Almost invariably, when Microsoft tries to do something for me, it's entirely the wrong thing. Just like Word... I find it 10 times harder to use Word now than I did 10 years ago because it's constantly "doing things" for me which are not something I want, and more often than not are, to me, totally unpredictable, and worse, often difficult to undo. I'm sure Vista has lots of features like that too.
You're right there is not a strong correlation between a having college degree and not being an idiot. I was convinced, having received a BS in Computer Science in 1987, that someone with enough people skills could obtain a similar degree, at least where I went to University, which was Virginia Tech, without being able to code his way out of a wet paper bag.
After 20 more years of the dumbing down of our education system, where a CS degree in at least some cases is merely training in Java programming, I can only imagine that it's worse.
Although many of my CS classes were very good, the most valuable classes I took in college were often not even CS, or even technical. I tried to round myself out by taking non-technical things that interested me, as much as possible. In fact, I wasn't too far from an English minor or a psychology minor. I also took a year of Music Theory and Spanish. While these don't necessary help me as a code monkey in any way, I do believe they contributed significantly to me as a whole person. Actually, the Spanish came in handy when working with some folks in Mexico a few years ago. I can't exactly talk or listen well in Spanish, but I was told that my written grammar was excellent.
This is the part of a university degree that people need, as much or more than the "training" in their particular field. While I feel like I barely got a well-rounded education in the Arts & Sciences department, at least at the time, it would have been almost impossible in Engineering. Education is not training and training is not education. I think real "education" contributes more in the long-term than how to write C or Java programs. BTW, at the time we worked mostly in Pascal, a language I've never used on the job, but that never caused me any problems.
What about the guy that advised the President to scramble fighter jets and take down airliners the morning of 9/11? Can you imagine the radius of the blood spray when the journalists got through with that guy? It's conceivable the idea could have saved hundreds or thousands of lives especially when they didn't know how many planes were involved.
The President's advisors need to be able throw out seemingly inconceivable alternatives because every angle needs to be considered. Someone, somewhere, has written up the war plan to nuke Tehran, Beijing or maybe even Ottawa, not because the administration wants to do it, or is considering doing it, just because you have to consider every possible situation, no matter how radical because when something completely unexpected comes out of the blue, having the right, obscure, seemingly unthinkable, plan available could save thousands or millions of lives. Maybe there's one in a million or even one in a billion chance that plan would be needed. Would you want every hack reporter with a grudge to spread the details of this plan and who made it up to the world?
I'm not specifically defending this administration or anything it's done, it's just that the need for some secrecy is justified. If it requires serious secrecy for companies to successfully compete, how can governments expect to do the same when everything they do and plan is out in the open?
It's a huge conflict in a free country that must defend itself against evil enemies and corruption from within at the same time.
We had a base on the moon, but it blew up on the third day. We had FTL travel, but it cost $9 billion per mile to use. And we had cures for AIDS and common cold, but to use it you had to compile the retrovirus against your DNA yourself, which takes about 100 years, assuming you have all the libraries installed.
Then all you have to do is cause yourself to be injured (how hard can that be) and the cop is neutralized. After all, in the climate some police forces have to work in, if the perp throws himself on the ground and gets hurt while being arrested, whose side will the politicians and courts take?
Cops have great power and great responsibility and should take every reasonable precaution to protect anyone they come in contact with, but your attitude will only neutralize them even more.
If any cop who injured a civilian went to jail, regardless of necessity, there wouldn't be very much unnecessary brutality.
So, who are you going to cry to when the police are rendered completely useless? It's bad enough an officer is constantly risking litigation just doing his job (with the idea of unnecessary force or brutality even entering the picture), how is he going to do his job without any physical contact whatsoever, which is what you're idea would force.
Like the serious explanations that the earthquake that caused the Thailand tsunami was caused by global warming?
I mean, a connection between global warming and Hurricane Katrina is believable (even if the climatologists said it probably wasn't so), but global warming causing earthquakes is ludicrous, but there are people who will not only believe it, but blame it on George Bush.
Bush was also blamed for the downturn in the economic cycle that actually hit before he was even elected. Clinton was praised for the good economy of the 90's, which he didn't cause (he certainly didn't mess it up either, which I think you _can_ give him credit for) and which ended during his term.
The problem is that the economy and the weather and similar systems are so complex we barely (or just don't) understand how they work and cause and effect, even when it's demonstrable, happens over longer periods of time than people realize. I suspect the jury won't be in on global warming for another decade or two by which time the Chicken Littles will have forgotten it and be on to some other impending global calamity.
p.s. If Al Gore was really serious about fighting global warming through reducing carbon emissions, why doesn't he promote nuclear power?
Slashdot Mirror
However, Lenovo lost marks for still using some of the most toxic substances to make its products.
Yeah, but they're doing that in China, which as we all know, Doesn't Count.
Well, I don't know Ruby either, but I think it's a reasonable result for something as "weird" as multiplying a string.
Well, that's better than "I'm sorry, El Torico, I'm afraid I can't do that." or the more curt, "Access Denied!" or the classic "Does not compute!"
Voice control is great as long as it doesn't get the Temperature and Cruise Control commands confused.
"Honest officer, I couldn't have been doing 75 in a 35 zone, I set the cruise control. You say there's frost on the outside of my windows?!"
Technology rocks! We can do nothing so much faster and more efficiently.
Well, it seems to me then that there must be some way that such a platform would violate the GPL without the GPL having to explicitly state "this platform violates the GPL".
I'm hardly a legal scholar, those kinds of things make my head hurt, but it seems to me that the "trusted platform" thing is ipso facto what the software runs on, even if it takes software to implement such a platform.
I don't know, I'm probably butchering the logic as bad as a Microsoft marketing person, a SCO CEO, or a presidential campaign manager, but I still think there must be a better way to do it without having to be so explicit. I suppose I should also review the latest draft again and compare it with previous versions. I think anything that could perpetuate the image that Open Source people are Birkenstock-wearing, unshowered, raving, pinko zealots doesn't help the cause...
DRM is suffering setbacks, at least in terms of content, and the "trusted computing" thing hasn't taken off the way I thought it would. I think market forces are the answer to defeating DRM (well, that and _real_ antitrust action by the government). I think the tide is changing.
Oh well, I need more caffeine, maybe I'll get more work done and be less hopelessly idealistic.
Oh, OK, well I'll order three then.
We would love to have a robotic vacuum cleaner but we just have too much stuff laying around. I guess we'll have to hold out for the robotic maid. Does anyone have Rosie for sale?
What? You mean people aren't guaranteed a right to a comfortable living? How vicious and socially Darwinian of you.
And I wouldn't want it any other way. I've been laid off 3 times in the past 5 years, and you know what? I went and found another job each time, in two cases, much better than before. I'm very happy that I got laid off last time, because my current job is much more interesting and fun. I might have to work harder, but since I'm enjoying it, that's not a minus.
It's called capitalism. If you can't deal with it, move to Europe where they are more welcoming of people on the perpetual dole. Just make sure you're comfortable with the idea of becoming a dhimmi in the next decade or so.
Oh, sure... if you're looking to get things done, then fine, use FVWM2. But as soon as you realize your priority should be eye-candy and infinite flexibility and 3D graphics, then you'll come back to the One True WM.
OK, I need unwind through my levels of sarcasm. I actually think KDE is pretty swell, especially because I _know_ I don't know a tenth of what it is capable of. I would switch to KDE on Windows in a heartbeat, but the last time I tried (which admittedly was a long time ago) KDE running under Cygwin was pretty slow.
Of course, the real solution is to run KDE on Linux, and minus a couple of Windows apps and games I really need (or want), that's exactly what I'd prefer.
It's very contrived, but it's conceivable that, say, Microsoft could secretly pay off the FSF to issue a GPL 4 that could do things the "or later version" people never dreamed of.
I don't care how good the FSF, and I believe their motives are pure and good, in the crazy legal and technological environment, I could see a future where the FSF isn't what it is now, or even that there is a battle over what is the FSF or what is a valid new version of the GPL.
I would never go for the "or later version" clause. Of course, I also think the political statement in the GPL3 drafts about how "DRM is teh EV1L" are just ridiculous. DRM is "teh EV1L" but they should save their pontificating for the blogs. It's an arbitrary restriction for no other reason than the FSF wants to make a statement (and I even agree). Shouldn't there be a clause that GPL software can't be used in devices that squash kittens or that GPL software can't be used in world-annihilating Doomsday devices? I'm sure everyone would support preserving kittens and the world, but I don't think we need to codify that.
I understand the new draft qualifies this clause more strictly, but it's still the equivalent of a bumper-sticker slogan in a serious legal document. I wouldn't include "Save the Whales" or "Free Tibet" in my will, why should the GPL complain (implicitly) about the evils of DRM?
You gotta love our court system... there's a whole industry of tort based on the fact that it's much, much easier and less expensive to settle than fight and still risk getting some vindictive judge or jury to find against you anyway.
It seems gaming the courts is more common that using them for actual justice.
I think Godel proved it doesn't have a code.
This is nothing new. Government regulation has become so complex that no one can understand it or adhere to it, even if they are trying. The tax law is a perfect example, but there are far more pervasive and hidden laws that will trip you up only when your political enemies, or someone with a grudge, decides to point them out.
I heard many years ago that a cop could, for any vehicle that hasn't just pulled out of the dealer lot, pretty much find an infraction at will. While I believe the vast majority of police are honest, it's really heart-warming to know that there is so much leeway for those few who want to abuse their power.
And even if you haven't done anything wrong, if they want you bad enough, they'll get you anyway just by harassing you until you make a mistake (cf. Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby).
That symptom points to a larger underlying problem, er, feature of Windows compared to Linux. In Windows, you cannot delete a file until you convince every single process, however obscure, to stop accessing it. Sometimes this is impossible short of rebooting. In Linux, when you delete a file, it gets deleted. I don't know exactly how this works under the covers... maybe Linux pretends to delete it until everyone lets go and then deletes it for real, the difference is, you don't have sit around and struggle to tell the computer you want to delete a flippin' file, or give up and come back later.
It's yet another in a long line of millions of instances where when you use Microsoft, you work for the software rather than the software working for you. Almost invariably, when Microsoft tries to do something for me, it's entirely the wrong thing. Just like Word... I find it 10 times harder to use Word now than I did 10 years ago because it's constantly "doing things" for me which are not something I want, and more often than not are, to me, totally unpredictable, and worse, often difficult to undo. I'm sure Vista has lots of features like that too.
Ridiculous! Java can perform NOPs as fast as any compiled language.
You're right there is not a strong correlation between a having college degree and not being an idiot. I was convinced, having received a BS in Computer Science in 1987, that someone with enough people skills could obtain a similar degree, at least where I went to University, which was Virginia Tech, without being able to code his way out of a wet paper bag.
After 20 more years of the dumbing down of our education system, where a CS degree in at least some cases is merely training in Java programming, I can only imagine that it's worse.
Although many of my CS classes were very good, the most valuable classes I took in college were often not even CS, or even technical. I tried to round myself out by taking non-technical things that interested me, as much as possible. In fact, I wasn't too far from an English minor or a psychology minor. I also took a year of Music Theory and Spanish. While these don't necessary help me as a code monkey in any way, I do believe they contributed significantly to me as a whole person. Actually, the Spanish came in handy when working with some folks in Mexico a few years ago. I can't exactly talk or listen well in Spanish, but I was told that my written grammar was excellent.
This is the part of a university degree that people need, as much or more than the "training" in their particular field. While I feel like I barely got a well-rounded education in the Arts & Sciences department, at least at the time, it would have been almost impossible in Engineering. Education is not training and training is not education. I think real "education" contributes more in the long-term than how to write C or Java programs. BTW, at the time we worked mostly in Pascal, a language I've never used on the job, but that never caused me any problems.
Re: Your sig...
/me wiggles fingers in air guitar flourish
I believe he said, "There's computers..."
Be excellent to each other... and Party on!
"Starts" affecting?
That assumes that these decision-making processes were once made rationally.
What about the guy that advised the President to scramble fighter jets and take down airliners the morning of 9/11? Can you imagine the radius of the blood spray when the journalists got through with that guy? It's conceivable the idea could have saved hundreds or thousands of lives especially when they didn't know how many planes were involved.
The President's advisors need to be able throw out seemingly inconceivable alternatives because every angle needs to be considered. Someone, somewhere, has written up the war plan to nuke Tehran, Beijing or maybe even Ottawa, not because the administration wants to do it, or is considering doing it, just because you have to consider every possible situation, no matter how radical because when something completely unexpected comes out of the blue, having the right, obscure, seemingly unthinkable, plan available could save thousands or millions of lives. Maybe there's one in a million or even one in a billion chance that plan would be needed. Would you want every hack reporter with a grudge to spread the details of this plan and who made it up to the world?
I'm not specifically defending this administration or anything it's done, it's just that the need for some secrecy is justified. If it requires serious secrecy for companies to successfully compete, how can governments expect to do the same when everything they do and plan is out in the open?
It's a huge conflict in a free country that must defend itself against evil enemies and corruption from within at the same time.
We had a base on the moon, but it blew up on the third day. We had FTL travel, but it cost $9 billion per mile to use. And we had cures for AIDS and common cold, but to use it you had to compile the retrovirus against your DNA yourself, which takes about 100 years, assuming you have all the libraries installed.
You are kidding. It can't be related to Anna Nicole. However, I expect it may very well be blamed on President Bush.
They did it an the earthquake, why not?
I got one word for you. Noo-kyoo-lar. It's pronounced noo-kyoo-lar.
Then all you have to do is cause yourself to be injured (how hard can that be) and the cop is neutralized. After all, in the climate some police forces have to work in, if the perp throws himself on the ground and gets hurt while being arrested, whose side will the politicians and courts take?
Cops have great power and great responsibility and should take every reasonable precaution to protect anyone they come in contact with, but your attitude will only neutralize them even more.
If any cop who injured a civilian went to jail, regardless of necessity, there wouldn't be very much unnecessary brutality.
So, who are you going to cry to when the police are rendered completely useless? It's bad enough an officer is constantly risking litigation just doing his job (with the idea of unnecessary force or brutality even entering the picture), how is he going to do his job without any physical contact whatsoever, which is what you're idea would force.
Like the serious explanations that the earthquake that caused the Thailand tsunami was caused by global warming?
I mean, a connection between global warming and Hurricane Katrina is believable (even if the climatologists said it probably wasn't so), but global warming causing earthquakes is ludicrous, but there are people who will not only believe it, but blame it on George Bush.
Bush was also blamed for the downturn in the economic cycle that actually hit before he was even elected. Clinton was praised for the good economy of the 90's, which he didn't cause (he certainly didn't mess it up either, which I think you _can_ give him credit for) and
which ended during his term.
The problem is that the economy and the weather and similar systems are so complex we barely (or just don't) understand how they work and cause and effect, even when it's demonstrable, happens over longer periods of time than people realize. I suspect the jury won't be in on global warming for another decade or two by which time the Chicken Littles will have forgotten it and be on to some other impending global calamity.
p.s. If Al Gore was really serious about fighting global warming through reducing carbon emissions, why doesn't he promote nuclear power?